Republicans & Conservatives Archives

I think possibly this ineptness of Obozo and company probably wouldn’t stand out as much, had they not created a “Pandemic”. Of course the purpose of the pandemic was to terrify the American people into believing our only salvation was a government run healthcare system. But, it all backfired and it’s a shame the administration worshipping MSM haven’t done their job.

“Isn’t this like a lot the Administration’s urgent priorities? They are the most important thing in the world … until they aren’t. The article I linked above describes the typical MO - 1) put profits before people, 2) fly by the seat of your pants, 3) if you get into trouble, scramble, and cover your tracks with overblown rhetoric, and 4) flip flop without any trace of shame if you have to.”

Perfect assessment.

Christine,
From your linked article:
“You have a brand-new disease that gets identified in April. By October, you have a vaccine for it. By any standards, it’s a miracle,” said Dr. Diane Helentjaris, director of the Virginia Department of Health office handling swine flu response.”

The article concludes with the Center for Disease Control blaming manufacturers for not producing enough vaccine. Sounds like a problem with private enterprise.

Propitiation,
You suggest the Obama administration created a pandemic scare in order to promote health care reform?

Wow. Just wow.

I’ve heard the moon landings were a hoax. Pass it on.

Phx8

I was being ironic, a bit snarky and a bit “told you so”. It was silly for Kerry and the Dems to give a hard time to Bush in 2004. As it turned out nothing much happened. That will probably be that way this year too.

I plan to “mine” Democratic statements about Bush and apply them in similar situations to Obama. It is a rich vein, as Kerry’s hyperbole shows. If we hold Obama up to the standard set for Bush, he may be found wanting.

BTW - I won’t speak for propitiation, but I don’t think he means that Obama created the flu scare itself, but rather Obama & Co created the overblown hysteria around it. If it was/is really as bad as they said, why don’t they have a greater sense of urgency now?

We have had a lot of hair on fire hysteria from this administration and then nothing.

They had to pass the 2nd stimulus before reading, but they still have not spent most of the money. They told us nothing was more dangerous than global warming, then they don’t pass the bill.

There is a lot of sound and fury in this administration. But they don’t follow through with actions. It is more fun to attack Fox News. Heck, they don’t even bother to fill many of the “important” posts in their own government.

here are currently 200 appointments that Obama has made, and the Republicans have held up in the senate. That in addition to many laws which the Republicans have stopped dead in the Senate, even when they have majority support.

It is a rank bit of hypocrisy, in my opinion, for Republicans to take this line of attack, having set their absolute, party-line aim on obstructing the Democraty Party’s majority at all costs.

You do not get to criticize the very follow-through you’re preventing, especially in the absence of any sensible alternatives from your party. Your party has decided that if it is not the leadership of this country, there won’t be any leadership that can function until they’re back in charge.

And this?

It was silly for Kerry and the Dems to give a hard time to Bush in 2004. As it turned out nothing much happened. That will probably be that way this year too.

Yeah, the Bush Administration turned out soooo much better in the Second term, didn’t it? Nothing much happened, except Katrina, the failure of the Bush Strategy in Iraq, the steady deterioration of the war in Afghanistan, the build up and catastrophic collapse of the housing bubble, and then of the market as a whole… yeah, nothing much happened at all!

This is the cloud nine that the Republican party seems to be floating on above the painful, everpresent problems of our nation.

We criticized Bush because he lead us into an unnecessary war, a war we’re still in. We criticized him for a policy that could not be sustained without making Iraq an even worse problem. We criticized him for unnecessarily running a deficit, so he could give trillion dollar tax cuts that mostly went to the upper class.

He besmirched our country’s reputation with his detainee policies. He gave our intelligence community repeated black eyes with systematic intelligence failures that have literally cost Americans thousands of lives.

Now we bear the burden of cleaning up that mess. It’s what we volunteered for. We knew it would be difficult.

We had no idea, even then, how difficult the Republican Party would try to make that clean-up. It’s like the Republicans are not only back seat drivers, but they’re expecting the President to make perfect decisions while they throw food and objects at the back of the President’s head.

I mean, what kind of insanity is it that a President who wins by a ten million vote margin is considered by more than half of the Republicans to have stolen the election with the help of ACORN? I mean, if he won by a few thousand votes, that would be one thing, but he demolished McCain in so many states by such a margin, that only those who have marinated themselves in the constantly caustic bath of lies could believe that such a grand conspiracy could be pulled off with not one open revelation of the fraud.

We on the Democratic side are being forced to contend with rebuttals and claims from the other side that seem not only wrong, but must be related to politics on another planet!

That guy in NY-23 is trying claim, despite being consistently behind in the polls, that somehow ACORN rigged his defeat.

Your people talk about death camps, death panels, the intention to turn America into some kind of police state.

A person can’t say black without your people saying white. Your people trumpet the stimulus grant your party votes against. We point out that your favorite politician Sarah Palin lacks follow through (Palin quit halfway through her term, no follow up job to make that necessary), and your folks claim that she’s just indulging her impulse to fly free to the national stage to do more important things.

It seems the most important thing for Republicans is serving the Republican cause, and that cause seems to be nothing else than defeating Democrats. It doesn’t matter if that means throwing the country into gridlock, you just have to get your way.

When are you going to realize that the Republican Party has come off the rails, and is just spinning them in a trainwreck now?

the Republicans have held up in the senate.

Except that they can’t mathematically do that. That’s some crazy powerful votin’ goin’ on there.

Your assertion that the Republicans should ok something that even members of the President’s own party reject is an interesting one that, I am sorry to say, falls flat.

Do the right thing, Stephen. Call on your party to make the Republicans ACTUALLY FILIBUSTER something. They may have to actually chose what they want to filibuster and what they don’t want to filibuster. What, you don’t want that? Oh yeah, right, you want to make sure you can do the same when you are back out of power…

They’re a word for that, you know…

Stephen

What I meant is that nothing came of the Kerry flu scare. The Democrats lurch from one phony crisis to another to keep their constituents in a perpetual state of agitation.
Re the Bush Administration in general, that is finished. You guys said it was terrible. I am just pointing out that in particular cases it is pretty much the same as Obama. As I said, I will continue to mine this information and recycle it. If the criticism applied to Bush, it applied to Obama in similar situations. Democrats are much better at vitriol than I am, so I will be happy to copy their words.

Rhinehold explains why the “blame the Republicans” approach is silly. Democrats have it all. IF they cannot make it work, perhaps they are incompetent or just messed up. Or more likely, IMO, is that government itself cannot do some of the things they promised.

Democrats had a great time saying how Republicans were messing up. Now they get the chance to do something. So far (and they have been in since 2007) their results have not been good.
BTW – there has not been a really bad hurricane since Katrina. Despite what the hysterical Dems said, hurricanes have NOT become worse. If a Katrina style hurricane hits us again, I regret that Dems will do no better than Bush. You guys even blamed Bush for the weather. Now the weather is yours too. Good luck with those expectations you have raised for government.

You’re right Christine, I was not talking about Obozo and company causing the H1N1. This is silliness on the part of the left. But they are responsible for hyping the flu into a crisis. I don’t know how many of Obozo’s people called it a pandemic. Now, there is nothing wrong with this, if it is true, and if you can provide the vaccine. Of which, neither is true. Of course it was Obozo’s man who said, “Never waste a crisis”:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122721278056345271.html

So everything becomes a crisis, but eventually he begins to sound like “chicken little”.

Rhinehold-
One Democrat disagrees, and he can overrule the other 59. But he can only do that, if one Republican doesn’t change sides as well.

The filibuster is conditionally dependent on a few Democrats, but ABSOLUTELY dependent on all the Republicans the Senate has, with room for error only if some Democrats crossover.

More to the point, this is a deliberate strategy of the Republicans. They are doing this on purpose, and you’re cheering them on, in spite of a philosphy that should find a minority overruling the rights and privileges of a majority abhorrent. You and they are not using reason to get what you want, but the political machinations of an elite that could care less about founding your paradise of reason and freedom after they win.

Do you think just a few years in the wilderness is going to reform the people who blew it all in Bush’s term? Do you think that’s actually going to happen, that they won’t flock back to their old ways? The Republicans want vindication for the very policies that got us where we are now.

Christine-

What I meant is that nothing came of the Kerry flu scare. The Democrats lurch from one phony crisis to another to keep their constituents in a perpetual state of agitation.

Are there not tens of millions of Americans without coverage? Are most bankruptcies not medical bankruptcies, and are these not occuring even among people whose insurance should protect them against being ruined this way? Are healthcare costs not set to soon take up a full fifth of our GDP? Are they not already outpacing inflation?

Yeah, we just make these things up. The reality is, we want to set up death panels to kill Granny. We want to do wonders for our popularity by inflicting a bureacratic, costly boondoggle on our constituents. And we can sure look to the wonderful example of the Republican party on Medicare Advantage and the Medicare Drug benefit, which added trillions in new spending without raising or shuffling around an ounce of revenue from somewhere else to pay for it, as a great example.

I mean, damn it, we got a bill out there that save taxpayer dollars. But no, The same folks who actually banned the government from bargaining for cheaper prices on drugs are criticizing our efforts to keep the costs down. I guess you only get credit for saving taxpayer dollars if you are a Republican. If you can find one that’s actually done that.

Yeah, you guys know everything about what the government can do. You sure showed us, over the last eight years. You said, oh, no, nobody could do it better than us. Which mystifies most of us, because we’ve seen even your own party’s presidents do better.

This is a political party that just doesn’t care about solving actual problems. It just care about getting and keeping it’s power regardless of what it does to alienate those who are supposed to hand them that power.

You want to point out that the Obama is the same, because that gets you off the hook for the sublime incompetence, arrogance, corruption, and failure of your President. If Obama can do no better, than maybe Bush was simply unlucky.

You’re happy to copy our words because you’re dragging on the coattails of our reporting, our investigations, the facts we uncovered, the deceptions we exposed. You’re leaching off the emotional impact of what were substantive descriptions of what was going on in your President’s administration.

But what have you got here? Scandals? No. Just a crapload of all the obstruction that your party is responsible for, but whose results, you want to be blamed on the Democrats. That’s the twisted, sad nature of your party’s strategy. Your equivalences are just an attempt to lower the standards of the rest of the country so they’ll actually see your party as a viable alternative.

Or more likely, IMO, is that government itself cannot do some of the things they promised.

Medicare and Medicaid. We’ve done that. And it runs more efficiently in terms of overhead than anything the private sector does.

Plus, goverment takes care of healthcare in some capacity in virtually every other advanced country on the face of this planet. No, this isn’t something government can’t do, it’s something people like you won’t let it do, out of political ideology. How many things has America actually done before that your people badmouth as impossible, or undoable?

As far as bad Hurricanes go, I lived through one in 2008, it was called Ike. It practically destroyed the communities on the Bolivar Peninsula, it tore apart Galveston in a way that it will take years to recover from, it chewed through downtown, blowing out windows, blowing down trees, and it screamed through our area for the better part of a day. And when it was all over, we spent weeks without power, weeks getting our city resupplied with fresh groceries, and for people like me, months recovering from the financial strain inflicted by it.

Oh, but no major hurricanes here. Just a category two that happened to be much larger than one of those hurricanes should be. Now you cite that there haven’t been as many hurricanes, but that in part is due to El Nino oscillations in the Pacific that have cause winds in the Atlantic to create greater wind shear, causing fewer hurricanes. But Hurricane specialists say that even if we don’t see an anomalous hurricane season like that, hurricanes are likely to get stronger as oceans warm up.

And their average strength has risen.

If a Katrina style hurricane hits us again, I regret that Dems will do no better than Bush.

I’m sure Republicans will start sniping about the performance of the president even before the damn thing makes landfall. They’ve come off the worse President in decades, and so they have to make every other President of the other party look bad afterwards in order to avoid admitting they elected the bastard twice, despite all he screwed up.

And yes, I hope for good luck. But more to the point, I will ask for, and expect from my president much more than Republicans asked for and expected from Bush. If you want to wallow in the reduced expectations that were necessary to maintain Republican support for that incompetent man, be my guest. But since I haven’t decided yet that my government is bound to fail in the face of the current crisises, I’m going to continue to want more out of our government performance-wise. And maybe I’ll get it, because me and other Democrats don’t simply brush the mediocrity off as all that government is capable of, and our politicians know that we won’t settle for it.

We’re going to fight to get America back on track. I think that’s a fight that has a much better future for it than the one where a party is trying to fight to get back on top, despite the mediocrity it’s stubbornly dead set against surpassing.

SD:

“Are there not tens of millions of Americans without coverage?”

Could it be they are without coverage because they are out of work? Fix the economy and healthcare will be restored to employees. Actually fix the economy, not just talk about it and try to re-distribute the wealth.

“Are most bankruptcies not medical bankruptcies,”

False premise. Are most bankruptcies are result of loss of jobs. It is ridiculous to say most bankruptcies are the result of medical problems, when 17% of the work force is out of work.

Orin Hatch just declared Jihad against the Healthcare Bill….shouldn’t we declare him a terrorist?

propriation-
See, here’s where you make your mistake:You didn’t check my facts.” How does sixty-two percent strike you?

I don’t think unemployment is the problem, as many of those people get COBRA health benefits under that. It’s expensive, but it’s there. Underemployment is a problem, but if you look into that study on Medical Bankruptcies, you’ll find that they’re even occuring with people who HAVE medical plans.

My premise isn’t false it’s supported by evidence, and I predict you’ll find some reason to question it, because that’s what Republicans do nowadays: they play contrarian to the Democrats.

As for fixing the economy, can we recall for a second who let it get this bad, who failed to properly deal with the crisis last year, just so they could satisfy their blasted political principles?

You can make red-baiting comments about socialist Democrats trying to redistribute the wealth, but when it comes down to it, your policies about keeping money from filtering down to the average person. In a healthy economy, more wealth is redistributed more often.

You guys promised that the tax cuts would be spent on jobs. That the rich would naturally share their windfall. They pocketed it. We were told that if we relaxed rules on environmental matters, we’d get more jobs. The rich pocketed the windfalls. We were told that absolute free trade would benefit us all. Then our jobs were shipped overseas to competitors who were nowhere near so naive about where their jobs went. The rich pocketed the proceeds.

We’ve seen some benefits, but not enough to really outpace the new risks, the new burdens, the new infrastructures that we are asked to support. In short, the Republicans have been all about the redistribution of wealth. Upwards.

But they haven’t been honest with people, and never really will be able to, so long as this is what they’re selling people. It’s a devils bargain. Serve somebody else’s interests, and they’ll serve yours when they get around to it.

I don’t want socialism. I want a system where the rules encourage a healthy circulation. You cannot run a consumer-based economy on this kind of elitist model of redistribution.

You also can’t run a society for long in disregard of the consequences of pollution, working conditions, healthcare access problems, and other situations.

The American people cannot be asked forever to foot the bill for their own impoverishment and debasement. We want back some share of what we deserve for the hard we do for the only people the Republican party seems to have honest sympathy for.

As for fixing the economy, can we recall for a second who let it get this bad, who failed to properly deal with the crisis last year, just so they could satisfy their blasted political principles?

That would be the Republican president and Democratic House and Congress who were more interested in winning a Presidential election than changing the Mark to Market rules which would have turned the housing bubble crash into a mild downturn in the economy that we would have already been out of…

(and of course they did go ahead and change them almost immediately after Obama took office, imagine that!)

Rhinehold,

..were more interested in winning a Presidential election than changing the Mark to Market rules which would have turned the housing bubble crash into a mild downturn in the economy that we would have already been out of…

Got proof of that?

Just because you believe in something doesn’t make it true, as you told someone else in another column. Nonsense is still just nonsense.

Temporarily changing mark to market made sense, but eliminating it makes no sense, changing it to reflect business models with a base in principal rather than whim does make sense. How soon we forget history and another fun economic mess….The S&L disaster of the eighties. No mark to market then, but thanks to repeal of Glass Steagall we had even more players this time around. Why doesn’t Paul Volcker agree with you?

http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/21/volckers-voice-fails-to-sell-a-bank-strategy/

http://taxesandbudget-blog.ncpa.org/volcker-and-greenspan-mark-to-market/

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/paul-volcker-blasts-goldman-business-model-moral-hazard-and-calls-return-glass-steagall

Mr. Daugherty wrote; “How many things has America actually done before that your people badmouth as impossible, or undoable?”

I don’t know who the “your people” refers to but I will assume you mean Repubs. And I will heartily agree that Reps are just as responsible as Dems for most of our economic and financial problems. I happen to be a conservative and vote R or D depending upon the candidate. How do you determine your vote Mr. Daugherty? Would you vote for a liberal Rep? There are lots of them around but not quite as many as before because some were replaced by conservative D’s.

To answer the question you posed…Well let me think…there’s Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid for starters. Look at the unfunded liability that these programs represent and one could accurately conclude that they don’t work within the hyperbole, lies, and faulty assumptions that constructed them. Only a liberal could believe that another huge government entitlement program, masked as health care reform, won’t meet the same dismal end as the first three.

Rhinehold-
You’re treating the symptoms as an explanation for the disease.

But of course, with deregulation advocates, this seems to be standard operating procedure. If somebody asks what you had for breakfast, you tell them, “we must deregulate!”

Mark to market at least had the virtue of asking you to set your numbers to something that reflected what you could expect from your assets.

The only reason that does any good, is that nobody knows what to expect, market-wise from many of these bad assets, so nobody was sure enough about them to give out figures on the worth of their assets on their balance sheets. Thus the mayhem on Wall Street.

So, in essence, you’re telling us that helping the Banks get past the shakiness of the valuation of their assets is a permanent fix.

But think back: we’re in this trouble in the first place because of improper valuation of assets, of future income. This temporary change from mark to market only functions to keep these hair-raising valuations or lack of same from causing additional corporate collapses and the secondary consequences thereof.

In the mean time, the resolution needs to be done, and accounting laws need to rewritten less with the interest of speculation-focused stockholders in mind, and more with interests of investors overall concerned.

Royal Flush-
Social Security’s fine over the long term. Medicare and Medicaid need work, but we’d do that if you let us. Unfortunately, we have to deal with the Republican’s efforts on that matter, where for some mysterious reason, they added huge amounts of spending, yet no taxes to cover the new liabilities.

I’m of the opinion that there’s little reason to be equal in the blame. It was the conservative’s show, this last decade. It was your principles, your ideas, your theories. You made your choices.

I am willing to vote for people who are willing to vote for me, so to speak. I am a centrist, for the most part, but not somebody who rigidly adheres to principles even in the face of practical reality. We just had one of the worst economic crisises in recent history, and it seems like conservatives think that they can just do what they’ve done before.

Well, I think it’s time to look at things another way. If the way that automatically comes to the liberals doesn’t work, fine, then we go to another solution. I don’t care it’s ideology, but I do mind if it doesn’t work, and all too many of the Republican’s ideas are built simply on opposition to us.

Every time a lefty opens his mouth, he is blaming someone else. The election was over a year ago, how long are you going to continue to blame Bush? By the way, who in government actually controls the purse strings?

Let me ask another question, exactly what has Obozo done since he has been in office?

Stephen, I have a lot of trouble reading your posts. They are too long winded and I’m half asleep by the time I get halfway thru them. Besides, it’s all rhetorical, same thing over and over.

Propitiation,
What has Obama done? You mean, like preventing the worst recession we have ever experienced from becoming another Great Depression. Gee. That’s a tough one. Does restoring America’s reputation abroad count? You know, making us the most admired country in the world again, according to international polls? Oh wait. The world beyond the US borders does not exist, except as an area to be feared and denounced with the exception, Israel. So! Let me think. Words don’t count, right? Speeches don’t count, right? Polls don’t count, right? Saving the economy doesn’t count, right? Hmmm. It’s been 10 months. Gosh. The US has not started one war. Pretty shoddy work.

phx8

I actually asked 3 questions.

I’m not sure how to tell you this, but we are still is economic chaos and it’s going to get worse. Absolutely nothing has gotten any better. Where do you see progress? In the phantom jobs we created or saved? Oh, not them, because that was also a scam.

Obozo has traveled around the world as an apologist for America. But, has he restored our reputation, no he hasn’t. I’m not sure what international poles you are reading. He’s snubbed leaders we need on our side and bowed to those we don’t need. Of all the questions and favors he has asked of foreign nations; do you know how many have said yes? None. He is a joke outside of our borders. China does right by asking him how he is going to pay for national healthcare. They know we are going belly up. How many nations are now asking for something other than the dollar to be the international currency?

It’s true we haven’t started a war; even though during his campaigning he saw Afghanistan as the war we should be fighting. We no longer call it a war and we have troops dying while asking for help, but Obozo can’t make a decision to help them. What a buffoon.

But of course, with deregulation advocates, this seems to be standard operating procedure. If somebody asks what you had for breakfast, you tell them, “we must deregulate!”

Except I’m not a ‘deregulation’ advocate. I believe in strong appropriate regulation. It is when the government starts ‘directing’ markets that I have a problem.

Mark to market at least had the virtue of asking you to set your numbers to something that reflected what you could expect from your assets.

Again, that isn’t correct. The problem was that marking them to what the market would pay is an insanely bad idea, done due to an overreaction to Enron. The assets were overvalued due to the market reacting to the ‘directing’ that the FED did in lowering interest rates artificially. Doing this created the markets. Derivatives of mortgages was thought of a decade earlier but they were thrown out because there was no margin for profit. Once we inflated value through artificially lowering interest rates, we created that market and we inflated the value of those assets tied to the market for their value. Banks had more ‘assets’ because of the overvaluation due to this. When the market dropped to nearly nothing, those assets were severely UNDERvalued. Because of this, banks had suddenly much LESS ‘assets’ so they could no longer lend. The loans were still on houses that existed and could be resold, they were not worth ‘next to nothing’, but because of the rules the banks could not list them on their books for more than that, locking them up. Instead of temporarily lowering the mark to market requirements, as they should have and could have, the democratically controlled congress decided, along with President Bush, to give money to the banks to loan (which they didn’t do) that was borrowed to try to get them to start loaning money again. Oh, and it was a great ‘headline’ for their drive to win the White House.

Once in office, the Democrats then had the mark to market rules temporarily lowered so that the banks could free up room on their ledgers and lend more money (oh, and keep a lot of the money that we had given them on borrowed money) which they used to buy up other banks and do other things with it. Some even tried to give the money back but the Administration didn’t want it, since they lose control over directing the actions of that bank when they do…

Sorry, Stephen, but the right thing to do was suggested during the election and the Democrats rejected it for their own political gain. That put the hurt on us and turned what was a minor issue into a major headache. THEY are the ones to blame, along with the republicans and the FED who fought to keep interest rates low during the 2004/2006 elections for THEIR political gain.

You can keep trying to push all of the blame over to the other side but the facts just don’t back it up when looked at objectively.

So, in essence, you’re telling us that helping the Banks get past the shakiness of the valuation of their assets is a permanent fix.

I don’t think I ever said permanent. But a temporary relaxation, which I note that the Democrats did, once they won the Presidential election, but NOT before, would have prevented much pain and saved us a lot of taxpayer money while they looked for an appropriate long term way of adequately valuing assets in the future for the long term.

Propitiation,
You write: “… we are still is economic chaos and it’s going to get worse.”

That is a definite possibility. The situation is bad, no doubt. However, we are seeing the prerequisites for a turnaround. Non-farm job payrolls have stopped showing catastrophic job losses. In the next month or two, we should be back to even. That is not good, but at least that represents stability. Transporation and shipping are showing pickups. Same with the retail sector. These are leading edges of an economic recovery. In addition, the rise in the stock market suggest a recovery is underway. So yes, there is definite, measureable progress. Absolutely.

What all this means is the first phase of the Obama administration has apparently succeeded. The economy did not go into a deep Depression, as most of us feared. It has stabilized. There’s a lot to criticize about the lack of transparency, and there are a lot of reforms that still need to occur, but nevertheless, count this as a victory in a three-step process.

Part two- job creation.
Part three- deficit and debt reduction

US international standing:
http://features.csmonitor.com/globalnews/2009/10/06/new-poll-finds-obama-has-already-rebuilt-americas-global-brand/

In his first year Obama has already visited 20 countries, more than any other president in a comparable time.

You are right about the currency. We have a real problem there. If we create jobs and stop outsourcing, and if we address the deficits and debts, we’ll address the problem with the falling value of our currency.

We need to withdraw from Afghanistan. At this point we’re just throwing good money after bad. Even conservative Fred Thompson calls it a “lost cause.”

Social Security’s fine over the long term.

!? Surely you meant SHORT term?

propitiation-
The economy is still in one piece,, and will grow about three points in the latter half of the year, a miracle considering what was done to it up to that point. Do you see any of the banks being nationalized? The big three automakers in America still survive. If we’re lucky we may soon see legislation that makes sure the words “Too big to fail” are a thing of the past.

He’s managed to resuscitate his nation’s image to the point that somebody handed him a Nobel Peace Prize. He didn’t screw up his response to the Iranian election, keeping America from becoming the scapegoat for the voter’s unrest, a move that will make it harder for Iran’s leading Mullah’s to dismiss the unrest as the result of American intervention. He also put Iran in the corner on it’s nuclear weapons programa, succeeding in isolating it, instead of further isolating America instead.

He’s tightened up the military’s fiscal structure, taking out much of the waste and unnecessary programs. He didn’t treat a jet made for Cold War era combat as a sacred cow, and has increased the emphasis on our soldiers, whose pay and benefits he has increased.

He’s done a great many things. But what you are interested in is seeing that he does no more, since every achievement he makes despite you is another nail in a coffin the Republicans largely put themselves in.

As for Afghanistan? I don’t like us to lose. But what I hate even more is to lose in a long drawn out fashion, because some folks won’t admit that something’s missing that we are required to have to win. If we don’t have an exit strategy, then we don’t even begin to have any idea of how to win, or what to make our sacrifices for. These wars are unsustainable, and America needs the best way out of them. Now hopefully, that way lies through a plan that succeeds in furthering some of our original aims. But if this poor beast is suffering, we should have the guts in the end to put it out of its misery. If the folks in Iraq and Afghanistan don’t meet us half-way, or don’t want to meet us halfway, then it’s not worth sacrificing any more lives to.

And as for looking for another currency, let me ask you a question: how is it that your party runs deficits and baloons the national debt, and suddenly it’s our fault the currency’s on such shaky ground?

We’re your favorite scapegoats, and if you really look at what your party’s doing, you are more or less stalling what could be Obama’s achievements for the sake of ensuring that Democrats get transferred all the sins of your party’s tenure.

Trouble is, we have a nation in suffering and need in the meantime. But I guess they’re all going to have to do things your way, if they want even a scrap off the masters’ tables, right?

phx8 wrote; “In addition, the rise in the stock market suggest a recovery is underway.”

Sure hope you’re not putting any of your money in stocks. Anyone who understands and follows the market knows what is coming. And, it is not going to be pretty. Buy Gold…Buy oil…buy commodities that people consume.

Rhinehold-
Bush picked the worse of the worst case scenarios, and the prediction of the consequences were made over several decades, which is a hell of a long swath of history to try and predict. There’s a reason that the CBO doesn’t make 20 year predictions, and even its ten year predictions can have huge margins of error. The deficits under Obama, as predicted by the CBO, had an uncertainty in either direction of about 900 billion. Correct me if I’m wrong but that’s almost a two-trillion dollar spread.

If you want to adopt Bush’s absolute and intentional pessimism, which he adopted for the sake of handing more money to Wall Street, and to support a program which he later admitted would do nothing to make the trust fund more solvent, be my guest.

Mr. Daugherty, I read your post just above and was going to refute most of what you stated. Then, I realized it would be useless to debate you as it’s just the same old song and dance routine. Recent news accounts have revealed all the falsified jobs numbers. The world welcomes this fool to their shores as they know he is an easy mark. He bows and scrapes and comes home with nothing of value. This man is a hollow suit. He is a puppet dancing on the strings of liberals and can’t make a decision on his own except for when to take a dump.

What a sorry and phoney person we have as a leader of our country. I would hope that after the 2010 election when he looses congress he will just resign and slink out of Washington. Perhaps he can open a law firm in Chicago to defend war criminals.

Remember the “Looney Toon” cartoons, well maybe you don’t. Watching liberals explain how great we are doing is like watching the Looney Toons.

Phx8 said:

“Part two- job creation.
“Part three- deficit and debt reduction”

So I guess saving us from a depression is part one? Part two-job creation; is that the jobs they blatantly lied about or is it the government jobs that are created? Obozo and company are so confident of having the MSM in their hip pocket, that they can’t even comprehend someone actually checking to see if actual jobs were created. Government jobs are good, it expands government, which is the goal, but government jobs are slugs on society. They use taxpayer dollars and don’t create anything.

Part three; every time Obozo gives a speech, he talks about lowering deficits and debts. The problem is, he and the congress can’t control their own ambitions, let alone the debt. Every time they open their mouths, it cost more money and raises taxes.

Yes he IS a hollow suit. He CANNOT make a decision. He leaves all decisions up to everyone around him, so when it hits the fan he can say, “I didn’t push that”.

Royal Flush, we don’t have a leader. We are a nation without a president. We have no leadership. Gallop poll held his approval ratings above 50% as long as they could and they finally had to join all the other polls showing Obozo dropping like a rock. I can promise you liberals one thing: if the election were held today, he wouldn’t get a 40% vote. People are really upset with the direction he is taking us, but the left is oblivious of it. Every thing is fine; we live in a land of lollypops and ice cream. You are so fast to point out that we lost and you won. Well, I’ll tell you this, the democrats are going to loose big next year. And you will be able to thank Obozo. The sad thing is, he don’t give a rat’s behind for democrats is the house or senate. All he cares about is Obozo and the socialist agenda he has for America. He knows exactly what he is doing.

I asked the question earlier, who holds the purse strings in our country? Everyone failed to answer the question.

Royal Flush,
I used to be licensed for all sorts of trading; Series 3, Series 7, but that was a long time ago. When it comes to investing, my only advice is to recommend a very, very conservative approach.

Propitiation,
I’m not sure what you are talking about when it comes job creation through the government. It’s safe to assume the Obama administration is creating jobs that way. The Bush administration actually created more government jobs than private sector jobs. After all is said and done, I’d suggest ignoring politicians and pundits with axes to grind, and watching the non-farm payroll numbers. Those give the best short-term snapshot of what is happening with job creation. The non-farm payroll number is volatile and constantly revised, but still the best way to asses what is really happening.

Job creation will be every bit as important as the first step (stabilizing the economy). The 2nd stimulus bill should play a major role in this process. It will take more than just stimulus spending. It will also take a fundamental change in the public’s perception of “free trade,” which usually means shipping jobs overseas in order to avoid paying decent wages, observing OSHA laws, observing environmental regulations, and so on. Labor unions will need to come back in order to protect and eventually increase wages.

Job creation through green enterprises offers a great way to overcome the terrible situation. Green industries also gives a way of escaping the certain disaster awaiting us if we continue our oil dependency. Peak Oil is real, and if Royal Flush has any reason to fear for the economic future, this should be it. Rising oil prices and our economic dependency threaten the US with catastrophic inflation. However, that scenario will only occur if the economy starts taking off…

Stephen

Simple logic

You blame the Republicans for everything bad that happened during their tenure, but at no time did they enjoy the kinds of majorities the Democrats have now. In fact, the Democrats won control of Congress – both houses – in 2006.

So here is the logic problem. How can how can you logically say that one party was completely to blame for the time when they were not completely in control, while the other part is NOT to blame for the time when they ARE completely in control?

You really cannot both blame Republicans for the time when they were in control and not blame Democrats when they are in even stronger control.

Your argument seems to be that Democrats cannot run things; even when they are in charge so all their problems must result from the sins of others. That is a nice statement of faith, but it is not logical.

Christine, you have a lot of faith to believe a liberal can think logically.

Let me answer my own question; the congress controls the purse strings. They appropriate funds, including funds for war. Not just the last 3 years, but they also voted with republicans to appropriate funds from the the time we went to war. In fact Hillary, Biden, and Obozo voted to spent the money for the past 2 years of the Bush presidency.

Propitiation,

Glad to see you come along and admit that spending money for and therefore the war in Iraq was a bad idea.

If more Republicans would just flat out admit that like you just did, it would go a long way in mending rifts.

gergle:

You have never heard me say we should have invaded afghan or Iraq. My opinion, we should have leveled any spot where terrorists gathered. Including Baghdad, and all of Sadam’s government and family. It is a waste of our time trying to develop democracies in this area. It will never happen, without 1st amendment rights, there can be no democracy. But, I think you missed the point. The claims that Bush put us in debt are false; the president does not control the purse strings. It is the congress who puts us in debt.

Propitiation,
What happened to the presidential power to veto bills? Did that go away?

For example, when Bush became president, the Republican Congress passed a huge tax cut for the wealthiest Americans with just 51 votes, using the process of reconciliation. Bush signed the legislation. Had he vetoed it, the legislation would never have passed, since it could never have gathered enough votes to override a veto. That single action resulted played a huge role in eventually cratering the economy.

Furthermore, the presidency gives direction and coherence to the political philosophy of the president’s party in Congress. Without the guiding hand of the executive branch, the legislative branch is unlikely to order the invasion of a country like Iraq; another action which played a direct role in cratering the economy.

Should I go into the presidential power of appointment (with the advice and consent of the Congress) which has resulted in executive branch policies supportive of outsourcing, which once again played a large role in cratering the economy? Appointees who supported deregulation? Supreme Court appointments of justices who conflate money with free speech, and grant free speech rights to corporations?

(Obama’s addition to the POTUS, Sotomayor, actually questioned whether the 14th amendment could give corporations the same status as citizens!!!)

phx8 wrote; “Labor unions will need to come back in order to protect and eventually increase wages.”

I believe in labor unions and they have an important and useful role in protecting workers. However, labor unions have declined greatly over the past 50 years for good reasons. Without expounding on the reasons, for them to come back to their former status will require a total change in their thinking. Collective bargaining has become totally adversarial just as political bargaining has become.

Workers need employers just as politicians need voter support. Both it seems have adopted a win loose mentality when it should be a win win mentality.

I am old enough to remember the auto, steel and other industry strikes that crippled our nation and forced all Americans to endure hardships to force concession. The attitude then, when unions were very strong was; My way or else! Dam the public…we are going to get what we want regardless of the harm it may do.

Is that not what we see in congress today? Dam the voters…we are going to spend all the money we want and the public can like it or not. They will pay the bills we incur regardless of the suffering and damage it will cause.

I would enjoy hearing from you phx8 on what you believe lead to the decline in union strength and membership.

Royal Flush,
That’s a really complicated topic. Part of the decline of labor is just a matter of the pendulum swinging. It began to swing away from labor @ 1970, when the Chicago school of Economics thinking about free markets and free trade was adopted by the conservative movement. It was first implemented overseas, in Chile, and other places as well. “Chaos capitalism” and “shock doctrine” (see the book by Naomi Klein). This doctrine was used to destroy labor movements abroad. In Chile, tens of thousands were killed simply for being “leftist” and sympathetic to labor. Allende was overthrown. Free market capitalism and free trade were instituted… Um, it didn’t work out so well.

In the US, the attempts to destroy the labor union went into full gear with Reagan. Conservative economic philosophy became the rule, replaying in the US the same results as others suffered abroad: anti-labor sentiment, free market capitalism and “free trade” (i.e., outsourcing), flat to declining wages, enormous debt, spending on the military, and so on.

It’s hard to separate the experience of the labor movement from the larger experience of the country and even the world. It’s way beyond me. But you asked, so there you go…

Thanks for your effort phx8…I enjoyed reading your response. I believe the Hoffa era and all the fraud perpetrated on union members played a role in the decline.

Royal Flush, you are correct. I was involved with unions for over 40 years. I can say, they have changed in the past 80 years. Unions are absolutly corrupt. It’s all about money and power and because of declining membership, union bosses and liberal politicians seek to force employees to join unions through card check. Phx8 was trying to “blow smoke” up someones rear end. His response was double talk.

Royal Flush,
No doubt, part of what caused the pendulum to swing against workers and back towards owners was the issue of corruption. Unions were successful. Union leaders became disassociated from their dues payers. Part of the reason for that is that unions were so successful. In the decades after WWII, the top tax rate was as high as 90%, the US was prosperous, and working people rose to become members of the middle class.

Propitiation,
Why would you suggest my response is “double talk”? When conservatives refer to ‘leftists’ and socialists’ and even ‘communists,’ who do you think they are referring to? The answer: working people. When you see ‘anarchists’ protesting the WTO and NAFTA and “free trade”, you are seeing protests by working people.

Over the years, the GOP has traditionally sided with big business, and the Democrats with labor. As a result, the GOP has consistently been able to raise big money, but had difficulty attracting voters. The opposite has been true for the Democratic party.

We’re now seeing the pendulum begin to swing back in the favor of labor. Part of the reason is the internet. Technology has enabled a person like Obama to reach out in a way that was never available in the past…

Christine-
Logic without decent factual premises is like a gun without bullets.

I am not saying one party or another is completely to blame, I am saying that one party is primarily to blame. You folks led the charge against the regulations that might have safeguarded our economy, had they remained in place. Your people eroded and corroded the authority and power of the institutions that could have provided a check on bad corporate governance.

You would have taken credit for it in 2005. Now you seek to avoid the blame for the consequences of it, by this sort of logical fallacy of claiming that just because things are bad now with us in charge, they’re bad now BECAUSE we are in charge. Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc.

But it isn’t as if the hideous economic policies that your people just stopped affecting us overnight. You folks dug the hole we’re trying to dig out of, and you’re complaining about how deep into trouble your folks got us.

Things have gotten better for the economy since we got in charge, and as another comment of mine would demonstrate, A growing consensus of economists believe that this is not a coincidence.

Simple logic, really: we have to remember how we got here to establish where and in which direction somebody like Obama has taken us.

So let’s not be coy: The events of last year, which we cannot blame Obama for, continued to unfold their terrible consequences into 2009, the business failures and other economic troubles creating a cascade effect.

If we do not allow for this, we’re essentially scapegoating Obama for events that are the responsibility of his predecessor, an unfair, if not unintentional direction of rhetoric on the part of those who would have to shoulder the blame for their mistakes if things were seen clearly.

Propitiation-
You have a lot of gall to think they can’t.

Liberals do not believe, generally speaking, in the obstruction of government and its functions for the sake of political public relations stunts.

It’s funny, though, how few complaints you have about the previous six years, even though you really can’t argue we’d be in the place we are now, if our predecessors in the majority did not get together with Bush and pass four or five years worth of deliberately unbalanced budgets.

No one should dispute the fact that Democrats have to clean up the mess we are in now to be worthy of keeping that majority, but what nobody should also dispute is that we are in the majority, and we are dealing with the messes we are in now because of the actions of your party. Hell, hundreds of billions of dollars of those deficits come from those wars we’re fighting, wars I think you’d be loath to give up on, under any circumstance.

When are you people going to admit that you’re wrong? By the nature of your tu quoque argument, you effectively concede that your folks helped make the mess. You’re just trying to claim we were involved enough in making that mess so as to neutralize the advantage of our opposition.

That, and renounce any responsibility for that, at the same time. Never mind that when your people turn around, you suggest that we try the same policies that got us in this mess to get ourselves out of it. Funny how that works, doesn’t it?

Unions allow people to organize for their mutual benefit in the same way that members of an ethnic group organize to better the other members of their group, or more prosperous people organize to benefit themselves.

The problem with the auto industry is that the government won’t allow these large entities to close because of fear of dislocation of millions. In so doing, they are stifling progress and handicapping us all for the perceived benefit of many, including local governments and the military.

The auto industry is an example of a regulated industry that is required by the government to produce a better product. If left alone, this industry could produce a cheaper product, of lower quality, but innovation and competition would come back, as long as the government doesn’t interfere to allow or promote monopolistic practices.