Obama Paradox

KANEMAN

Tuesday, July 27, 2010 11:43 AM

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Originally posted by antimason:
this talking point on the left to blame "Dumbya" for this abysmal, non existent 'recovery' just isn't holding water anymore. Obama isn't cleaning up any mess that the democrats weren't also equally responsable for. the democrats have had majorities in the house and senate for 4 years, and total control for almost 2 years now. not coincidentally, the deficits have exploded exponentially since then(although in conjunction with liberal republicans). but just under the current president, the trillion dollar stimulus was a failure, the healthcare bill is a nightmare, and financial reform and cap and trade will all be huge tax increases on everybody. and the Bush tax cuts expire soon, on top of everything. in other words, we've basically turned a crash, similar to '29, into what will become a another 15 year long great depression. and, just as it was then, this is the fault of flawed economic theories, wich will result in the same predictable outcome. so because i fundementally disagree with the agenda of the current party in power, i don't see a whole lot to be praiseworthy about towards president Obama and the dems

if he was a libertarian, as charasmatic a person as he is, you want to like him- he could be one of the greatest presidents in modern history. and how oppertune a time, when we need his abilities of persuasion and charisma to advocate the principles liberty. you notice he never talks about these concepts though.. he truly believes in a command and control, top down centralized society. and you just cant run peoples lives, in will never work

about the surpluses under Clinton, does any of that credit go to the republican party, who took control of the house and senate for the first time in 20-30 years? it was a generation of Reagan era conservatives who did that. eventually the power corrupted them though, and they became socially conservative liberals. but when Bush was elected in 2000, republicans had an oppertunity to decentralize this top heavy authoritarian government, purge the beauracracy and return back to classical laissez faire capitalism, and they blew it! and this perception among the left of massive deregulation during this period, what are you talking about? in fact, what regulations were put in place, such as in housing and banking, turned out to be counterproductive and harmful to the economy, as evidenced by our current situation.

and on the Bush tax cuts, if they were indeed only for the super rich, which is untrue but the common myth among the left, what is the left admitting is wrong with that? its an admission in premise that a tax cut is a benefit to people. why then does the left demonize the Bush tax cuts, which benefit a broad range of people of all tax and income brackets? or, why not propose tax cuts greater then 'Bushs'? i dont get it.. and out of pure partisanship you will let them expire, and punish everyone. but if you think letting these cuts expire will result in greater revenues to the federal government(maybe in hopes to pay off this massive deficit), you've got an important lesson in economics coming to you

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KWICKO

Tuesday, July 27, 2010 3:58 PM

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Originally posted by AnthonyT:

P.S. Any chance we can cut out the tea-bagger stuff? Slapping folks who are already polarized isn't gonna mellow 'em out.

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NIKI2

Tuesday, July 27, 2010 4:28 PM

I’m going to try not to get caught up in the back-and-forthing, I’ll just refute a few things:

The Republicans had the triple-threat: House, Senate, President (and Supreme Court, too, actually) for six years. They had it under Bush and Clinton. The Dems had both House and Senate under Eisenhower, Nixon, Kennedy, Ford and Carter. Notice how the debt didn’t rise much.

It starts going up strongly when the Republicans got the Senate in 1980. It leveled off a bit during Clinton, when the Repubs had a double threat, and I give them all kinds of points for that (I also give Clinton some points, as he worked WITH them to bring it down), but had its single largest bump up until then under Bush, again triple threat.

The concept that the Dems could turn that around under a Repub President in four years, given where it had gotten to, is in my opinion fallacious. Yes, they haven’t done it, I don’t like that. And yes, they aren’t doing it, I don’t like that either. But if one takes into account how it got there, and that it was grown without any attention to infrastructure, with tax cuts and benefits to the rich, and by trashing the economy, that leaves a lot for anyone following Bush to “fix”. And yes, those “flawed economic theories” were begun under Bush, copying Reagan’s “voo doo economics”, as even Pappa Bush realized.

You cannot damn any one party without taking history into account, much as you’d like to, I know. No President acts within a vaccum.

I fully agree with your second paragraph, DT, except I think the reasons are different, as I posted before. Most of the third as well, except for the tax cuts part. I’ve shown over and over that trickle-down does NOT work; so there’s no debating, since you are convinced despite hefty evidence that it does. Tax cuts do increase the deficit, that’s also been shown over and over, despite Republican talking points that they “pay for themselves”—they simply do NOT.

Notice how the debt/GDP ratio was RAISED under Reagan, Bush I and Bush II—Reagan was the big believer in Tricke-Down, so if it works so well and tax cuts work so well, why is that the case?

I already explained the blame I place on the Tea Party, so won’t repeat myself. And I’ll put Maddow’s fact checking up against ANY fact checking done by FauxNews, happily. To say otherwise is to ignore the facts, or to be ignorant of who checks them and who does not. To say she is all opinion is pure partisan bullshit unless proven otherwise, which is impossible. It’s obvious such an opinion is garnered from other sources than actually checking anything out.


Hippie Operative Nikovich Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
Contracted Agent of __________________, code name ‘Nike”,
signing off