corianderstem
Blue Crack Distributor
Awesomesauce. Thanks for that, I wasn't aware.
Senator Jim Bunning: Hero? Or Asshole?
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Awesomesauce. Thanks for that, I wasn't aware.
Harry Vest
Refugee
It's o.k. to bail out the banks but not hard working people. Asshole. They should hang guys like this from meathooks...and I'm afraid they soon will because of idiots like this.
Assh*le, Uber.
What I can't stand is how CNN is trying to act like it's a matter of opinion, for the sake of ratings, and they have that bastard from Redstate.com on all the time; I hate that guy; he's such a typical self-satisfied Republican, spreading myths about the self-made man. I don't like many Democrats, but I HATE Republicans.
Op-Ed Columnist - Senator Bunning�s Universe - NYTimes.com
By the way, too many Democrats already think like this. I remember Chuck Robb ran for election in the mid-'90s crying out, "I'll let people die in the streets before I raise your taxes!" or something to that effect.
Obama hasn't exactly fought for the poor with his lame economic reforms, either.
What I can't stand is how CNN is trying to act like it's a matter of opinion, for the sake of ratings, and they have that bastard from Redstate.com on all the time; I hate that guy; he's such a typical self-satisfied Republican, spreading myths about the self-made man. I don't like many Democrats, but I HATE Republicans.
Op-Ed Columnist - Senator Bunning�s Universe - NYTimes.com
No, it's because right wing politicians always find an excuse to screw over the poor. They never demand finding money for projects that benefit tax cuts or the war or so many other things. It's phony for him to act like it's a matter of principle because it's about priorities for him.
By the way, too many Democrats already think like this. I remember Chuck Robb ran for election in the mid-'90s crying out, "I'll let people die in the streets before I raise your taxes!" or something to that effect.
Obama hasn't exactly fought for the poor with his lame economic reforms, either.
PhilsFan
Blue Crack Addict
The poor aren't represented by lobbyists, thus the poor are consistently shat on by the federal government.
Op-Ed Columnist - Senator Bunning�s Universe - NYTimes.com
Good summary of how delusional the Republicans have become, and of the extent that Obama has gone to try and reach out to them.
It should be clear now from the Bunning debacle, as well as the fact that Scott Brown is now signing autographs with the number 41, that the Republicans, just like with Clinton, have no intention of working with any President with a "D" after his name.
What the GOP has done in the last 13 months is just the height of immaturity. Cry like a baby when you don't get your way, ignore the facts, and put yourself and your ambitions before anyone or anything else.
Seriously, when faced with an economic catastrophe that any sense of basic economic understanding would tell you the government needed to inject money into the economy, they screamed and cried out of control spending and deficits, when they know damn well Obama did not do this because of some ideology.
To make matters worse, people who are supposedly intelligent(congress people) decided to go out and whip the ignorant masses into an idiot frenzy about some non existent socialism. Make no mistakes, today's Republican party is making being stupid a virtue.
Sad part is they know better. They all know the stimulus and the bailouts were necessary to keep the economy from completely collapsing. If they do not understand economics(most of them don't but they at least have a basic enough understanding to know we needed a stimulus), then all they had to do was open any newspaper in February 2009 and there it was from objective economists across the spectrum: we need a big stimulus, and we need it now.
The adult thing to do, which its a tall order to ask today's Republicans to be adults, would have been to explain the bailouts the same way Democrats have. They voted for it in just as great of numbers, but now they act like it was all Obama(when it was passed under Bush) and rail against it. Stimulus, same thing. They would have done a stimulus if they were in power, rest assured of that. Instead of working with Democrats on bringing the economy from the edge of a cliff, they decided to oppose the stimulus in lock step and then go around the country and tell people it was socialism and big government. What they should have been doing was saying "this is not a partisan thing, either we act, or we see unemployment at 14/15%, etc. There will be time for disagreements later, but this is not one of them."
It is a FACT that the economic recovery is going along much faster because of the stimulus, and it is a FACT that if McCain or John Kyl or Mitch McConnell or Eric Cantor were in charge, unemployment would be no lower.
The Republicans are just exploiting the general public's lack of understanding of economics to pin the unemployment situation on the Democrats instead of acknowledging that there is a little $13 trillion thing called the private economy that is subject to its own natural laws and forces and that, though we can prod it, will take a while to work all the kinks out no matter what we do.
No recession spurred by a financial collapse had ever turned around to recovery as quick as this one, and unemployment ALWAYS lags behind actual growth returning. The Republicans can acknowledge this and still disagree on any number of issues- whether or how to reform health care, the environment, general tax policy, etc, etc.
Instead they are playing to the dumbed down masses and acting like little kids.
Good summary of how delusional the Republicans have become, and of the extent that Obama has gone to try and reach out to them.
It should be clear now from the Bunning debacle, as well as the fact that Scott Brown is now signing autographs with the number 41, that the Republicans, just like with Clinton, have no intention of working with any President with a "D" after his name.
What the GOP has done in the last 13 months is just the height of immaturity. Cry like a baby when you don't get your way, ignore the facts, and put yourself and your ambitions before anyone or anything else.
Seriously, when faced with an economic catastrophe that any sense of basic economic understanding would tell you the government needed to inject money into the economy, they screamed and cried out of control spending and deficits, when they know damn well Obama did not do this because of some ideology.
To make matters worse, people who are supposedly intelligent(congress people) decided to go out and whip the ignorant masses into an idiot frenzy about some non existent socialism. Make no mistakes, today's Republican party is making being stupid a virtue.
Sad part is they know better. They all know the stimulus and the bailouts were necessary to keep the economy from completely collapsing. If they do not understand economics(most of them don't but they at least have a basic enough understanding to know we needed a stimulus), then all they had to do was open any newspaper in February 2009 and there it was from objective economists across the spectrum: we need a big stimulus, and we need it now.
The adult thing to do, which its a tall order to ask today's Republicans to be adults, would have been to explain the bailouts the same way Democrats have. They voted for it in just as great of numbers, but now they act like it was all Obama(when it was passed under Bush) and rail against it. Stimulus, same thing. They would have done a stimulus if they were in power, rest assured of that. Instead of working with Democrats on bringing the economy from the edge of a cliff, they decided to oppose the stimulus in lock step and then go around the country and tell people it was socialism and big government. What they should have been doing was saying "this is not a partisan thing, either we act, or we see unemployment at 14/15%, etc. There will be time for disagreements later, but this is not one of them."
It is a FACT that the economic recovery is going along much faster because of the stimulus, and it is a FACT that if McCain or John Kyl or Mitch McConnell or Eric Cantor were in charge, unemployment would be no lower.
The Republicans are just exploiting the general public's lack of understanding of economics to pin the unemployment situation on the Democrats instead of acknowledging that there is a little $13 trillion thing called the private economy that is subject to its own natural laws and forces and that, though we can prod it, will take a while to work all the kinks out no matter what we do.
No recession spurred by a financial collapse had ever turned around to recovery as quick as this one, and unemployment ALWAYS lags behind actual growth returning. The Republicans can acknowledge this and still disagree on any number of issues- whether or how to reform health care, the environment, general tax policy, etc, etc.
Instead they are playing to the dumbed down masses and acting like little kids.
INDY500
Rock n' Roll Doggie Band-aid
That will satisfy as an example of "the elite media."
PhilsFan
Blue Crack Addict
CNN and MSNBC have done a godawful job describing how wrong Republicans have been (logically, economically, morally, etc.) so I don't see what you mean by that.
pretty much, yeah. i can't say i necessarily agree with everything obama's done, but i do know no matter what paths had been taken, we wouldn't be any better off as a country than we are now. not to mention, a recession simply can't be turned around overnight. not even in a year, not how massive this one was. in the 1940s we were lucky (i suppose you could put it that way) that we then entered world war two which quickly turned things around for us. if that hadn't happened, things would be as slow-moving as they are now. except at least then fdr didn't have practically all of congress conspiring against whatever he did to make sure his bills wouldn't pass. i know he had his detractors, trust me, but he was still able to get shit done.
INDY500
Rock n' Roll Doggie Band-aid
Which begs the question... why was it WWII that got us out of the Great Depression and not, NOT, as you point out, all of FDR's "shit" -- Keynesian government spending, higher taxes on the rich, price controls, infrastructure jobs (WPA) and social welfare programs.
And why would we travel that road again?
PhilsFan
Blue Crack Addict
This is purely revisionist history. You can't just sweep everything FDR accomplished under the rug by saying it was all WWII, because that's just not true.
BVS
Blue Crack Supplier
Are you serious?
INDY500
Rock n' Roll Doggie Band-aid
Take that up with KhanadaRhodes.
The Great Depression was much deeper than this recession. While a good 2/3 of the New Deal was either rejected or ineffective, it did a great amount of good. The housing act actually reversed the massive foreclosures and made the government money, for example. By 1937, things were alot better than they were in 1932, but still not completely recovered. The reason why we had the 2nd recession from 1938-40 was because FDR tried to balance the budget when the recovery was not fully in gear. He pulled back the stimulus, and it took a bigger stimulus, WW II to get us moving again.
Wage and Price controls were negotiated between business and the government through the NRA as a means of halting deflation. It was voluntary, and supported as necessary by industry at the time. You know who did heavy handed wage and price controls to get re elected? That would be Richard Nixon.
All of the "shit" that you talk about especially the infrastructure piece, put people to work and helped the economy. The turnpike system, the national highway system that was the forerunner to the interstate(the maps for the interstate system of 1956 were drawn up in this time period), many roads and bridges still in service today were built under the WPA. That is to say nothing about the institutions created that have played a key role in protecting consumers and investors to this day- like the SEC. The Wall Street reforms of FDR were the last real effort at updating regulation and making it work for business, investors and consumers. Wall Street supported these reforms. Social Security remains to this day the most effective government program ever created, and it is overwhelmingly popular among voters.
Like I said in the 1st paragraph, neither FDR nor the new deal was perfect. He unsuccessfully tried to pack the courts to get the more controversial parts of it through, and alot of it was window dressing. But the fact remains:
1.)It got the economy into recovery initially.
2.)We only hit another downturn when FDR did what you want Obama to do(pull back the Keynesian stimulus).
3.)Many programs were effective at employing people at the time and produced real results before they were terminated in better times. Many institutions created during the New Deal are alive, well and broadly supported today(SSecurity, minimum wage, SEC)
FDR had higher taxes on the rich for sure, but he kept a 25% capital gains tax rate, and alot of the jacking up did not come until he responsibly decided we were going to actually pay for a war. Plus, the marginal rates being that high were part of a completely different tax code that was scrapped in 1986. There were a shitload of brackets and many more loopholes that knocked down effective rates to about half the marginal, even for the very rich.
Truman and Eisenhower had the good sense to keep the taxes high in prosperity so we could pay off the war debt and not dig a big hole. No President did massive deficit spending as a matter of policy until Reagan.
Obama is not proposing anywhere near a return to FDR era tax rates, nor is the stimulus anywhere near as far reaching as the new deal. I don't know where you get the price controls and social welfare programs from.
Where has Obama proposed price controls or any new social welfare program?
And just because I am curious, did John Maynard Keynes shoot your dog or something? You accuse everyone of being Keynesian like it is being a member of the Charles Manson cult. You do realize that the principle of government counter-cyclical stimulus long predates Keynes, right? You also realize that Summers, Geithner, etc may take some aspects of Keynesianism, but that they are not what any economist would label Keynesian thinkers. The hard core devotees of Keynes have been out of any position of influence for many years now.
INDY500
Rock n' Roll Doggie Band-aid
You mean other than appointing a "pay czar" to control CEO pay and Wall St. bonuses and that sweeping new entitlement called "Universal Health Care"?
Answer the rest tomorrow.
Indy and Khandarhodes were not making the same argument. Khandarhodes acknowledged that FDR passed some good legislation, but that it ultimately took WW II to get us back to where we were before the Depression. That is very, very true. I think FDR was a great President, a courageous American and an excellent commander in chief. That does not mean that I can't objectively say that some of the New Deal was ineffective, impractical, or too autocratic to pass constitutional muster. Some of it was egregious and legit should have been struck down, but there was alot of stuff that was struck down by a Republican and yes, activist Supreme Court(the first attempt at minimum wage being the prime example) on political grounds only. Once FDR got some of his own appointments(outside of the court packing) some of this legislation went through. The egregious stuff, well, even FDR's guys Black and Douglas, et al would not go for it.
If I understand her right, she was saying that FDR clearly helped, but the New Deal was not what brought us back to sustained growth by 1941, it was WW II.
Indy used this as a blanket condemnation of the New Deal and then compared it to the very different circumstances we find ourselves in now to try and put a shot in on Obama.
Khandarhodes just acknowledged that the economy is an outside force that can only be affected so much by politicians of either party, and I think she may agree with me that acknowledging FDR did well and got some good things done does not mean we have to blindly worship or romanticize him or portray him as the holder of the magic economic wand.
BVS
Blue Crack Supplier
Were you upset by Reagan's czars?
The "pay czar" is only there in so far as they are getting government money. It is not a permanent thing. It is saying "taxpayers are giving you this money in the middle of a deep recession, you're not going to Cancun with it." Now that the banks are paying TARP money back, they are moving out from under the constraints of the "pay czar" who will soon not be working anymore. The 10 or however many big banks that are getting TARP money in no way represent widespread wage and price controls.
CEO pay and bonuses in every non taxpayer controlled institution are still privately set. Obama has not proposed to change this.
I can't count the number of times you have had it pointed out to you that Obama has no designs on controlling the economy from any objective reading of the facts.
I hear so much from Palin and Brown and everyone else on the right about the "socialist bailouts"(that they supported) are you really capable of holding a vehement anti wall street view while at the same time opposing restrictions on how they spend taxpayer money? That's ok, its just shows the lack of logic on the right... Obama is a socialist and a Wall Street pawn at the same time. That is impossible, but strongly believed by Scott Brown.
Health care reform is NOT an entitlement program. That is just a fact. Legal Definition of Entitlement Program
Entitlements are given to everyone who meets a certain set criteria w/o any discretion as to the level of funding by Congress. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc.
Setting up competitive exchanges and giving some sliding scale subsidies that are subject to change and conditioned on a number of things(not just age or income level like entitlements) is NOT an entitlement program.
Neither you nor anyone else against the health care bill has shown you understand any of what is actually in the bill. The main parts:
1.)You like your current health care, you keep it.
2.)Competitive exchanges for consumer choice. Helps reduce costs. Private companies participate, its not government run.
3.)Prohibitions on the denial of coverage for preexisting conditions, on dropping coverage arbitrarily, etc.
4.)Individual mandate and subsidies to make policies more affordable for consumers and small businesses. Tax breaks for small business to buy health care. A modest assessment on large corporations who do not make reasonable contributions to employee health care.
5.)Pilot programs on preventive care, medical malpractice reform, pilot programs on changing the payment system, etc are all put in place with an explicit goal of implementing the reforms that are found to save money.
6.)Improvements in Medicare quality for seniors and increased payments to physicians. Cuts in unnecessary, wasteful medicare advantage plan.
7.)The whole deal reduces the deficit by $132 billion over 10 years, CBO speaking, not me.
1-7 all have widespread popular support when Americans are polled.
1-7 have all been proposed at one time or another by Republicans.
1-7 in no way represent socialism or a new entitlement to anything.
1-7 were part of what the new Republican hero Scott Brown supported strongly in Massachusetts.
The people support what is actually in the bill.
They do not support what you and your friends say is in the bill, but no one would, that's why you say it.
I've heard that a few times and it has never got answered.....I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume the talking points sites are down tonight.
PhilsFan
Blue Crack Addict
Why?
PhilsFan
Blue Crack Addict
How is preventing government bailout money from being pocketed by CEOs a price control? Wasn't that something almost universally accepted by everyone involved? Are you FOR that money being pocketed?
Were you for or against the czars in Republican administrations?
He doesn't know what he is for, so hence all the drastically different things that come out of his mouth at the same time without any sense or irony.
The right were the first to scream and cry when 2008 bonuses that the bailout restrictions did not apply to were paid about this time last year. They blamed this on Chris Dodd, when in fact if it was not for Chris Dodd, we would have had a $700 billion bailout with no strings attached and no payback mechanism.
That was what Bush's Treasury Secretary Paulson was asking for!!
Geithner was all of a sudden Mr big bad Wall Street greed when bonuses accrued before the Sept 2008 bailout were paid to executives.
If you asked him 2 questions independent of some "control the economy" argument he is trying to make, I bet my bottom dollar he would answer like this:
1.)Do you like the Wall Street bonuses and the executives having a good time with Main Street's money?
Indy:NO.
2.)Who do you think is to blame for this?
Indy:Obama of course, that socialist is controlling our economy. We don't want Wall Street getting our money, we're for regular(very well off) people like Sarah Palin and Scott Brown.
martha
Blue Crack Supplier
I find the lack of irony more annoying than the lack of sense.
BigMacPhisto
Rock n' Roll Doggie VIP PASS
- Joined
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Asshole. His atrocious 10.4 Hits per 9 innings after a trade to my Dodgers mid-season is unforgivable.
heroic asshole?
INDY500
Rock n' Roll Doggie Band-aid
If every other pitcher on the staff had matched his .750 winning pct the Dodgers would have played the Orioles in October.
PhilsFan
Blue Crack Addict
Like I said, it's all been downhill since his first stint with the Fightins.
INDY500
Rock n' Roll Doggie Band-aid
Here's hoping I can soon draw a comparison between Obamacare and the '64 Phillies.
PhilsFan
Blue Crack Addict
Ha. I already would say they're not even close since I'm of the opinion Obama's exceeded my expectations for his first year, but I enjoy sports analogies as much as the next guy, so I'm sure it would be fun.
cydewaze
Refugee
This still isn't over btw. Now, one of Bunning's twins is blocking Federal workers from being compensated for the lost work that Bunning's shenanigans caused.
Senator holds up bill compensating furloughed Transportation workers (3/12/10) -- GovExec.com
Senator holds up bill compensating furloughed Transportation workers (3/12/10) -- GovExec.com
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