Democrats & Liberals Archives

OK Stephen when are you going to comment on the billions that the feds lose every day on stupid stuff. I sgree a bank loses two billion in a shady trade is bad, but we let our elected officials spend trillions every year like Obama has and give him a pass??????? A little Hypocrocy don’t ya think.

People really need to learn how goverment works before posting nonsense. ongress spends money not the pothus.

Stephen

“just how much political benefit is your party going to derive from video of the Senators showering their praise over the CEO of this bank, when it’s being shown after the next financial crisis?”

They probably will not derive political benefits. Sometimes truth is more important than political benefits. I have noticed in our respective writings. You talk politics; I talk what is the right thing to do.

The hope of conservatives is what is right will come into line with what is good politics.

President Obama is a great talker and a great politicians. If talk could make things right, we would be fixed by now. Obama promised to save the economy. He said that if he couldn’t do it in three years, he should be out. Well…

Watch President Obama in his own words

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-0ecuS8tWs

Maybe Obama didn’t cause the problems. But he is not the man who can solve them and he made them worse. Let’s vote for hope and change.

It takes both parties to make goverment work c&j so let’s be honest your side is not helping.

Congress spends it but the POTUS approves it jeff, and your side isn’t helping much either jeff.

jeff

Agreed. Democrats controlled all of Congress since the elections of 2006 until 2010 and still control the Senate. So when Obama blames Republicans for the mess he inherited, is he telling the truth.

Of course Democrats controlled the presidency and both houses of congress for the first two years of the Obama time. They passed all they wanted and it didn’t work.

C&J Like I said let’s be honest the Republicans are the problem and a few are starting to come out and be truthfull.

jeff

I would like to have other options. Unfortunately, Barack Obama doesn’t seem to be very good at the job. I think he is in over his head.

Both parties are to blame jeff, not just republicans. You sound like Stephen now, he won’t blame HIS PEOPLE either.

KAP-
You took the words right out of Jim DeMint’s mouth. Of course, we all know you’re a genuine independent.

I wonder how much of that money is coming out because people like DeMint voted for lifting restrictions on Banks getting too big to fail, or because he voted for Tax Cuts that immediately gutted revenue. Or because of that war he voted for.

But more to the point, are you telling that banks should be able to take incredible risks with depositors money on account of the fact that the Federal Government is running a deficit? I’m not quite sure how a deficit run largely on policies he voted for and which he’s insisted on keeping in place through the filibuster justifies a trading loss in a bank that taxpayers were just forced to take a “loss” to bail out.

C&J-
As for Obama making problems worse? That’s demonstrably wrong. We are not in a deeper recession. We have added almost four million jobs since we started out. We have grown GDP since the summer of 2009.

That, while your side has decided you must destroy the village of public sector growth to save it. You’ve effectively thrown over a half million people out of work, trying to make things better, but that’s only proved a drag on private sector numbers that have continually increased since the Stimulus.

So, I am willing any day to pit a record of job increases against your record of job-killing. The perverted logic of creative destruction should not be the guiding principle of our efforts to guide the economy towards recovery. We shouldn’t screw around with voodoo economics of that kind, but instead provide positive boosts to an economy that needs it.

Your people want to have a referendum on the economy, go ahead. We can remind people where your policies took us, and educate people about what our policies have done to save this economy from the Bush Recession.

Stephen

Your argument goes in a circle. We are in a slow recovery. You defend that by saying that proof that Obama did the right thing is that we did not plunge into a deep recession. Yet Obama’s own predictions were different. He told us that unemployment w/o his stimulus would get above 8%. We got the stimulus and unemployment went to 10% and is still above 8%.

So you prove that Obama did well because you assume, w/o evidence, that things would be much worse w/o Obama.

Before you deploy the Obama talking point - NOBODY wanted to do nothing or “go back” to the policies of 2007. We all move ahead. What we wanted was something that worked better than what Obama gave us.

The economy recovers. W/o Obama we would be recovering faster and better.

We just need better management in the White House and a more intelligent policy.

BTW - if Obama is reelected, who is he gonna blame when things still don’t work. When the weak recovery extends, will he complain about Obama of term #1 and then claim he is a different Obama?

You know in May of 1945 there was almost nothing standing in Germany. They called it the zero point. But four years later, the economy was growing robustly. I know you think that Obama faced the worst situation in the history of the world, but others have faced similar or greater challenges and done well.

I am sick of our president crying about the troubles he faces; nothing is his fault. We are Americans. We don’t cry; we work on our problems. We find opportunities in adversity; we don’t embrace adversity as an excuse to poor performance. We can do better and I hope come November we will.

OK Stephen your writing something I never said, I suggest you read the first comment again. What I said was that what the bank did was bad but YOU give YOUR PEOPLE a pass when they spend Trillions on stupid stuff. Get YOUR FACTS STRAIGHT YOUNG MAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Stephen

The other problem is that Obama cannot blame Bush for what is happening now.

The economy came out of recession in 2009, as economists predicted it would w/o a stimulus. It grew by almost 4% growth in three consecutive quarters beginning in late 2009. This is why Obama and Biden predicted that 2010 would be the summer of recover. But then in in July 2010, twe sank to rates that are well below average and too low for a strong recovery.

So what Obama “inherited” was a recovery. When his programs came on, that recovery stalled. In previous recoveries, growth goes way up after being pushed down.

I think that you misunderstand the difference between rates of growth and the total. Indeed, Obama is right when he says it will take a long time to get back to where we were in 2006. But he is misleading you when he mixed rates of growth with the total size of the economy.

He could complain that the it is not his fault that we are at a lower level of total wealth than we were in 2006. But the rate of growth we are experiencing now happened completely on his watch. To the extend that presidents take credit or blame, it is indeed Obama’s fault.

C&J-
First, Obama never said it himself. Second, it was from a report written before he took the oath of office. That means in the middle of January or earlier, before even the first survey of the 4Q 2008 numbers was in.

Third:

Forecasts of the unemployment rate without the recovery plan vary substantially,” the report said. “Some private forecasters anticipate unemployment rates as high as 11% in the absence of action.” As Smith noted in his video, the report spoke of “considerable uncertainty” in the estimates and the potential for “significant margins of error.”

And fourth, it was a generic stimulus they were talking about.

Politifact ranks this as “Mostly False”. Odd occurence, something your man says being ranked as BS.

Fact of the matter is, in January 2009, most people had no idea how bad this recession really was going to be, but the simple facts on unemployment rates illustrates the problem. Let’s say you start with December’s rate. Well, 7.3. Then January’s: 7.8. Which is to say that by the time Obama could have legally done anything, passed a law or whatever, he was .2% away from hitting 8.0% anyways.

Why do you think it’s plausible that Obama could have done that? I know I must have quoted the job loss numbers of that period to you. You don’t lose the better part of a million jobs the month you get into office, and keep that rate from growing. By the time Obama has the stimulus plan done, but before it can be enacted, February numbers are at 8.3% He needed a time machine to meet that projection. NOBODY could have met that projection.

The first provision that went into affect in April was the payroll tax cut, if I remember correctly. 8.9%. To keep folks like you happy, thought you made a point of bargaining him down on the actual direct assistance, including infrastructure, he had spread out the spending reduced it, made a lot of it tax cuts to satisfy folks like you who still believe that tax cuts move a lot of capital into people’s hands to invest and create jobs.

By the middle of that year, we lost around three quarters of all the jobs that were going to be lost for the Obama Administration By the end of the year, we had lost 92% of all the jobs we were going to lose.

You tell me: what were the mysterious forces, other than a massive stimulus, that were going to keep unemployment rates from rising at the pace they were going to do before? What was going to end the recession? What was going to rescue the economy?

We did something, but your people made a point of opposing it on a party line basis. Instead of talking of hypothetical unemployment rates you believe Obama should have been able to maintain, despite the evidence that nobody could have maintained them, let’s talk about the real unemployment rates, and how far Obama has reduced things from their peak. Obama is likely, with luck, to break even this year. This, despite a Republican delegation in Congress, and delegations throughout the states who have mounted a job-killing campaign of fiscal austerity throughout the states, and who have forced similar measures on the Federal government for the future.

So you tell me something here: who should we really be after: A man who tried and largely succeeded in creating and preserving actually jobs, or a party of people who have tried and failed to improve the economy by politically radical means of job cuts and spending decreases in the midst of a recession? I mean, we’re still better off than we were at the start of the stimulus. We’ve added actual jobs. But since Republicans have gotten their hands on budgets, things have slowed down significantly, and public sector losses have been dragging private sector number down, not to mention swallowing the private sector’s gains up in their layoffs.

If we had provided aid to the states to make these layoffs unnecessary, then American unemployment would have been sharply reduced, and job growth would have been faster. With an additional 650,000 jobs, the number of jobs fiscally conservative officials have cut in state and local governments, Obama would have better than broken even, he would had a good start to start undoing Bush’s job losses.

Your people have essentially blocked any progress that you can’t claim for your own, but the problem is, your policies have a net negative impact to start with, and as of late, I have not noticed those net negative impacts turning, via fairy dust, into net positives. I would rather have somebody in office who is steadily, though slowly gaining us jobs, than another moron in office killing them in the vain hopes that this “creative destruction” will somehow save the economy.

SD

Senator Harry Reid has refused to, as you say, compromise and neither has he allowed to bring to a vote far too many jobs producing bills and economic ideas.

Accusing republicans is a farce and a fraudulent concept.

You just like to type words to make it sound like you know what you are talking about. You make numbers say what you want them to say, sans truth.

You cannot argue against those negative numbers and words. There is no argument.

Maranatha

Stephen Daugherty loves to defend Obama because Obama is his messiah; well defend this:

“Americans Across The Country Disagree With The President’s Assertion That We’re “Doing Fine”:

• Reuters: “Obama Ratings Sink On Economic Doubts, Worries” (Reuters, 6/12/12)
• ABC News: “A Chilly Reception From Independents On Obama’s Plans For The Economy” (ABC News, 6/13/12)
• National Journal: “In Colorado Focus Group, Obama Voters Disillusioned” (National Journal, 6/13/12)
• The Washington Post: “10 Signs Obama Is Sinking” (The Washington Post, 6/13/12)
• National Journal: “How Badly Has Obama Alienated The Middle Class?” (National Journal,6/13/12)
• Politico: “Poll: Independents Wary Of Obama’s Economic Plans” (Politico, 6/13/12)
• The Hill: “Poll: Weak Economy Hits Obama Approval Rating” (The Hill, 6/13/12)

Even His Own Supporters And Fellow Democrats Are Questioning President Obama:

• The Washington Post: “Obama Campaign’s Rough Patch Concerns Some Democrats” (The Washington Post, 6/12/12)
• Politico: “Democrats Want Change In Obama’s Message” (Politico, 6/12/12)
• Washington Examiner: “Now Union Members Are Deserting Obama” (Washington Examiner, 6/12/12)
• Politico: “James Carville ‘Worried’ About Obama’s Message On The Economy” (Politico, 6/13/12)

And Evidence Continues To Pile Up That President Obama’s Policies Aren’t Working:

• Politico: “Election Angst: Wages Have Barely Budged Since ’08” (Politico, 6/12/12)
• Bay Citizen: “Solyndra Layoffs Larger Than Previously Reported” (Bay Citizen, 6/13/12)
• Associated Press:“Federal Deficit Totals $844.5B Through 8 Months” (Associated Press, 6/12/12)
• Wall Street Journal: “Steep Rise In Health Costs Projected” (Wall Street Journal, 6/12/12)
• Associated Press: “More Than Seven In 10 US Teens Jobless In Summer” (Associated Press, 6/12/12)
• Associated Press: “Average Price Of 4-Year University Up 15 Percent” (Associated Press, 6/12/12)

List can be found at: http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obamas-day-headlines_647210.html

Some of these aticles are in the liberal MSM. Obama is going down…

tom humes-
80% of the output from the 2009-2011 Congress was shot down by your people. I’ve seen such filibusters resolved before by deals being made, but that simply did not happen on a regular basis by your group.

You can pretend you were extending olive branches so you can pretend to be a victim, but you were deliberately killing bills rather than negotiating new versions that could then be voted on.

I don’t have to pretend your people dealt with us fairly at all, just so you can do this ridiculously transparent, ridiculously repetitive game of simply repeating back what charges we make at you back at us.

Billinflorida-
1) From 50% to 47%.

2) I quote:

It’s no party for Mitt Romney either. Independents also rate his economic plans more unfavorably than favorably, by 47-35 percent. But more are undecided, giving Romney some room to maneuver; unlike Obama, Romney avoids majority criticism in this group.

3)Obama leads or is tied with Romney in Colorado

4)Jennifer Rubin may be published in a mainstream publication, rather than being a part of the deliberately biased Right-Wing Media, but she is A Tea Party Supporter and vociferous critic of the President’s Israel policy. Long story short, she’s just one of many Right Wing Commentators predicting doom for Obama.

5)Yet another opinion piece, speculative and… Well, did you actually read most of these articles?

“Banking benefits those producing and consuming financial services - the private benefits for bank employees, depositors, borrowers and investors,” he writes. “But it also risks endangering innocent bystanders within the wider economy - the social costs to the general public from banking crises.” Yet no one — no one — in the Obama administration or the U.S. Congress has begun to talk in fundamental terms about the social costs of Wall Street. So yes, this festering inequity at the heart of our economy is perhaps the main reason why Barack Obama may lose in November. The president, quixotically, sought to save both the poor (with Obamacare, mainly) and the filthy rich (Wall Street)—but at the expense of the bigger victim, the middle class. And if he gets voted out, they will be the ones to do it.

6) Romney’s not doing much better, if you look at the poll results. And let’s be blunt here, have we really gotten into the battle here? Can Romney defend economic elitism to a public that’s been stung badly by it?

7)

But Obama’s strategy of blaming a do-nothing Congress for hampering his efforts to boost the economy might be resonating with voters. The poll finds 70 percent think Congress has done more harm than good on the economy. Fifty percent say Obama has done more to help the economy than hurt it, with 44 percent saying his efforts have mostly harmed the recovery.

Is this poll still politically correct for your party chairman, or must it be surpressed for the common good?

8) Is it time to panic? No. Obama is not known for panicking, and doing so at this point will hardly help him. You are so caught up in this vision of me as a dazed and confused Obamamaniac, that you fail to recognize that I have never declared this an easy campaign.

I know what we’re up against, I just don’t choose to get as melodramatic and panicky as folks on your side have when you were sucking air. What folks like you should be concerned about is getting too complacent, too fast.

9) and 11) You’re double dutching on Carville, who was a critic of the President back during his first campaign. Yes, the Centrists are saying, oh noez, what is happening… But then what? Would their advice be to be more centrist, more hard-hitting, what? Go for social issues, or whatever?

10) As for the Union voters, you’re measuring that now. Again, what Romney says and does between now and election day will have an effect. What do you want to bet that Romney convinces a lot of them that its not in their best interests to vote for him? Additionally, as the article notes, even if your worst predictions come true, you’ve been too successful in destroying the unions, and their numbers won’t sway the election as much if they desert him.

As for your last few?

12) The funny thing is, you seem to think that you can block one jobs bill after another, bills that actually create jobs, and then not take responsibility for the slower rate of job growth.

I mean, really, what would your plan be that would speed up job growth?

I ask, because the article specifically says that the low wage growth comes in part from the fact that during this recovery, people can be hired more cheaply than they otherwise would. So, in essence, Republicans by killing 650,000 jobs (with more to come) have put their own policies to the test.

13) The screw-up you note with this one will only make a difference of 800 something jobs, meaning an amount maybe approaching a thousand times less than what Republicans have actively killed. Be reminded also that Solyndra qualified for loans in this program, which was passed by a Republican Congress, and signed by a Republican President, largely during Bush’s administration. We’re sharing this albatross around our necks.

14) It’s a lower deficit than last year, and much lower than the 2009 Bush Deficit. Is improvement evidence of a bad policy?

15) and I quote:

Spending would jump 7.4% in 2014 when the health-care law is scheduled to be fully implemented, the analysts predict, as millions of Americans gain coverage through subsidized insurance plans purchased through government-run exchanges or through Medicaid, the federal-state program for low-income people.

And:

Overall, the new health-care law would have only a small impact on total health-care expenditures, they said, because the new outlays would be offset by provisions expected to reduce spending on Medicare and on some high-cost health plans.

In all, only 0.1 percentage point of the expected annual average growth could be attributed to the law, the analysts said, although that comes to about $478 billion by 2021.

A bigger reason for projected spending growth is the aging of baby boomers as they make greater use of Medicare, the federal insurance program for the elderly, the analysts said.

16) This is largely a result of long term unemployment and the gutting of retirement savings, which is a trend created by the problems in Bush Administration policy. You could say Obama’s not done enough, except your people have insisted that he shouldn’t do anything, and have gone out of your way not to let him do anything. So, I don’t see how this reflects on Obama’s policies.

17) and I quote:

The average tuition at a four-year public university climbed 15 percent between 2008 and 2010, fueled by state budget cuts for higher education and increases of 40 percent and more at universities in states like Georgia, Arizona and California

Austerity, bill, austerity. YOUR POLICY.

The problem with being a dittohead is that you often don’t find out things for yourself. My practice of tracking down and reading the sources Republicans use has served me well over the years, and spared me much in the way of panic.

Quit while you’re ahead.

“tom humes-
80% of the output from the 2009-2011 Congress was shot down by your people. I’ve seen such filibusters resolved before by deals being made, but that simply did not happen on a regular basis by your group.” Stephen Daugherty…

Let’s go through this one more time; the Conservatives are finally taking control of the Republican Party, we do NOT want “deals” made with the socialist Democrats on your side. In the eyes of a liberal politician, a “deal” means liberals get what they want and conservatives get the shaft. So, Republicans politicians are doing exactly what their constituents want. Why should Republican politicians do what you want them to do? Did you vote for them? IF and I say IF the Republican Party pays a price for not “dealing” with Democrats, then you can say it was because their conservative constituents demanded they stand for our beliefs. Do you now understand Stephen; or is this just too complicated for your level of intelligence?

Re/your response to all these links I provided showing Obama in trouble. If Obama does not think he is in trouble, why is he running around the country giving speeches defending his actions and trying to say everything is great?

Stephen, you make the same old “well Romney is in trouble too” claim. Romney is NOT the president, he is only running for the office; but Obama is the president and he is now answering for all the policies he has developed over the past 3 ½ years. I’ll tell you what Stephen, why don’t you show me a Democrat leader, outside of Obama’s circle of advisors, who are supporting him? Perhaps you could show us a democrat politician, who is running for reelection this year, who is supporting Obama and his record?

I gave you a list of news links, some liberal and some conservative; but all saying Obama is in trouble. And your answer: attack the writers (normal liberal policy), or say Romney “is too”. Stephen, you are pitiful. You talk just to hear yourself speak.

Let me give you some advice; instead of reading the daily alking points put out by the WH, or reading liberal blogs, why don’t you go to this link and actually learn something:

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/

Or listen here:

http://streaming.wokv.com/_players/coxradio/index.php?callsign=WOKV

“NO, MR. OBAMA, WE AREN’T “DOING FINE”
Later today, President Obama will try to “re-frame” the campaign debate over the economy in a speech in Ohio. Good luck with that: the economy is lousy, everyone knows it, and Obama has been in charge of the executive branch for the last 3 1/2 years. His problem isn’t “framing,” his problem is that his policies have failed. Dismally”

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/06/no-mr-obama-we-arent-doing-fine.php

Billinflorida-
If you don’t want deals, you don’t want them, but don’t whine about the fact we won’t compromise, then.

As far as deals go? Basic Civics: Madison and the other Federalists deliberately created a system where any faction or party would find itself worn down by the friction of checks and balances, and the competition of different factions against each other. You may see it as more natural to run things with iron discipline, trying to force everybody to give you what you want, but the Constitution was never meant to gift anybody with that kind of permanent power.

If you need any more evidence, just look at what a Do-Nothing Congress your Tea Partiers have made of it. Why is it do nothing? Because the voters kept the Senate in our hands, and put the Presidency in our hands in 2008.

You, in your political fervor may not see it this way, but Obama and the Democrats have their power by the mandate of the American people, and are legitimate custodians of it.

The power we have has meant that your extreme policies haven’t gotten any further than the Senate. So, for all your bluff and bluster, your side essentially produces nothing but hot air for your constituents.

I think if they want more than that, their representatives need to make the deals that actually get these things signed into law. And if they can’t even get it then? It wasn’t meant to be, at least not then and there.

As far as Romney goes, he has to fight back against the fact that Obama is an incumbent, and that Obama has actual achievements. Congress? Neither popular, nor identifiable with any positive policy change in the last two years.

Additionally, Romney has yet to really sell his policies to a general audience in a debate with Obama. As it is, his policies aren’t that much more popular than Obama’s, and he doesn’t even have responsibility for the last four years of policy to weigh him down!

As far as the Limbaugh offer, your overconfidence knows no bounds. He’s a political hack who’s accumulated an audience of people like you, who repeat whatever he say. I’m proud not to be a dittohead, not to be somebody who just passes on things without researching things.

No thank you, I will get the facts from real sources, not from a guy who calls himself an entertainer to avoid having to conform to journalistic standards.

As for the “fine” comment?
Politifact gave more context, essentially saying that the rest of what the President present acknowledges the trouble in the economy, but basically says that the Private sector isn’t the part of the economy dragging things down.

So, what about Romney’s implication that we don’t need more Teachers, Firefighters and Police Officers?

“Billinflorida-
If you don’t want deals, you don’t want them, but don’t whine about the fact we won’t compromise, then.”

Once again Stephen, you are a liar. Pull your head out of your rectum and quote to me where I whined that your side won’t compromise. I personally don’t give a crap if your side compromises or not. It is not conservatives who have their back against the wall; it is your side. So take your compromises and shove them where the Sun doesn’t shine.

“If you need any more evidence, just look at what a Do-Nothing Congress your Tea Partiers have made of it. Why is it do nothing? Because the voters kept the Senate in our hands, and put the Presidency in our hands in 2008.”

Pure BS Stephen; this is today’s Obama talking points; do nothing congress. I guess you continue to listen to the holy words of your messiah. Problem is, he is talking about the Reid Senate. Reid is the do nothing king of DC. When was the last time he brought a House jobs bill before the Senate? The House has passed over 30 jobs bills. When was the last time Reid brought a Budget Bill before the Senate? Once again Stephen, you do not fail us by quoting the daily talking points of the left.

“The power we have has meant that your extreme policies haven’t gotten any further than the Senate.”

So Stephen Daugherty admits the Senate is the do nothing part of the Congress, thanks for proving my point.

“As far as Romney goes, he has to fight back against the fact that Obama is an incumbent, and that Obama has actual achievements.”

Once again, Obama talking points; pray tell us SD, what are Obama’s achievements? Loss of jobs, high debt, high unemployment…what achievements? Why is Obama asking for another 4 years to do what he couldn’t do the first 4?

“As far as the Limbaugh offer, your overconfidence knows no bounds. He’s a political hack who’s accumulated an audience of people like you, who repeat whatever he say. I’m proud not to be a dittohead, not to be somebody who just passes on things without researching things.”

If he is a political hack; then what are you and the rest of the socialist who write for the kos? Limbaugh…political hack/ daily kos writer SD…political hack. The difference is, Limbaugh has 20 million audience and rich; and you…well, nobody knows or cares about you and you’re probably still living with mommy and daddy and typing on their PC.

“So, what about Romney’s implication that we don’t need more Teachers, Firefighters and Police Officers?”

Again, talking points from the left. Romney’s comment is in response to Obama calling for yet another failed stimulus to hire teachers, firefighters, and cops. So Stephen tell us, who hires these teachers, firefighters, and cops? Does the Federal Government hire them, or are they hired by states, counties, or cities. When Obama talks about hiring these 3 groups, he is not actually talking about hiring these 3 groups:

“We all assume that teachers and firefighters and cops are exclusive members of the public sector. I think that the problem that I was having yesterday is in that fundamental concession that may not be necessary to make, that cops, firefighters, and teachers belong to the public sector. Because you could make an argument that they don’t. Now, Obama says they do, but the thing you have to understand about Obama, he’s not really talking about the jobs of police officers, firefighters, and school teachers. And this is what I didn’t make clear yesterday about my level of understanding here.

When Obama and Axelrod talk about putting more cops and firemen and teachers in the classrooms, on the street putting out fires, he’s not talking about the jobs that they do. He’s talking about their unions, and he’s talking about the way these functions are co-opted by the public sector in the big cities in the blue states, which has created a presumption among a lot of people that they are public sector jobs.

Now, millions of Americans, most of whom are not wealthy, pay additional money to send their children to private schools in order to keep them out of dysfunctional public sector school systems that we all rightly decry and criticize. American men and women all over the country serve as volunteer firefighters on behalf of their communities and their taxes are confiscated to pay for public schools and big city fire companies. But they choose to pay more for the value having these jobs done right creates. I mean there is value in what these people do. This touches on the whole argument about productivity. In the sense that there’s no entrepreneurism in being a police officer and that there’s no productivity, maybe so, but there’s value. And the value has to be calculated. It’s a mistake to try to calculate that value the way we calculate the value of entrepreneurism or commerce or what have you.

There are measurable ways to determine productivity. And there are with teachers. How well do the students do, for example, is one way. But there’s no direct financial relationship until you find out how well the student does in the world. And who can keep track of all that? The bottom line, there is value that having these jobs done right creates. Now, if the states went bankrupt tomorrow, what would happen is that communities would come up with their own police forces. People would do this if the state or the municipality went bankrupt and was not able to, the community would come together and do that. And the history of the United States, education and security, from crime and catastrophe, has always been part of the private sector.

This is what I was struggling with yesterday, why I knew that I had to be careful here. Education and security have always been part of the private sector. I did not mean to say that there is no value created yesterday when I was talking about the job of teaching, policing, and firefighting. They are fundamental to the assurance that we have a civil society and which economic activity can flourish. They have a value that can be measured like anything else. Now, let’s bring Obama back into this. Obama is flaking for the unions and big government, and he’s always urging there has to be more and more and more. It doesn’t matter how many we have. It doesn’t matter how well they’re doing their jobs or how poorly they’re doing their jobs or whatever value we assign, there has to be more. There’s no end to how many more cops, firefighters, teachers, and public sector employees, union employees, that we must have. There’s no end to it.”

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2894469/posts

Now Stephen, I will ask you the same question I asked earlier, of which you seemed to have danced around:

“I’ll tell you what Stephen, why don’t you show me a Democrat leader, outside of Obama’s circle of advisors, who are supporting him? Perhaps you could show us a democrat politician, who is running for reelection this year, who is supporting Obama and his record?”

SD

I am going to be a broken record. Your socialist side, which by the way nearly one hundred congressmen acknowledge to be a member of, wants to emulate Europe. That includes the OWS type behavior. There will be riots here in just a few weeks. That will provide our “fearless”, fectless leaderlessship with the tools necessary for a federal response to the riots. Your man in the WH is a liar, deceiver, and just not fit to be president. That is shown time and time again that he is a devider and not a uniter. Those of you on the left are part of the problem.

You type away on this blog site and pontificate that you research everything you write. You use talking points that appear in writng at other places. That is not research. Research would produce some original thought or idea not the repeating of the Obuma, Assholerod, Holdem-or-fold-em, gang of thugs.

Maranatha

Billinflorida-
I was simply warning you not to be offended that Democrats don’t take the Republicans unwillingness to make deals as a sign not to give in.

The simple constitutional fact is that you need Senate and White House approval to pass bills into binding, active law. Otherwise, they’re just political statements. I assume that your people want actual things done. If what they want is something you can’t deliver, the way things are, then maybe you overpromised, overhyped those things, which is a shame.

This is the problem of the corner your politicians and pundits have painted themselves and their constituents into. The rest of America gets to be represented, too.

Because your people have not been forthcoming in negotiations, not been interested in making any deals, they’ve had little to send to the Senate that any self-respecting Democrat would actually let out of committee, and after several years of filibustering, I doubt many Democrats are in a doormat mood.

You talk about jobs bills, but how many of them are just environmental deregulation bills, or your Ryan Budget, which guts medicare, or whatever else you can throw in on the pretext and the pretense that it might indirectly create jobs?

When Democrats talk about job creation, we’re not talking tax cuts alone, we’re talking funds for projects that actually have to employ people. We’re talking about aid to industries that create good jobs here at home. We’re talking orders for products and infrastructure projects that will help contractors employ more people. We’re not playing around with your voodoo bull****. We’re talking real policy here, mostly paid for by offsets.

You can set your quotas of re-labelled agenda items, and call those jobs bills, or you can get together with us and, gasp, negotiate!

And as for talking points of the left?

I guess we’re working on a double standard here. You give me links to Rush Limbaugh and Powerline, and Weekly Standard, partisan publications and personalities RIFE with Republican talking points, and you’re bashing me for using my side’s talking points?

Look, when you presented me with your list of 17 headlines, I bet you thought, “this guy will be stunned, that will shut him up.” Well, no. I started doing this almost right out of college, which means I brought with it a set of skillsets regarding research. You can’t throw all that bull**** my way without me being curious as to what I’m really dealing with.

Some of the attacks are ridiculously simple to deal with. 47% is not an ideal polling number for a President, but honestly, I’ve seen worse, both for this president and others. There’s no reason a three point change in a poll from 50% to 47% should make me scared.

If you’re dinging Obama on policy, it helps if the policy is actually something he’s responsible for. One of the articles you present explicitly lays out the cause for the given unfortunate outcome as being state cutbacks, The exact sort of austerity Obama was citing as a major economic problem to be solved. (not to mention something you have to blame state legislators and governors for, not Obama)

See, you’re running into trouble because you’re trying to intimidate me with the emotional impact of the headlines. But unlike you, I have a certain curiosity for whether what the other side is saying is true, and if so, how.

That’s why the “30 jobs bills” thing doesn’t work on me.

“The power we have has meant that your extreme policies haven’t gotten any further than the Senate.” So Stephen Daugherty admits the Senate is the do nothing part of the Congress, thanks for proving my point.

Democrats have proven far more flexible on ideological grounds than Republicans. If we had your inflexibility in the Senate, the cuts from the Debt Ceiling deal would have never gone through. I know you want to blame us for not just getting it over with and doing everything you want, but that’s not bipartisanship, and that’s not compromise.

Your side is the one that insists on a party line agenda, with anti-abortion bills, budgets that shut down the EPA, gut medicare, and do all kinds of other poison pill things. Saying that Democrats have to pass all that to be seen as compromisers is a sick joke.

Republicans had a choice to do what Americans wanted people to do, and cooperate to take care of things. Unfortunately, your side doesn’t care about taking care of things, because if you folks did a good job, you might make government look good, and we can’t have that, can we?

As for what are Obama’s achievements?

GM is alive, and Bin Laden is dead, for one thing. The Iraq war is finally over, and soon so should the Afghanistan War. Spending has been brought under control,and this nation has been taken back from the edge of a recession.

Oh, talking points? Well sooooorreeee pal, I guess we can’t talk about obvious achievements, because the Administration likes to talk about it.

That high unemployment is down. Growth is back. We’re not staring at the destruction of major sectors of the American economy. I mean, what is Obama supposed to do? Oh, that’s right, bring back all of Bush’s policies so you folks can have another crack at vindicating yourselves!

Obama is asking another four years to finish what he started, which is America’s recovery. We are back where we were when he came into office, almost, and given the opportunity, we’ll recover even further.

As for Limbaugh? I wouldn’t trade places with that man for anything. Why? Because he is a prisoner of his own stupidity. I will happily talk my politics from the substance as he chases his own lying ass off the cliff.

I don’t have any real desire to base my politics on self-pity of my own socio-economic position.

As for the last part, as many articles have pointed out, the Federal government can provide plenty of money to help states and local governments hire and equip the police. In fact, that’s part of what the Homeland Security department is tasked with. I’m shocked you didn’t know this, with all the promises that politicians have made about this.

That’s it for now. I’ll come back later to kick your dead horse comments a little more.

C&J,

The economy in 2006 was a phony economy fueled by a huge record expansion in private sector credit/debt supported by inflated housing prices.

That debt money creating engine is dead. It died in 2008 when the housing market imploded. However, we are left with the private sector debt resulting from that explosion of credit money.

Conservatives act like this never happened. They say that the economy should have snapped back by now. But, they never explain how. What do you want? Another inflationary bubble?

For me, I would prefer no quick fixes. Understand the debt problems of the private sector, the consequences of the loss of our manufacturing base, the difficulties of international wage arbitrage in competing in a world market, the financialization of our capital markets, etc.

Its good politics to promise more jobs and criticize a sluggish recovery. But, it is dishonest to ignore the fundamental problems as if they really didn’t exist.

You tell me: what were the mysterious forces, other than a massive stimulus, that were going to keep unemployment rates from rising at the pace they were going to do before? What was going to end the recession? What was going to rescue the economy?”

This is the crux of a real disagreement. Thing just do not keep on at the same pace. When you get a common cold, you get sicker and sicker and then you stop getting sicker and start getting better. Medicine may or may not help alleviate symptoms.

The recession would have ended no matter what Obama did. Job losses were bottoming out and starting to return to normal. With our without the stimulus we would have come out of the problem. Perhaps - perhaps - the stimulus made the unemployment less severe, but perhaps at the cost of a more robust recovery now.

The other point I made above I will repeat. It is true that Obama inherited a problem. But in almost four years he did not improve things. The RATE of growth should be much greater. Obama cannot make the excuse that the recession was worse than he though, since we are talking about the rate of recovery, not the depth of the problem.

Rich

See above. The economy cannot “snap back” to its former heights, but the rate of growth should be better. We are not even growing at the historical rate. This is very bad.

Stephen, what does it matter what the House bills are? They have some Democrats supporting them, but Reid will not even allow them on the floor of the Senate. So the do nothing congress you talk about is nothing more than the Dem controlled Senate. That’s the facts.

When the democrats are talking jobs bills, they are talking government jobs paid for by tax payers. So your speech is nothing more than BS.

Tom Humes is dead on about his analysis of you.

Tell me Stephen, are the links to Rush Limbaugh and Powerline, and Weekly Standard, partisan publications coming from the WH? Or are they independent analysis of what Obama is doing. The talking points you use come straight from Obama’s administration and are passed to liberal Medias for broadcast. Of course you are more than willing to pick up the torch and pass them on. I have given you links to liberal, moderate, and conservative analysis; and you in your ignorance refer to them as talking points. Are you saying liberal press and media are determining talking points against Obama? Give it up Stephen, you are beginning to sound ridiculous.

“Look, when you presented me with your list of 17 headlines, I bet you thought, “this guy will be stunned, that will shut him up.”

No, I didn’t; what I thought was this guy is too stupid and too partisan to ever recognize when even liberals are fed up with Obama. Because you worship him and he can do no wrong. It’s always someone else’s fault.

Re/Obama’s achievements:

GM is still in hock to the taxpayers and should have been split up in a bankruptcy court. No bragging rights there.

Bin Laden is dead: yes he is, and it’s a shame Obama has to keep reminding us every day, along with releasing classified material in order to make himself look like a tough guy.

The Iraq war is over: tell that to the hundreds that get blown up every day on the streets of Iraq. Obama has left Iraq in a mess and it will get worse.

Spending has been brought under control: Stephen, you are so full of shit, your eyes are brown. Tell me again Stephen; what was the national debt when Bush left office and what is it now…Oh…it’s almost $16 Trillion. And Obama still wants more stimulus money. Nice try Stephen, but that dog won’t hunt.

Unemployment is down: to what, 8.2 % and 16% in reality. It’s been over 8% for the past 40 months. Only in the eyes of a stinking liberal would 16% of Americans out of work be successful.

Obama is asking for another 4 years to finish what he started: what’s that Stephen, destroy the country? Obama’s own words:

“Don’t you hate it when your own words come back to bite you in the butt? Back in Febuary 2009 President Obama told Today Show host Matt Lauer that he’d be a one-term president if he didn’t fix the economy in three years.

“I will be held accountable,” Obama said. “I’ve got four years and … A year form now, I think people are going to see that we’re starting to make some progress, but there’s still going to be some pain out there … If I don’t have this done in three years, then there’s going to be a one-term proposition.”

http://www.ihatethemedia.com/obama-in-2009-if-cant-fix-economy-fire-me

Now he is asking for another 4 years and you are more than willing to accommodate him, but I don’t think the American voters will.

The rest of your blather is ignorance. You wouldn’t make a pimple on Rush’s ass. If you knew only 10% of what you think you know, perhaps you would be as popular as Alan Combs, and he’s a looser.

C&J,

All you offer are unsubstantiated partisan opinions and pronouncements about the economy.

It was bad, but it would have gotten better without any intervention. How do you know? What’s your evidence? You get a cold and you get better, medicine or not. But, then again, maybe you have cancer and you don’t get better without some significant intervention. You apparently thought that the “sickness” in the banking system was beyond a common cold when you supported the bank bailouts. But, Bush was in charge then. The general economy, though, only had a cold and didn’t require a stimulus package. But, Obama, was in office then. See a pattern here?

By the way Stephen, I will try this one more time:

“Why don’t you show me a Democrat leader, outside of Obama’s circle of advisors, who are supporting him? Perhaps you could show us a democrat politician, who is running for reelection this year, who is supporting Obama and his record?”

What’s the matter Stephen, can’t you find one?

What we are seeing is a man who has no message; his charm and charisma have all disappeared. The same old rehash of ignorance has transferred to the water boys like Stephen Daugherty:

“President Obama’s Speech Gets A Thumbs Down From Political Press Corps”

“Prior to President Barack Obama’s marathon 54 minute speech in Ohio today, the Obama campaign sent our several statements promising the speech would be a major address framing the campaign going forward. Despite the hype, the speech was mainly a rehash of themes and ideas from the president’s recent stump speeches and his remarks were widely panned as overly long by the political press corps.”

http://politicker.com/2012/06/president-obamas-speech-gets-a-thumbs-down-from-political-press-corps/

So, Obama speaks it (a rehash) and Stephen repeats it. Nice boy Stephen, good puppy.

Unearthed by the Media Research Center and reported by USA today:

“The Democrats are saying something like this: ‘We found a big hole that we did not dig. We didn’t get it filled in 21 months, but at least we quit digging,’” Clinton said at the time. “‘Give us two more years. If it doesn’t work, vote us out.’”

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/06/14/bad-news-clinton-time-travels-back-2-years-to-step-on-obamas-message/

Bill Clinton, the gift that keeps on giving.

Stephen Daugherty’s post, “Part of the problem, not the solution”

Tell us, what part is Clinton?

Let me save the left some time researching, hahahaha, I will link to the latest reasons why Clinton is helping, hahahhaha, Obama:

“In the past, these kinds of complaints have often prompted Clinton lieutenants to kindly suggest that the Obama team can go to hell: a former president can, should and will say what he wants.

This time was different: Clinton’s team was as aghast as Obama’s at how the boss had wandered blithely into remarks that left even sympathetic listeners wondering what exactly he was getting at. He also gave gleeful Republicans an opening to skewer Obama with a popular Democrat’s own words.
Clinton, in a ritual that would be familiar to anyone who has worked for him during the past 20 years, protested that his words were being wrested from context and blamed a manipulative news media for stirring up trouble to satisfy its own lust for chaos and conflict.

But his own team, and eventually Clinton himself, agreed there was no choice but to issue embarrassing what-the-former-president-meant-to-say clarifications, which were crafted in close consultation with senior Obama aides at the White House and campaign headquarters in Chicago, according to people involved in the negotiations.”

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/06/07/clintons-team-throwing-him-under-obamas-bus/

C&J-
Nice that you pick an incurable disease. If it is incurable by mortal means, you can at least not work to complicate it. You know, there was once a theory that if you gave people medicines that made their conditions worse, and brought things to a head quicker, folks would recover faster. You can be thankful that theory’s fallen by the wayside, because it was one reason people distrusted doctors in the old days.

Folks tried to fiscally balance their way out of the Great Depression, tried to cool down the heated market. They drew in the money supply and let the charities take care of people.

The recession would have ended, but there’s a fourth dimension of time to economic downturns, and the longer they last, the worse they hurt. Up until now, Republicans have been eager to intervene, but unfortunately, Republicans chose to have both an identity crisis, and the odd impulse to try and turn Obama into a single-term President by blocking any additional aid to the country’s economy. So now they’ve contradicted years of practice in order to prove purely partisan credentials.

As for the cost of more robust recovery now, I don’t see how starting deeper in the hole, with most likely higher deficits, greater unemployments costs and all that would make for an easier recovery. As it is we’re having to recover from an unemployment increase of about 8 million people, plus all the additional folks we should have added to the workforce since then. How many millions more would have been out of work if we didn’t stop things as soon as we could?

As for improvement, we’ve improved in almost every measure, but we’re having to do such improvement out of a very deep hole, and with your folks deliberately hanging on our backs, causing what even your Wall Street friends call fiscal drag.

It is the depth of the problem that makes the fiscal drag a problem, and the truth is, we would have had less fiscal drag if we stuck with an anti-cyclical policy, rather than fall prey to your party’s ill-timed fiscal mania.

Billinflorida-
So, your people are always negotiating in good faith, right? You just turned down all those opportunities to negotiate filibustered bills in the Senate, right?

You want to have it both ways, praising their obstinacy, while denying their fault. You could at least be honest enough to just say outright that you’re hostile to any cooperation, and willing to burn down the process of policy making in this country so can force your political outcome.

But you won’t do that. It’s not approved rhetoric yet.

I read your links, and I explained in detail why I did not agree with your conclusions. Of course, your response is to call me a moron. Oh, that’s right, I have to be very precise. You said:

No, I didn’t; what I thought was this guy is too stupid and too partisan to ever recognize when even liberals are fed up with Obama.

Listen, 47% approvals hardly indicates that people are running away from Obama, much less Democrats. Scratch the surface of those polls, and I think you’ll find approval ratings from the mid eighties to the mid nineties among his own party

Besides, that’s just now. That’s a snapshot months out from the election. And what are you trying to prove? Eh? You’re trying to prove that Obama’s going the way of Bush, that his party’s fleeing him. It’s not happening.

RE: GM. Hmm. Liquidation?

This is why I hate arguing with some conservatives nowadays. Step back, and tell me what your main argument is, these days, as a surrogate for Mitt Romney.

Ah, that’s right, the President isn’t creating jobs fast enough! Well, with the advice you’re giving right there, we’re starting out February and March with the destruction of millions of more jobs than were already going away!

Great! Brilliant! You’ll have to explain it to me, because I’m too stupid, somehow, to figure out how destroying an entire domestic industry is the first step to a nationwide recovery from an unemployment problem!

God, just say that out loud: the first step to solving our unemployment problem is to make a financial move here that will force the liquidation of an entire domestic industry.

That’s your side’s creative destruction, your ostensibly job-creating, but in reality Job-killing policy positions.

As far as Bin Laden goes? You had almost eight years to get him. You didn’t. You could have wrapped up Iraq quicker, or better yet have avoided the war in the first place. You wave the bloody shirt about folks in Iraq still being in the war, but I will remind you that I was complaining about the rising insurency while your boss was floating banners above aircraft carriers proclaiming his victory. Maybe Iraq gets worse, but what you think happens when you let a war go on that long, and get that bloody complicated?

And really, you increased the Defense budget by around 400 billion, and then ran up even larger debts paying for the wars off the books. Did you know one reason for the larger budget deficit is that we put the wars on the books for the first time ever? I guess you didn’t know that.

As for your 16%? Keep in mind, that’s more than just people who are actually out of work, that’s people who are underemployed, working part time, or discouraged as well, and you can bet the number was higher earlier.

We’re making progress, but unfortunately, your side will have none of that. You don’t want Obama to have credit, and you’ll go to great lengths to deny him his due, even keeping this country in an economic funk, just so you can have your precious presidency back, after having put the worst President of the last century in there.

The question is, does your relentless contrarianism and partisanship win anything?

As far as I can see, your partisan theories are all that support the notion that your policies would help the economy recover faster. Otherwise, it’s hard to see how austerity, killing public sector jobs, and encouraging critical businesses and banks to collapse, rather than be saved would actually create jobs. It’s also hard to see how the same sort of policies that failed to create jobs under Bush would succeed, in steroidally enhanced form, to create them now.

American doesn’t need four more years of your mistakes to figure out they were bad in the first place.

As for your Clinton item, let me be blunt: we’ve recovered millions of jobs already since he talked about that. We’ve filled in much of the hole left by Bush policies.

Why we should return to the policies that left that hole in the first place, simply because we have not yet filled in that hole complete by now, is beyond me. America needs to get off of Republican’s economic crack. It provides a quick rush of sensationalism as your people make all the big promises, and people feel like going out and spending, but then the reality sets in and folks realize they don’t actually have the money to afford things, and all they did by going to shop like Bush told them to was deeper in debt.

What’s the matter Stephen, can’t answer the question:

“Why don’t you show me a Democrat leader, outside of Obama’s circle of advisors, who are supporting him? Perhaps you could show us a democrat politician, who is running for reelection this year, who is supporting Obama and his record?”

If Obama is so successful, I’m sure you won’t have trouble finding many-many democrarts who are willing to support Obama.

You’re failure to answer the question says reams. Any other time and you would be writing lengthy essays concerning democrat politician’s support of Obama. But, just ignore the question…

Even the young lady who was all but in love with Obama is now having doubts.

They’re all bailing on him; all except for Stephen Daugherty and the libs on WB. Of course it is the blog sites that have the most hardcore socialist and their job is to protect Obama at all costs. I have to give SD an A+ for being a full blown socialist coolaid drinker.

Now another end around congress to buy more votes from the Latino’s by stopping deportation of young Hispanic illegals. This goes to show he hasn’t anything to run on that he accomplished so he has to try and buy votes.

Billinflorida-
Mister, as my lawyer brother might tell you, you need to know the answer to a question before you pose it, so you can avoid embarrassments like this:

U.S. Presidents and Vice Presidents

Fmr. President Jimmy Carter[1]
Fmr. President Bill Clinton[2]

[edit] U.S. Senators

[edit] Current

Sen. Mark Begich (D-AK)
Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO)[3]
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Ethics[4]
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH)
Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA)[5]
Sen. Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL)[6]
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), chairwoman of the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and chairwoman of the International Narcotics Control Caucus[7]
Sen. Al Franken (D-MN)[8]
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)
Sen. John Kerry (D-MA)[9]
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) [10]
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT)[11]
Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ)
Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA)
Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV)[12]
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) [13]
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), chairman of the Senate Rules Committee[14]
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH)[15]
Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA)
Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA)[16]

[edit] Former

Fmr. Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN), Fmr. Governor of Indiana[17]
Fmr. Sen. Jon Corzine (D-NJ), Fmr. Governor of New Jersey[18][19]
Fmr. Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-RI), current Governor of Rhode Island (I-RI)[20]
Fmr. Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI)[21]
Fmr. Sen. John Glenn (D-OH)
Fmr. Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL), Fmr. Governor of Florida, 2004 Presidential Candidate[22]
Fmr. Sen. George Mitchell (D-ME)[23]

[edit] U.S. Representatives

[edit] Current

Rep. Jason Altmire (D-PA)[24]
Rep. Joe Baca (D-CA)[25]
Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA)[26]
Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-CA)[27]
Rep. Bob Brady (D-PA)[5]
Rep. Corinne Brown (D-FL)[28]
Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA)[29]
Rep. Dennis Cardoza (D-CA)[30]
Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA)[31]
Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO)[32]
Rep. Jim Costa (D-CA)[33]
Rep. Joe Courtney (D-CT)[34]
Rep. Mark Critz (D-PA)[35]
Rep. Danny K. Davis (D-IL)[36]
Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro (D-CT)[37]
Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL)
Rep. John Dingell (D-MI)
Rep. Michael F. Doyle (D-PA)[38]
Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD)
Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN)[39]
Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA)[40]
Rep. Charles A. Gonzalez (D-TX)[41]
Rep. Sam Farr (D-CA)[42]
Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-PA)[5]
Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT)[43]
Rep. Mike Honda (D-CA)[44]
Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL)[45]
Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH)
Rep. John B. Larson (D-CT)[46]
Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA)[47]
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA)[48]
Rep. Doris Matsui (D-CA)[49]
Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-CA)[50]
Rep. Michael Michaud (D-ME)
Rep. Grace Napolitano (D-CA)[51]
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Minority Leader & Fmr Speaker of the House[7]
Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-ME)
Rep. Laura Richardson (D-CA)[52]
Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA)[53]
Rep. Linda Sánchez (D-CA)[54]
Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-CA)[55]
Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL)[56]
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA)[57]
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), Chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee[5]
Rep. Allyson Schwartz (D-PA)[58]
Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA)[59]
Rep. Peter Stark (D-CA)[60]
Rep. Mike Thompson (D-CA)[61]
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA)[62]
Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-FL)

[edit] Former

Fmr. Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL), Mayor of Chicago, and former White House Chief of Staff[63]
Fmr. Rep. Harold Ford (D-TN)[16]
Fmr. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ)[64]
Fmr. Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-PA)[65]

[edit] Governors

[edit] Current

Gov. Neil Abercrombie (D-HI)[66]
Gov. Jerry Brown (D-CA)[67]
Gov. Lincoln Chafee (I-RI), former U.S. Senator (R-RI)[20]
Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY)[68]
Gov. Mark Dayton (D-MN)[69]
Gov. Chris Gregoire (D-WA)[69]
Gov. John Hickenlooper (D-CO)[70]
Gov. Dan Malloy (D-CT)[69]
Gov. Martin O’Malley (D-MD)[69]
Gov. Jack Markell (D-DE)[71]
Gov. Deval Patrick (D-MA)[72]
Gov. Beverly Perdue (D-NC)[73]
Gov. Pat Quinn (D-IL)[74]
Gov. Peter Shumlin (D-VT)

[edit] Former

Fmr. Gov. and US Senator Evan Bayh (D-IN)[17]
Fmr. Gov. and US Senator Jon Corzine (D-NJ)[18]
Fmr. Gov. Howard Dean (D-VT); Former Chairman of the DNC; and 2004 Presidential Candidate[75]
Fmr. Gov. and US Senator Bob Graham (D-FL), 2004 Presidential Candidate[22]
Fmr. Gov. and Lt. Gov. Tim Kaine (D-VA)[76]
Fmr. Gov. Angus King (I-ME)[77]
Fmr. Gov. Ted Strickland (D-OH)[citation needed]
Fmr. Gov. Douglas Wilder (D-VA); Former Mayor of Richmond[78]

All bailing on him, right?

If I had a nickel for every time I was told Obama was screwed, I’d wouldn’t be among the 99%. I don’t support Obama simply because he spouts idealism and seems like he’s taking the party in a refreshingly Democratic direction. I support him because he’s one of the canniest political operators our party’s had for decades. He’s not locked into old arguments, he’s adaptable, and if it weren’t for the Republican’s relentlessly toxic propaganda campaign against him, he’d be one of the most popular Presidents of recent times.

You may see a 47% rating, and think, “he’s toast”, but let me remind you that he’s already come back from a much worse rating, and he’s held his current ratings despite the concentrated onslaught of GOP hatred that he’s faced for the last four years. On nearly every issue where there is gridlock between the President and your people, your people have been drawing the short straw on whose to blame. People see the offers and compromises, they hear him making reasonable statements about why he’s taken his position, and what they see your people doing is picking one fight after another, and supporting some god-awful stupid, paranoid conspiracy theories that scare reasonable people when they hear them.

Meanwhile, you got Mitt Romney. You got a candidate people are only flocking to on the right because they’ve been conditioned into paralyzing fear about Obama winning. Ah, but if you look at his record, he’s every bit the kind of RINO the Republicans are supposed to be ridding themselves of!

The GOP, ostensibly, is past the compromising and watering down that folks like Pawlenty, Bush, and Romney represented. Yet still, Romney won. Obviously, your party is making the calculation that Americans in general are not ready for the hard-right leaders you would like to win, and the clown-car 4-lane blocking pile up of the Primaries is evidence of how poorly that sits with the GOP.

If you look at your policies, too, you’ll face the uncomfortable truth: Republicans have tried hard to forget their history with George Bush, tried so hard that they’ve stumbled into trying to elect the same kind of dickish trust-fund baby they elected before, probably with the same results down the line. You’re not campaigning for change. You’re campaigning for a resumption of the debacle that was the Bush Administration, if for no other reason than this was the height of your power. Problem is, you’ve never resolved the issues that got you into this terrible position, that knocked you down from grace.

Even if you win, you lose. your policies, if they follow the result of the GOP, will just make people remorseful that they didn’t re-elect Obama. They’ll experience the same extremism, the same hobbled response to economic trouble that we saw in the Bush Administration.

By the time you’re through, you’ll likely have re-coalesced the Democratic coalition, this time with people who have no patience either for cooperation with the Republicans or infighting among themselves.

I know I sound like I’m not worried, but really, I am. I just don’t think the shift you think has happened back to the Republicans is real. I think it’s mostly just the success of your sowing of doubts of the other side, not any great love for your own. You can make people afraid of change, but if you keep on pushing things the way you are now, you’ll force people to seek it out anyways.

BillInFlorida: “…why don’t you go to this link and actually learn something …. http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/”

Am I the only one who laughed uncontrollably and nearly fell out of my chair when I read that? Rush Limbaugh as a source for learning. What a hoot.

Adam Ducker-
Like many fanatics, Billinflorida believes that what is obvious to him is obvious to everybody else, so folks who are opposing him are just deluding themselves, or denying something deep down that they actually agree is the case.

So, he thinks if we listened to Rush Limbaugh, we’d suddenly realize how wrong we are.

Sorry, Bill, doesn’t quite work that way.

SD

That looks like the A list of past and present Socialists. Now we can look it up now or look it up later. Makes no difference to me.

Thy are all in the camp of “I have always been a socialist”.

Maranatha

Deeper declines have usually lead to steeper growth rates as the economy returns to its normal patterns.

You are confusing getting back to the former state with growing towards it.

I do not blame Obama for the fact that we have not caught up yet to where we would have been (although this did indeed happen under Reagan, but we all know Obama is no Ronald Reagan). But I do blame him (again to the extent presidents really do these things) for the slow growth we are seeing today. Slow growth now does NOT depend on the depth of the hole. As I wrote above, we did okay in 2009 and then slumped again. We are growing below the rate needed to keep us even.

So let’s take your metaphor and assume Obama is truthful. He falls into a hole. It is deeper than he thought and he uses that as an excuse to why he is not out sooner. But when you look carefully, he is actually lower than when he started to climb out. So he says that he would have fallen farther.

Maybe it is time for Obama to act like an adult and take responsibility for what he does … and fails to do.

I am convinced that the libs on WB really believe the cockeyed nonsense they spew about King obama. Debt beyond our imagination doesn’t faze them, the King issuing edicts, beyond his legal authority, regarding illegals in this country bothers them not. It the King declares something to be to his liking it must be done…damn the Constitution, damn the congress, damn the courts.

What the King can not ram through congress he regulates into existence. If courts find his actions unconstitutional he ignores them. And his lackeys, SD comes to mind, praise his actions being to blinded by the King’s brilliance to think of the consequences.

Libs want socialism…total and complete. They wipe their asses with our historical documents, decry our military, burn our flag, and encourage more illegals to flock to this country. They have no God but government. There are no inalienable rights, just those rights granted by government. They see states as mere vassals to the Federal behemoth. They see huge entitlement programs as “fair” and “just” because they say they are. Liberals are takers and contribute little to our national good.

I hate to admit that I have come to despise most of which they stand for. They have worked for years to worm their way into the fabric of our lives and in the process have made us all much worse off. They have destroyed our schools, battled our religious beliefs, besmirched our marriages, killed our unborn, squandered our wealth, and derided our patriotism.

Liberals are a very, very dangerous bunch. Their King is anti-American, anti-capitalism, anti-individualism. He seeks, with their help, to destroy the nation our fathers built with hard work and and devotion to duty…God, family and country. They leave in their wake ignorance, poverty, dependencey and hopelessness. May God have mercy on them…I don’t.

tom humes-
Your definition of socialism is meaningless. It’s a socially acceptable way of calling Democrats communists, post-cold war.

I wonder how many Republicans, other than C&J, can actually voice criticism of the Democrats without the cheap red-baiting attacks. Republicans use those because their version of the Capitalist system has failed catastrophically, and if they didn’t distract people from that, folks might realize that all Democrats really offer is a better, alternative form of Capitalism, one not run according to naive expectations that people always behave their best in groups.

C&J-
Ronald Reagan had money supply he could open up, interest rates he could lower, and he increased spending by almost 40% by 1985 from where it had been in 1982. Reagan also had banks that were still functioning and looking to lend.

What we have here are two conflicts with what Reagan really did, since the GOP’s not going to support a 40% spending increase, and attempts to monetarily solve the problems have drawn fire from your increasingly dominant Tea Party caucus.

We also have banks that are still lending more weakly than even the normal rate they had before they started bubbling things up.

Reagan started growth again as fast as he did because he got to be the good guy on relieving anti-inflation measures, and he had a functional banking system to help him revive things. He also had a much more substantial domestic manufacturing sector, now that I think of it, which means that when people started buying in America, the proceeds went back to our own people, stimulating the economy.

Obama? He has to deal with the smoking wreck his predecessor left behind, with banks not really lending, with interest rates already near zero, and the unsettling quantitative easing the only way to expand money supply . Your people are dead set against any spending increases, and in fact pushed decreases.

Isn’t that funny? If Reagan is so great, why is Obama’s stimulating effort so unpopular? Is it just that some people have a crystal-perfect idea of Reagan as an austerity hound who cut taxes and cut spending?

Your people have resisted any idea about stimulating the economy other than your own. The problem is, we tried your methods, and by the way, your methods for stimulating the economy are part of why we have this large debt. Just as you were unwise to get prodigal in the first part of the last decade, you are unwise to get stingy now.

But you have. There it is.

As as your theory goes, I would say it would have been fine if the basic structures of the economy remained intact, to a limited extent. I would point out to you that for much of 1982 and 1983, Reagan was in serious trouble. For one thing, unemployment remained above 10% for the better part of a year. For another, although his economic gains came quicker, if were to transpose his gains and losses on unemployment to Obama’s timeline, with no stimulus enacted, the peak unemployment at about the same spot, Reagan would have been right where Obama is now.

That is, if Reagan had to recover from unemployment as it would have been without the stimulus, and things followed a similar course as it did in the early eighties, he’d have done little better than Obama did.

Royal Flush-
Liberals are your next door neighbors, not villains from a low-budget James Bond ripoff.

You really need to stop describing liberals to liberals, because you’re sounding pretty silly and overwrought.

Royal Flush

Never fear, November is coming and looks to be a disaster for our leftist friends, but if not, is that garage apt. still available ? LOL !!!!!!! P.S. I can bring plenty of BBQ equiptment, and ammo.

Stephen

I suppose there are lots of reasons why Reagan did a better job than Obama and I suppose Obama supporters like you will think of many reasons why Obama is falling short.

“If Reagan is so great, why is Obama’s stimulating effort so unpopular?” Because Reagan trusted the American people; Obama trusts himself and his central planning. That is why Reagan was successful.

“That is, if Reagan had to recover from unemployment as it would have been without the stimulus, and things followed a similar course as it did in the early eighties, he’d have done little better than Obama did.”

I don’t know about that. Reagan probably would have come up with another idea. Obama spends most of his time trying to figure out how the shift the blame and attack his opponents. Maybe if he spent a little more time thinking of how to make things better and maybe if he trusted the American people, he could do as well as Reagan. Well, probably not that good.

Stephen & Royal

You ask Royal to stop describing liberals to liberals. Most of your posts describe conservatives. You keep on telling us what we need to do.

Many of your liberal colleagues evidently lose their ability to use grammar and try to characterize conservatives, who make up more than 40% of the U.S. population, as extremist hillbillies. If liberals are our neighbors, it must mean that conservatives are yours. Once again, we have to slap you with the inconsistency of your own positions. I know you get tired of this, so maybe you should stop doing it.

Stephen Daugherty, as your brother in law would tell you; read the question with understanding before you try to answer it. The question, “Perhaps you could show us a democrat politician, who is running for reelection this year, who is supporting Obama and his record?” Are the people of your list running for re-election and are they publically supporting Obama’s record?

“Meanwhile, you got Mitt Romney. You got a candidate people are only flocking to on the right because they’ve been conditioned into paralyzing fear about Obama winning. Ah, but if you look at his record, he’s every bit the kind of RINO the Republicans are supposed to be ridding themselves of!”

The left predicted the Tea Party conservatives would never support Romney, and they were wrong. Really pisses you off don’t it Stephen? Okay, let’s look at this logically..vote for Obummer and watch the country slip into socialism…or…. vote for a RINO….hmmm….I’ll take my chances with the RINO.

“Obviously, your party is making the calculation that Americans in general are not ready for the hard-right leaders you would like to win”

And obviously the American people are making a calculation that they don’t want another 4 years of a flaming socialist liberal.

Stephen, the only infighting is in the Democratic Party. The Republicans are doing just fine.

“I know I sound like I’m not worried, but really, I am. I just don’t think the shift you think has happened back to the Republicans is real. I think it’s mostly just the success of your sowing of doubts of the other side, not any great love for your own. You can make people afraid of change, but if you keep on pushing things the way you are now, you’ll force people to seek it out anyways.”
Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at June 15, 2012 2:15 PM

You should be worried…you haven’t got the memo, Obummer is loing.

Blaming Obama’s problems on right wing scare tactics is the latest liberal talking points.

Sorry Stephen, but you’re wrong again, conservatives like Romney and will willingly vote for him in number.

Adam Ducker, I read your link and fail to understand your point. Are you talking about “Obama’s amnesty: catch and release” or “Voters are paying attention”? There is a plethora of knowledge in this link.

“Like many fanatics, Billinflorida believes that what is obvious to him is obvious to everybody else, so folks who are opposing him are just deluding themselves, or denying something deep down that they actually agree is the case.”

No Stephen, what I actually said was that you are a water bucket boy for Obama and have gone far beyond understanding truth and logic.

C&J said:

“You ask Royal to stop describing liberals to liberals. Most of your posts describe conservatives. You keep on telling us what we need to do.”

C&J, you have nailed it on the head. I have the same question, why do liberals ALWAYS insist on telling conservatives how to think, vote, who to vote for, who to run for office, and who to support after elected? If they are so concerned about whether Republican candidates are ultra right or RINOs, then why don’t they register and vote Republican. I personally don’t care who they run, I don’t care who they vote for, in fact, the further they move to the left, the better I like it.

I don’t have any liberal neighbors, no liberal friends, and don’t go to church with any liberals. They say liberals make up 20% of the electorate, but where I live they must be closet liberals.

“Debt beyond our imagination doesn’t faze them,..”

Royal Flush,

Well, who put us into such debt?

Well lets see Rich, Bush left office with just under or at 10T in debt for 8 years in office, Obama has done what Bush did in just over 3 years. I remember when Remer would bash Bush for doubleing the defict in 8 years but I guess it’s OK for YOUR SIDE to do it, in less time mind you. We know it’s Bush’s fault, When is your side going to accept the fact that it’s YOUR PROBLEM NOW???????????????????

KAP

Let’s give Obama credit. He managed to do in three years what took Bush eight and what all the other presidents in the history of the Republic did not do. He must be wildly good at what he is doing.

To be fair to our president Obama, he did not dig the hole by himself. But his attempts to get us out failed to do the job and dug us in deeper. I am sure his intentions were good and he hoped for a positive change.

I agree C&J!!!!!!!!!!!!

SD wrote; “Royal Flush-
Liberals are your next door neighbors, not villains from a low-budget James Bond ripoff.”

I don’t object to them being my neighbors, I object to them being in my government and on my payroll.

Contrary to what C&J have said, I don’t believe King obama cares one whit for the America of our founders, or the America that made us the greatest nation on the face of the earth. This is a man with a personal agenda, not an American agenda.

Of course obama is out of his depth when it comes to governing a capitalist Republic, how can one govern what one either doesn’t understand or is opposed to?

Frankly, I don’t believe either side has a lock on the next presidential election. What I do know is that the obama administration has not lived up to the billing it gave us nearly four years ago…hope and change.

And, obama and his failed administration appear to face new reports of malfeasance and scandals nearly every week. His campaign energies are more and more being taken up defending his past actions rather than promoting new ideas. The majority of the electorate, I believe, want new leadership and new ideas, not the stale and outdated old democrat ideas about more spending and more government.

Here’s a little example of the damage teachers unions can and do cause and why liberals aren’t very popular across the U.S. This is from the June 16th HuffPost on Education.

“Michelle Apperson, recently awarded the title of “Teacher of the Year” for the Sacramento City Unified School District, has lost her job.

Apperson is one of nearly 400 Sacramento City Unified teachers who received lay-off notices last month due to budget cuts. Neither her nine years at Sutterville Elementary School nor her best-teacher honor could shield her from state law, which carries a “last in, first out” policy, requiring that teachers be laid off by seniority — starting with the most recently hired.”

Every single liberal on WB will defend that action I am quite certain. Is it any wonder why union forced rules about their members is considered so flawed and causing our children to be less educated?

dbs-
Who are you going to shoot with that ammo?

Really, Republicans have lost a lot of election in the last sixty years, yet mysteriously, these apocalyptic consequences for the GOP being out of power haven’t materialized.

C&J-
The Republicans have spent most of their time on a propaganda binge the likes of which we have rarely seen. This is how you convince people that a man whose increases in spending, at best, don’t top 5% is a less frugal president than one whose own first term measured a near 40% increase in spending. This is how you act like you’re such saints on fiscal matters when your last President accumulated 30,20% increases in spending on his terms in office.

Let’s face it, Republicans have great marketing and lousy execution on fiscal matters. If we posed the simple criteria of only electing a Republican President if the any last three Republicans left office with smaller deficits than they came in with, then you guys wouldn’t stand a chance.

Obama, on the other hand? He would stand a chance.

When I made my hypothetical Reagan recovery model, I did it this way:

1) I extrapolated the average rate of unemployment increase from October to March, essentially the months after the crash, but before any Stimulus package policies went into effect. I got about .43333 percent increase per month out of that. Then I let those increases compound until October of 2009, which is when Obama’s worst unemployment struck.

This, I think is one of the questionable assumptions of the model, since there’s no reason to believe that unemployment that severe would simply stop there. But that’s where Obama’s policies turned things around, so I thought it would be a fair place to start letting things get better.

Using the .4333 increase model, I get to about 11.7% by that time. That is your steep dive that you say you wanted.

2) I think plotted out the change per month as occured during Reagan’s administration, aligning the recovery month per month after his peak unemployment, December 1982. For those who want to know, His peak was 10.8%, almost a full point higher than Obama, on about half the recession.

I think its only fair to point out that Reagan’s mistakes must have been much severe than Obama’s, if he’s registering higher unemployment with his policies.

3) I then had those improvments, and whatever backsliding occured replicated, with improvements subtracting numbers from the rate, and backslides adding to it.

You talk about many months over 9.0%, but Reagan’s policies, as modeled, has us spend 6 months after the peak at 11.0%+, and additional 3 months over 10.0%.

With Reagan’s numbers, we never get much further than about 8.0. And last month? We’d be at 8.2, just like we are now.

As much as you tout how fast or how far the recovery came under Reagan, the big trouble with holding him up as an example is that letting things get worse means you have to make up all the damage you allowed to occur.

And the real question is, if we weren’t laying off so many people in the private sector (which didn’t happen under Reagan), or hamstringing any kind of additional spending (again, didn’t happen under Reagan), wouldn’t the numbers be better?

You pose all these mysterious effects, but for all the effects you assert, we can easily look at your administration and see that what you predict to be the case isn’t happening. Your tax cuts do little that they promise, except allowing the rich to accumulate more.

You can talk about trust, but what have Republicans really done to earn trust in their policies? If Romney gets elected, I guarantee you we either leave with a worse economy or a worse deficit, because I guarantee you it will take the Republicans getting past their blind spots to do any better than that.

As for describing conservatives to conservatives?

First, do yourself a favor: stop using the tu quoque form. You effectively concede the point I’m trying to make, in return for trying to cut away some of the moral authority with which I say it. Your problem is, I have plenty of example of Republicans treating me as if I’m some sort of Communist or terrorist sympathizer out to destroy the country.

I can agree that conservatives don’t necessarily fit stereotypes. I was among them for more than four years of my life, and I’ve lived among others, being a Texan.

I can acknowledge the point, can you acknowledge mine?

As for your last post, does it make any difference that your policies are largely responsible for the depth of that deficit? Your wars, your changes in the Medicare system, your deficit widening tax cut at work?

One reason our deficit isn’t lower is that your people have prevented us from undoing the tax cuts for the rich, which cost billions a year to keep going. But I guess there are certain things you’re not willing to recognize as causes of the deficit, even if your math doesn’t add up.

Billinflorida-
My brother in law? My Brother, full stop.

As for the list, by definition, any Representative on that list is running for reelection this year, so yes. I’d have to look up the individual Senators or Governors, by I’m sure at least some are running.

What, are you trying to cover for the fact that you once again failed to research your source or your claim?

Going on to Romney and the Tea Party conservatives? Well, there you go again. You fail to acknowledge my central point, which is that Tea Partiers could not remain purists and win, and if Tea Partier fervor was built on balking at compromise, this election is going to be a hell of an ordeal for them.

You know he’s going to say things that are going to get people like you saying “We might as well let Obama win, because he’s not any different.”

It will happen. You got a candidate who could move towards the center, and Obama’s going to force him to react time and again to do so, or else lose part of the center by not jumping on the right bandwagon.

I can live with my President making compromises. Question is, how much compromise can you tolerate?

Stephen, the only infighting is in the Democratic Party. The Republicans are doing just fine.

Ahem.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

Sorry, but what was that stuff with Richard Lugar a month or two back? What was going on with your primary before your default candidate finally wore his competition out? You’re like a report for Pravda, when it comes to your party.

You really need to break out of your shell here.

Oh, by the way, if you don’t know any liberals personally, where does all this supposed knowledge of liberals come from? If you don’t have first-hand knowledge, then how the hell did you become such an expert about us?

Me, I spent years growing up in Texas, and years at one of the most conservative colleges in the country. I can say I know some conservatives, and they are good people, for the most part. I know the Conservatives out there, the Republicans, can be better than they are now.

I know they can be more flexible. Unfortunately, folks like yourself have taken over the party, and I’m afraid you’re going to break it in the process of trying to force it to rigidly conform to one set of policies. If you let it, your party could be open to so many different approaches to policy, so when one approach fails, they could go to another. But because your people insist that there are only one true set of good policies, you have no alternative.

Stephen

Obama said he would fix the mess. He made it worse. Whether or not he made it much worse is less important than the fact that he isn’t fixing it, evidently doesn’t know how.

As I said, we can stipulate that he started in the hole. But in the four years he has been in charge, we dug deeper.

The other thing is that if Bush pushed spending so high, should it not be easier for Obama to cut?

Put it in personal terms. You wife borrows big money with the credit card. You take over the management. We would presume the the debt should come down, but instead it goes up. You just blame her. In fact, you are both at fault. Indeed, if Bush runs again, we won’t vote for him. But the same goes for Obama.

Re your model, you have studied calculus, right? This is a calculus problem, not an arithmetic one. You are using a simple model of averages when you should be using the diminishing change. The job loss hit bottom and started to come up before the stimulus. The recession was ending.

Your model is just a bunch of numbers.

There are simpler numbers. Unemployment went higher during Reagan’s term and came down faster. If Obama’s record was as good as Reagan’s, he would be almost assured reelection.

But I do have this. What do you think?

Government is not the answer to all our problems. Not every regulation is smart nor that every tax dollar spent wisely. Government should not be in the business of helping people who won’t help themselves.

Stephen

Give us this day our daily inconsistency. You laugh at Bill for saying Republicans are doing fine. Have you now given up the “lockstep” meme? I mean, Republicans cannot be walking in lockstep and disagreeing among themselves at the same time, can they?

C&J-
Made it worse? How? Is unemployment higher than it was? No. Are we still leaking GDP, like we were in 2009? No. Are there fewer people in the work force? No. Are corporations short on Cash? No. Are the banks dead? No. Is Detroit dead? No. Are private sector jobs decreasing? No. Is spending still increasing at Bush’s rate? No.

How are you defining worse, if by most measures we’re doing better?

You’re just saying what you’re saying on partisan grounds, because you sure as hell can’t sell Romney on economic grounds if the economy’s doing better since Obama took over, which it is.

Your policies never worked as advertised anyways, so all you have to work with is manipulating rhetoric to make people think that they are worse off than they actually are.

As for the “lockstep meme?” There’s nothing inconsistent about talking about that, because in order to keep these blocks on Obama appointees, and to keep legislation in the last Congress from passing by majorities, your people had to pretty much make sure that every Republican voted against Democratic Party bills. Even at our peak, with sixty votes, you had to make sure everybody was on board in your party, or we’d succeed in getting things passed.

Republicans can agree on individual issues without agreeing on them all, and one issue that it seems Republicans can agree on is blocking Democrats and their legislation. You can’t twist words to deny reality, and the statistics on cloture votes and bills killed in the senate by their failure speak for themselves. Why you think you can logic that away is beyond me.

There is conflict in your party, and a lot of it has to do with intensifying what you’ve been doing with the blockades in the Senate, and all these stunts you’ve pulled in the house. Unfortunately, your party is taking great political risks doing this, and they’re turning what might have been an easy election to win into a competitive set of races by insisting on this conformity.

As for my model, keep in mind that it went up higher, came down faster, but then STAGNATED for the better part of a year, leaving it pretty much where Obama is now.

So, we can say this: if we took Reagan’s plan, in the vaguest sense, we’d do no better, and we’d end up having suffered considerably more for letting things get worse, with consequences down the line for those who end up having to start their careers or get hit with economic problems in those times.

And that’s if everything stopped at about 11.5%-11.7% If my pattern goes on for a few months more, then the damage is even longer lasting, and Reagan falls behind at this point.

And, more to the point, this all depends on Reagan having had a sturdier manufacturing sector to help improve his economy post-recession, interest rates he could lower, and the willingness to increase outlays over a period of four years by almost forty percent.

Everything you’d say Obama was wrong for doing, even though he wasn’t doing it.

Plus, Reagan did not have to deal with an artifical drag on job numbers coming from austerity-mad Republicans trying to slash state and local funding and payrolls everywhere they can. You guys have destroyed about three quarters as many jobs in state and local areas as Obama has created in the last year. Republican policies are the root of a considerable drag on our recovery.

What will you do when you get into office except create more drag, trying to prove your policies correct? Your party picked a lousy time to see religion on fiscal responsiblity, and picked a lousy way to do it. We cannot cut out of his deficit, we will have to raise taxes. If you don’t think it’s the right time to raise taxes, then let me ask you something: why is it then the right time to cut spending?

Stephen

Actually unemployment is higher than it was on the day Obama took office.

He inherited a recovery, which his policies weakened. More precisely, he traded less pain in 2009 for more weakness today.

Re lockstep

“Republicans can agree on individual issues without agreeing on them all” This does not sound like lockstep to me.

When you say “lockstep” it conjures images of troops marching in … lockstep. Having some of them doing what they want, marching to the beat of different drummer, is not lockstep.

As I wrote above, Obama can think of lots of excuses why he is not as good as Reagan. But the part that makes the difference is “not as good as Reagan”.

We have a complainer in chief, not a real president.

Stephen

Re calling you a communist etc. - I defend you on many occasions. I don’t think your a communist and I believe your intentions are good. I don’t have a problem with those things. I have told you the disagreements with our basic outlook and experience.

Stephen opined:

“You fail to acknowledge my central point, which is that Tea Partiers could not remain purists and win, and if Tea Partier fervor was built on balking at compromise, this election is going to be a hell of an ordeal for them.”

If we go back about a year or so Stephen, your central point was that the Tea Party was done…just a passing fad. How can you use the word compromise? You have never compromised on any liberal topic. Why do you talk about purists; you have no concept of what conservatives believe. But you continue to try to tell us who we should nominate, support, and vote for, don’t you? Stephen, why don’t you clean up you own house first and quit worrying about who we run?

By the way Stephanie, I did not say I don’t know liberals, I said I don’t live around any or fellowship with any. But I did have to deal with union illiterates for 36 years, so I know how they think; which is why I am in favor of bankrupting all unions.

“Stephen
Give us this day our daily inconsistency. You laugh at Bill for saying Republicans are doing fine. Have you now given up the “lockstep” meme? I mean, Republicans cannot be walking in lockstep and disagreeing among themselves at the same time, can they?”
Posted by: C&J at June 16, 2012 4:59 PM

Good point C&J; but you’re going to get Stephen all flustered trying to figure out an intelligent answer to that one. It’s just more of his double speak…Republicans are in lockstep, no their divided, no their in lockstep, no their divided, etc. etc. etc……

“Stephen
Re calling you a communist etc. - I defend you on many occasions. I don’t think your a communist and I believe your intentions are good. I don’t have a problem with those things. I have told you the disagreements with our basic outlook and experience.”
Posted by: C&J at June 16, 2012 6:24 PM

I, on the other hand believe Stephen is still living with mommy and daddy, has no life experience, and is a nerd that hides behind a computer screen spouting his left wing socialist ideas. I don’t believe he has ever held a real job, and his education was paid for by the taxpayers. I can get on here almost anytime I want because I am retired; but Stephen is on here all the time, so I am assuming he has no responsibilities other than to defend Obama.

Liberalism boiled down to its basic principals is simply…grow government ever bigger, with an ever increasing percentage of the GDP, empower those who will not empower themselves, break down traditional religious values, turn our children into ignorant robots, kill the unborn who are unwanted, advocate energy policies that will crush this nation, admire all the socialists countries that are failing and wish to emulate them and…

reelect a failed leader who has absolutely no new ideas about anything and whose only excuse for our problems is to blame others.

C&J-
Inherited a Recovery? Inherited a Recovery?

Between November 2008, when he was elected, and April 2009, when his first remedies went into effect, the American economy shed 3.8 million jobs, and unemployment increased from 6.8% to 8.7%. During those two quarters, the Quarterly drop in GDP was 8.9% and 6.7%.

WTF do you mean inherited a recovery? He got hit with the worst of it, the meat of the recession, before his policies even had a chance to do any damage.

Oh, but could it have been a drag? By what means? This is deficit financed, to be blunt, which means it’s borrowed money. Are you saying that hundreds of billions of dollars has suddenly come due? I don’t think it has. However, we do have a big fiscal drag somewhere: we have the hundreds of thousands of workers laid off from their public sector jobs. We have spending cuts, we have business that’s being cut short.

In short, there’s a lot of business not being done because of your policies, and a lot of people who would otherwise not be contributing to unemployment, who now are.

If it weren’t for those policies, I bet you we’d unequivocally better off than we were when Obama got into office.

The question is, do we really need to be following additional advice from those who have killed jobs, rather than created them? Do we need additional tax cut voodoo, additional claims that letting people on Wall Street and other places take advantage of the majority of Americans will heal our economy?

We’ve concentrated the wealth, pretty much like you folks thought would help things, giving them enough money to create jobs. But has that created jobs? Has record reserves of cash created jobs? Have all the deficit dollars we spent improved job creation from where it was in the 90’s?

No. The middle class creates jobs. Its spending keeps recessions from getting too severe. When they can’t spend, that’s when things get really bad.

Unfortunately, all your policies are aimed at helping the rich, and that won’t help anything. There’s no point hiring people to serve customers who aren’t there.

stephen

You need to get a sense of humor. I noticed you didn’t ask me what I was going to do with the BBQ equiptment. LOL @

Stephen:

Okay, your Bank loses two billion dollars (and perhaps more later) on a trade so god-awful complicated that few people can actually explain it.

Did you know that those losses are up in the vicinity of $6 billion to $7 billion now?

If you pay people who screw up huge bonuses, praise them, angrily denounce the folks who criticize them as economic radicals, etc, you’re only encouraging them to repeat their bad behavior.

In other words: acting like Republicans who actually admire the stupidity and recklessness of the 1%. Yawn… What else is new?

The Republicans are no longer looking the other way on destroying the economy, they’re actively cheering on the people whose behavior presents the most systematic risk to our economy.

The GOP has always been by and for the 1%, and they have no shame at all about this fact.

The jobs of millions of people and the continued operation of tens of thousands of businesses are at risk become people leading the financial sector, because they can’t be bothered to make money through productive investment and safe lending practices.

They don’t care about the masses of people. If the top 1% was in any danger they’d be completely freaking out; but since there’s no huge danger for that segment, pffffttt!

how much political benefit is your party going to derive from video of the Senators showering their praise over the CEO of this bank, when it’s being shown after the next financial crisis?

They’ll pay no penalty from their party — Republicans don’t care about holding their people to account. It’s completely obvious that they just don’t care about serious F-ups that come from the actions of their people at all.

Seriously. These people still make excuses for Nixon. They love Henry Kissinger. Reagan is their ultimate hero, despite raising taxes eleven times and despite the clear-cut criminality of Iran-Contra. Indeed they think Ollie North is totally fantastic. Condi Rice is a highly respected Republican despite “Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S”. Ashcroft gets a pass despite the serious overreaches of the Patriot Act (even though many on the right complain about those giant overreaches to this very day). Rumsfeld is still a respected Republican despite his not making any plans whatsoever while pre-emptively invading a nation to wage war. John Yoo is respected despite his torture memo. They still talk about Alan Greenspan as if he’s someone who should be respected and taken seriously after bringing on our ongoing economic meltdown. Even Bush/Cheney are getting a pass in many GOP circles.
Let’s face facts here. There simply aren’t any expectations whatsoever. With the GOP it’s “Heckava Job Brownie” all the way.

Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS) asked Dimon and his firm to be good corporate citizens, if only to avoid complicating conservative free market messaging. “How you managed JPMorgan is the business of your board of directors, your shareholders, but it does have consequences to those of us who believe in the free-market system, its value, its merit. I have the sense and I hope it’s the case that it is a responsibility you understand. [Your] behavior really matters in our ability to be an advocate for a free-market that creates jobs and economic opportunity and allows Americans to pursue the American dream.”

Republicans, including Moran, have protected Wall Street from all accountability, and will continue to protect Wall Street. They’re a wholly owned subsidiary.
And, a large number of DLC Democrats are not too far behind them in this.

Problem is, the message has already been complicated by a near forty percent drop in household wealth for the average America.

And yet, a huge number of the electorate is so ignorant or misinformed (Fox News), they continue to vote for these clowns, despite the fact that they’re slitting their own throats.

You can sell fear-based rejection of re-regulation only so long as people are not confronted with the ugly consequences of deregulation. Trouble is, there’s a minefield of consequences for those policies, especially the policies largely unchanged from that period before. You may save a certain laissez faire attitude temporarily, but if anything sufficiently bad happens anytime soon, it will set the discrediting of Wall Street-Friendly policy in stone.

They just don’t care, and they won’t care until people rise up and seriously threaten the rotten, corrupt system that is run by and for the 1%.
Americans need to keep marching and protesting (or start marching and protesting) the way Occupy Wall Street has been doing literally all over America over the past year. And, people should know that whenever they do so, they’re far from alone.

Billinflorida-
The Tea Party is in a dilemma. Even after what is supposed to be a wave election, they can’t even get their preferred candidates nominated. When the try their political stunts, instead of backing their play, the party enlists the aid of Democrats to pass compromises that fall far short of what they originally wanted. That is, for those who wanted a deal made at all. Many of your people wanted default, and didn’t get it!

Now, one of two things will happen: either the Tea Party will get voted out because people think they’re nuts, or Washington will wear the edges off of them. I think if you look at their records, you’ll see the latter happen.

As for Compromise, I backed pushing the compromises through. I backed compromising healthcare reform to get it passed. At my core, I’m a pragmatist. I might seem like more than that to you, but only because your brand of conservativism is insane, badly misinformed, and I don’t like compromising with insanity or stupidity.

C&J’s the flustered one in the exchange, trying to get me confused around how a party can fight amongst themselves, yet unite to oppose somebody else.

Duh, I’m a Democrat. I have practical experience in dealing with a party that can be fractious in its inner dialogue, yet unite to support a candidate, or oppose its adversaries.

There were many Republicans, like Richard Lugar and Olympia Snowe, who had their differences with the Tea Party Republicans, yet joined their fellow Republicans in backing one filibuster after another. Is that contradictory? No, it’s fact. And since the filibuster required almost unanimous votes from the GOP to be maintained, it is not unfair to speak of lockstep obstruction, because nothing else would allow them to get in the way through that method.

As for your last paragraph?

You will never be able to put me so far down that I won’t get back up and spit my response back in your face. Never. That part of me that might give in about that is long dead. My peers in junior high made sure of it. I had to learn, in those formative years to stand up to folks like you no matter how ugly they got, because that’s what you got to do when you are autistic, and you have nobody else to look to for validation. Whatever battle of wills you want to win with me, you’ll never succeed. I’m not stubborn because I don’t compromise. I’m stubborn because I’m wired to be, and because my life experience has beaten a certain level of armor-plated “**** you” into my personality when it comes to a******s trying to put me in my place.

Folks think they can back me down by insulting me, by essentially pushing that Bond-villain BS on me. They think that all this nastiness will intimidate or impress enough people with social pecking order BS that they’ll win on that. But you folks have neglected something crucial: There are people like me out there who are going to insist that you prove what you claim. I’m going to keep you honest regardless of what pressure you put on, because nothing you can say can be worse than what I’ve already experienced.

Good night.

PS: as you can tell, my pet peeve is people who act like bullies, so step back and consider what all of y’all are doing to Obama, what all of y’all did to Clinton. I can compromise on some elements of policy, and I expect to. But I have no desire to compromise on people tormenting and heaping abuse on my own. I’m not going to help people like you tear down anybody. That seems to be all the GOP in Washington is good at doing, to itself and others.

I want adults in charge, folks who know something about dignity and respect.

Stephen

Obama supporters, who did not understand statistics or economics, used to use a chart showing how job losses bottomed out almost the day Obama took office. More informed conservatives have used that very chart to indicate that Obama inherited a recovering economy. You can see the chart right here. http://www.watchblog.com/republicans/archives/007946.html. Notice how things improved in 2009 and then flattened out.

Let me emphasize again trends. Let me try again with trends. Say you are driving in the wrong direction. You drive ten miles in the wrong direction, then you turn around and drive three miles the right way. At that time, you wife takes the wheel. You are still -7, but you were headed out. If she subsequently starts going backwards or perpendicular to the desired destination, she can’t blame you for that.

You are measuring something akin in my above example to time lost. We are looking at trends.

So I do not blame Obama for where we are now (although at some point we need to start holding him accountable) but rather for the direction and speed we are going now. This has been very bad.

As for lockstep - I am simply asking how the party can be two opposite things at the same time. Lockstep implies almost an absolute standard of control. Then you tell me that there is disarray. Quem sabe?

Adrienne

Re JP Morgan

Jamie Dimon is a prominent DEMOCRAT - a big fund raiser for Obama. So I invite you to vote against both Obama and Romney if you want to get at those evil 1%. You may also need to boycott most movies (famous actors and producers are 1%), sports figures and you may even need to avoid going to the doctor.

Beyond that, that 1% is very unstable, so you might hate the wrong people. From 1999 to 2007, about 50% of people who earned $1 million or more in any given year only managed to achieve that once. Another 15% did it twice and
only 6% filed in all nine years with incomes more than $1 million.

So maybe you see the problem. The people who made the big bucks in 2007, for example, are not the same ones doing well this year. So if you hate them for ruining the economy, you are hitting someone else today.

I am still hoping to make it into the 1%. I think I might be able to do it in 2023, when we will do a big timber harvest. Of course it will have taken 32 years to create this. Even if we make $1 million, that will be only around $31,000 a year. Adjusted for inflation, that is only $8856.29. So you will have a choice to make. You can hate me for being 1% of feel sorry for me for making below poverty level for 32 years.

Stephen Daugherty said:

“Billinflorida-
The Tea Party is in a dilemma.”

If the Tea Party is in a dilemma, then OWS is nothing more than a bad memory. You can’t seem to rap your mind around the Tea Party concept, can you Stephen? The Tea Party began as a grass roots movement and has become a conservative mindset. We no longer need to meet in town squares, we were never bussed in by the unions, and we were never paid to show up to protest. But what we did discover is that there are millions more like us in America who are now using FB and internet to stay connected. Our beliefs may vary, but we have certain conservative core beliefs. You Stephen, as well as other liberals are beside yourself because the TP is still a viable entity. You and the liberal establishment predicted the demise of the TP and it has not happened. And since it has not happened, you now change your message to say we are giving up core beliefs, and you are wrong. The OWS crowd on the other hand was nothing more than masses of people protesting, but not knowing or understanding what they protested. The politicians and liberals, who once supported their movement, have run far away.

Stephen goes on to say:

“Now, one of two things will happen: either the Tea Party will get voted out because people think they’re nuts, or Washington will wear the edges off of them.”

Stephen, the Tea Party is not a real political party. It’s a conservative concept. I know you would like to identify all conservatives as part of a literal party, but we’re not. Let me give you an example: some TP conservatives are Catholic and yet I am an evangelical. My religious beliefs are at the complete opposite end of the spectrum from Catholic beliefs; yet, when the Catholic Church filled lawsuits against obamacare for infringing on religious rights, I am in complete support. The reason being, religious rights is a core belief of TP conservatives. The same can be applied to taxes, big government, etc.

“As for Compromise, I backed pushing the compromises through. I backed compromising healthcare reform to get it passed.”

This is a lie Stephen; you did not back compromise on obamacare. Obamacare was rammed down the throats of the American people. Between 55-60% of voters have consistently wanted obamacare repealed ever since it was passed. It was passed on straight party line vote and you Stephen have supported and defended it from day one. So don’t come on here with your BS about compromise.

“There were many Republicans, like Richard Lugar and Olympia Snowe, who had their differences with the Tea Party Republicans, yet joined their fellow Republicans in backing one filibuster after another. Is that contradictory? No, it’s fact. And since the filibuster required almost unanimous votes from the GOP to be maintained, it is not unfair to speak of lockstep obstruction, because nothing else would allow them to get in the way through that method.”

So it is “lockstep” when Republicans stick together, but it’s not “lockstep” when Reid forces all Democrats to vote for obamacare? Once again Stephen, you show your double standards and hypocrisy.

As per your last 3 paragraphs; Stephen, I imagine you were a weird little boy. You were probably withdrawn and had no friends. Bullies picked on you on the playground. These things must have left mental scars. Now that you grown, you lead an isolated life behind the screen of your PC. You live in a make believe world; you have probable played reality games on your Xbox or PS3, and voicing your opinion of politics is an escape for you. You are able to sit at your PC and make bold statements of your radical political beliefs, without worry of retribution. But I do find it interesting that I have insinuated you live with your parents on a several occasions; yet you have never denied it. But you are not alone Stephen; most liberals have similar mental problems.

Bill

Re Tea Party - It seems impossible for liberals to understand the TP because they really think that they represent the people. When the people come out in the streets in large numbers and are peaceful and clean, i.e. Tea Party, liberals think this is somehow against the rules of the universe.

Liberal like the slobs like OWS, who yell and crap in the parks. You are also correct that unions and rich liberals paid the OWS. Of course the street people who came to make up a big part of the OWS just go anywhere where they can sleep free and beg w/o being bothers by the police.

IMO liberals idea of “the people” is the great unwashed masses. BUT what has happened in the last century is the great unwashed masses have mostly become middle class, i.e. Tea Party. The unwashed are a much small part of the population today, i.e. OWS, but they cling to the self-deception that they are the 99%.

Jamie Dimon is a prominent DEMOCRAT - a big fund raiser for Obama.

Wrong. The GOP wouldn’t have been kissing his ass quite so loudly and wetly the other day if that were currently the case.

So if you hate them for ruining the economy, you are hitting someone else today.

I’ve always aimed my punches at the correct people.
Here’s a perfect example:
Jim DeMint to Dimon:

“We can hardly sit in judgment of your losing $2 billion. We lose twice that every day in Washington.”

“If we could do anything to encourage the industry to develop a lot of its own voluntary rules, that would guide us.”

I am still hoping to make it into the 1%. I think I might be able to do it in 2023, when we will do a big timber harvest. Of course it will have taken 32 years to create this. Even if we make $1 million, that will be only around $31,000 a year. Adjusted for inflation, that is only $8856.29. So you will have a choice to make. You can hate me for being 1% of feel sorry for me for making below poverty level for 32 years.

Adrienne

From the article you so helpfully link -

“From 1989 to 2009, the banker and his wife gave over half a million dollars to Democrats, according to a Center for Responsive Politics analysis. That’s 12 times what they gave to Republicans during that same time frame.

Dimon has given money to politicians in both parties over the years, in particular senators who oversee the banking industry. But the bulk of his funds have gone to Democratic politicians. He gave $50,000 to Obama’s inaugural committee after giving $2,300 to Hillary Clinton in the 2008 primary.”

Sounds like a Democrat. I like the part about giving a half a million dollars to Democrats. How many of us here have a half a million dollars to give to anybody?

Re coming back to me - I use this as an example because it is the one I know best and I am sure that it is right.

I gave you the general information too.

Do you believe that most of the people who earned income in the top 1% were/are the same people who earned in the top 1% ten years ago?

They are not. Whether you understand or not. About half of the people who make a million do it only once. This affects your analysis. If you want those who benefited from the upswing in the 1990s or even in 2008, you probably have to go after people now making much less money and probably lots of people in the old folks homes, since the average age of a millionaire is 57, a guy making the big bucks in 1990 would be 79. So you want Obama to be the scourge of the old folk homes.

Sounds like a Democrat.

But Dimon has become one of the highest profile critics on Wall Street of Dodd-Frank, the financial regulation reform packaged pushed and passed by Democrats last year. And so far this cycle his donations are more divided — he has given $6,800 to Democratic candidates and $4,500 to Republicans. He has not given to President Obama’s reelection campaign.

This is why the GOP is kissing Dimon’s ass.

C&J-
I just don’t see how an economy hemorrhaging more than 800,000 jobs in a month is one in recovery. I’d say, the damage that has us where we are now was being done there.

If job losses has continued at the rate they were going between Oct. 2008 and March 2009, we would have been about 1.7% higher on unemployment by Oct. 2009, the peak month of unemployment under Obama. Even under that Reagan Model I created, you still have a year’s worth of some of the most intense unemployment Americans had seen in a generation, and that’s assuming unemployment didn’t keep rising.

Different pieces of the economy rely on one another for support, so if you end up blowing up a substantial part of the economy like that, natural recovery becomes, at best, a long and problematic affair. This isn’t a normal recession where things just cycle through. The overcorrection on this recession is so huge as to be crippling to recovery.

I’ve been over the advantages that Reagan had- a Congress willing to spend to stimulate the economy, interest rates that were high, and therefore would provide relief when they were lowered, and a manufacturing sector that would reap the benefits of a recovery, and distribute them to a broader middle class.

Your policies have helped kill many of these outlets. Spending? That’s socialist! Interest rates? Already at 0%, or close to it. Middle class manufacturing? Sorry, globalization had to triumph, so we started devoting corporate money to developing middle class economies elsewhere.

Free markets aren’t magic. They aren’t deities that look out for the greater good. People look out for their interests, but often with a narrow perspective, or without the kind of moral sensibility that your side naively expects to just spontaneously develop all the time.

I think Murphy’s law is a good guage of market policy. Anything that can happen, will happen. If people can making money by lying, cheating, and getting themselves over their heads, they will! The most efficient business transaction is fraud. Sell somebody the Brooklyn Bridge, and you have 100% profit.

If we want the financial sector not to resemble an organized crime racket, if we want business to be honest, we have to set those rules. Yes, the markets have sometimes encouraged more responsible behavior. But if you look over the last few years, the last decade really, you’ll see that markets can also encourage and feed into some pretty stupid, pretty psychopathic behavior. Why? Because sometimes it takes people a while to catch up with the truth, if ever. Because if it makes a profit, and does so more competitively than being honest and good, the incentives, perverse as they are, will encourage the behavior.

Here’s the thing: yes, the complexity of the market often defeats central control. So what we have to ask is what are the simple things we can do that have a greater emergent effect, that cut short some of the bad behavior, or at least keep the consequences from raging over the economy like a wildfire. If we had been dealing with twenty banks, rather than just five, and just those five were in trouble, we could have more easily let them unwind into oblivion.

There are just some places and situation where leaving people a choice is not a good idea. Taxes aren’t voluntary for a reason. Following orders in the military isn’t voluntary for a reason. Murder is outlawed for a reason, and you don’t simply make going to prison voluntary, now do you?

It may not be wise to let banks get that big, or to let them trade derivatives paid for with depositor’s money. The outcomes might just not tend to be that good, and if it takes a law to stop them to do that, if voluntary choice isn’t leading to market-based reform, then we need to stop offering them the choice.

As for contributions to Wall Street, Wall Street is now disproportionally supporting Romney and the GOP, and the shift was there as early as 2010. In fact, it’s kind of a regression to mean, as 2008 was the only year that contributions to Democrats were that strong in recent memory. It says something that donors from the FIRE sector have given Romney 11 million more this cycle than they’ve given to Obama.

I’ve got a theory about that, and it’s one many share: That Wall Street sought to contribute as much as it did to the Democrats because it knew they were going to win, and they wanted to get in good with those who won. But apparently, they didn’t get the picture like they should, so Wall Street almost immediately shifted its resources over to helping the Republicans defeat Democrats, to avoid any further reforms. If so, then your argument that we’re just as beholden to Wall Street falls flat- Wall Street donated out of fear of what would happen if they didn’t secure the good will of those in charge.

Billinflorida-
Wrap my mind around it. What is this, the Matrix?

America is at its heart, politically moderate, pragmatic when it comes to policy. The Tea Party is neither. If it becomes so, it loses the enthusiasm of people like you, and without that enthusiasm, what is your Tea Party? If it doesn’t start becoming more pragmatic and moderate, the Demographics alone are going to ensure that whatever influence your Tea Party has is diminished.

Democrats can markets themselves as moderates. We can vote for jobs programs, where you cannot. We can set the fiscal balance back in order with tax increases for the rich and judicious spending cuts. We can challenge Wall Street where your politics forces you to stay in their corner.

OWS? It’s done what your Tea Party had to fight and claw and beat up folks to do with minimal effort: turned the conversation away from deficits, back to the economy. It’s no coincidence that Obama’s ratings have improved since then. People really want the government to start taking their side, and that is what your side cannot admit, not without becoming victim to what it considers a heresy.

It doesn’t have to stick around, anymore than a match has to remain for the fire to continue.

As for Compromise? There was plenty of compromise on healthcare. You’re conflating the issue with polling your side pushed with a relentless flood of often psychotically out of touch propaganda. I always found it interesting that aside from the issue of the mandate, which lets face it never would be popular, most of our reforms enjoy majority supports. Your public opinion triumph was a victory of propaganda, but a hollow one if you drill down into the details.

And I think that’s a common thing. You push all these ideas and notions, and you’ve pounded them relentlessly down people’s throats, and so, it’s grown to become conventional wisdom, something people just repeat without even thinking about it. But if folks have to think, if you’re asking them, do I want jobs or the deficit to take precedent, they’ll say jobs. If you tell them what renewing the debt limit really means, they’ll be all for doing it.

We did plenty of compromises on the policies. Your party, though, did not bargain in good faith, and so, my party had to pass it on its own, without your compromise. If every concession is greeted with another “no”, why concede anything else?

As for there being a double standard on Democrats and Obamacare? No, that’s the filibuster at work! See, if Reid had not gotten his people in lockstep, your people in lockstep would have blocked the bill. Reid had no choice. In fact, that’s one of the reasons why some of the concesssions were made to Republicans, in order to get all the Democrats together. We might have had a public option instead of a mandate, if we didn’t have to get every Democrat on board.

You can pretend that I’m ignorant, and you’re just teaching me what I should know, but I think the reverse is true: I followed this issue much more closely than you did, and I know more about what the bargains were, who they were trying to negotiate with. So, your Orwellian revisionist history seems an inferior substitute for what I already know to be fact.

As for your conclusion?

My mental problem is having 141 IQ, the ability to visualize with almost cinematic quality and fluency in my head, verbal and mechanical abilities that exceed the average. I rarely have to use a spellcheck, I know the appropriate words for a sentence most of the time.

Ah, yes, and then there’s being a bit of a social blockhead. Sorry, can’t be all good stuff.

As for my past, there was a dark period in Middle School, and then I got over it! I joined the football team, found a certain sense of spirituality, people who liked me, and experience started to teach me more about how to manage my shortcomings. College was not easy, but I picked a subject I loved, and I feel I still have a future in it.

As for the rest? I feel no shame in saying that I’ve held down a job for several years, and supported my family doing so. I’ve helped my relatives where they needed it, and have sacrificed a measure of personal freedom to do so. I’ve always been a big believer in individual achievement, but also in helping others as well. I have not so deranged my personality as to only accept my individual needs and wants, or only care for others.

Like many others, I seek a balance, one with compassion and conscience as well as practicality and sensibility to it. I don’t adhere to my Christian or Liberal beliefs out of some sort of naivete, but out of a belief supported by hard experience and plenty of study that people need some limits on their behavior if the systems we create are to remain healthy and human.

Here we go again; another round of lunacy from Stephen Daugherty:

“Democrats can markets themselves as moderates. We can vote for jobs programs, where you cannot.””

Democrats are not marketing themselves as moderates when the “jobs programs” they vote for are government jobs created by taxpayer’s money. Big government creating more government jobs…is this what you call moderate?

“We can set the fiscal balance back in order with tax increases for the rich and judicious spending cuts. We can challenge Wall Street where your politics forces you to stay in their corner.”

Stephen, the Obama team has pumped so much smoke up your ass:

“President Obama: The Biggest Government Spender In World History”

http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2012/06/14/president-obama-the-biggest-government-spender-in-world-history/

What are judicious spending cuts? You can’t challenge Wall Street; Obama and the Dems are beholding to WS.

I love it Stephen, you are as ignorant as your messiah. You come on here and blatantly lie just like Obama does:

“OWS? It’s done what your Tea Party had to fight and claw and beat up folks to do with minimal effort: turned the conversation away from deficits, back to the economy.”

Are you referring to the same “economy” that Obama is trying his best to change the subject away from? Obama does not want to talk about the economy; it is Romney who is staying on point.

Help me Stephen, when was the last time Obama and the dems were actively supporting the unwashed OWS? Maybe you are privy to information we are not hearing. I haven’t heard the dems support OWS in months. Or perhaps you could tell us of the effect OWS has had on elections? The TP effect goes back 2 years.

“You’re conflating the issue with polling your side pushed with a relentless flood of often psychotically out of touch propaganda.”

So now you are saying the reason the polls are bad for obamacare is because those mean old conservative TP people have been lying to the masses of the American voters. How can this be Stephen; you already said the TP was fading and has lost its impact? How can we influence when we have no influence?

“We did plenty of compromises on the policies. Your party, though, did not bargain in good faith, and so, my party had to pass it on its own, without your compromise. If every concession is greeted with another “no”, why concede anything else?”

The real question is: is Stephen Daugherty a liar when he said, “I backed compromising healthcare reform to get it passed” or is it when he said, “my party had to pass it on its own, without your compromise”? The truth is, I caught Stephanie in an outright LIE when he said the Dems compromised with the Republicans on obamacare, and now, when he knows he LIED, he say they had to pass it without compromise, because that was the “right thing to do”. Stephen, the problem with lying is that sooner or later, you get caught up in the lie.

“As for there being a double standard on Democrats and Obamacare? No, that’s the filibuster at work! See, if Reid had not gotten his people in lockstep, your people in lockstep would have blocked the bill. Reid had no choice.”

What we have in this statement, for anyone who wants to know how the real Stephanie thinks, is SD explaining why it is okay for Reid and the dem politicians to walk in lockstep which is really not lockstep; but it’s wrong for Republicans to be in agreement, which really is lockstep. The Stephanie says, this is not a double standard or hypocritical. Okay Stephen……whatever…

Continued wisdom from Stephanie:

“You can pretend that I’m ignorant”

Sorry Stephen, but I don’t think anyone believes you are pretending; I think you really are ignorant.

As for the rest of Stephanie’s statement:

“As for my past, there was a dark period in Middle School, and then I got over it!”

Stephen, I don’t think I would have told this story; it makes my comments sound correct. But since you brought it up, it is my understanding that when you were given a Prozac licking block, everything began to turn around. But, are you sure it wasn’t the girls soccer team you played on?

But, anyway, I’m sure I hit close to home with a mentally challenged nerd hiding behind his parents PC screen. Have you ever heard about people who have book sense, but no common sense? I think that fits this senerio.

Just out of curiosity Stephen, what kind of job do you have? I have already stated, I’m retired.

Adrienne

I understand that you dislike people who do things for non-political reasons, but Dimon was just voicing his opinion. That he has come to the same conclusion as many Republicans is a reason for you to hate him, of course. But that doesn’t make him a Republican

You also point out $6,800 to Democratic candidates and $4,500 to Republicans. This makes his less of a Democratic supported but he still supports Democrats more. And if you think that $4,500 is enough to buy support from politicians, while giving half again as much to their opponents, you understand even less than I thought.

Stephen

You are looking at the average for the whole period and missing the trend. I understand why you don’t do well as an investor. I cannot explain it any better.

But you claim to be a scientist. Let’s take a simple experiment. Heat a beaker of water for ten minutes and measure the temperature rise. Remove the heat and wait ten minutes. Would you now take the average temperature gain and project that forward to estimate the temperature at the end of another ten minutes? Or would you take into account trends?

I know that you guys have lots of excuses for Obama’s lack of performance. I suppose we can always figure out excuses for failure and reasons why those who have not succeeded had challenges too hard. So we agree that the challenges Obama faced were too much for him.

SD

Why do you have to gloat over your IQ being 141?

BTW—Mine is higher than 141 and I have two sons who are also over 141. My wife is 142 and that is not her weight.

Maranatha

I haven’t been on WB for quit some time, and when I do visit I have to read Stephen bragging about his IQ and his ability to spell correctly. It’s a shame he can’t think straight. I do believe Tom Humes and Billinflorida have his number.

Stephen, Frank, Tom etc

Re 141 IQ - I am considerably dumber than Stephen by those sorts of measurements.

I have a different way of looking at things. I call it my “Gold’s Gym Rule”. Lots of people spend lots of time at the gym, but they cannot lift much weight. It really doesn’t matter how much they can do in theory. All that matters is how much they can do.

So when somebody tells me how smart they are, I always ask how successful they have been. I mean, the goal is to have good relationships, good health, a good job, reasonably wealth and a moral life. If your smarts helps achieve these things, great. If not, maybe you are not so smart.

In all honesty, I find it a little embarrassing that a man would get on a blog site, such as this one, and try to impress us with his intelligence quotient. If anyone on WB was that exceptional, they certainly wouldn’t be expressing their vast knowledge on WB. But his comments are in sync with liberals; we dummies/they smart… But as has been said about Stephen on many occasions, “if he can’t dazzle you with his brilliance, he will baffle you with his bullshit”.

I understand that you dislike people who do things for non-political reasons, but Dimon was just voicing his opinion.

What a joke. CEO Dimon just lost 6 to 7 Billion Dollars. F**k his opinions and those of all the other Bankster criminals on Wall Street. Every last one of these corrupt clowns should be put behind bars, but what does the GOP do? Kneels down and kisses all their asses continually, no matter how many people they hurt. It’s disgusting and pathetic.

That he has come to the same conclusion as many Republicans is a reason for you to hate him, of course.

Yes, the fact that Republicans protect such criminals and actually say things like: “If we could do anything to encourage the industry to develop a lot of its own voluntary rules, that would guide us.” is a bloody disgrace.
Your corrupt political party along with these bankster criminals have deregulated and robbed this country right off the economic cliff. That is hateful and despicable, yet none of you have any shame about it, and seem oblivious that you don’t make any sense to intelligent people at all.

But that doesn’t make him a Republican

He’s a criminal who has fought all regulations following the economic meltdown and is currently getting his ass kissed by everyone in the GOP — same difference.

You also point out $6,800 to Democratic candidates and $4,500 to Republicans. This makes his less of a Democratic supported but he still supports Democrats more. And if you think that $4,500 is enough to buy support from politicians, while giving half again as much to their opponents,

That’s chump change to bankster criminals like Dimon and crooked millionaire politicians.

you understand even less than I thought.

No matter how much belittling you attempt to do to people on the left, and no matter how much shameless puffing and bragging about yourself you do, I’ve never thought much of your level of intelligence or ability to reason either, believe me.
And, that applies generally to most crooked, selfish, and short-sighted plutocrats for the 1%.

Might I suggest anger managment classes.

“A study by the nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation’s Influence Project finds that Obama has received more in campaign donations from the financial sector than any other politician in the last two decades.”

http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2011/10/10/obama-has-received-more-money-from-wall-street-than-any-politician/

In fact Adrienne, just Google, “who receives more wall street donations” and you will find dozens of links identifying Obama as the largest receiver of WS donatins.

Are they giving him money so he can just turn around and crack down on them? No, they are giving him money for favors.

“Despite frosty relations with the titans of Wall Street, President Obama has still managed to raise far more money this year from the financial and banking sector than Mitt Romney or any other Republican presidential candidate, according to new fundraising data.

Obama’s key advantage over the GOP field is the ability to collect bigger checks because he raises money for both his own campaign committee and for the Democratic National Committee, which will aid in his reelection effort.

As a result, Obama has brought in more money from employees of banks, hedge funds and other financial service companies than all of the GOP candidates combined, according to a Washington Post analysis of contribution data. The numbers show that Obama retains a persistent reservoir of support among Democratic financiers who have backed him since he was an underdog presidential candidate four years ago.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-has-more-cash-from-financial-sector-than-gop-hopefuls-combined-data-show/2011/10/18/gIQAX4rAyL_story.html

It’s terrible when facts get in the way of a liberal’s rant.

Adrienne

He lost the money of his investors and took responsibility. Risk is what investors do. We expect to lose sometimes and win sometimes. A good investor wins more than he loses. Those that try to avoid risk of loss are not investors.

In any case, the man contributed a half a million dollar to Democrats and %50,000 to Obama. Maybe we should question those “investments” but it is private money. His business, just as JP Morgan’s losses are the business of the investors.

Shouldn’t you be happy the investors lost money? A majority of the stock is owned by that 1% you hate so much.

RE chump change - you are right. It is also chump change to politicians. Once again, you have come to my point w/o understanding how you got there. You are a smart woman when your judgement is not blinded by partisan hate.

Re my intelligence - I am nowhere near as smart as Stephen with his 141 IQ. You can keep on thinking what you want about my intelligence or lack thereof. But I just ask you to think. For all my limited ability to reason, I frequently find ways to school you. But it doesn’t take.

Re the 1% - As I said, I wish I could achieve that. But I doubt anybody who writes here is a member of the 1%. You hate them, but recall that Obama is a member of the 1%, as are liberal celebrities as well as people like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. Greedy sons of bitches. Let’s vote them all out.

I quoted my IQ number and my abilities by way of responding to Billinflorida’s questioning of my mental capacity. I rarely quote it otherwise because it’s not all that relevant a piece of information, and it doesn’t lend me much real authority on any subjects. Anyways, I see it as part of the mix bag I was dealt in the first place. One of the reasons I’m so relentless is that I’ve got that kind of autistic focus.

Someone questioned why their arguments didn’t take. Well, when somebody blames Fannie and Freddie for the housing boom and bust, but I know Fannie and Freddie were basically being handed their hat in the market, I have no reason to trust their argument.

The logic of the argument seems to be creating a thin rationalization for Democrats and the Federal Government being responsible for the crash, with Wall Street and the others exonerated. But I know what was going on with Wall Street, the mechanics of the derivatives market, the interconnectedness of it all.

Why should I accept an explanation that is factually questionable, and isn’t even as complete in its scope as the theory I’ve already been presented with? The Fannie and Freddie theory doesn’t even begin to deal with the banks and non-bank lenders that formed the majority of the market.

If I have a good theory that fits the facts, I’m not going to take too well to people trying to push me around on political grounds. No, no matter how many times you call me a socialist, that doesn’t change the fact that banks were heavily overleveraged on derivatives, and most importantly, this was true even in 1998, before the Housing Boom took off, before the effect of financial reforms by the Republicans making the banks too big to fail took place. Even then, it almost caused a crash like the one we witnessed.

Knowing that, to just look at it as a housing market problem is far too narrow, and to take the narrow segment of the risky subprime market, and ignore the broader lending industry in all this just seems like purposeful wearing of blinders on the subject. Why should I?

As far as bias theories go, I once was willing to give FOXNews a chance. I turned to them as a source in 2003, as I was following the war. What kind of broke me of wanting to watch them further was a series of articles that were posted, then retracted, where the news outlet claimed they had found WMD. What struck me after a while was that they were eagerly trying to report things as a success, and that they were being careless with the facts to do so.

I felt the question of whether we’d find the WMDs was fairly important, because we just invaded a country for their sake, and to have FOXNews so repeatedly fail to get its facts straight led me to believe that the outlet had a truly problematic bias, one where the facts could be a casualty of a political agenda.

I’m old fashioned. I like my news as objective as possible. Failing that, I want those who report to be willing to kill their own darlings when it comes to theories. All too often, though, the Conservative press seems more focused on vindicating conservatives, not even as a passive artifact of their culture, as some allege with the so-called “liberal” media, but as an active, activist sort of endeavor.

To me, the way my mind works, concrete fact is what’s most important. To me, the idea would be we establish facts in a reliable way, and then we take the direction that their proper interpretation would suggest is best. Where I believe there is room for difference of opinion, when the facts are settled, is in what we decide based on those facts.

There’s just too much use of propaganda techniques where reason and rationality should be employed instead, and I think that’s bled into the way Conservatives now deal with policy, and not for the better.

The thinking that Propaganda appeals to is basal, primal. Us vs. Them, survival, threats and promises. I’m not so naive as to think that folks won’t employ techniques like that now or in the future, and as somebody who’s been arguing politics for a time, I haven’t been immune to its use. I think don’t think people are stupid. I tend to model what I write on the notion that people can understand what I understand, given enough preparation on the subject.

But propaganda has its own logic, and it can be a cruel seducer of minds, if relied upon too much. It can suck people into running around its labyrinth of emotional appeals, and get people into a state of mind where they’re simply not questioning what they’re being told.

I don’t believe in questioning everything, but I do believe that it is not the best idea to fail to question something when the impulse comes up. The question is, how to question things in a way that gets REAL answers, not simply somebody’s manipulated, set-up conclusions.

We can be free on paper, but prisoners in reality if our minds don’t get the opportunity for various reasons to put what we see before us to the test.

I think there are plenty of people with IQs as high or higher than mine who are made to be complete fools because they are locked into to an unreliable process of reasoning. Intelligence can become the means by which you dig yourself deeper if you don’t use the proper logic. There are kinds of foolishness that only the intelligent can inflict on themselves and others.

Ah, another reason why I don’t discuss my IQ typically- I get hit with the conservatives on this site calling me arrogant for mentioning it. I think it’s better to demonstrate, rather than boast of it.

Ah, but how do you argue with folks whose first instincts are to go for the throat with Ad Hominem attacks?

Billinflorida-
I would like everybody to note a funny fact here: Both of your articles are from October 2011. They are literally last year’s news. What has happened since then? Only that Romney’s gone from being a possible nominee for the Republicans, to being assured the nomination. As it is, the current numbers for the FIRE sector, which would include the donors from Wall Street, are now overwhelmingly tilted in Romney’s favor. That’s what I linked to before, and it’s unfortunate you didn’t examine that before you posted last years numbers as a basis for your argument.

As for why I express what I do here? Because when I started this back in 2004, blogging was a fairly new thing, and I really didn’t know of any other opportunity I might have to satisfy my wish to express myself politically. Since then? It’s a kind of home. I liked that it was a place where insults and demeaning rhetoric were kept to a minimum, and issues were discussed in greater detail. It appeals to the perennial student in me, the person who finds comfort and sustenance in research, in finding out what the facts really are, rather than just accepting them as they are shoved into your face.

You make these elitist kinds of arguments, saying, if I’m so smart, why am I not capitalizing on it? Well, some of the veterans on this site may remember that I had this fiction project I started out here. That has grown into something consdiderably grander in scale, and broader in its focus, and it’s that, not politics which is my ultimate ambition. I’m comfortable with being kind of out of the way on things. I will seek my success, and I will do so as I was planning to do for years before I ever dreamed of being a prolific political writer like I am here.

Besides David Remer, Paul Siegel, and I guess C&J at this point, I’ve got one of the most extensive back catalogs of entries of anybody here. I’ve been writing for the site since 2004. I never thought I’d be published this many times over in my life on this kind of subject. This wasn’t planned. It started with an e-mail about a site with competing columns of writers. I think my brother gave it to me. I started commenting, and then it became clear that I wanted to do more, which I did.

Politics is a passion, but it’s also been a distraction as well, from many pleasures (I like watching movies, reading, and playing video games much more, trust me), and from the serious work I’ve been doing.

But it’s something I felt I needed to do. I thought, and still do that liberal voices needed to speak out, speak eloquently, and start talking about the things that the Republicans and Right Wing political types had rendered unmentionable, politically incorrect in the old Maoist sense of the word.

You guys work so hard to make it nearly impossible to dissent from your point of view, despite all that’s gone wrong with your policy For me, it’s a necessary sacrifice to take time to confront, dissect, and debunk your arguments. You want this country to yourselves, and you can’t have it. You’re going to have to share it with the rest of us, and we’re all going to have to keep each other honest if we want this country to work, because nobody’s perfect, and if anybody’s views are set in stone, folks are going to sooner or later run up against the limits of our intelligence and imagination. Better to have many people thinking up different things, with everybody being wrong, but somebody being right about something important, than everybody thinking the same thing, and assuming the same weaknesses of thought.

Oh, PS: I take no anti-depressants. I worked through my troubles the old fashioned way. I know it doesn’t make for as pathetic an image as you want, but when you rely not only on ad hominem arguments, but on spurious ones at that, you have no choice but to rely on cliches.

C&J-
Claim to be a scientist? Sorry, no. But the question is, what trend? Unemployment continued to increase for much of the year. Why would it stop early? Why would it spontaneously turn around, with the banks not lending, the venture capital dried up, the investment banks essentially corpses wrapped up in the sarcophagi of the banks.

What’s your mechanism for this recovery? Past recessions had interest rates that could be reduced, energy crisises that were resolved, banks still lending, errant corporations chastened, bubbles deflated to normal, with supply and demand then stirred up again as folks corrected the correction.

Here, much of what would have drawn the economy back to prosperity was gone, and your party was opposed to many of the policies that would try and mimic those effects anyway.

You want to claim that things would just happen, but I think that’s all wishful thinking, and it wasn’t in our country’s best interests to let the worst come to pass, and then have to clean up all that mess, simply because Reagan did things a certain way three decades before under very different circumstances.

As for Obama and his challenges? Obama remains comptetive, despite the financial crisis he’s carried on his back and all the bile that’s been spewed his way. You again want to believe he’s not up to the challenge, and in a perverse way, I actually want you to think that. It would be excellent for you to lull yourselves into a false sense of security.

C&J-
I have to wonder, with you saying “they lost the money of their investors” whether you mean the banks who were criminally irresponsible with the way they ran their enterprises, or Obama, who didn’t make the Wall Street Types as rich as they thought they should be.

The simple fact is, the latter should never be the question a candidate should ask first. I think, isolated enough, interest groups begin to lose perspective, and start living in fantasy worlds of their own. In the end, though, the real results of the policies on the public good are what’s important.

People used to make that distinction more, not so much to oppose private interests as a rule, but to simply carve out and analyze a different cross section of necessary actions than what those merely thinking about their own enteprises might see as idea.

We need to stop assuming that the contributors always know best. They can get mistaken, as individuals and in groups, just the same as everybody else.

Stephen

The mechanism for recovery is that demand and supply come into balance.

Take the housing problem. Prices went higher than people could or would pay. A house that sold for $250K in 1997 might have risen to $750K in 2005. This was artificial and had to come into balance. Prices needed to drop.

We saw the adjustment with energy. Prices dropped.

Re the mechanism for recovery - we have a wonderful stimulus at our fingertips, if only we will use it. The bonanza of natural gas, made available by new technologies, has already lowered heating and electricity costs. This is a real stimulus and will provide a big boost. All we need do, all government need do, is to let it happen.

This energy stimulus, worth billions, is a REAL stimulus. Unlike the Obama stimulus, we do not have to borrow money or take money from some Americans to give to others.

Stephen

Re lost their money - I am referring to the investors in JP Morgan. The lost money. Since this was a hedging operation, there were two (or more) parties to these transaction. If somebody like JP Morgan lost money, it meant that whoever was on the other side made money. This was not like the housing collapse. For the economy in general, the JP Morgan loss made no difference at all.

You need make a distinction between losses that simply move money from one balance sheet to another and those that destroy general value. The former is actually a good thing, since it moves money from those who are managing their money poorly to those that might do a better job.

“The mechanism for recovery is that demand and supply come into balance.”

C&J,

That is only part of the solution. The principal problem is the legacy of enormous private sector debt resulting from the inflation in the housing market. That isn’t going away. It has created an enormous balance sheet problem not only for banks but for the private sector in general. The great engine of credit money formation in the 2000s has been disabled. Clearing that debt and repairing the nation’s balance sheet will take time. There is no simple magic wand.

“I quoted my IQ number and my abilities by way of responding to Billinflorida’s questioning of my mental capacity. I rarely quote it otherwise because it’s not all that relevant a piece of information”

Not true Stephen, over the past few years, you have talked about your I.Q. many times. You have also to us about your degree from Baylor University, and your aspirations of making it big in the film industry, but in the meantime you write on WB and the Dailykos. Did I miss anything?

“As far as bias theories go, I once was willing to give FOXNews a chance. I turned to them as a source in 2003, as I was following the war. What kind of broke me of wanting to watch them further was a series of articles that were posted, then retracted, where the news outlet claimed they had found WMD.”

Stephen found out they really were “fair and balanced” when they have people speaking from both sides of the argument and he just couldn’t handle all that “fair and Balanced” reporting; so he went back to MSNBC, where he can hear 5 liberals on a 5 man panel all congratulating each other for being liberals, where Obama’s name is only mentioned in praise and adoration, and where everything is blamed on Bush.

“I’m old fashioned. I like my news as objective as possible.”

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Stephen, you mean like on the Dailykos, MSNBC, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS? You are harlarious.

“To me, the way my mind works, concrete fact is what’s most important.”

HAHAHAHA, you’re killing me SD. The way you mind works is, “If Obama says it; it is as if it comes out of the mouth of a god”. Facts have never got in the way of any argument you ever made. Do you think you are making these ridiculous statements to people who have never read your fact less, talking points, rhetoric from the lips of Obama?

“The thinking that Propaganda appeals to is basal, primal. Us vs. Them, survival, threats and promises. I’m not so naive as to think that folks won’t employ techniques like that now or in the future, and as somebody who’s been arguing politics for a time, I haven’t been immune to its use. I think don’t think people are stupid. I tend to model what I write on the notion that people can understand what I understand, given enough preparation on the subject.

But propaganda has its own logic, and it can be a cruel seducer of minds, if relied upon too much. It can suck people into running around its labyrinth of emotional appeals, and get people into a state of mind where they’re simply not questioning what they’re being told.”

So Stephen, what are we to think of the 8 years plus 3 ½ years of Bush propaganda that was coming from your lips? Again, you are an absolute joke.

“Billinflorida-
I would like everybody to note a funny fact here: Both of your articles are from October 2011. They are literally last year’s news. What has happened since then?”

Oh, Stephen, you are so smart….I guess you got me… But I would like to take note of another funny act here, “when did Stephen and the WB liberals’ first start claiming that Republicans were defending Wall Street?” Oh, I know, I know; it was ALWAYS. Sorry Stephen, but everyone knows WS and the banks are bailing on Obama. Reason: because they supported him in 08 and then he made them the enemy. Would you support someone who was trying to destroy you? Stephen, I don’t see you denying that WS money support for Obama was the largest in DECADES. You just ignore those FACTS, and change the subject.

What does it matter what kind of catalog of posts you have on WB when their all BS?

Marvel Comics have printed millions of comic books, but they are nothing more than comic books. You talk of your years of posts as if they should be recorded in the LOC.

“You guys work so hard to make it nearly impossible to dissent from your point of view, despite all that’s gone wrong with your policy For me, it’s a necessary sacrifice to take time to confront, dissect, and debunk your arguments. You want this country to yourselves, and you can’t have it. You’re going to have to share it with the rest of us, and we’re all going to have to keep each other honest if we want this country to work, because nobody’s perfect, and if anybody’s views are set in stone, folks are going to sooner or later run up against the limits of our intelligence and imagination. Better to have many people thinking up different things, with everybody being wrong, but somebody being right about something important, than everybody thinking the same thing, and assuming the same weaknesses of thought.”

Yep Stephen, I guess it is frustrating when you spread your talking points BS and none of us will accept it as fact. You don’t try to convince us you are correct; you spend most of your time trying to convince us of where we are wrong. If instance, who we should run, why we should abandon TP conservative ideas, why certain candidates are not going to win and others will lose, what our morals or convictions should be, and the list goes on and on. Stephen, you have never quite been able to grasp the fact that Conservatives are not necessarily Republicans. I am a registered Republican, but DO NOT support the Republican Party. I have told them not to contact me because I will not support them; but I do support individual conservative candidates from all states. I did not support Bush, I did not like his policies, I did not like the involvement in the war; but voting for Bush was better than voting for the psycho Al Gore or John Kerry. As a TP conservative, I feel the Republican establishment does not give conservatives a voice in the party. A third party is not feasible because it would give the elections to the socialist liberal democrats. So the only recourse is to take back the Republican Party to its conservative roots. This is what the TP is doing. Will we have to vote for some people we are not completely satisfied with…YES. But it doesn’t upset us near as much as it upsets liberals. Stephen, you and the rest of your socialist friends cannot understand why we would forsake our core beliefs to vote for a RINO. You tried your best to drive a wedge between evangelical Christians and Romney’s Mormonism, but failed. You had it all figured out that we would not support Romney; but that has all faded into the history of failed liberal ideas.

The problem for you is that we know the mind of a big government, tax and spend liberal; but you have never been able to understand the mind of a conservative. Most of the accusations and claims you make are false. We say keep going the direction you are going. I don’t want Obama to stop his socialist change for America. I love it when Obama ignores the legislative branch of government and by-passes the Constitution (the very thing he said was illegal a year ago). I love it because every time he violates the Constitution, the American people become more convinced of what he is. On the other hand, instead of allowing conservatives to go their direction (which you always tell us will hurt us), you try to tell us to go your direction…if we want to be successful. I’m sure you have our best interest at hand and to that I say bullshit.

Stephen, for all your self proclaimed intelligence, you are one stupid S**.

C&J-
I’m not complaining that the money’s vanishing into thin air. I’m complaining that the bank we just got done bailing out is taking the same stupid risks all over again, which heightens the chance of another bailout.

I don’t want another bailout. I’m not stupid enough to say I’ll not do one when push comes to shove, but I’m not eager to waste more taxpayer money, either.

If we’re going to absorb their risk, if they really screw things up, I want that risk of failure to be as small as possible.

As for natural gas, the boom is underway. We just have to be careful about it so we’re not undermining the supposed ecological benefits of using natural gas with leaky wells and spilled toxic brine. No, the real challenge is what we do after the boom busts. Throughout my life, Republicans seem to have always been planning for the best, and caught with their pants down on the worst. much better to be surprised by good results than caught unawares by what should be fairly obvious problems.

I’m a resident of Harris County, so that means I’ve seen booms come and go. I would say it’s nice to have them, and its nice to be burning gas instead of coal, but we got to be discipline enough about energy and thoughtful enough about the history of such things to know that even this new boom will have its end, and we got to be planning for it.

But let me get back to your point: it won’t help, not enough. Fracking’s expensive, even if done right, so there’s a floor on how cheap it gets before people cut back on drilling wells.

We need to do more.

SD

“Why should I accept an explanation that is factually questionable,…”

You shouldn’t, but you do.

I don’t.

That pretty well put it in the nutshell.

Maranatha

This is why Obama is losing in America; it’s the double standards of the left:

“Video from 1994 has surfaced of David Axelrod, President Obama’s chief campaign strategist, calling former President George H.W. Bush “out of touch” for “tastelessly” playing golf while trying to convince voters that the economy is improving.”

http://dailycaller.com/2012/06/13/flashback-axelrod-called-bush-%E2%80%98out-of-touch%E2%80%99-for-playing-golf-in-bad-economy/

Then we have this:

“President Obama rolled out of his Kenwood, Chicago home Sunday morning and headed to out to play his 100th round of golf since becoming president.

Obama played at the Beverly Country Club with two old pals, Eric Whitaker and Marty Nesbitt, as well as regular golf companion Marvin Nicholson, the White House trip director.

Obama has already played golf eight times this year. He actually is a little off his normal pace – perhaps campaigning is intruding on golf. The president golfed 28 times in 2009, 30 times in 2010, and an incredible 34 times in 2011.

Obama’s golfing takes about five hours, including the motorcades back and forth from the fairways. If one thinks of this as taking up much of the day – include getting ready to go and cooling off afterward – its fair to say that Obama has spent more than three months of his presidency golfing.”

http://www.whitehousedossier.com/2012/06/17/obama-plays-golf-100th-time-presidency/

That equals about 1/tenth of his time in th WH has been spent playing golf. Obama is totally out of touch with the American people. I can’t wait to hear the left defend Obama on these numbers.

TomT-
So, let me get this straight: do you agree or disagree with Axelrod’s assertion? Or put another way, If you think Axelrod was too harsh on Bush, why should you be harsh on Obama?

The danger in your charging a double standard here is that you were on the defense on this question during the last administration, with a President who took considerably more vacations. Oh, you didn’t know that? Why do you think the drive is here now to portray Obama as lazy, idle?

Behind nearly every line of bashing you folks lay on Obama is something from the Bush administration you’re trying to exorcise from your party’s record, or make seem like a common mediocrity.

What you haven’t asked yourself is whether by making it seem like this is the best we can get, you’re not defining deviancy and stupidity down. I look at what the GOP’s doing and the thing that’s scaring me the most is that rather than face the music on the stupidity, bigotry, corruption, or incompetence the politicians have committed, the party’s instead focused on excusing the bad behavior, either re-defining it as acceptable, or turning it into just another one of these “The Democrats (or Obama specifically) are just as bad.”

The party isn’t learning from its mistakes, it isn’t accepting that they’re mistakes at all, even when the outcomes peg them so obviously as such.

I think it’s killing your party, killing it’s ability to have perspective on its wrong turns. Everybody makes mistakes, but people learn from them, re-adapt to the situation. I believe, as a matter of political principle that is is better to retreat from a political principle in the service of preventing a bad outcome, than to allow the bad outcome as a matter of political principle. Politics is meant to serve our interests, not define our interests. We have our needs to define those.

Stephen Daugherty, I guess my point is that Axelrod had the nerve to atack Bush for playng golf when the economy was going downhill; and the left defends Obama for playing 3 months of golf when the economy had tanked. I wasn’t on the defense of this during the last administration. But you are clearly defending Obama now, but had no problem attack Bush for the same thing. I call that a duble standard.

I think BIF is correct Mr. Daugherty; I think you spend to much time trying to tell conservatives what they are doing wrong. When I hear this, I am thinking you are terrified of conservatives and what they are going to do to the democratic party in November.

When you say our party is “excusing the bad behavior, either re-defining it as acceptable”; are you not talking about your defense of Obama? I simply said what Axelrod said about Bush could just as easily be applied to Obama, and you go off on a rant defending Obama and blaming Bush. You have a serious problem Mr. Daugherty.

Tom T-
If he had played three months of golf straight, you would have a point. But Obama’s been in office for about 40 months at this point, about 1245 days, which means, quite precisely, one game of golf every 12.45 days.

Wow, you can’t separate him from the links with a crowbar, can you?

Your people like the sound of a hundred. It’s a nice, round number that says “many”. But stacked against 1245, it’s only 8%. Put another way, 92% of his time was spent on the nation’s problems, if you assume that every golf day is lost completely, which I sincerely doubt.

This is an example of a Republican double standard, a standard by which the Previous president can spend a third of his Presidency on vacation without complaint from your side, but a president who plays golf about every other week is held up to be lazy. Good job.

By the way Mr. Daugherty, you metioned Obama’s vacations and Bush’s vacations. Since you have all the stats; perhaps you cold tell us who spent the most money on vacations during the first 3 1/2 years? Was it Bush, who spent his time at Camp David and his ranch in Texas, or was it Obama who traveled the world. Please include Obama’s wife’s travel in the sum of money; since she insisted in taking her own plane and entourage.

If we added Obama’s vacations and golf trips together, who knows what percent of wasted time we would come up with.

Good grief TomT; you broke rule number one on WB. You brought charges against Obama. There is nothing that will rile Stephanie up more than saying something against his messiah. He will tell you under no uncertain terms that you cannot say anything against Obama. Because he worships Obama.

SD

Once again your math is screwy. 92% of the time was not spent on taking care of the nations problems. A hefty portion of the 92% has been spent on campaigning.

Just a guess but I think when it is figured out, less than 50% of the time has been spent on dealing with the problems of the nation. That is a far cry from 92%, sonny.

Maranatha

Stephen

Re bailouts - the banks paid back the money. In fact, the government made a profit on the banks. Still lost money on GM and Solyndra etc.

In this case, it was just moving money on balance sheets. Some investors gained; others lost. It is none of the government’s business. No laws were broken and the only harm was to investors, who should watch their risk.

Re gas - it is good all around. It is American. It is inexpensive and it is better than the the alternative that it replaces. America in the last five years reduced its CO2 emissions more than ANY other country. Natural gas was one reason. BTW - Europe, which suffered a greater downturn than we did (which should reduce CO2) actually increased in some places.

Re fracking being expensive - it produces gas cheaper than other forms of energy, so it must be cheaper than the other options.

BTW - if it gets too expensive or something comes in cheaper, by all means we should change. This is the difference between conservatives like me and liberals like you. I am flexible and willing to go with what works. You guys try to identify winners and put all your eggs in that basket.

Very good Tom Humes, but I bet Obama spent about 40% of his time doing the president’s work. And when you include the time spent with the Chicago thug cabinet, trying to figure out how to make America a third world nation, figuring what nation to apologize to next, how to re-distribute America’s wealth to other nations, and how to invoke more executive decisions; the time spent on actual presidentual work would be about 10% of his time.

C&J, Stephen just pulls his numbers and facts out of the old annal cavity and calls them facts. Companies are in business to make a profit; why would an energy company want to frack if it cost more and paid less dividend?

By the way, the GM bond holders lost and will never get their money back; while the unions came out smelling like a rose.

The idiot Obama even came out the other day asking for another stimulus; in order to bail out states and cities. Wonder which ones he had in mind?

“The idiot Obama..”

Nice.

Sorry Rich, I will have to wait until he is sent back to Chicago in November before I can really say what I think of him. Right now I’m holding back.

“Re bailouts - the banks paid back the money. In fact, the government made a profit on the banks. Still lost money on GM..”

C&J,

The Federal Reserve still holds substantial amounts of “toxic assets” on its balance sheet. It made a market for mortgage backed securities (toxic assets) held by banks at favorable prices in order to help with their balance sheet problems (Maiden Lane I and II) Cash for junk. Where did it get the money? It wasn’t from Congress. It just printed it. It was the hidden bailout of the banks and is ongoing.

As for the GM bailout, it was an astounding success. The structured bankruptcy with government debtor support for ongoing operations avoided a catastrophic liquidation of GM and the loss of millions of jobs. Remember, the bailout began with the GW Bush administration. Recently, he said that he would do it again and was unapologetic about it. He said that millions of jobs were at stake. He put the interests of the country above partisan politics.

TomT-
I’m sorry you feel so eager to change the subject, it must have been pretty embarrassing that one hundred days divided amongst the over twelve hundred days of the Obama Presidency is actually a pretty meager proportion.

But that’s what you get for leading with your innuendo and suspicions instead of starting from facts. Personally, I have never heard anybody level these kinds of cheesy complaints about expense at a President since I was a young boy. It seems to be a produce of our more partisan, more propaganda-soaked times.

I’m not going to do your research for you. You’ll have to confirm your own argument yourself. I’m sorry you felt it necessary to rush it out before you were ready to prove it.

Billinflorida-
Oh, yeah, nobody is ALLOWED to make any charges, they just get automatically erased, right?

Of course you’re allowed. You’ve been doing this for how many months or years now? What a delicate hothouse orchid you must be, if you cannot be confronted with a disagreement without thinking that people are trying to infringe on your right to express your views.

The right to free speech is not the right to take free potshots at the other side, and not get hit back. Get used to being challenged and disagreed with.

As for your other comment?

Very nice to see your suspicious speculation going into overdrive. And you tell me I’m pulling stuff out of my butt. That’s anal, by the way, annal is what you call a chronological representation of history. I think it’s far better for me to pull something out of my annal cavity, which is I assume the space in my brain where my memory is, than for you to pull what you’re pulling out of your anal cavity. Sorry you got confused on that.

I do my research, and most of what you do is dump, usually without evidence of your own, on my research.

tom humes-
Right, right. Got numbers on that charge? Get back to me with them. It’s strange the list of things that you insist on saying the President looks bad for. I’ve seen Presidents since I was born engage in the same behavior, so I can’t help but think that you’re just looking for crap to be mad at him about. Oh, a President campaigning in a campaign year. He should just stay home and throw the election, and Romney should do the same after. No campaigning, no going out and making speeches or selling policies. Hell, he should just sit at his desk and twiddle his thumbs.

You know, people have noticed just how petty the BS is that you go after Obama for. I’m just exposing more of the pettiness so people can see it and throw their support where it’s deserved.

C&J-
Look, fracking isn’t magic. You have to basically crack open sedimentary rock with water and other chemicals- fracking stands for hydraulic fracturing. That’s a great deal more expensive than drilling down into a formation and then just releasing what’s down there.

Because of that, if prices go down too far, they have to hold up on production, because they’ll be selling it to cheap to make back their money on the deal. The linked article talks about how the drilling companies are shifting from purer “dry” gas to “wet”, the main difference being chemical components that raise the price because they’re useful for chemical manufacture.

Supply and demand can be more complex than just having a product people want and plenty of it. If wood gets too cheap, you might not make a profit, after all the equipment, the seedlings and whatever you buy. Then you have to hold back on production in order to drive prices higher. It puts a constraint on how far the price can be driven down.

Too many Conservatives look at the market, or at least talk about the market in these sorts of pie in the sky terms.

Just look at how the film industry and other media are dealing with the internet. Digital is a far cheaper way to distribute. You can load a movie onto a hard-drive or a Blu-Ray Optical disk and carry it much easier than those huge film cans. Or you can download it if your connection is fast enough. A 1 Terabyte drive costs a few hundred dollars at worst, which is better than the thousands of dollars needed for all the film which makes an analog-shot movie. But of course, being digital means that what you produce is easier to rip off, which means the cost for the consumer becomes zero, which means you make no money. Streaming is a little better, and digital distribution and disk sales are ideal. But people have to want to do it!

In a world where big corporations want assured profits, despite the nature of the entertainment business, the new order of things is hard to adjust to.

I’m going to go further tomorrow, talk to you then.

RIch

I have said on many occasions that I agree that the Feds needed to step in. I point out that Obama folks implemented it badly and borrowed more than they should have. In the GM case, the bailed out the unions, not GM.

Stephen

All forms of energy exploration, extraction and use do something. If you worry about that in such detail there is nothing you can use.

Re gas prices - they are lower than the alternatives. If they are higher than the cost of production, people will not do it, in which case you don’t need to argue against it.

I always find it interesting that liberals lecture business people about the cheapest way to do things. If you (and other liberals) are so smart about these things, why aren’t you rich?

C&J-
You’re just using the standard Republican line. “Bailed out the unions.” BS, it was GM’s corporate debt that was being restructured, and unions took a heavy cut in pay and benefits to help pay for that restructuring. It was a compromise, a concept that seems alien to Republicans who would just as soon bust unions and naively hope that the wages and benefits that help people contribute to the economy will remain stable.

No, I’m not rich, not by any means, but if wealth was an IQ test, Donald Trump would be your nominee by now, and Romney wouldn’t have had multiple gaffes by now. You’re showing an elitist attitude here, and it’s not altogether attractive. America’s smart people are not all concentrated at the top, nor will circumstances allow most to go to the top. If we judge intelligence or validity of opinion by a person’s bank account balance or investment portfolio, we’re engaging in a prejudice no less unfair than one that presumes any black person who gets shot or beaten up by police is just a thug who got what he deserved.

There are many ways to get rich in this world, and not all of them are moral, or dependent on sustained good judgment in an overall sense. Folks can cheat investors, take their clients to the cleaners, engage in criminal activity, or make their money acting, playing basketball or doing something else that isn’t dependent on them being a super genius.

As far as fracking goes, I’m just relating the facts. Drilling a hole and just letting the pressure push something out is the simplest and cheapest way to get out natural gas. Fracking adds another level of cost and complexity. It’s main virtue is that it allows access to a greater supply, but if too much supply comes out as a result, then costs for natural gas go down, and it’s harder to recover costs, which of course all businesses must do to stay afloat.

It’s a balancing act.

Look, you go out in the gulf, or off Brazil, and they’re having to use new technologies to drill down further, to handle matters at that depth. You got out into the Bakken formation, and they’re having to employ fracking and horizontal drilling to get new oil. You go up to Athabasca, see them scooping up the tar sands, melting off the bitumen. All these are more expensive methods than traditional drilling on land or in shallow water.

You can verify these facts for yourself, in addition to the cost. None of the validity of the facts I have laid out depend on what my tax bracket is, sorry to say, so why don’t you tell me in technical terms how I’m wrong instead of attempting this kind of crappy argument?

SD

“It’s strange the list of things that you insist on saying the President looks bad for. I’ve seen Presidents since I was born engage in the same behavior, so I can’t help but think that you’re just looking for crap to be mad at him about. Oh, a President campaigning in a campaign year. He should just stay home and throw the election, and Romney should do the same after. No campaigning, no going out and making speeches or selling policies. Hell, he should just sit at his desk and twiddle his thumbs.”

Glad you are my defense attorney. That defense is pathetic. I know, you have to say something. So be it.

Maranatha

tom humes-
But I notice you have no real response! My defense doesn’t have to be particularlly stellar if you never lift a finger to prove what you say.

Maybe on the other sites you frequent, you say such things, and its “megadittoes” all around. Here, you have an audience which is at least part way different, and isn’t going to look at what you say as especially obvious.

You don’t think you need to convince anybody. I’d say that’s not true, you’ve got plenty of people to convince, and more to come after that, because the generations are going to change and shift, and all the folks of this generation have been taught to do is convince themselves.

Well, you’ve convinced yourself, but I don’t buy it.

Stephen

Trump inherited a large fortune and now has a smaller one.

I am not talking IQ in general. However you keep on telling us about their cost structures. If you know so much better than they do, I expect you should be able to get rich off that information and skill.

It is not only you. I just get annoyed when people not involved in the situation give advice. If these guys are so dumb and want to lose their money, they deserve to lose their money. Smart guys like you should be able to pick it up.

C&J-
Look, I’m very familiar with media technology. I know that if you stick with a consumer camcorder, you can get 1080P cameras pretty cheap nowadays. If you want a 4K 3-D Camera system, you’ll have to spring for more.

According to this man, the economics aren’t favorable if gas prices don’t remain high.

Fracking and horizontal drilling are both rather advanced techniques that add a degree of difficulty, and therefore expense to the projects. There’s a reason we’re hearing about these processes now, and not long before. Simply put, prices didn’t justify them before. Now more supply might dampen the rise in energy costs for now, but it can’t dampen things further than what it takes to actually drill and extract.

Stephen, Re/anal/annal; you see Stephen, I do not have an IQ as high as yours and that’s the reason you caught my typo…typo…was it a typo, or did I misspell anal/annal? I’m not sure…perhaps I hit the “N” key twice or maybe not. Correct me (and I know you will) if I am wrong, but there is actually no such word an “ANNAL”, the correct spelling for your definition would be “ANNALS”. So Stephen, you are incorrect in your correction of me. Since I did not put an “S” at the end of my spelling, it would stand to reason I simply had a typo and hit the “N” twice. It appears you are also very “ANAL” in your correction of others. But in any case, I’m glad you know the difference between an asshole and the memory bank in your brain. But, in your case I believe they are both coming from the same place.

You say, “The right to free speech is not the right to take free potshots at the other side, and not get hit back. Get used to being challenged and disagreed with.”

So, the question is, do you have the right to take potshots at Republican Politicians? I’ll tell you what you better get used to; you need to get used to not defending Obama because he is going to continue to spiral downhill until he loses in November.

Stephen

Prices didn’t justify when there were oceans of oil flowing. That is true, but not relevant. Fracking is important now because it currently produces the lowest priced energy and better techniques have made it cheaper.

This is just the obvious. You actually point it out yourself. We all hope and believe that some other form of energy that is cheaper and cleaner will be developed. There is incentive for individuals and firms to do this and I support government investment in basic research. Currently, however, no such thing is available. What it is available, I will be among the first to adopt it. Until that time, we are still cooking with gas.

Billinflorida-
Doesn’t exist? (Defined as the chronology of a single year)

It never hurts to check out the facts before you make concessions or claims.

It also doesn’t hurt to read carefully. What I said basically is that the freedom of speech is a two way street. You can expect people, free as they are, to talk right back to you. They’re not going to simply concede you the territory.

And you know what?

There’s a reason I like to answer with facts rather than insults. It’s not that I’m some pure soul, or that I think it’s beneath my intelligence. No, it’s because I actually want to change minds. Maybe not yours, but maybe some independent out there. I can waste time on insults you’ll never take to heart anyway, or I can be a good evangelist for my side of things. Your Rush Limbaugh has taught you nothing more than how to be a belligerent jerk to your non-conservative readers, your debate opponents. The best you can do is make the political forum so toxic people don’t want to be in there with you.

You need to realize that you’re hardly helping to spread conservatism here. In fact, you’re providing quite a bit in the way of a counterexample, and I’ve been playing off that quite a bit, in case you haven’t realized it.

C&J-
Look, however cheap you make it, you still have to do more than the usual drilling for it. Fracking opens up formations bearing natural gas you couldn’t otherwise exploit. But there’s a price to that, and further exploration doesn’t get done until the price for natural gas rises far enough to justify it.

I’ve already posted links to articles saying that the techniques making gas so cheap that they’re switching their emphasis to natural gas that has other kinds of chemicals in it, which can be sold off in their own right. Regular natural gas is just coming out too cheaply to justify further development of these “dry” wells.

So, really, that’s the limit of how cheap you can get it. It’s also of limited supply, so even though this is an expansion of supply, it’s a limited one.

I’m not saying this is necessarily a bad thing to have. Certainly if it’s displacing coal, I’m pleased. And if they accept a certain level of standards on dealing with the fracking compounds and properly lining the well, so much the better.

Even so, we need to develop wind and solar actively, because the solar and wind supply aren’t going to run out, and advances in other technology will help even out the natural rises and falls of electricity generated from that.

What I’m counseling against is the sense that this is some magical fuel supply, that it will answer all our needs, that it will be some sort of stimulus. It’s a stopgap solution to the carbon and energy problems, not a final one.

“Billinflorida-
Doesn’t exist? (Defined as the chronology of a single year)
It never hurts to check out the facts before you make concessions or claims.”

I checked your link and it doesn’t show a definition for “ANNAL”, but it does show a definition for “ANAL”. I checked “ANNALS” and it showed a definition, but no “ANNAL”. Stephen, I hope you didn’t screw up while trying to show me your high IQ. Be sure to get back with me on this one.
“You need to realize that you’re hardly helping to spread conservatism here. In fact, you’re providing quite a bit in the way of a counterexample, and I’ve been playing off that quite a bit, in case you haven’t realized it.”

Stephen, I have been on WB for close to 10 years, and I have yet to see a conversion. You are a socialist, phx8, j2t2, and others are flaming liberals; Adrienne and Jane Doe are radicals who live and breathe socialist comments, like yours, on sites like the dailykos. You talk as if this site is about debate. Debate takes place when a point is proved and a person admits he was wrong; you Stephen have never admitted you were wrong about anything. You’re constant defense of Obama is laughable. At what point will you admit Obama is out of his league? When he is beat in November, and when he is sent packing; you will still be defending him and you will begin a 4 year attack on Romney. Even though a majority of American voters will vote Obama out and vote Romney in, you will continue to say the majority of Americans are ignorant and you are the intelligent one. Sorry Stephanie, but my goal is not to convince a socialist like yourself of the error of your way, my goal is to set back and watch you make an ass out of yourself. I will go so far as to say Romney will come very close to the Reagan sweep in November.

Perhaps Stephen is referring to an Acronym: Annal, Annual

Billinflorida-
The definitions behind a paywall of sorts, so if you like, you can check out This definition on another site.

You’re trying hard to make me feel stupid, but that’s not the effect you’re acheiving. ;-)

You’re a name-caller. That’s your whole deal. Your whole strategy consists of trying to browbeat me through insults and trashtalk into a state of depression. It won’t work.

The fact you feel it so necessary to try and put me in my place just indicates how lacking in confidence you really are.

Kathy-
They have similar root words, relating to the word year. It’s actually a back-formation from what I read. People assumed annals meant a plural of some kind, and derived a singular out of it. It’s not my fault that Billinflorida doesn’t even bother to google things.

Besides, let’s step back: I was essentially poking fun at a spelling mistake, one of many of his, which he made in the effort to call me a dumbass. He’s just so intent on making me miserable for being a liberal that he doesn’t even notice how much I enjoy just defying that nastiness of his.

Stephen

“What I’m counseling against is the sense that this is some magical fuel supply, that it will answer all our needs, that it will be some sort of stimulus.”

Funny - this is what I am always telling you.

Gas is already here and it is already a stimulus. It is not magic, but it is very lucky. Inexpensive gas is already pumping billions into the economy that was not there five years ago. As it works through the energy matrix, it is causing the prices of other energy to drop, even as the price of gas itself will probably rise. Energy is fungible.

It is not a permanent solution. Nothing is permanent. But it is providing a more real stimulus than Obama gave us in 2009 and we are getting it w/o having to borrow money.

Re solar wind etc, I will be very happen when they get more useful. But they also are not free. Consider solar. You need to install and maintain. They are vulnerable to hail storms and wind damage, as any roof. You have to cut down trees that might shade them and you have to keep them clean. Sunlight is free. Making into electricity is expensive.

C&J-
And is it any less expensive to construct a nuclear reactor safely, or a coal-fired plant that doesn’t kill local forests with acid rain, or even a clean burning natural gas plant? And in all those cases, do you not have to pay for fuel as well?

The great things about solar is that you don’t need the system to be perfect. The very fact that you can distribute solar to almost anywhere on the planet is one of its primary virtues.

The sun doesn’t even have to be always out. The panels generate electricity even on an overcast day. Otherwise, Germany wouldn’t get much out of its panels. Yes, they are vulnerable to weather and whatever else. Other power plants have their own maintenance problems, too, given the fact that they’re either burning something or trying to contain a nuclear beast.

But as a utility project, solar has already proven to be a worthy addition to the energy mix. It’s not necessarily as cheap equipment-wise as older plants, but you don’t have to continuously buy and ship fossil fuels or uranium to them to keep them operating, either.

As for your statement, that the natural gas is giving us a greater stimulus than what Obama provided? Not if these numbers tell us anything. Read the numbers about the estimated difference the Stimulus has made over the last three years.

And what about this?

If we had done what your people wanted, there would be some richer rich people, and everybody else would be suffering more. Britain’s austerity measures, however they moralized and patted themselves on the back for it, haven’t revived either their economic or their fiscal fortunes. In fact, it’s done quite the opposite to them.

We’ve grown, albeit slowly or weakly, while they’ve shrunk pretty substantially. You tell me, which is the preferable outcome? These countries inflicting austerity on themselves aren’t actually going to solve the problem they were intending to solve, just make it worse. Why? Because the economic problems come from a lack of demand, not from concerns over risks. This didn’t start out with a sudden unwillingness of investors to pay for America’s debt, or anybody else’s. In fact, Treasury bonds have continually been best sellers for their safety as an investment. People are even investing in them despite the fact that they’re losing them money because of the yield being less than inflation.

No, this has been a consumer crisis, and government cuts and layoffs have only served to make it worse. This is a politically reinforced downturn we’re trying to inflict on ourselves here. We need to do better, and we can do better.

And don’t mistake that for a love of runaway debt. One thing that keeps our deficits high is that the economy is generating proportionately less revenue to deal with. Raising tax rates on most people won’t help, though the rich could probably stand to pay a bit more without putting a dent in their spending habits. No, what you need is more people back to work, and back to something approaching their old spending habits. The quicker we go back to full employment, the less we have to spend on government assistance, and the more revenue we have to pay for what government we’re getting now.

Stephen said to Kathy:

“I was essentially poking fun at a spelling mistake, one of many of his, which he made in the effort to call me a dumbass.”

Stephen are you sure you want to go to spelling mistakes or grammatical errors?

No Stephen, what you were doing was trying to show us your superior IQ; when in reality all you have done is show us you are an “anal” person.

By the way Stephen, did your Webster site give the word Annal? You were the one who provide the link. And after you made a Google search to prove me wrong, your latest link says it it is a rarely used word.

Billinflorida-
I’ve taken my cue from Emerson who said:

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think today in hard words, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today.

I believed “Annal” was a word. I might have been wrong, and in that case I would have admitted it. But having looked it up, I found it to be true. There was a such word, obscure or archaic, but still there.

One reason I like to research my points is the unfortunate fact that the politicians and the pundits, and even your fellow party members don’t always know what’s up. We are all ignorant to some degree. Seeing things for yourself allows you to go out there and find the facts and figures your fellow party members wouldn’t think to look for. It also prepares you for what you might have to defend your argument against.

If you’re not seeing things for yourself? Well, let’s put this in market terms: if you simply imitate everybody else, don’t innovate or discover things through research, you might be able to imitate everybody’s successes, but you inherit all their failings, too.

There have been times when my fellow Democrats have gotten defensive about a particular subject, and just argued in response, where I instead came around and found out something new that completely recast things. And vice versa, of course. The danger in either conforming to your own, or reacting in uniform opposition to your rivals, is that you aren’t truly evaluating your choices, you aren’t truly seeing for yourself how things are, and applying your principles on those grounds.

If you want to be truly free, if you want to be able to break from what’s bad, you have to be willing to step beyond what you hear from others, willing to put everybody’s ideas to the test, including the ones you like.

That’s my philosophy. You have to know what your arguments mean and don’t mean beyond just the rhetoric. The logic of the rhetoric can be a trap, if that’s all you got, the impulse that you must say what’s orthodox for your people, or oppose what’s accepted by your rivals.

Stephen

I like solar. It will be great WHEN we can use it more widely. Until that time, natural gas is a great solution.

We have found a great source of energy that produces less CO2 than the alternatives & almost no other kinds of pollution. It is American, inexpensive and widely distributed. It is already providing a stimulus to our economy, and a real one not the Obama style.

If you thought the Obama stimulus was a good idea, why are you not as excited as I am by this billions of dollars stimulus that really is giving us wealth.

Re the Obama stimulus - your article says the CBO thinks the stimulus created at least 0.4 million jobs. So Obama spends billions to produce millions of jobs. A million has six zeros. A billion has nine zeros. How much taxpayer money did it cost per job?

Take the simple math - $196,750 and $562,000. Take the $787 billion price of the stimulus and divide by CBO estimates of 1.4 million to 4 million “full-time equivalent”

It is interesting. Do you make $196,750? Not me. If you get much above that you are talking about the top 1%.

Compare with gas. The stimulus of gas (i.e. new energy online) was $476 billion in 2010. In two years, it pumps more money into the economy, w/o debt.

Stephen, you have admitted a truth. When you corrected me on the word “Annal” and sent the Webster definition of the word, you did not know the word existed. In fact, your link at Webster did not show the existence of the word. It wasn’t until I told you, that you did a Google of the word Annal and finally found an archaic meaning. The word is never used and most dictionaries do not carry it and refer to the word “Annals”. So in other words, you came on here spreading bullshit and hoping I would fall for it and at the same time you said to me”

“Billinflorida-
Doesn’t exist? (Defined as the chronology of a single year)
It never hurts to check out the facts before you make concessions or claims. “

Then you compounded your retaliation on me by telling Kathy:
“Kathy-
They have similar root words, relating to the word year. It’s actually a back-formation from what I read. People assumed annals meant a plural of some kind, and derived a singular out of it. It’s not my fault that Billinflorida doesn’t even bother to google things.
Besides, let’s step back: I was essentially poking fun at a spelling mistake, one of many of his, which he made in the effort to call me a dumbass. He’s just so intent on making me miserable for being a liberal that he doesn’t even notice how much I enjoy just defying that nastiness of his.”
Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at June 19, 2012 11:05 PM

So to wrap up everything: you accuse me of not checking the facts and accused me of not Goggleing the word, when in reality; you never googled the word Annal, and did not even know if the word really existed. So without even knowing that the word existed you posted a link to Webster, which proved nothing, and tried to “dazzle me with your intelligence”, when in reality, you were trying to “baffle me with bullshit”. This is was a perfect example of how well this saying fits you. So everything you said was simply an attempt to try to prove how intelligent you. Checkmate

Billinflorida-
Checkmate? God, what an ego. You call my claim BS, but your claim, that annal wasn’t a word, is the true BS.

I make plenty of educated guesses. You talk about me googling the world after the fact, but in fact I googled it before the fact, which is how I found the definition in the first place. I went back to search for another dictionary site to corroborate.

Meanwhile, my first hit on Merriam Webster provides a suspiciously close definition to that dictionary.com entry.

The reasoning behind my guess was wrong, But the guess itself was right. Is this what you mean by “befuddle with BS?” I mean, if you read between the lines, the people who used that word essentially made the same mistake I did, and it was used as a real world word thereafter.

Checkmate? You yourself, on a factual basis, are in check.

Stephen,

Bill is incapable of admitting a mistake simply because to him, admitting a mistake is a sign of weakness.

If his messiah Limbaugh didn’t say it, it’s not true.

Rule #5 Bill.

Rocky

Stephen said:

“I make plenty of educated guesses. You talk about me googling the world after the fact, but in fact I googled it before the fact, which is how I found the definition in the first place. I went back to search for another dictionary site to corroborate.”

Stephen’s original post said, well, we don’t know what Stephen’s original post said when he linked me to Webster, because Stephen cheated.

Stephen deleted his original post linking me to a bogus Webster definition of the word “Annal”. You cheated Stephen and as a rest I say once more, CHECKMATE.

BECAUSE YOU CHEATED AND DELETED YOUR COMMENT.

The question now comes to mind; how many times does Stephen delete his own posts when he is wrong.

C&J-
Well, lets look at your Bush Tax Cut plan, YOUR stimulus in the last decade. From 2001-2010, we lost a net of 2.1 million jobs, at a cost of 1.285 trillion dollars.

So, we’ve paid 601,000 dollars apiece to lose 2.135 million jobs. That’s some expensive job destruction.

And you’re taking the lowest possible estimate to determine the cost of Obama’s job creation, so the likelihood, given the statistics, is that’s the most expensive Obama’s job creation could be, and it’s likely cheaper!

Oh, but what if we exclude the period of job destruction that took place during 2009? Well then you’ve paid 677,000 dollars a job.

How about we take away 2001? After all, that was a Clinton year, and 2002 was the first fiscal year Bush managed. You’re still paying 351,189 dollars a job.

And here’s the question: would those jobs have existed if Bush hadn’t cut taxes? Bush faced one of the shallowest recessions in recent history. Tax cuts are shown to have a rather poor stimulative effect, so were those jobs truly dependent on Bush’s efforts? Given that Bush wouldn’t be in positive jobs territory until 2005, it’s questionable. The economy wasn’t hurt that bad, so it should have been easy to create more jobs off of a tax cut.

Obama, on the other hand, faced a quarter that had sucked the economy down at an annualized rate of 8.9%, and then would do another 6.7% hoover of it the next quarter. He had to buy those jobs back from an economy that was screaming towards the bottom.

I think it’s much easier to demonstrate the necessity of Obama purchasing back jobs at a high cost in the face of an extreme economic collapse than Bush spending so much, at best about 351,000 a job, to bring them back out of a very, very mild recession.

In determining the effectiveness of stimulus measures, we should pay attention to both the load that must be carried by those measures, as well as their absolute value per job. We should also consider that there are long term costs to a long term economic slowdown. Put in other terms, Our deficit dollars are paying for a lack of people with jobs as much as for the presence of people with them, and it’s less expensive in the long run to get people employed so Uncle Sam gets some revenue out of them, instead of more costs.

Stephen

Tax cuts allow us to keep our money. I know that liberals think everything belongs to the government so that it is the same to let one guy keep money as it is to take that money and give it to someone else.

Beyond that, they are now Obama tax cuts. Obama could have let them die. He had Democratic control of Congress. Why did he keep the tax cuts? Because he knew they were the right things.

Here is a great article by Shikha Dalmia, explaining some of the very things you are talking about:

“3 Fallacies in Obama’s Public-Sector Stimulus Strategy”

“Paying people to do busy work won’t revive the U.S. economy.”

http://reason.com/archives/2012/06/19/three-fallacies-in-obamas-public-sector

C&J-
Don’t tell me what I want to do, you are a poor judge of my intentions. I seek balance, but not balance based on an ivory tower vision of commerce unhindered by any real world factors. I’m sick to death of being battered with aphorisms by people whose policies fail to actually work.

You can’t rewrite history. 1)The Bush Tax Cuts, as a policy, began with Bush, and so he deserves whatever accountability comes with that, even if the next president continues the policy. 2)Obama promised to keep taxes relatively low for the Middle Class. Republicans filibustered the bill that had only the Middle Class tax cuts preserved. Obama could have passed a middle class tax cut, and jettisoned those for the rich if the Republicans in the senate hadn’t united to stop him. So why not call it the Senate Republican Tax Cuts, because they were most instrumental in keeping it going.

An additional reason for keeping the middle class tax cuts, is that regardless of their stimulative value, raising taxes on the middle class is a bad move in a recession like ours. It’s the sort of jerk move that Romney’s policy would actually inflict on the bottom tax brackets, along with the spending cuts, but then, nobody ever accused Romney of being that concerned about keeping people’s jobs, outside of the GOP.

Kathy-
Dalmia starts with mocking Obama, and from there goes on to simply restate political objections with little in the way of objective proof.

Take point one. She equates “make-work” jobs with just handing people a check for doing nothing. Except that’s not what the Obama administration aimed at. It aimed at multiple sectors, getting people back to productive work, which also in turned got others back to productive work.

The idea was never to have people continue to be dependent on additional stimulus, but rather that once the jobs had been created or saved, they would continue to remain active economic participants, locking in the economy at a new, higher level, rather than letting it sink further and get stuck in the mud.

In this, the concept of the Stimulus was most certainly more responsible than the libertarian strawman she compared it to. You’re not handing people money to simply sit around. You hand it to them to make cars. You hand it to them to make more green technology. You hand it to them to build the roads, bridges, and other structures necessary to carry out commerce.

Or, if they’re still unemployed, you pay them to keep looking for work. You pay them to keep eating, and spending money on rent and other things. But you also try to get them re-employed as soon as possible, so their tenure on this program comes to an earlier end, and they don’t leave a black hole in the economy by simply falling through the cracks.

Her second so-called fallacy assumes there was something to crowd out at the time, which there wasn’t. The financial institutions weren’t lending, and the venture capitalists were naturally flat on their asses. She assumes a functional investment environment at a time when people weren’t even certain capitalism could continue to exist as we knew it. How quickly she forgets the context!

Investment is still not back up where it should be, but now it’s not because the banks don’t have the money, it’s because they’re simply not expecting any return on it. The economy’s bad, so people aren’t acting as customers as much as they should be, so there isn’t any reason to hire people to fill jobs that will do nothing, so the economy’s bad. And since the economy’s bad…

The point of the stimulus was to knock the system out of this downward spiral, but it was designed for a much smaller recession than it was forced to respond to. So, there’s still much work to do. But if we just let things go, it will take some time for things to recover on their own, and in the meantime, we will pay the price for all that, economically and socially.

As for the third point? It’s typical libertarian crap. Right now we’re experiencing the consequences of years worth of letting the market police itself. There are costs to letting people take excessive risks, both institutional and financial. There are costs to letting people cheat. Their philosophy supposes that people will take that into account, but often you get overcorrections, or people get talked into investing in the loaded game again, to their loss.

As long as the system rewards the cheaters, rewards those who destroy people’s finances, one way or another, the system will continue to undermine itself. The stimulus worked. This critique is simple revisionist history meant to cover for one of the biggest failures this philosophy has ever inflicted on itself.

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