teabagging....... yes or no ?

[gb2000ie]

treblex635 - your points are most valid, your link to the raw data is exceptionally helpful, as it backs up your points with hard facts, and the video you link to is good too. BUT, and this is a big BUT, by using such massively loaded and disrespectful language, you will have alienated everyone who doesn't already agree with you before they get anywhere near the link to the data.

If you just want to preach to the choir this is fine, but it's actually counter-productive if you want to change people's opinions. The only way to save America is to open people's eyes to the big picture, like the data and the video do, but you have to be respectful, or at least neutral, in your language or you'll fail utterly to convince anyone.

If I put myself in a Republican's shoes and read your post I'll have my heckles up in seconds, and will write you off as a loon the moment you start to insult Regan by making fun of his illness. I won't get to any of the substance, and if I do, I'm not going to be in a receptive frame of mind.

Even if I was a swing voter, I'd read one paragraph in, and think you were a loon, and ignore you. Swing voters don't want extremists, and you sure as heck come off as one, even though the actual substance of your contribution is nothing of the sort, just the presentation.

I'm offering this constructive critique as food for thought, not to insult or belittle you, I hope you'll accept it in the spirit it's offered.

B.

 

[treblex635]

regret, not ridicule...

gb2000ie - Thanks for the thoughtful note

But I am not really trying to convince the obdurate and ostentatious obfuscators.

Just telling it how I see it

In the language taught to our nation over the last thirty years by an increasingly hostile leadership and deluded public.

I am a man of the peasantry, tho I hope to avoid their delusions

And I ridicule neither Reagan's illness nor Bush's total ineptitude.

What can this country expect if it continues to install people of low ability, competence and moral stature to the position of ultimate power where they are easily manipulated
by the Avaricious Masters of the Abattoir.

 

[hawtsean]

But I am not really trying to convince the obdurate and ostentatious obfuscators................{big snip to join two small fragments}............................they are easily manipulated
by the Avaricious Masters of the Abattoir.

Your interesting use of alliteration and onomatopoeia is facile, but sadly lost on those who might not get the point of such language constructs.

 

[treblex635]

hawtsean ....you noticed !

yes, ah duz luvz :heart: mah alliteration

(had to look up onomatopoeia in the Funk & Wagnall's - it's been half a lifetime < :thinking: actually longer> since I studied grammar - I'll have to ponder on that'un awhile)

just as I cannot expect the truly brilliant to carry the burden of my ignorance, I cannot spoon-feed those who miss out on my crass cleverness

it should be obvious that I tend to only preach to the choir as I feel the heathens are beyond reclamation, what with their total lack of a sense of humor and their ironclad sense of what should be

 

[gb2000ie]

it should be obvious that I tend to only preach to the choir as I feel the heathens are beyond reclamation, what with their total lack of a sense of humor and their ironclad sense of what should be

The thing is, there world is not broken into the choir and those with an ironclad sense of what should be - there are loads of reasonable people who are just drowning in the noise, and I think it's everyone's civic duty to try throw a life belt to those people when we can.

And I do love the lyrical nature of your posts, they're very clever and fun, but you might choose slightly less extreme descriptions of the cast perhaps?

B.

 

[hawtsean]

hawtsean ....you noticed !

yes, ah duz luvz :heart: mah alliteration

(had to look up onomatopoeia in the Funk & Wagnall's

As you no doubt discovered, treblex, the term refers to words and sometimes complex phrases that "sound" like the thing they describe. Examples could be as beauteous as "the shimmering crackle of tiny ice crystals on a frosted window pane"; or as brusque as "thwack" - denoting the impact of an initiation paddle across a fratboi's rump.

I took your phrase: "obdurate and ostentatious obfuscators" as both highly alliterative, and the term ostentatious (subjective for me) as onomatopoeic. But I hasten to refrain from continuing and diluting the thread. Unless Behrluvr can post some data to validate his assertions and enlighten me as to why his views are reality as opposed to what I currently believe, I doubt that I personally have any more to contribute here in this thread - it appears to have served its usefulness. I see no point in clogging up the board, and I believe that between gb200ie and myself, Behrluvr has gotten the drift of what we wished to express.

 

[topdog]

OK, I saw the original post and, like Behrluvr, saw it as pure flame bait so I stayed away from what was surely going to become a scorched earth thread.

But there have been some intelligent points made and a few things I'd like to comment on - so here I go. This will be over several posts.

..,The federal government has few legitamite reasons to exist. Guard the coast, deliver the mail and such. It has become a huge greedy monster devouring every last dollar available with the consequence that there are now no dollars available to devour.

I'm not sure if you are going for hyperbole here, or want this taken at face value. In case it's the latter, saying that portions of the federal government are illegitimate is a pretty strong statement. In some places that would be considered treason. That is essentially what the founders said about George III's reign over the colonies.

So looking at the legitimacy question: The constitution is legitimate, right? The enumerated powers? The commerce clause? The necessary and proper clause? The principle of judicial review (Marbury v. Madison, 1803)? Add these ingredients along with the needs of a growing country (minus one Civil War) and you have our current Federal Government.

There is certainly a lot of room for improvement, and you can shrink or expand the government's mission depending on your philosophy, but I don't see the case for questioning the legitimacy of the federal government.

Do you want to elaborate?

 

[topdog]

...Bill Clinton handed Gearge W Bush a budget that was in surplus, so each year the debt was shrinking, and had Bush continued like Clinton, the entire debt would be been gone in a decade or so.

Clinton inherited a weak economy and deserves praise for quickly implementing a series of spending cuts and tax increases. That put the bond markets at ease and let interest rates rise making US bonds both a safe and profitable investment. He also had the good fortune to ride along the tech boom with a skyrocketing stock market.

But comparing Bush and Clinton isn't really fair. They lived in different times. 9/11 and the financial crises were looming for whoever was sitting in the office at the time.

• Reaction to September 11 pushes whoever is President into Afghanistran.
• The economy falls post 9/11.
• The housing bubble keeps growing. People sell houses for muich $$$, spend the profit, buy new houses on debt, confident that rising prices will bail them out and they can refinance when the bill comes due.
• Wall Street creates mortgage-backed securities. They also invent a deadly web of collateralized debt obligations (CDO's) that underwrite (insure) the debt of leveraged deals at other firms. The rest of the world goes on a feeding frenzy of selling and investing in those booby traps.
• By 2005 everyone who could afford a house already has one. Responding to pressure from Wall Street for more mortgages, local banks start lowering their credit standards to pull in people who previously would never qualify for a bank mortgage. Sub-prime mortgages are born.
• Local banks only hold the risky mortgages for a month and then sell them to Wall Street investment houses. Local banks are lending to risky people, but making a profit from and handing the risk to the Wall Street investment houses who bundle them together and sell to investors. It's an win (for the home buyer), win (for the local bank), win (for the investment house), win (for the financial firm the guarentees the investment with a CDO), and win (for the investors who get what they have been assured is a safe and profitable investment.
• People with sub-prime mortgages fall behind on payments. Some default. Housing prices stop rising. Some markets fall. People who had bought big houses with little money and credit default when the baloon payments come due. Housing prices drop more.
• Mortgage-backed securities fall in value; investors want to dump them. Financial houses that had leveraged one deal, to leverage another one, to leverage another are pressed to produce actual cash (in essence, and old-fashioned run on the bank).
• Wall Street giant Bear Stearns fails. The whole mess blows up and threatens to implode the entire global financial system, and the Keynesian theory of government stimulus is the only option available to avoid disaster (other than doing nothing and just watching the dominos fall). This is anathema to Republicans who believe in free markets.
• Lehman Brothers fail; AIG, Morgan Stanley, Smith Barney, Travelers Group and Citigroup teeter on the brink. The economies of Iceland and Ireland collapse.
• The President, Congress, and Treasury Department invent the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to buy up bad debt so banks will continue to exist. But even with TARP funds, banks refuse to loan money because of uncertainty.
• Corporations postpone projects because they can't get the loans. Employees are laid off.
• Falling housing prices, rising personal debt, multiple re-financing, and now soaring unemployment means that even people who were good risks now default on their mortgage. Panic spreads into the stock market.
• President and Congress turn attention to the national economy and pass American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, a $780 billion stimulus
• Consumers cut down on spending; pay off debt. Banks are still freaked and hoard money; won't lend. Business cut back even more.
• More people are laid off; More people default on mortgage; Consumers spend less.
• Repeat
• Repeat...

In this whole mess, the only decision that comes to the President's desk is whether to let the markets take care of themselves (i.e. fail), or to step in and try to buy the bad debt and keep the financial sector solvent. I don't think it would really matter which party was in power; Clinton, Bush, Gore, Kerry, McCain, Obama... the whole mess is out of their hands until it's time to pay the bill or go broke.

 

[topdog]

... So - what did Obama do wrong? His stimulus was too small! Why was it too small? Because the republicans beat him down, and he was stupid enough to cave instead of doing the responsible thing.

Yes, the stimulus was way to small. But saying that Obama "caved" takes a complicated process and issue and reduces it to political winners and losers. Obama got a sizeable stimulus through with some republican votes. That is an enormous accomplishment that many thought was impossible until the very last minute.

You have to realize that this kind of Keynesian major government invervention is the opposite of basic Republican fiscal values about smaller government and free markets. George W. Bush resisted the move until Treasury, the Federal Reserve, and Wall Street representatives painted a picture of the black hole that could consume the world financial system in a matter of weeks if markets were just left to take their course. Bush eventually pressed Congress for a two part Troubled Asset Relief (TSA) fund to bail out banks. The first part would go out on his watch and the second part under the new president.

In addition to TARP, Obama and his Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner pushed for a economic stimulus package as their first order of business. They originally wanted a 1 trillion dollar incentive. (Economist Paul Krugman who was originally pushing for a stimulus insisited that 1.5 trillion would be the amound needed to kick-start the economy.) Republicans resisted. Obama wanted bi-partisan support. He actually needed some bi-partisan support because some conservative democrats refused to go along with it. By lowering the amount and adding some tax and spending cuts he was able to bring enough conservative democrats on board as well as three Republican senators and get the bill passed.

Once again, the alternative was doing nothing leaving the economy in a vicous cycle of debt, unemplyment, low consumer spending, and lack of investor confidence. Would Paul Krugman's 1.5 trillion stimulus have brought the economy up faster? Maybe - but Congress' heads were already spinning from nearly 1 trillion in TARP funds out the door. (Almost all would come back, but there was no way to be sure of that at the time.) It took every bit of Obama's election political capital to get the $780 billion. Also keep in mind this was not on his agenda. Health care was what he wanted to get to work on, but sometimes a President's battles are chosen for him.

...Have you looked at the pie chart showing where the federal government spends the VAST majority of it's money? ...

The Washington Post has a great interactive graph of federal revenue (left) and spending (right) that lets you see the big picture, as well as drill down into detail.

 

[topdog]

I also agree that shipping out jobs to overseas cheap labor is shortsighted. Once all jobs in America are low wage paying who will be able to afford a life of excess? It will be all about the bacis: food, clothing, shelter and gasoline, nothing else.

This trips my sarcasm detector. Yes? No? :thinking:

But the bigger point is that we live, for better or for worse, in a global economy. Labor has become a comodity like oil, wheat, or automobiles. We may feel patriotically protective of the American labor force, but the way we spend our dollars (at Walmart) sends a different message. We want medium quality products at the lowest price. We don't pay a premium for a label that says "Made in America". Walmart vendors need the lowest material and labor costs to sell in that market. I'm not blaming Walmart for the global market, but it's supply chain encapsulates the whole economic transaction in a nutshell.

 

[topdog]

...So - Bush turned Clinton's surpluses into deficits AND crashed the economy, and then Obama stepped in.

The current American financial crisis was created by the avaricious element in our society (primarily republicans....... and their drones) in a deliberate attempt to crash our economy while aculating the lion's share of a wealth imbalance not seen in this country since the era of the Robber Barons...

This is a great narrative if you are writing a comic book with great heroes (Democrats) and super-villans (Republicans). But US politics and economics can't be reduced to the characters in an Ironman movie.

"...a deliberate attempt to crash our economy..."? Please! :rolling eyes: Neither Republicans nor Democrats are scheming to crash the economy. (Wall Street, irresponsible bankers, and overextended consumers have managed to do that with little intervention by the government.) They do however have two different views of government's role in the economy.

We have had prosperity both under Democrats (last years of Clinton) and Republicans (last years of Bush). We have also had recession under both Democrats (Carter and Obama, so far) and Republicans (G.W. Bush and beginning of George W. Bush). Nobody wants a bad economy. You can't get re-elected in a bad economy. All of our savings depend on a good economy.

But sometimes outside events (9/11, oil crises, Kuwait invasion, Wall Street collapse, Greece default) overwhelm the best of plans. And other times there are unforseen consequences of a move that was meant to help economic growth (steel tarriffs, NAFTA, Bush tax cuts, expensive weapons systems, invasion of Iraq).

With rare exception, these are all good people on both sides of the aisle that are working for the public good. There is a legitimate split in the country as to which philosophy will best take us forward. We can argue passionately for what we think is best, while also listening to the other side to see what we can learn from their point of view.

Or am I just dreaming? :dreaming:

 

[gb2000ie]

All good contributions Topdog, and thanks.

I guess I have three key responses:

1) You are of course right that the comparison between Bush and Clinton is not a simple one, but you can't deny that the ethos inverted. Clinton raised taxes and succeeded in cutting the deficit, Bush gave out massive un-paid-for tax cuts and ballooned the deficit instead. This is all without even considering 9-11, which of course had a massive impact on the Bush presidency, and like you say, would have affected every president in his place. However, there are different ways to react to a crisis! You are right that every person who could possible become US president would have invaded Afghanistan, that was unavoidable, but Iraq, that was VERY avoidable! By invading Iraq, again, without raising taxes to pay for it, Bush starved the Afghan war of resources, and got the US embroiled in a mess that he could never finish in his term. Had the US focused on just one war, the right war, then they could have done a much better job there, and perhaps even be out by now as victors, and saved the nation a whole other war, and the estimated 3 billion it will add to the debt.

2) You are right when you describe how tough it was for Obama to get any stimulus at all, but I think he could have done much better were he to be a better negotiator. A pattern I've noticed from Obama is that his opening offer in every negotiation is the reasonable middle ground he should arrive at in the end, but by starting there, he ensures he always ends up further to the right than he should. Republicans HAVE to be able to be seen to negotiate the Dems down. The HAVE to, so you need to factor that into your calculation, he asked for 1tn, and had to settle for 780bn, but had he started at 1.5tn he could have let them beat him down to 1tn and added significantly more stimulus. In healthcare he took medicare for all off the table before he even began negotiating, making his first offer the very reasonable compromise of a public option, by starting with the public option he had to concede further, so he ended up with just these high risk pools instead.

Same story with Wall St. regulation and so on and so forth. By always trying to start any conversation at the centre, Obama has ensured that even under democratic rule, democratic policies are not getting tried, just Republican Lite.

3) Yes, it is true that Presidents are not all-powerful when it comes to the economy, in many ways they are distressingly powerless, but they do still have some very substantial levers they can work. Stimulus is one they can pull when things go bad, but they also have a preventative lever, regulation. Clinton is no saint on this one, he started a trend of de-regulation which Bush then accelerated, to the point that the entire banking industry was let undermine itself with financial products that were so complex no one knew they were being sold a pup. If ever there was a recession caused by pathetic oversight and regulation, it's this one.

B.

 

[hawtsean]

This is a great narrative if you are writing a comic book with great heroes (Democrats) and super-villans (Republicans). But US politics and economics can't be reduced to the characters in an Ironman movie......................................./snip/.......................We can argue passionately for what we think is best, while also listening to the other side to see what we can learn from their point of view.

Or am I just dreaming? :dreaming:

Essentially, it is an unrealistic dream, so long as both sides are prepared to slander and smear each other. I must say that the Repubs seem to be quickest to label many Democrat incentives (that would do good for the USA) as leftist, commie, red, socialist, etc. The word socialist is an epithet within mainstream politics in America, or so it seems. If everyone could just put that crap aside and actually analyze the good or bad of a scheme - we might see some progress. However, when parties field candidates who have little or no comprehension of the issues, and when some of those candidates act in a foolish and ignorant manner - they literally invite sarcasm and invective heaped toward them.

 

[gb2000ie]

Essentially, it is an unrealistic dream, so long as both sides are prepared to slander and smear each other. I must say that the Repubs seem to be quickest to label many Democrat incentives (that would do good for the USA) as leftist, commie, red, socialist, etc. The word socialist is an epithet within mainstream politics in America, or so it seems. If everyone could just put that crap aside and actually analyze the good or bad of a scheme - we might see some progress. However, when parties field candidates who have little or no comprehension of the issues, and when some of those candidates act in a foolish and ignorant manner - they literally invite sarcasm and invective heaped toward them.

I can't argue with any of that - but to add a little to it, my biggest problem with Republicans ATM is that they are showing striking evidence of not acting in good faith. Allow me to back that up before shouting me down as partisan:

1) When ever Obama takes steps to implement good republican ideas, the Republicans flee from those same ideas and attack Obama for trying to implement them. Pay-go is a good example of this. If you really are serious about the deficit, then "Pay as you Go" is a great rule, you can't spend money on anything new without finding the money for it first so that it will be deficit neutral. The Republicans proposed it, and as a party running on deficit reduction that made a lot of sense. So much sense Obama tried to implement it, and found that the republicans who co-sponsored the bill turned around and voted against it, and it was defeated. That is not acting in good faith!

2) Republicans claim there is nothing more important than the deficit, but they force Obama to extend un-paid-for tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires which will massively explode the deficit and hence debt going forward. If you really cared about the deficit you wouldn't balloon it by trillions while quibbling over a few billions in cuts.

3) Republicans want to cut spending in return for an agreement the debt ceiling, but walk out of talks in protest when Obama suggests that a good saving would be to take away tax payer subsidies for the oil industry who have record levels of profit at the moment - they are literally the most profitable industry in the history of our civilisation. Surely, if any companies are strong enough to stand on their own without corporate welfare payments it's the oil industry! Boehner even said he was in favour of that idea a while ago, but again, now that Obama is for it too he's full-square against it! Similarly, the Republicans are up in arms at a proposal to cut tax rebates on private jets, but insist there need to be cuts in social welfare. Really? It's the government's job to pay for private jets, but not to pay pensioners what they've earned and paid for all their lives, or to care for the sick?

I could go on and on, but you get the idea. This is not about actual political differences, but about the dirtiest and most insidious partisan politics.

B.

 

[jeansGuyOZ]

Drat, also thought it had to do with the fetish known as teabagging. As you were. JeansGuyOZ lOVE your jeans. Congrats on the Brisbane Red's victory over the Crusaders - that is if you follow rugby. Dan Carter is a hottie, but I was supporting the Reds.

Thanks for the compliment - but I don't even know who those people are that you mentioned. We play football in this state, not rugby.