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Bob D'A
Trad climber
Taos, NM
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TGT wrote; Gee,
Now where did all that money come from?
My guess would be not from the likes of you.
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Elcapinyoazz
Social climber
Joshua Tree
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Where did he go??? I'm so tired of people accusing me of stupidity, only to realize their ignorance, and then hiding without admitting they were wrong. Or at least debating the topic.
Shows a real lack of character and humility.
And that is really lame and a bad show of personal responsibilty and character.
It just is sad, and one of the problems in our society lately. Throw out accusations and blame and fail to apologize when you're proven wrong.
Really f*#king lame!
Keep stamping your feet and crying little man. "where did I go?" I went f*#king home from work, then to the gym, then on a date with a saucy little latina number, then to bed. I have a life that doesn't revolve around trying to fix your incurable idiocy that you spray all over the interwebz day and night.
There is no "debating" with a moron who insists that "anything south of San Diego is South America". When said moron cannot discern actual FACT from those things he wishes were fact or his ideology, there is no "debate".
Again, perhaps you should look into how the United States budget process takes place. The starting point is the PRESIDENT proposing a budget. This information is readily available, despite your moronic assertion that the president won't show you the numbers, or whatever Limbaugh's marching order talking point of the day happens to be.
A good place to start:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget
What shows a lack of responsibility and character is when you are shown to be wrong (Mexico is indeed, not in south america and "everything south of san diego" is also NOT part of south america) yet instead of accepting that you were wrong, you will attempt to redirect, qualify the statement, or simply insist that is is true anyway, despite any authoritative source that contradicts you.
Keynsian monetary policy is not really a matter of debate outside true-believer right wing moron circles. You keep stamping those little feet crying "we tried it, it don't work", and the evidence shows otherwise. Without the stimulus spending we would have been in MUCH worse shape. The simple fact of the matter is, the stimulus spending was insufficiently large and not targeted where it would have the most impact BECAUSE OF RIGHT WING INSISTENCE.
Now since I am off work today, and in the middle of a long gym workout session, I'm done with your idiocy.
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Keynsian monetary policy is not really a matter of debate outside true-believer right wing moron circles
To those with open minds, or those of us who make a living forecasting economic phenomena, "Keynesian" monetary policy, like any other macroeconomic theory, is always open to debate and testing by its predictions and outcomes.
John
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Weisberg vs. the People
The authoritarian impulse and the Cult of Obama.
By JAMES TARANTO
America, you've been a bad, bad country. And Jacob Weisberg is very cross with you.
"It is hard to remember a more dismal moment in American politics," Weisberg moans in a column originally written for the Financial Times. It starts out as a standard partisan attack on Republicans for failing to fall into line with liberal dogma--excuse us, "science":
President Obama is trying to push a jobs agenda. But for the federal government to spur growth or create jobs, it has to spend additional money. The antediluvian Republicans who control Congress do not think that demand can be expanded in this way. They believe that the 2009 stimulus bill, which has prevented an even worse economy over the past two years, is actually responsible for the current weakness. . . .
Some of the congressional Republicans who are preventing action to help the economy are simply intellectual primitives who reject modern economics on the same basis that they reject Darwin and climate science.
Darwin is a red herring here. Although disparaging people for holding harmless religious beliefs as "intellectual primitives" is awfully uncivil, we agree with Weisberg that people who "reject" the theory of natural selection are mistaken.
But the comparison between Keynesian economics and global warmism is on target. Both are liberal dogmas disguised, increasingly thinly, as science. Both are supported by circular logic, and thus lack falsifiability, a necessary characteristic of a scientific theory. If the weather gets warmer, that's because of global warming; if it gets colder, that's "climate change" and proves the theory too. Had unemployment stayed below 8%, as the Obama administration promised it would, that would have proved the "stimulus" worked; since it peaked at 10% and has held steady above 9%, that proves the stimulus wasn't big enough. Heads I win, tails you lose.
To Weisberg, the failures of the Obama administration prove not only that Republicans are "intellectual primitives" but that you are stupid: Among the "sobering lessons" that "we" have "learned," he writes, is "that there's no point trying to explain complicated matters to the American people."
[botwtcrop] Getty Images
He's smiling, but he's very unhappy with you.
The FT, by the way, is a London-based newspaper with a far-flung world-wide circulation (though it is smaller than The Wall Street Journal's by an order of magnitude). So when Weisberg says you're stupid, he isn't exactly saying it to your face. Remember when dissent was the highest form of patriotism? We suppose the definitions are flexible here. Bad-mouthing the American people--for dissenting!--is the highest form of patriotism, at least this week.
Weisberg criticizes Obama, too, but only in a backhanded way. "The president has tried reasonableness and he has failed," Weisberg sobs. "A Congress dominated by mindless cannibals is now feasting on a supine president." (News you can use: Always sleep on your side and you'll wake up uneaten.)
This all reminded us of another Weisberg piece, published in 2008. Back then, he was much more enthusiastic about the "handsome, brilliant, and cool" Sen. Obama, whose policies, Weisberg claimed, even those who disagreed with them were obliged to acknowledge constituted "serious attempts to deal with the biggest issues we face."
But Weisberg's attitude toward the American people, if not as openly hostile as it is today, was characterized by a deep suspicion. Obama was not doing as well in the polls as Weisberg thought he should have been, given the all-around awesomeness of the junior senator from Illinois. If Obama lost to John McCain, it could mean only one thing: America was irredeemably racist. (As we noted at the time, in reaching this conclusion Weisberg committed a rookie error of logic, which makes today's pompous pronouncements about "science" all the more hilarious.)
Weisberg's latest amounts to a lament for democracy. Even if the American people aren't as racist as he suspected you were back in 2008, you aren't up to the challenge of being governed by the handsome, brilliant and cool Barack Obama.
We would offer an alternative hypothesis: The American people, while imperfect, are basically OK. You just made a mistake in choosing a president. Oh, there were any number of reasons why Obama seemed better than Hillary Clinton or John McCain, and who knows? Maybe either of them would have been even worse. But the point is, Obama was never all that, or even nearly what, he was cracked up to be.
It takes an authoritarian mindset to look at a failed leader and fault the people for failing to follow him. This is not just an ideological authoritarianism, although it does have that element, as evidenced by Weisberg's peremptory dismissal of opposing viewpoints. But he treats Obama not as what he actually is--a human being and a politician--but as a sort of religious figure--a potential savior in 2008, a martyr in 2011.
This is the Cult of Obama. Many of the then-candidate's supporters--especially highly educated ones who pride themselves on their superior rationality--saw Obama as a sort of idealized version of themselves. The classic of the genre was a June 2008 column by Mark Morford of the San Francisco Chronicle's website, who, citing unidentified "spiritually advanced people" (we are not making this up), described Obama as "a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being . . . who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment."
Slightly closer to Earth was a February 2008 essay for the Christian Science Monitor by Warren Bennis and Andy Zelleke, professors at the University of Southern California and Harvard, respectively. Obama, they claimed, has "the edge when it comes to that magical quality known as charisma," a "unique capacity to inspire" that "should not be undervalued." Oh sure, there are some dangers. Bennis and Zelleke pre-empt a ludicrously weak counterargument by conceding that Hitler was charismatic. Then they note:
A far more mundane disappointment in charismatic individuals is that they sometimes reveal themselves to have been smooth-tongued empty suits without the capacity to deliver results.
Say what you will about Obama, he certainly isn't smooth-tongued. But Bennis and Zelleke saw credited him with "unusually strong character and good temperament" and wrote:
A president with charisma and good character--and, of course, sound policy ideas--would be an invaluable national resource, with the transformational capacity to lift the malaise that is paralyzing so many Americans today.
Obama seems to have "good character," at least in the everyday sense of being a good husband and father. Then again, so did Richard Nixon and so does Jimmy Carter. But sound policy ideas and charisma? He's no steak and no sizzle.
And Obama shares Weisberg's frustration with you, the American people. As he said at a Wednesday fund-raiser in Chicago:
It's been a long, tough journey. But we have made some incredible strides together. Yes, we have. But the thing that we all ought to remember is that as much as good as we have done, precisely because the challenges were so daunting, precisely because we we were inheriting so many challenges, that we're not even halfway there yet. When I said "change we can believe in" I didn't say "change we can believe in tomorrow." Not "change we can believe in next week." We knew this was going to take time because we've got this big, messy, tough democracy.
We could've sworn we heard something about "the fierce urgency of now," but maybe we were just dreaming. Lots of people were. Reader Kevin Johnson argues that Obama's despairing tone is the antithesis of leadership:
I served three combat tours in the U.S. Marine Corps and never once heard a leader explain the the challenges of command by noting that his unit and its Marines were flawed or not perfect. Can one imagine a commander declaring, "I'd have done a better job if the situation I had to deal with were better. Let's face it, I'd be a better commander if I didn't have to deal with you Marines. And, by the way, that includes the organization and character of the Marine Corps itself"?
For every commander I dealt with--some outstanding, others less so--both his command and even the "fog of war" were always givens for that situation. The commander always took personal responsibility.
Obama refuses to accept personal responsibility, and Cult of Obama die-hards like Weisberg refuse to assign it to him. Too much of their own identity is bound up with their idealized vision of him, so they lash out at those who are not part of the cult. They lash out at you. But try not to take it personally. Anger is depression turned outward.
The Chicago Tribune notes with understatement that Obama "probably will be forced to run on something other than his economic record." That something is the fierce urgency of ferocity:
"It's not going to be 2008 'Yes, we can' anymore. I think it's going to be slash-and-burn," said Democratic pollster Paul Maslin. "We have an embattled incumbent who doesn't have much hope of improving his standing except by point of comparison with his Republican opponent. It's going to be a very different kind of election that's going to be brutal, to be honest."
"It is hard to remember a more dismal moment in American politics," Weisberg writes. If Maslin is right, things are going to get more dismal still. And we won't be surprised if a year from now Weisberg is defending the handsome, brilliant and cool incumbent's vicious campaign on the ground that it's just what stupid, racist Americans deserve.
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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remember jonah goldberg's book title: Liberal Fascism
he does not claim that liberals are fascists, simply that liberals sometimes apply fascist tactics (he acknowledges that repubs sometimes do the same)
case in point (also from taranto):
Are Tea Partiers Literally Terrorists?
On Wednesday we noted that Froma Harrop, who oversees the "Civility Project" of the National Conference of Editorial Writers, had penned a column in which she referred to Tea Party Republicans with what struck us as uncivil language: "engaged in economic terrorism against the United States . . . like the al-Qaida bombers . . . delusional . . . dream of restoring some fantasy caliphate . . . terrorists . . ignoramuses . . . destructive children . . . extremists."
Harrop, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Baroness Catherine Ashton, responds on her blog. She explains that "I see incivility as not letting other people speak their piece. It's not about offering strong opinions. If someone's opinion is fact-based, then it is permissible in civil discourse."
Her defense, if we understand correctly, is that her opinion is "fact based" because Tea Party Republicans are literally terrorists:
As far as the facts are concerned, I stand my ground. Terrorism is not confined to physical attacks. In May, The Wall Street Journal reported this:
"The Pentagon has concluded that computer sabotage coming from another country can constitute an act of war, a finding that for the first time opens the door for the U.S. to respond using traditional military force."
And
" 'If you shut down our power grid, maybe well [sic in Harrop post; the original said "maybe we will"] put a missile down one of your smokestacks,' said a military official."
Blowing up the U.S. economy to make a point would be an even more serious attack, in my book. And that's what the tea party saboteurs were threatening. They are what they are.
There are three obvious problems with this. First, nobody was threatening actually to blow anything up; that is but a metaphor. Second, computer sabotage is a crime; voting against raising the debt limit, even if doing so is unwise or destructive, is a legitimate exercise of a democratically elected lawmaker's authority.
Third, does Harrop really mean to suggest that military action would have been appropriate to force Congress to raise the debt ceiling, or to punish it for having failed to do so? We don't think so, but if she isn't, the analogy falls apart.
She would have been better off just admitting that the column was foolishly intemperate.
He Has the Tat to This Day
Add Sen. John Kerry to the list of people making authoritarian noises. In an interview on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" today, the haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat who by the way served in Vietnam had this to say:
And I have to tell you, I say this to you politely. The media in America has a bigger responsibility than it's exercising today. The media has got to begin to not give equal time or equal balance to an absolutely absurd notion just because somebody asserts it or simply because somebody says something which everybody knows is not factual.
It doesn't deserve the same credit as a legitimate idea about what you do. And the problem is everything is put into this tit-for-tat equal battle and America is losing any sense of what's real, of who's accountable, of who is not accountable, of who's real, who isn't, who's serious, who isn't?
This on Al Sharpton's network. RealClearPolitics says UnrealUnclearKerry is referring to the Tea Party. We'd just like to quote from John Kerry's 1971 Senate testimony on imaginary war crimes in Vietnam:
They had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, tape wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the country side of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.
It's rather galling for somebody who has never apologized for kicking off his career with such extravagant slanders to be lecturing anybody about "who's real, who isn't, who's serious, who isn't."
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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straight from the horse's mouth (ok, the horse's lackey):
Carney listed legislative priorities the president believes will create jobs, including an infrastructure bank, the passage of free trade agreements, and tax cuts. But he would not say what was being done to further those goals while Congress takes a month-long vacation.
“The White House doesn’t create jobs,” Carney said, adding “the government, together — White House, Congress — creates policies that allow for greater job creation.”
Asked whether the White House could do more, Carney said “there is no silver bullet” to creating jobs — but he didn’t answer the question.
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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more liberal fascism:
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2011/aug/03/satirical-mints-poking-fun-at-obama-pulled-from/
btw, the same university of tenn bookstore also sold "national embarrassmints" with W's picture on the package...there were no calls from repub legislators to remove the satire directed at W
let's start keeping score, now...the rules: only examples from american politicians, pundits, and media personalities
so it's liberal fascism 1 vs conservative fascism 0
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Bob D'A
Trad climber
Taos, NM
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Book...you are a lying sack of....from Kerry's speech. They weren't lies or dreams or false images...they happened.
I would like to talk, representing all those veterans, and say that several months ago in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command.
It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit, the emotions in the room, the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam, but they did. They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.
They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, tape wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the country side of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.
""But Gary Solis, a former Marine lieutenant colonel, Vietnam veteran and expert on war crimes who is an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center here, said Mr. Kerry had made a grave error. 'Sure it's true,' Mr. Solis said. 'Sure there were people raped, ears cut off and so on. Each one of the things that he mentioned happened, in some cases I know, and in others I'm confident. But when you put them all together in one sentence and say this was well known at every level of command, it impugns, it seems to me, everyone who fought over there and it gives the impression that everyone who fought over there was a war criminal and that's just not true,' " the Times report concluded.
What the national news media has not reported in the current controversy - just as was not widely reported in 1971 - are the crimes of war that Kerry summarized in his antiwar speech to Congress. When it comes to war crimes, the news world seems to prefer quoting opinions rather than presenting facts.
The fact is that the testimony on war crimes presented by Vietnam Veterans Against the War in Detroit, Michigan, was read into the Congressional Record, spurred Congressional hearings into the conduct of the war in Vietnam, and echoed the conclusions of Brigadier General Telford Taylor, who prosecuted Nazi war criminals after World War II, that in Vietnam "we failed ourselves to learn the lessons we undertook to teach at Nuremberg, and that failure is today's American tragedy" (Nuremberg and Vietnam, 1970). "
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apogee
climber
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Hey, bookworm- who's your pick of the current GOP offerings? Hoping Rick Perry will jump in?
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Crimpergirl
Sport climber
Boulder, Colorado!
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If 700$ was spent on botox for Kerry, there should be an investigation into why it failed to work. Someone got ripped off.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Keep stamping your feet and crying little man. "where did I go?" I went f*#king home from work, then to the gym, then on a date with a saucy little latina number, then to bed. I have a life that doesn't revolve around trying to fix your incurable idiocy that you spray all over the interwebz day and night.
Is it too much to expect a reply? Maybe I was asking for too much.
There is no "debating" with a moron who insists that "anything south of San Diego is South America". When said moron cannot discern actual FACT from those things he wishes were fact or his ideology, there is no "debate".
Why are you obsessed with this? Do you remember the context of when I lumped everything south of the border as SA??
Again, perhaps you should look into how the United States budget process takes place. The starting point is the PRESIDENT proposing a budget. This information is readily available, despite your moronic assertion that the president won't show you the numbers, or whatever Limbaugh's marching order talking point of the day happens to be.
The prez can outline anything he wants Congress to do. Doesn't mean he gets anything close. The Congress decides on budgets, maybe with some input from what a prez may want.
But the point WAS, Congresses write the budgets. The prez just signs or vetoes them.
During this whole fiasco, Obama wasn't pitching this plan or elucidating in presses conferences. Why not?
What shows a lack of responsibility and character is when you are shown to be wrong (Mexico is indeed, not in south america and "everything south of san diego" is also NOT part of south america) yet instead of accepting that you were wrong, you will attempt to redirect, qualify the statement, or simply insist that is is true anyway, despite any authoritative source that contradicts you.
Again. Find the reference I made to SA. I'm damn well aware of the differences between Central/South America, but I believe I was referring to everything south of the border, and as a result, used SA.
Keynsian monetary policy is not really a matter of debate outside true-believer right wing moron circles. You keep stamping those little feet crying "we tried it, it don't work", and the evidence shows otherwise. Without the stimulus spending we would have been in MUCH worse shape. The simple fact of the matter is, the stimulus spending was insufficiently large and not targeted where it would have the most impact BECAUSE OF RIGHT WING INSISTENCE.
Wow!!! Not enough, huh?!?! How much money are we going to print to 'fix it'??
Now since I am off work today, and in the middle of a long gym workout session, I'm done with your idiocy.
Sorry for troubling your giant intellect with my idiocy....
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Bob D'A
Trad climber
Taos, NM
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Fat...we already know the failures of Bush's policies but thanks for reminding us.
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HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
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John said I think in general, this economy baffles the troglodytic "Keynesians" because they've already emptied all their weapons, with no positive effect. They're out of options. (I use the term "Keynesians" in quotes because their policies and theories differ from the economics of Keynes himself. Those interested [and if you are, I question your use of time!] can look at, for example, Axel Leijenhufvud's Keynesian Economics and the Economics of Keynes).
This just seems like more criticism for attempts to fix damage done by lax regulators, supply side economic policies and "tax cuts fix everything" rhetoric without saying what would actually work. The Keysnians are upset because they dont think their policies were actually tried, not because they are "out of ammo." All of them argued from the beginning that the simulus wasn't big enough based on the actual math. You can't argue the medicine didnt work when you only took half the dose.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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All of them argued from the beginning that the stimulus wasn't big enough based on the actual math. You can't argue the medicine didn't work when you only took half the dose.
So 1.5 Trillion in one dose would have worked? How do you know that? How do they? They were only a year apart.
I wonder if the opposite strategy would have worked better. We can both put the hindsight goggles on...
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Jobs, huh?
 We have outsourced low and middle-income jobs to China, India, and South America (including Central America....for ElCapinyoass). What was the result?
We have lost jobs for middle, low-income workers. Now these workers are on food-stamps, welfare, WIC, Cal Fresh programs that only suck tax-dollars fron the Fed (me and you) and contribute nothing. Nothing!
-Who has taken the jobs the jobs that these people would normally self-demote themselves too? Yes, "undocumented" South Americans, which includes Central Americans.
What if there were time limits on welfare programs? Clinton did propose this too!
You get 2 years to find a job and get off your ass!
And we also start doing E-Verify and stop hiring the "undocumented", or fine employers that don't comply.
Tariffs on goods from foreign countries would help too.
Also, giving tax-breaks to manufacturers to keep factories here would also help.
America needs more jobs. And not gov't jobs.
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Aug 5, 2011 - 05:27pm PT
Obama will go down as the worst president ever, even surpassing Jimmy Carter.
He is an unmitigated,unequivocal,unmistakeable failure.
Donald, you traitorous anti-american, what did you not get that you wanted?
Gitmo is still open.
The Billionaires got their Tax Cut, and are substantially richer, while the middle class and poor are substantially poorer.
The debt ceiling was delayed to the last second while the repubs "got 90% of what we wanted".
Gays are still not able to marry
Gays are still not able to join military
Corporations have the legal rights of humans
You Repubs have succeeded in nearly destroying the economy in trying to bring down Obama, as the most important priority (more important than defense of the the country, more important than jobs, more important than lives of servicemen and women, more important than lives of children). You appear to have succeeded in the economic goal, although the political goal remains to be seen. Does this make you proud?
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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You get 2 years to find a job and get off your ass!
Quit being mean to Rox!
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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You Repubs have succeeded in nearly destroying the economy in trying to bring down Obama
The Dimocrats ran everything for two years.
Nancy controlled the purse strings from 2006 till last November.
Dingy Harry still controls the Senate.
Who's ruined the economy?
If Klinton would have had his way we would have been here years ago, but he didn't
Kasich and Gingrich saw to that.
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