I Don't Recognize My Country Anymore - Page 10

 

Tis also interesting to note that for a country that espouses "freedom" as a self evident right, the US has the highest incarceration rate (per head of population) of any country in the world (ok - you could probably put North Korea at the top of the list - but that's hardly a mitigation). 

 

And spent more on military expenditure than the next 12 countries combined... 

 

Yes, I've read all that stuff. I see a lot of vague allegations that amount to almost nothing but are nicely couched to give the impression of much more. "Mentor" is a good example of misusing a word for that effect. Consider the Ayers question for example: claiming that Ayers and Obama were founding board members of the Woods Fund of Chicago (as you did earlier) is plain incorrect - Obama was, but Ayers joined much later and they only overlapped by a couple of years. You cited Ayers Wikipedia page, which I think is a credible source. Did you even read it?

 

The established interactions between Obama and these guys are largely incidental, and a poor excuse for labeling Obama as a radical.

 

Gee, thanks for the condescending attitude. It sure is appreciated! Doubly-so when talking out your butt!

 

He wasn't. I did place the blame where it belongs. You need to step up your game if you are going to talk about the budget and who is responsible for it.

 

Actually, no, it is quite easy to stop borrowing and spending. What is much harder though is to keep the votes being bought with that money. That is what really should be accounted for.

 

The systemic failure was bad housing loans which had been backed by GSA's. The GSA's were created by the government. The recession was a little deeper and longer than most recessions but nothing unheard of in our history. When you compare it to say, 9/11 in which a trillion dollars worth of wealth and economic activity were wiped off the map in a day, it actually isn't bad at all and the point is we recovered from that and also our president at the time got us growing and working again.

 

 

First he wasn't handed a trillion dollar deficit. He signed it into existence. Second he doubled down by requesting more stimulus. Per your reasoning what he was actually handed was the answer because government spending is the answer and per you, he was handed lots of spending so again per you, his predecessor didn't hurt him but in fact helped him. Sorry you can't have your cake and eat it too. If Bush's $4 trillion in borrowing was bad, then Obama's is worse. If Obama's is just helping the economy via spending the so was Bush's. It doesn't matter if holes are being dug or refilled, windows being broken and replaced or wars are being fought. Government spending is government spending and lack of it is lack of it. You can't be a hypocrite. The economy was indeed in a recession and it was much the same when Bush received it in 2001. Likewise Clinton received an economy coming out of recession when he took office. It's almost like a common sort of thing most presidents face and thus it should show their leadership rather than be a pathetic excuse.

Yes failure because that "growth" came at the expense of future growth because the debt must now be paid down. The stimulus plan declared that without action the unemployment rate would hit 8%. With action it was supposed to be much lower than that and also much lower than that now. We borrowed trillions to avoid deep economic pain and instead got the debt and the economic pain. That is a failure. Now we will have to pay it back and the drag on the economy will likely cause another recession. Obama's own forecasts were hopelessly wrong and so were the economists who endorsed them. Regardless though, the one area everyone was in agreement was that paying back the stimulus would lower future economic growth. We weren't getting something for nothing. We were borrowing future growth for the present. We didn't get that level of present economic growth. We have anemic growth and now it will lower further when the borrowing and spending must stop.

 

Would you like me to bring you a coffee and hike up my skirt as well? Don't be a condescending asshole.

 

Of course the stock market is going up. The key industries are being fed massive amounts of government money in pure crony capitalism. Certain people are getting rich at the government trough all in the name of "helping the poor." It is failed policy because it isn't real growth and can't be sustained. You're looking at a snapshot. I'm looking at the movie. GM looks marginally successful right now because the government stuck all their bad debts into a shell company (ala Enron) and handed them massive wads of cash. Then it paid people to buy new cars and turn in their old ones (Cash for Clunkers) gave them credits for buying certain cars (Volt) and they still haven't taken the losses because they are co-owners who bought the stock at an inflated price.

 

The photo is of someone flying. The movie is of them falling and hitting the ground. What happens when no one can pay someone to buy their cars? What happens when the tax credits expire? What happens when the stock has to be sold at the present value rather than sit on the government books at an inflated value? THUD.

 

 

It's called the public record. It's called knowing how the budget process works. It's called not getting my information from Daily Kos while being a condescending ass and claiming someone else is ignorant.

 

So we are supposed to understand that Obama signed the budget but "wasn't happy about it" and the next four budgets he signed all happened to do the exact same thing and I guess he wasn't in control of or happy about that either. They were exclusively responsible because they had control of the House and Senate for 3 out of the 5 years being discussed and when they had lost control of the House just didn't pass a budget at all and ran the same numbers up on continuing resolutions. The Senate hasn't passed a budget in years.

 

Okay, this might be horrifying to someone like yourself who claims to know so much but actually understands so little but while there are indeed perhaps hundreds of bills considered and even passed by the Congress every year. The bulk of ongoing spending and the budget itself is undertaken in 12 major bills. Those 12 bills are, get this will ya, actually created in 12 committees that exist in both the House and Senate.

 

So now to clarify for you there champ, those 12 bills, they weren't all passed when Bush was in office. The Democrats took control of the House and Senate in 2006. Deficit spending almost immediately went up to $400 billion a year. They knew that Bush was a lame duck and held off passing certain bills. They held them for their own candidate and when he was elected, they stuffed them full of the spending they wanted and he signed them. Obama signed 9 of the 12 appropriations bills that create the budget for FY2009. That's a fact. He didn't inherit it. He created it.

 

We have gone three years without a budget because....surprise Republicans have taken the House.

 

 

Yes and again, folks like yourself magically don't add any losses or mis-assign or just rationalize them away. Obama is responsible for the job creation during his term. NET positive means beyond the losses, not ignoring them and counting from the bottom of the recession every job as a gain.

 

Now go inform yourself on the budget process. Stop thinking you know it all because you get the DailyKos alerts and get back to me when you have a clue.

 

1.  Compared to Canada Free Press and American Thinker? I'll let you take a wild stab in the dark on that one.

 

2.  He visited him on several occasions to ask his advice. Not my idea of "close" or "mentor", but you may have had different experiences.

 

3.  You think Obama should have quit the board immediately that Ayers joined, to avoid criticism?

 

4.  Do you worry about the books that politicians have read, the movies they have seen, the places they have visited? All those things that influence everyone's thinking. Now you want proof that he rejected their ideologies? Do you think that maybe you are being just a tiny bit unreasonable? I guess there's nothing like a good witch hunt to ease the pain of the wrong election result.

 

muppetry, I'd encourage you to start a thread where some unbias news can be posted. It doesn't have to be in depth discussion or anything like that. However someone like yourself should assume responsibility for providing it because the apparent claim by you and perhaps others of your persuasion is that Republicans are suffering from GIGO. They go to the wrong places, get the wrong information and then come to the wrong conclusion. They do this not because they are rich, stupid, employed, white, racist, sexist males, but because they just get bad information.

 

So honestly shouldn't folks like yourself be responsible for helping to pop that bubble? Shouldn't you assume responsibility for getting the good word out there and finding some unbiased and credible sources that will persuade beyond the core support of Democrats?

So you reject Marco Rubio?  Good to know.

 

Incorrect. It was Fiscal Year 2009 that had the first trillion dollar deficit. Fiscal Year 2009 ran from October 1st, 2008 thru September 30th, 2009 (as the federal fiscal year always does), and was the final Bush administration budget. It was George W. Bush that was signing all of the appropriations bills during 2008 that would enable the Fiscal Year 2009 spending.

 

 

That would set up the deficit the GOP would then blame entirely on Obama.

 

How did Bush arrange to have those wars paid for, again?

 

That's an interesting question. I started reading PO as the election approached to get a feel for arguments on both sides. The discussion forums on most of the news sites do not get into much detail and are mostly polarized and ugly. What I found here was that there is obviously polarization, with a mixture of reasonable and unreasonable argument on both sides. I'd say that some of the more right-wing posters (yourself included) are better at arguing than those on the left, and the discussions often seemed imbalanced as a result, which is why I find myself arguing one way more often than the other. You may have noticed that all the recent new contributors have been doing the same.

 

But if your observation is that I'm not contributing new discussion topics then I would have to admit that you are correct - I seem to be more in the logic and fact check role. Part of the reason is that I'm not a Democrat and I don't have much of a "persuasion" - you may recall that I have argued against what I thought were baseless criticisms of Romney when they arose and were not clearly refuted. I'll happily dismantle fallacious arguments on either side as I see them arise. At present, the right-wing contributors who loudly, dismissively and aggressively backed the losing horse appear to be desperately trying to assert that it didn't happen / it doesn't matter / we were robbed / everyone else is stupid etc., etc.. It's embarrassing, a bit obnoxious, and entirely counter-productive.

 

I'm not sure about GIGO. I think that there is significant dissonance in the GOP, and that the party and its supporters are having a tough time adjusting to the changing demographics and increasingly liberal social attitudes. There are clear reservoirs of resistance, but these changes are inevitable and will continue to favor the Democrats. Denial will not work. Arguing that they need a more solidly conservative candidate will not work. It does not mean that conservatism is dead - far from it - but it needs to evolve. As many have pointed out, the GOP is a natural home for many Hispanics / Latinos if only they could adjust their message on some policy issues. The reluctance to separate religion clearly from politics also hurts the GOP. Religious diversity continues to increase, as does the fraction of the population that is eschewing religion entirely. The GOP increasingly looks like a party clinging to past values, and in this election cycle, a party rather out of touch with the electorate. Republicans may feel that they hold the moral high ground, but Democrats clearly hold the pragmatic high ground.

 

The media are dismissed a liberal mouthpieces, which seems to me to result from an inability to distinguish between news reports and opinion pieces, although I admit that the news outlets in the US do not go out of their way to make the distinction obvious. Personally, I find the actual news reports from most of the big players, including Fox, to be just fine. The right-wing propaganda sites are a joke; there may be left-wing equivalents, but I haven't seen them. What continues to annoy me most is the seemingly rabid desire to portray Democrats in general, and Obama in particular, as purveyors of the demise of the United States, if not the world. One may disagree with the social or economic policies of the party in the White House, but the clumsy and obvious distortions of the truth that are continuously generated and circulated are dishonest and counter-productive. My junk mailboxes fill up with this crap, and it is almost entirely right-wing nonsense. Very little left-wing nonsense. Actually none at all, to be honest. And then these same "talking points" end up on here being quoted as "facts" or "evidence". That's what drives me to post - I'm not trying to convert anyone.

Squirrel!

 

Now I'm curious. What would you suggest as a credible news source? And why, exactly, is it up to me to prove anything here? You made the assertions with no evidence beyond articles in two undisguised right-wing websites. Talk about mouthpieces. And you are correct - I don't care at all about what appears to me to be an entirely manufactured issue. Bring me some real evidence to suggest something that we should be concerned about instead of grubbing around in the dirt looking for crumbs to support your unshakeable belief that Obama is a bad guy.

 

And the election comment was a grandiosely expensive shot compared to the ones that you are taking.

So let's parse this out.

 

"Left wing media" (corporate owned behemoths) -- not credible for reasons.

The right wing blogosphere -- Biased, but whoa whoa, let's not shoot the messenger here.  

 

Sorry about that. I didn't realize that you had presented any facts. And you forgot to mention what you regard as a credible news source. We're not going to get far with the premise that Canada Free Press and American Thinker are credible news sources while NYT, CNN etc. are not.

Double posty goodness!

Still repeating the lies from the bubble.

 

http://articles.marketwatch.com/2012-05-22/commentary/31802270_1_spending-federal-budget-drunken-sailor

 

 

 

 

 

And, from politifact, here are the inflation adjusted budget changes year to year.

 

 

 

 

It's a revenue problem--not a spending one.

 

I enjoy watching scientists argue that the earth was not created 10000 years ago. What's your point?

The numbers don't lie.  You do.  

 

It ran from that time frame in terms of what the legislation covers. However who passed the legislation and who signed it remains as I stated. Obama signed 9 of 12 appropriations bills for FY2009. He did so because they were late, stuffed with pork and the Democratic House and Senate knew Bush wouldn't sign them and in fact threatened a veto of them. Get your history straight.

 

 

Are you contending the new contributors are posting in a style similar to yourself, or the the prior participants on left or right? The other bits are appreciated in understanding why you do what you do.

I can see your point a bit but I can also understand where they are coming from as well. The point can and will remain that no one simply lies down for someone else even when there is a loss. People continue doing what they do and eventually a decision will be made again one way or another. With our system of checks and balances people want to make it sound like someone has one or lost a championship game when in reality it is more like they gained or lost yardage in a(n) (American) football game.

 

Honestly most of the threads around here have claimed that Obama has a strengthened position and that he should get more of what he wants and while he did get reelected, his position was far from strengthened and his agenda, what can be divined of it, is far from endorsed.

 

The thing that really is counter-productive though is to take a snapshot and make it a movie. There are tremendous amounts of money to be repaid, massive quantities of spending that cannot continue and additionally, this fiscal, which is really a tax crisis is coming do with TAXES threatening to destroy the current growth of the U.S. economy. It's sort of a serious matter and it's worth being cranky over.

 

I concede part of what you say is true but what is also true, and this is a strong part of the ignorance within those changing demographics is that being that demographic doesn't automatically make one intelligent, hard working, enlightened, correct, etc. That is a core and profound dissonance within the left side. You actually hear the reasoning put forth, "This wouldn't happen if we had diversity" or "this wouldn't happen if women were running things", etc.

 

Those things are simply not true.

 

Likewise the ability to generate jobs, or make things add up doesn't change because the color, sex or ethnicity changes. In fact what is particular troubling is that some of these ethnic groups have a history of endorsing charismatic dictators or at a minimum, very authoritarian leaders. When you look at Mexico, Central and South America as an example, you don't see a lot of representative democracy and good results for the downtrodden. Suggesting that if the electorate here becomes more like the electorate in those countries, we will magically get a better result is a pure fallacy. We can say the same for African-American leadership in African American neighborhoods, cities districts and even large portions of certain states and can also say that for the countries within Africa itself if we care to dive as far as that.

 

So when we look at what cobbles the left together, it appears to be a radically divergent groups of people and when we ask what brings them together beyond claims of oppression and a desire for financial redress, we don't see much in common. There isn't a core there to adjust. There isn't a way forward beyond, these people are racist and bad, we give you things today without thought for tomorrow, give us your votes.

 

Well take what I discussed above, run it down the line a bit and get to a state where the reasoning is circular, the result is terrible and there is no way out of the circular reasoning. Perhaps I'm a little ahead in the game because I live in California. In California white males and whites as a whole are a minority majority. They are the largest minority group in which no group is a majority. Whites were 45% of the population last I checked. The state is hopelessly broke. Our unemployment rate is several points higher than the national average. The Republican Party due to demographics and also due to media demonization (it is a media center as are all blue states coincidentally) is not a major player and reduced to the sort of role Republicans played after Watergate. They can offer token resistance at best.

 

The state is a giant mess and it becomes laughable to continue to blame it on what amounts to 22% of the population (aka white males.) We have free tuition and financial for illegal immigrants, we have green industries a plenty wherever they can get past environmental lawsuits. We engage in minimal to no oil drilling. We have a Democratic executive branch and Democratic majorities that are now super majorities in both parts of the  legislative branch. (Assembly and Senate)

 

The problems haven't gone away. They have only grown worse. The state has the most progressive and highest state income and sale taxes in the nation all so we can be the most broke state with the worst credit rating. (Illinois is similar) We can build bullet trains while we are broke. We can offer everything to 1/3 of the nations welfare recipients. The problem is always someone else and never the party or the policy.

 

In short we are the blue utopia where the WASP's and all their ignorant ways and claims are banished and the result isn't utopia but a doubling down on the misery.

 

If we double down on the problems we have at the federal level, the U.S. as we currently know it wont' survive. I can fully understand that there is nuttiness on both sides and some are more concerned with motivations than actions.

 

I mean look at the left. They are saying things like spending cuts, balancing budgets, etc are racial code words. That is crazy. It is so nutty that of course people encountering it are going to think that no one would say it and have the best interests of a nation at heart. How can someone have the best interests at stake when they say the numbers don't have to add up when the faces are brown or the gender is female or that caring, empathy and other traits are exclusive to certain sexes or cultures? Again it becomes a strange circular logic that cannot be penetrated. It is vote your skin or your gender instead of vote your pocketbook or the reality in front of you. That is very much not in the interest of anyone let alone our nation.

 

Good post. Not much to disagree with there. I think that you accurately pointed out some weaknesses that clearly exist in some of the left wing positions, but I think that the Democrats are quite aware of those and working to address them. Similarly, I think that many Republicans are aware of the issues on the right. A difference is that some of those right wing positions are hurting them much more than the left wing issues are hurting the Democrats, for obvious reasons. And all that in the context that I think it is obvious that the US Government is hugely inefficient and bureaucracy-ridden, but that's a different problem.

 

I agree that Obama does not have an ironclad mandate to do what he wants, but he did win the only element of the election that is national and so we must presume that it represents some kind of expression of preference for his current policies over those proposed by the Republicans. I'm still not convinced by the high tax arguments. Taxes are not high in comparison to historical rates. I'm hopeful that over the next couple of months we see some real attempts to compromise on both sides - in line with the sentiments that have been expressed recently by Boehner and Obama.

The proposition system in California combined with Prop 13 fucked things up.  We will see what happens with a California Democrat supermajority.  Muppet, you are a self-proclaimed fact and logic checker on these boards.  Yet, I'm seeing you give the conservatives a lot of credit for arguments that look nice on the surface but are severely flawed when you look closer.  

 

Unfortunately I'm pretty ignorant of the situation in California, so quite useless as a fact checker on that. I can barely keep up with national politics, let alone the local kind. And don't misunderstand me - I don't claim to be a comprehensive fact checker - I just selectively call out stuff that catches my attention.

 

Perhaps he doesn't want to come across as a fool or a tool. You just mentioned the lie that President Obama isn't responsible for any of the blow-out spending gains for FY2009 as an example when he signed 9 out of 12 bills and they were passed during the time he was president. It is ridiculous to assert such things. It is against a fact based reality and those who would repeat it are treating their political parties like their church.

 

Since you hate it when people just repeat platitudes based on faith, check your faith at the door and stop ignoring counter-arguments that are put to you. President Obama is responsible for every bit of spending he signed during FY2009. The lack of growth after that is based on the fact that he had already ramped spending up to nearly 25% of GDP with the help of a Democratic House and Senate.

  

It does seem to me that there is a bit of misrepresentation from both sides here. Yes - it's true that Bush only signed 3 of the 12 finance bills for FY2009, but they were big ones, leading to a projected deficit even before Obama took office of over $1.2T. The bills that Obama subsequently signed did add to the total spending - around $200B or so out of a total federal budget of around $3.5T. Maybe he could have done more to reduce spending, but that was not the course of action that they chose to fight the financial crisis.

 

I've read several different interpretations of this and many of them assign different values to different bills, etc. Given the disagreement there, we should probably look at the following.

 

What did Obama do different when he became president and fully in control of the process?

How did Obama, as a Senator vote on some of these very large spending bills that were caught in the middle of the action taking place between the two presidencies?

 

When we look at the argument that Obama wasn't responsible but then see him borrowing more in four years than Bush did in 8 years, including the disputed FY2009 year, then that points to a problem. When we look at the bills in FY2009 that dramatically increased spending, some perhaps signed by Bush, some signed by Obama, others revisited by Obama, we don't see him as a Senator voting against them. He voted for them. This isn't a man that was being dragged into the spending and changed what was happening when he finally got presidential power.

 

He voted yea for TARP as an example. Bush signed it and all the cost for it was assigned to FY2009 but the repayment of it was assigned back to other FY years. If one is being honest, the repayment should deduct from the initial outlay.

 

Either way, we can assign blame or we can say what is being done different now. It is ridiculous to argue that when a man borrows an additional $5 trillion dollars that it is because the prior guy borrowed $1 trillion dollars. If you tried it in any other aspect of reasoning it would be laughed away.

It would have helped if the Republican party fielded a candidate who was in touch with his constituents.  And here's a wake-up call for you, Romney's 13% effective tax rate means that he got much "More Free Crap" in any recent year than any of us will see in a lifetime.  How gullible can voters be when an unemployed veteran or a senior citizen scraping buy on Social Security is viewed as a freeloader but "Mitt the Job Creator" is considered a hero for getting a tax break for his wife's dancing horse?

 

Rove and Co. made "entitlements" the bogeyman this year.  That doesn't mean the country is unrecognizable.  Four years ago everyone was panicking that Obama was "gonna take our guns" or "force us to be Muslims" or some other nonsense.

 

Here's a wake-up call.  I didn't support a war that put us into enormous debt, but you know what, when you live in a country with 300 million people not every decision will go your way, not every policy is one you can stand behind 100%.  It's called Democracy, not "my way only."

I am a social democrat who believes Israel is acting in pure evilness against the Palestinians, I believe every nation should provide non means-tested health care to everyone, paid for by taxes on the rich, and I believe the US constitution should be amended to greatly restrict and regulate firearms.

SDW and I have both been members of political discussion boards on Appleinsider for something like ten years or more.

If SDW ever runs for public office, he could claim that he disagreed with me. Fine.

How about when asked about agreeing/disagreeing with a number of self-proclaimed anarcho-capitalists who want to dissolve 95% of the US government (that's more radical than Ayers' aspirations ever were)?

I think a number of people would be concerned about those associations.

Oh, and Dick Cheney was best friends with Saddam Hussein, Mitt Romney pushed cigarettes on children in Russia, and Ronald Reagan sold arms to Iran when they were our enemy.

Guilt by association. Is not guilt.

Anyone looking for "associations" to condemn someone, or birth certificates, or transcripts or military records... Is simply unable to accept the fact that what's important is record.

 

That's odd, because it works just fine in many other countries. What's different here?

 

Isn't that a reference to his comments since the election, rather than the old 47% comment. I have to say though, that while I defended Romney at the time, he has since done a good job of confirming that the criticism he received was appropriate. That aside, I wish I could figure out how to get my tax rate down to 13%.

Obama's past "associations" are a concern. But Romney's tax records are a distraction. Riiiight.

 

 

I didn't realize that you were taking issue with just the taxing the rich bit. Fair enough, but I'm not sure that rates necessarily are higher everywhere else, and I'm not sure that the "much larger population" argument makes much sense either, since that means a much larger tax base. The total defense spending is nearly twice the world average as a percentage of GDP, but still less than 5%, as opposed to the nearly 20% of US GDP spent on healthcare, which is nearly double that spent in Europe and Canada. Double in both %GDP and per capita.