Today In Economic Grimness

The goal of business has never been to ‘create jobs’ the goal of business is to make money. The fact that the largest amounts of money to be made are in placing side bets on other people’s loans, it’s not surprising that certain people’s ability to get rich fails to translate into general prosperity.
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We need to take a hard look at core assuptions. The ones currently in place are hopelessly flawed.

An improving economy has lured those who had given up looking for work back into the labor market. The jump in the unemployment rate came even though payrolls rose last month by 290,000 jobs, the biggest gain in four years

From Krugman’s piece:

Low inflation, or worse yet deflation, tends to perpetuate an economic slump, because it encourages people to hoard cash rather than spend, which keeps the economy depressed, which leads to more deflation.

Do the brilliant economists running the GOP understand this last point?

Do the brilliant economists running the GOP understand this last point?
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The answer to the question is “more tax cuts for the richest,” right?
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I mean, for them, the answer always is.

Oh, and I have an idea. Congress should pass a bill to fund basic science research. Or maybe provide loan guarantees to small businesses developing new technologies.

OT, but the first poll of the Penn Senate race has Sestak leading Toomey 46-42.
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The weird thing is that this is a Rasmussen poll, and given the 5-10 point bias they traditionally have for Republicans, Sestak is likely doing even better than that.
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http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections2/election_2010/election_2010_senate_elections/pennsylvania/2010_senate_election/election_2010_pennsylvania_senate

I’m just copying my post in another thread:
Looks like more details about the April jobs number came out today from the Labor Department, indicating a broad-based recovery:
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Job increases in 38 states, led by Ohio (37K), Pennsylvania (34K) and New York (33K).
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Unemployment rate decreased in 34 states and rose in 6, though national rate went up from 9.7 to 9.9. The states with the worst unemployment rates, not surprisingly, are Michigan (14%), Nevada (13.7%) and California (12.6%).
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Yesterday, it was reported that in my own backyard of New York City, the rate dropped below 10%.r

It would be encouraging if a significant part of the unemployment rise comes from people re-entering the job hunt. Not so if they still fail to find work. Michael, any more links or thoughts on this?

Ferguson suggests that the financial industry has become a criminal class insulated from society, where profit justifies everything and morality and ethics, not to mention basic human decency, are totally irrelevant. Gaining remarkable access to a wide range of financial insiders, experts and academics, he builds a persuasive case that by conquering Washington with piles of campaign money and conquering the economics discipline with free-market ideology (and more piles of money), the financial industry built a fortress of deregulation that allowed it to plunder the peasantry with no control or oversight.

http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/cannes_film_festival/index.html?story=/ent/movies/film_salon/2010/05/19/cannes_ferguson

“Oh, and I have an idea. Congress should pass a bill to fund basic science research. Or maybe provide loan guarantees to small businesses developing new technologies.”
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No, No Art can’t have that! That would be Un-American for a Dem. Administration to do.

If a large rock hits the earth there might be a reason why assets should suddenly lose value in an instant. Until then it’s overreaction to a possible overreaction of an overreaction.
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To have rich folk who will never want for food in their lives standing with one finger on the “sell” button and one on the trigger of the gun at their temple watching the ticker to see if Greece joins Atlantis and all their paper value evaporates until tomorrow’s stock session…
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I don’t think I’ll worry. They make up new rules and a new game and won’t lose a dime.

Scherer, you’re not a business writer so will just point out a few things:
1) You don’t look at the one-off claims number to mean anything. That’s why there is a 4-week moving average, which only ticked up nominally. Current initial jobless claims are still 25% below what they were a year ago, and economists are increasingly saying that we’ve seen the bottom in the jobs market. (Of course, that trend could still change but not because of just today’s one number.)
2) There are several major differences with Japan’s “lost decade” mostly because we studied it and hopefully avoided their biggest pitfalls. It’s also why Bernanke still has a job — he once vowed to head off deflation by dropping bushels of dollars from a helicopter. He essentially did it.
3) Nouriel Roubini is mostly in the business of Nouriel Roubini, and getting co-ed tail. I take him about as seriously as Jim Cramer, but YMMV. He’s stating the obvious: world-wide economic conditions are difficult. Lots can go wrong. Be careful. Duh.

Hmmm. Looks like the stimulus was too small, after all. Go figure.

What part of “Its the economy, stupid?” did Obama not understand?

Could we have some more of that “hopey-changey” stuff? I am positive with a few more TRILLION dollars thrown at all of this we can come out smelling like Communist!! Look at Russia, they did it. You don’t hear anything about how bad Russia’s economy is do you?

Perhaps all those Republicans who required more tax cuts and then didn’t vote for it anyway were part of the problem and more influential than all the economists who said that a larger stimulus was needed. After all if you listen to the Repubs, the stumulus was a horrible mistake. Another one of the we report the statements given to us, you decide thingys.

I agree with your first statement.
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Your implication that Obama doesn’t understand its about the economy is way off base, however. Obama wanted a larger stim. It was a minority of lawmakers, from both parties, that gave us the stimulus we got. Obama settled for what he could get and it was better than nothing. Perhaps he can get us another.

Right you are newfreek. They finally realized that tanks and missiles don’t sell well at the local Wal-Martski so now they have Libertarians… I mean Russian Mafia… I mean Libertarians… conducting free markets with no interference from government at all. Hope your dream is a reality freek ol’boy.

Uhm … you know they haven’t spent all the money from the first stimulus yet, right? In fact, most of the agencies with allocations still have, on average, about 2/3 of the money left.
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From ProPublica:
“Stimulus spending has reached roughly $378 billion, according to the latest numbers from Recovery.gov, released on April 9, 2010. That number includes $215 billion in spending and an estimated $163 billion in tax cuts. The tax-cut figure was recently adjusted upward by the Office of Tax Analysis. In total, over 47 percent of the roughly $800 billion stimulus package has entered the economy.”
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Here’s a handy dandy chart:
http://projects.propublica.org/tables/stimulus-spending-progress

Please. Obama got EXACTLY the stimulus bill that he wanted.
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He’s the Goldilocks President. If liberal economists’ proposal of $1.3T in spending was “too big” and Republicans’ proposal to just have some targeted tax cuts was “too small” then $700B of mixed spending and tax cuts must be “just right.”
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As IVY noted, Republicans weren’t going to vote for it anyway and Democrats had the votes to pass whatever they wanted. If Obama’s solution has been too little, too late it is nobody’s fault but his own.
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I can’t tell you how disappointed I am in Obama’s failure to address problems based upon intelligent policy analysis rather than short-term political calculation.

porkdumpling: One of the reasons that a larger stimulus package was proposed was precisely because not all of the spending would — or should — occur immediately.
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Any intelligent stimulus package should have been comprised of three general categories: (1) Immediate “shovel-ready” spending that could jump-start the economy and provide jobs, (2) medium-term spending on projects that require more approval and review, and (3) long-term investment in new technologies and industries.
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The stimulus package that passed DID include spending in all three of these categories. However, it should be obvious that if a significant percentage of the spending was not even intended to be spent in the first 12-24 months, that the truly “stimulative” portion was only a fraction of the total package.

@artpepper: Hey, Art, was your post about funding a science bill sarcasm? (Can’t tell tone sometimes around here.)
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You know that the GOP killed that science research bill last week by attaching that porn rider onto it? There was a post on Swamp but it’s easier to search TPM:
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/05/gop-kills-science-jobs-bill-by-forcing-dems-to-vote-for-porn.php
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If that’s what you were referring to, then nevermind this post. And good one.

Rusty, one of the few areas where economists of stripes agree is that, during recessions, when private sector spending declines, it is absolutely necessary to increase government spending to compensate.
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As the saying goes, “We are all Keynesians now.”
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Since your post suggests that increased government spending is not a proper tool for recessionary economies, perhaps you could enlighten us as to what you base that belief upon.

“Nouriel Roubini is mostly in the business of Nouriel Roubini, and getting co-ed tail. I take him about as seriously as Jim Cramer, but YMMV…”
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Nouriel Roubini predicted, almost exactly, what has happened over the past two years while Jim Cramer was doing his irrational exuberance shtick and the geniuses who are currently running Wall Street and the US Treasury were whistling past the graveyard.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/17/magazine/17pessimist-t.html

porkdumpling: Exactly. I actually embedded a link in my comment, but WordPress made it invisible:
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37237288/ns/politics/
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“House GOP stops major science, technology bill
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Funding would have promoted education, as well as new technologies”
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I’ve moved from irony through sarcasm to full-on bitterness. It’s perhaps not entirely healthy.

Uh, square, don’t know what your day job is, but I don’t need you to explain economic stimulus to me. You seem to have swallowed zechman’s Third Way hooey wholesale, which is your brainwashed prerogative, but you have no idea how pushing close to a trillion dollars out the door in “shovel-ready” projects is hard to do in real life.
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Feel free to be disappointed in Obama, doesn’t concern me. But in economic terms, I can say you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, any more than newfreedomblog, who insists that the sky is green and we’re all communists. Just saying.
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There is no one, no one who knew with exactitude what the size of the stimulus should be, and still no one knows. The bigger, smaller bs is just dart board. But guess what? Our economy is growing, the numbers look pretty good. The dangers of double-dip are real, but those triggers are mostly external to our borders. I cull through these numbers every single frigging day. If anything, the stimulus may have been too big, but it’s too early to tell, and still NO ONE KNOWS for sure, including Nobel winning economists. So please, save your pronouncements.

Shepard, believe what you will.

porkdumpling: I’m not the one spewing bullsh!t on this thread.

WDCD? (what did Clinton do?)
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Slight tax increase on the richest Americans less than a year in office…
= economic good times for eight years
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Why haven’t we tried that yet?

Why haven’t we tried that yet?”
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Because in the ensuing 17 years the richest Americans completed their takeover of the both political parties and the US government?

More specifically, Clarence Thomas and his buds voted for Blush

OMG!!! You want to let the Bush tax cuts expire???
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That would be a tax increase – never mind that it still wouldn’t take it back to Reagan levels, but…
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Really, that just won’t do.

“For the past few months, much commentary on the economy — some of it posing as reporting — has had one central theme: policy makers are doing too much …But the truth is that policy makers aren’t doing too much; they’re doing too little.”
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This how I saw the stimulus package: too small.
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With the dramatic decrease in hosing values, Americans, in a highly atypical situation, refused to spend.
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A stimulus package taking that into account should have been far larger.
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With, apparently only one third of $ 564B spent or $188B plus the $236B unemployment relief spent (a total of $418B) created half a million jobs, then it is simple math that we should have spent close to eight times that much to really get the economy moving.
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In either case, clearly nothing is more destructive than the right wing ignoring eighty years of economic data for ideology.

It isn’t a matter of knowing “with exactitude” how big a stimulus we should have — a strawman argument if there ever was one — it is about making an informed analysis. Some economists thought that the stimulus should be in the $1-1.3T range. Others thought that it should be smaller. Obama sided with those who thought it should be smaller. Not because he had to. But because that was the amount that he felt was appropriate.
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Now unemployment is touching 10% and we are looking at double dip recession. You are entitled to your views. But I find the suggestion that the stimulus may have been too big to be laughable.
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It is also a strawman argument to imply that only spending on “shovel-ready” projects stimulates the economy immediately. Not so. Developing and reviewing non shovel-ready projects costs money right now.
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In addition to the cuts in private sector spending that have occurred, all 50 states are imposing, often draconian, spending cuts. Leaving aside whether you want to spend federal tax revenues on funding the states’ educational, welfare, transit, and road construction needs, it would be trivial to do so to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.

Since your post suggests that increased government spending is not a proper tool for recessionary economies, perhaps you could enlighten us as to what you base that belief upon.
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Huffing spray paint, listening to Glenn Beck … the usual.

Your comment about “Zechman’s Third Way hooey” is also bizarre.
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Stuart Zechman isn’t engaging in crazy conspiracy theories. He is noting that the Democratic party contains two general factions that have fundamental differences in governance ideology: Liberals and Third-Way Centrists. This isn’t a secret. The New Democrats and the DLC have only been writing about how they depart from traditional liberals for about 20 years. You might want to check it out.

Pork,
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Given references that you’re in the industry, what’s your take on this?
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“Ferguson suggests that the financial industry has become a criminal class insulated from society, where profit justifies everything and morality and ethics, not to mention basic human decency, are totally irrelevant. Gaining remarkable access to a wide range of financial insiders, experts and academics, he builds a persuasive case that by conquering Washington with piles of campaign money and conquering the economics discipline with free-market ideology (and more piles of money), the financial industry built a fortress of deregulation that allowed it to plunder the peasantry with no control or oversight.”
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http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/cannes_film_festival/index.html?story=/ent/movies/film_salon/2010/05/19/cannes_ferguson
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Are we simply peasant-populists lacking a real world grasp of your industry? Is Obama’s penchant for working within this incestuous template innocuous? The financial reform bill, is IYO, a fine piece of legislation? Enlighten us.
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And, as Square notes, do you honestly deny (calling it 3rd way hooey or nay) that the democratic party is by and large in thrall to corporations? I dunno mate, maybe you’ve been inside the bubble so long that you’ve lost sight of the fact that most Americans who see you and yours as parasites.

Rusty:
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You know, it was sunny today here. That proves that global warming won’t happen!
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Happy consuming…

If you want to reduce a wingnut to squirming while babbling incoherently — ask him why Bush chose to have his tax cuts expire in the first place.

And no analysis of America’s cratering economic empire is complete without acknowledging lunacy like this:

“According to the latest figures from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the United States accounts for 42% of total global military spending, more than exceeding the combined spending of the next 15 most powerful countries. The United States and its allies now account for two-thirds of total world military expenditures.”

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175250/tomgram%3A_christopher_hellman%2C_is_the_pentagon_finally_overmatched/#more

The news is so predictable these days. It is bad news, then some good, then hysteria, then confusion, then more bad news, then Glenn Beck screams and Michael Steele Raps and sings some Hip Hop tunes

This is Oh so so predictable. Crickey.

See Saw News

LM
http://bestrongbehappy.wordpress.com/2010/05/10/hello-female-victims-yeah-the-bogey-man-is-coming-for-you/

That was weird…

If we put one tenth of that into, so called, shovel ready jobs, we would be out of this recession.
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Of course two wars, including the extra war we should not have been in, does make a cut of one tenth difficult.

Shovel-Ready, Already
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Atrios sez:

Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Jobs
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As Mike Lux says, people are pissed because the economy sucks. I’m personally a bit tired of hearing about all of the problems with shoveling money out the door. It isn’t that hard.
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My local transit authority has had to cancel most of its on the shelf capital projects due to failure to receive planned revenue from tolling a highway. Those projects are basically shovel ready. They were scheduled. They aren’t happening.
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I bring this up because it’s what I know, not because I think my local transit authority is the most important thing in the world. Fix some bridges, fix some sewers, fix some train tracks.
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Just do it.

Heck of a stimulus, FDR would’ve been real proud.

…or the center demanding that we reduce our efforts to help our country in order to get zero Republicans to vote for it, or they won’t vote for it, either.

So much for the worth of middle-way technocrats who can “make the trains run on time”. Our elites are as valueless in their policies as they are in their politics.

Firstly, Wong, 7 hours later, I realize I pasted the same chunk about Inside Job (in response to Robert Rubin’s bastard son). I’d guess Digby was your portal too. I’ll probably be able to see it here sometime in 2014.
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As for infrastructure/trains that run on time, it was surreal to see Ray LaHood pop up on my evening news a few weeks back raving about his ride aboard Japanese bullet/maglev trains. I’m used to seeing the leaders of developing nations visit, but I suppose this is what happens when a gov’t embraces its inner banana republic for a few decades.

You know what sucks about this Rand-Paul-a-looza trainwreck? Our discourse could benefit greatly from one libertarian injection: their foreign policy/nonintervention stance. Though I’m uncertain if he shares his father’s radical views. Given that the DFH peackniks will always be outliers, it’d have been nice if a slightly more agile libertarian had garnered all this attn., thereby jolting our banal conversation.
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But as Tristero said: “The only good ideas in libertarianism are those that are already part and parcel of liberalism.”

Oh noez. It couldn’t be that they were passed with the horrible, dreaded, un-American reconciliation, could it?

You may want to look at Nate Silvers latest rating of polling company’s for accuracy. I know how convienent it is for Liberals to bad mouth Rasmussen Polls.
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Nate Silver who admits he is Left leaning, is probably the best Poll analysis in the country.
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According to Silvers current analysis, Rasmussen is the third most accurate poll out of the top 23 organizations with a 1.30% pollster induced error.
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http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/search/label/pollster%20ratings
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Before you make more ignorant comments, you should check out the facts.
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What Silvers has said about Rasmussen, is that he believes some of their polling techniques show a “House Effect” that show better results for republicans.
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It is the methology he is talking about not any bias. Silver does not say Rasmussen results are wrong. He is just stating the differents in polling result compared to some other companies.
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In 2008 Silver said Rasmussen was the most accurate Political Polling organization and if he were to go to a desert island and could take only one polling company, it would be Rasmussen. Not a bad recommendation for a person who will admit they are left leaning in their political views.

All of the above posts except Newfreedoms illustrate how little Swampland Liberals understand the real world of economics. You hang on to Socialist ideas of how to govern and create jobs which have only shown failure were ever it has been tried. One only has to look at Europe with all their dysfunctional countries and see that Socialism doesn’t work.
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None of you Liberals have any understanding of the economic realities on how to create jobs.
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Patrick will write volumes about economic theory but has no real understanding of practical application in the real world. He is young and idealistic and lives in the Liberal bubble of New York City which is not a part of the real world.
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You Liberals like to talk about economics but your ideas will not create significant jobs except for those in government which in the long run do nothing but make our economy worse.
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If you would stop being so anti-business and realize that our free enterprise system has created and provided more good jobs than have been achieved in any other major country. Your socialist utopia doesn’t work. Look around you at the rest of the world.

Big business always Wins! Guess who is running for Florida Governor?
In 1987 Richard L. Scott (aka Rick Scott) founded Columbia Hospital Corporation. He became it’s CEO. The Corporation became Columbia HCA after merging with Hosptal Corporation of America. In the mid 1990s the Corporation was charged with and Pled guilty to Medicade, Medicare and insurance fraud.
A question: Does this make Scott a felon? If so, how can he be elected Florida Governor?
Crime Pays?

Have you ever been to Europe?
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I’m wondering what it is you think is so terrible about it.

“…if he were to go to a desert island and could take only one polling company, it would be Rasmussen.”
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How would they conduct polls if they are stuck on desert Island?
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I’m not sure now, but a few years ago, if I were on a desert Island I would have wanted to take Salma Hayek.

How would they conduct polls if they are stuck on desert Island?

==

Patrickturd being deliberately dense or genuinely stupid? Why chose undoutedly both.

Maybe the garden gnome (Krugman) could ask Jimmy Carter about inflation. Wouldn’t 15% interest rates do us wonder with $1.2 trillion in government bonds to be sold.

I think 3xfire3 is conflicted.
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Either way, my state’s unemployment rate dropped to 9.2%.
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That’s Washington state, if anyone wants to look it up.

“With, apparently only one third of $ 564B spent or $188B plus the $236B unemployment relief spent (a total of $418B) created half a million jobs, then it is simple math that we should have spent close to eight times that much to really get the economy moving.”
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The math is not simpe it is you. Let’s just use the $188B in “stimulus” money to create 500,000 jobs. That works out to $386,000 per job!

Once again at best the government is an expensive inefficent middle man led by nonsensical liberal fantasies of what it will accomplish. They could have paid $100,000 direclty to the unemployed and saved the rest. But that would eliminate the bulk of useless government jobs that were created of that 500,000.

“You hang on to Socialist ideas of how to govern and create jobs which have only shown failure were ever it has been tried.”
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3X,
I find abuse of the English language for political purposes very irritating.
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I don’t call the Tea Party Fascist. Fascists are far, far further to the right than the Tea Party, hold deeply inside of their ideology absolute racism and don’t dress as dorky as the Tea Party dressing like Ben Franklin. (If you want to find a liberal founding father… Ben Franklin, by today’s standards, would have been considered a communist to you).
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First things first, Keynes himself as well Keynesian economists have as much appreciation of honestly earned profits as you do. Keynesians are, unquestionably both capitalist and mainstream economics of the past 75 years.
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So, putting it into English, you statement should read,
“You hang mainstream modern economic ideas of how to govern and create jobs which have only shown failure were ever it has been tried.”
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Also, starting with the Great Depression, it has always created good results. Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford used the building of interstate highways as a stimulus package.
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So, to correct the historically false statement at the end you should be saying this:
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“You hang mainstream modern economic ideas of how to govern and create jobs which have shown success were ever it has been tried.”
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“One only has to look at Europe with all their dysfunctional countries and see that Socialism doesn’t work.”
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All or Europe? No, just the problem of the PIGS under the same currency as the powerhouses such as Germany, France and Italy. (PIGS: Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain.) The remainder of the countries are doing well.
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Sharing a common currency is the problem and sharing a common currency is neither Capitalist nor Socialist in nature.
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“One only has to look at the so-called PIGS of the EEC and see that sharing a common currency doesn’t work.”
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Unfortunately, this statement would be unrelated to anything the US is doing.
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“None of you Liberals have any understanding of the economic realities on how to create jobs.”
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We’ll have to talk to people like George Soros and the founders of Google to see if that is true.
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Let’s be fair and say business skill and ideology are no correlated.
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“Patrick will write volumes about economic theory but has no real understanding of practical application in the real world. He is young and idealistic and lives in the Liberal bubble of New York City which is not a part of the real world.”
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What I write is undergraduate facts, not the most advanced things.
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I work in the “real world” with small to mid sized businesses.
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“New York City which is not a part of the real world.”
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New York City is the financial capital of the United States.
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“He is young and idealistic..”
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At age 39, I call myself middle aged.
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So, let’s get this statement accurate:
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“Patrick writes volumes about undergraduate economics and works with small to mid sized businesses all of the time. He is middle aged. He lives in the financial capital of the Unites States rather than out in one of the more financially depressed Red States.”

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You hang mainstream modern economic ideas of how to govern and create jobs which have shown success where ever it has been tried.
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Patrick writes volumes about undergraduate economics and works with small to mid sized businesses all of the time.
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He is middle aged. He lives in the financial capital of the Unites States rather than out in the bubble of one of the more financially depressed Red States.
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The US is nothing like Greece. One only has to look at the so-called PIGS of the EEC and see that sharing a common currency doesn’t work.
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Combining facts about me, the EEC, reasonable and fair definitions of ideology and a reasonable and fair definition of NYC as well as one spelling correction (where rather than were), this is what your statement would look like.

“At age 39, I call myself middle aged.”
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Wait just one second here, patrick! If that makes you middle aged, that makes me a paleontologists’ crowning discovery! I’m not sure I want to accept that.
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Aside from that, 3xfire3 et al mixes their metaphors vigorously…

“They could have paid $100,000 direclty to the unemployed and saved the rest. But that would eliminate the bulk of useless government jobs that were created of that 500,000.”
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That is, actually, the most leftist and anti-capitalist statement I have seen in the Swamp except for the one person who said that he is a Marxist Leninist and, therefore, found Obama far, far too far to the right.
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Imagine a building falling in slow motion.
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It is not visible, but, judging from experience, it is likely that, instead of making new jobs, the stimulus package saved jobs from being lost plus created 500K more.
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Mathematically, these “shovel ready” jobs had tiny, if any capital investment or training needed. So, although not 100%, very close to it going towards paying people to work.
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They were, unlike when the highway system building was used as a stimulus package by Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford, jobs picked by local governments rather than the federal government.
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So, it is obvious that this system was not expensive in it’s own right.
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Economics, although technically an exact science due to all of it’s answers being numerical, is difficult since, unlike chemistry where you can repeat the results, economists can’t. You can’t rewind the clock and go forward again and come back to today and say, “See, with no stimulus money we have 19% unemployment.”
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It is very hard to say exactly what would have been.

Maybe I am just self deprecating since, at a 42 inch waste I call myself very chubby, too.
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I don’t mind young, slim and handsome, though (especially from a woman I might see in real life – not so much this online stuff).
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I’ve got a great-Uncle who is 96 who would call you “a kid” 53_3.
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It is age is relative.
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Chris Rock on turning 40 (my best recollection of the interview):
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“When your 40, there are only two reasons people would call you young: if you die, or if you get married to Share.”
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40 is in 2011 for me.

“married to Share.”
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Intentional or not that was pretty funny.

“Your socialist utopia doesn’t work. Look around you at the rest of the world.”
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Okay, let’s look around the US.
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We have Canada and the EEC countries with much more government than we have all doing very well and we have third world countries with far, far less government (almost always, lacking sufficient police forces as well) who are far, far, far poorer than the US.
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So, it is clear that there is balance and we are on the small, small, small government end of that spectrum and may become more third-world like.
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I do not know anybody who is Utopian.
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Liberal stems from the verb “to liberate” and Progressive comes from the word “progress”.
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To free ourselves as much as possible from market failures and make progress for an improved society is all we seek, no expectation or even common common definition of “perfection” for Utopia.
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This, not Utopian ideals of dead or dying ideologies is the route of Liberal/Progressive thought:
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“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence,[1] promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
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The conservative version would replace the words “People” and put in “corporations”, remove the words “more perfect” and “general welfare” for “more free market oriented” and “profitable”.
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Hence, here is what the preamble would look like if we were founded by libertarians or conservatives.
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“We the corporations of the United States, in Order to form a more profitable Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence,[1] promote the more market oriented, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
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Fortunately, our founding fathers were liberals.

Chris Rock is great!

Hell, I am a kid to a 96 year old uncle. I’m two generations behind.
.
In re the economy, though, I think that we will just have to let the wheels turn. Freeinpa, 3xfire3, and Rusty are three of a kind and are not what you would call great intellects. I would rank them in order of intelligence:
.
1. Rusty
2. 3xfire3
3. freeinpa
.
Sorry to say, but the reason why freeinpa is not only third in the mad dash to this particular finish line is that he never even attempts to address the debate at hand. He’s a smash and dash debater. His intent is to a make someone angry.
.
Rusty does have some good points from time to time, when taken in isolation. He knows who he is even though he never admits it (except once, a couple days ago). He knows he’s propagandizing. He does have a pathological problem which is only rarely seen. A few of us oldsters here have seen this.
.
3xfire3, though he also addresses the debate at hand, is pathologically unable to discern the difference between opinion and reality. To him, opinion, no matter if it is rooted in reality or not, is the currency. Unfortunately for him, he seems unable to realize that the voicing of his opinions can be insulting.
.
Just my three cents on this particular “triad”…

“40 is in 2011 for me.”
.
So what you’re really saying is that that will be your personal “2012″, right?

Ummmmm, you do know military spending creates and saves jobs as well, don’t you?

xx,
.
“Ummmmm, you do know military spending creates and saves jobs as well, don’t you.”
.
Yes, but far less efficiently if and only if 100% of those expenditures exist in the US. We send payroll around the world to our bases around the world and, under many circumstances, hire (usually for small tasks) local contractors outside of the US. Money spent outside of the US increases our allies’ economy, not our own.
.
For domestic military expenditures, labor is a small, small portion of the expense and, therefore, a small percent goes to increasing consumer spending.
.
Also, most industrial jobs creating military goods are of a higher wage and highly specialized. The poorer the person who receives more income, the larger percent of the money goes into consumer spending.
.
So, yes, you are correct, but, it is far, far less efficient than “shovel ready” public works.

Yep, my 2012 is 2011.
.
And I agree with your assessment of 3X.
.
He has blinders on. He is in his own worldview where unions are there to take away business money and not to stay at their job for a lifetime and, by doing so, dramatically increase per worker productivity; taxes are for making him less wealthy, not to pay for needed services; poverty is created by the desire for welfare rather than desire for tiny welfare benefits being caused by poverty; and racism is caused by liberals pointing out racism, but not there if you ignore it.
.
He truly seems to want to be a great guy.
.
Rusty… I don’t think he has any ambition to be good to anybody.
.
Freeinpa has no idea what the difference is between disagreeing and insulting are – totally clueless.

He is young and idealistic and lives in the Liberal bubble of New York City which is not a part of the real world.
.
So, you may or may not remember this, but New York City is actually where most of 9/11 took place.
.
Seeing as how the nation is not allowed to get over 9/11 (it was the central plank of Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign platform, after all) it is extremely weird to see a terrorist-obsessed conservative discount NYC.

Before you make more ignorant comments, you should check out the facts.
.
How about the fact that Nate Silver wrote that in May 2008 — two years ago — and in the interim, Rasmussen has changed its polling model and become an incredible outlier? Facts like that?

One only has to look at Europe with all their dysfunctional countries and see that Socialism doesn’t work.
.
According to the CIA World Fact Book, in 2009 the European Union had a GDP of 16.18 trillion dollars. The US had a GDP of 14.43 trillion dollars.
.
If you want to break it down by nation, the US has the largest GDP, while Germany, France, the UK and Italy were ranked 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th.
.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)
.
If you want to look at it by per capita, Norway, Iceland, Sweden, Denmark, the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands and Germany were all in the top 20 in 2009, with Norway at #3.
.
The US was #6.
.
So it looks like Europe is doing just fine, and I’m sure I’m not the only commenter here who would appreciate it if you did some basic research before opening your fat gob about a subject you don’t understand.

Here’s the link to the per capita information:
.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita

“Ummmmm, you do know military spending creates and saves jobs as well, don’t you?”
.
Along with a strong temptation, provocation and/or pretext for tragic and expensive wars (as patrick suggests, in addition to half a $trillion a year for the basics, we’ve just committed another couple $trillion more of unfunded, expensive debt for this particular jobs program, with no end in sight). This is quite unlike better national infrastructure or a better education system which pays long-term dividends to the country.

“At age 39, I call myself middle aged.”
.
I think 53_3 and I are middle aged. If I’m not mistaken he has about a year on me. If you can’t walk into a pharmacy and head straight to the aisle that has heat/pain patches without looking, you’re still young. I have a 34″ waist btw and I’m 6’3″.

The ad at the top pf my page reads:
“Big government wants you to stop Using your Credit and Debit cards. Tell Congress to stay out of my wallet.”
I’m not willing to click through but one wonders who it is who wants to keep their hand in your pants INSTEAD of Congress.

No doubt some entiity that thinks that charging 22%-250% APR isn’t a crime

Damn sacred! I thought that I was fat, bald and white!
.
The thought just crossed my mind that with your MIL problems, it’s possible that you could be eating benazopril like candy to keep the old bp* down.
.
Then I remembered that you said you were one of the most laid back guys there is. Then this thought promptly elbowed that one int the stomach and shoved it aside:
.
We might not be just talking about personality quirks, instead, we might be talking about survival strategies.
.
*No, I’m not talking about British Petroleum. No siree! That is an entirely different kettle of very, very dead fish…

None of you Liberals on this site know anything about Job Creation. You think somehow big government can create jobs.
.
What you fail to understand is that 90% of job creation is done by small private businesses not government.
.
I suspect we could count on one hand all the jobs that have been created by all of the great Liberal minds that post on Swampland.
.
As a young man I took the personal risks to start my own business. I started with 2 employees. When I retired I had 65 employees. My company was a technology company that employed over 20 engineers.
.
I know first hand about real job creation. Something that all you Liberals know nothing about. All you can say is business is evil. Let’s redistribute their wealth. Government can do everything better. 90% of the major programs that government tries to manage are either near bankrupt or continue to lose large amounts of money ever year.
.
Then some nut says Europe is doing well. Apparently they don’t read the news. Europe is a basket case. Their Democratic Socialist systems are in near total melt down.

“Ummmmm, you do know military spending creates and saves jobs as well, don’t you?”
.
Oh, I see, it’s just another corporation for us to revere. By all means, then, let’s seek out some enemies, start an asinine, neverending war that merely shape-shifts from one theatre to another, and keep that economic gravy train rolling.
.
You know the difference between the MIC and the WPA or CCC, relics of a nation that once dared to contemplate liberal solutions to huge national challenges? These job providing programs didn’t lead to the useless slaughter of 10s of 1000s of innocent people. Sadly, even among liberals, the waste of treasure is far more important than this far greater obscenity of war. Additionally, the New Deal left a tangible legacy all over the country. It enriched not the captains of industry but the average Joes you flag-waving f@ckers ostensibly give a sh!t about.
.
But hey, as long as the war profiteers are happy & poor kids in the hinterlands have another option besides Walmart, it’s all good. The excellent thing for folks like you, is that Obama is no less inclined to feed this insatiable beast. War, not just the foundation of our empire but our economy.

Paging SZ! This piece in The Progressive obviously made me think of you:

http://www.progressive.org/print/139701

Here is Tristero’s response, which made me think of the Wonger:

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/chip-berlet-on-tea-party-by-tristero.html

Do you mean Greece? Because I know that Greece is in a ton of financial trouble. Do you have any evidence to show that Greece is going to bring the rest of the EU down?
.
As for your anecdotal evidence, what can I say? I assume you’re lying about it, flat out.
.
I’ve got no reason to believe an anonymous commenter like you when you start talking up your own exploits.

Cliff,
.
If you would read a little bit about world news you would know that half of Europe is already in major financial trouble and the other half is not far behind.
.
Do a little reading. You might find it enlightening.
.
If you and Patrick wish to not believe in my life experiences, I could care less. You are the ones who lose information that might make you a little wiser. That’s your problem.

“What you fail to understand is that 90% of job creation is done by small private businesses not government.”
.
So, then, why did Obama propose a tax incentive for small, private businesses to hire more people?
.
Do you understand that “stimulating” the economy, also known as “priming the pump” is done to get, originally, government employees to take those paychecks and spend them at small, private businesses to the point where those small, private businesses both need more employees to take care of all of these customers and have the money to do so due to having so much business?
.
“As a young man I took the personal risks to start my own business. I started with 2 employees. When I retired I had 65 employees.”
.
I owned a taxi when I was twenty four years old in Boston and had two people working for me. You didn’t do anything entrepreneurial until you were 36 years old, had college and graduate school behind you.
.
“My company was a technology company that employed over 20 engineers.”
.
You still won’t tell us what the name of this company founded in 1974 is.
.
“I know first hand about real job creation. Something that all you Liberals know nothing about.”
.
Don’t be ridiculous! A huge portion of entrepreneurs are liberal!
.
” All you can say is business is evil.”
.
Sorry, 3X, nobody here said that. You must have been reading the communist manifesto between entries since that is not anybody on Swampland.
.
” Let’s redistribute their wealth.”
.
No, it is “let’s prime the pump” as has been government policy since 1930.
.
3X, you do not read other people’s posts or you have incredibly bad reading comprehension if you see any of those things.
.
The only “wealth distribution” even contemplated other than existing welfare for the disabled is to provide more health care for the WORKING poor.
.
Since you tell us that you are the student, please write on the blackboard one hundred times “liberals love honest businesses”.

3X,
.
You claim you are here to learn about what liberals think.
.
Excellent!.
.
Now, look through as much as you can of this blog going back as far as you can to look for anybody saying that “business is bad”.
.
While you’re there, look for “let’s redistribute the wealth.”.
.
You will find that people will dislike several companies like Enron, Haliburton and Goldman Sachs for different reasons. Two of those three companies have members either in jail or likely to go to jail for their activities and sent there, in many cases, by conservative prosecutors.
.
Stop reading the communist manifesto and using your imagination to believe that health care reform is some secret code for going into your house and stealing your private property or nationalizing your business.
.
Look as far back as you can.
.
It just isn’t anywhere in here. It is exclusively in your own imagination.
.
With an imagination like yours, 3X, as much money as you made in business, you would have likely quadrupled that much as a fiction writer with evil domestic bad guys taking over the government and conquering everything.
.
It would make tens of millions in the box office, but, as fiction.
.
As fact, you are so off base it is hard to believe that you read anybody’s post here even once.

Here 3xfire3. I just wanted to wish you a very happy, strung out, and pathological Thanksgiving:
.

I noticed your company peaked above the EEOC floor, 3xfie3.
.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Rand Paul is your type of man, too. Nothing worse than having the Big Bad Guvmint tell you you gotta hire those welfare-cheating handout-grubbing…

“You are the ones who lose information that might make you a little wiser.”
.
No, you are utterly and completely wrong, 3xfire3.
.
You have an opinion, not information…

53_3: I hit the big double nickel next month. I’m fortunate to have a sky high metabolism. It doesn’t matter what I eat or how much. My weight stays the same. I’ve been at 185 pounds for the last quarter of a century. I can eat a grape or a half of a pie for dessert, it doesn’t matter (my wife could kill me sometimes when she has to take a little sliver of something and I throw the rest on my plate). My hair is still thick but it does have that salt and pepper thing going on.
.
I do take blood pressure medication though. I started a year after the MIL moved in. Coincidence? I think not. Here’s a quick story from two days ago. I went out to cut the grass after I put a load of clothes in the dryer. I came back in and she had taken my wet clothes out of the dryer, laid them on my dry, folded clothes and put hers in. I was washing the dishes and she walked by to go out with a friend for dinner. They were running late and the friend was outside honking her horn. I sprayed the MIL in the crotch with the dish hose as she walked by, forced her out the door and locked it. Fun times at the old homestead.

It’s rained here almost all day and no new threads. This is inter-tube hell.

“Patrick writes volumes about undergraduate economics and works with small to mid sized businesses all of the time.”
==

Patrick writes volumes about undergraduate economics is correct. KNowing naything about economics is something you will never be accused.

“You have an opinion, not information”

Says the man who has his own facts, throws up his hands and declars himself brilliant. Usually after his obligatory tirade of name calling and race baiting

“but the reason why freeinpa is not only third in the mad dash to this particular finish line is that he never even attempts to address the debate at hand. He’s a smash and dash debater. His intent is to a make someone angry.”

I am crushed to be only ranked third by one of the dumbest things to walk upright or do I make to big an assumption– that you walk upright. There is no debating you. You have you own set of facts that you repeat incessantly which i term convinces you they are true. You never confront any issue except to deride soem conservative, vent some mindless bile which is amusing only to you and when cornered you head straight to the race card which is amusing because you are one of teh biggest racists I have encountered.

“You know, it was sunny today here. That proves that global warming won’t happen”

==
One of your never ending examples of how you respond in a post that doesn’t address the debaye which you acccuse me of doing. This gem was in a thread on stimulus.

But go ahead declare your self brilliant and head back to mom’s basement

“That is, actually, the most leftist and anti-capitalist statement I have seen in the Swamp except for the one person who said that he is a Marxist Leninist and, therefore, found Obama far, far too far to the right”

==
Well you answered my question as to whether your are being obtuse or genuininely stupid. Stupid it is!

I was pointing out what a waste the stimulus was and it used an absurd comaprison to just hand out checks. But somehow you declared that leftist or anti-capitalist. This comes from someone who wants nationalized HC, unions controlled industries and regulations on what people eat (but hey you will let illegals wonder freely.

You are as dump as I have seen

Freeinpa has no idea what the difference is between disagreeing and insulting are – totally clueless.

==
Another wrong assumption — what is that 300-400 this week alone. I know perfectly well the difference. The reality is I have no respect for you or IQ53, the dum and dumber of the loiberal blog set.

I’m guessing it’s raining there too?

“One of your never ending examples of how you respond in a post that doesn’t address the debaye which you acccuse me of doing. This gem was in a thread on stimulus.
.
But go ahead declare your self brilliant and head back to mom’s basement”
.
Ummmmm.
.
freeinpa? You there? Um, do you know what planet this is?
.
freeinpa, that was a parody of your tactics!
.
You do know what parody is, don’t you?
.
Oh, hell. Never mind…

Just drooled on my keyboard sacred. Thanks. It’s not waterproof.
.
Laughter is the best medicine. You and the MIL must have one spectacular relationship. Beautiful comeback. I’m not really quick witted like that. I have to think mine out. I would have probably been one of those people who would have thought that one up after the opportunity passed.
.
Oh well, at least I can take solace in the fact that freeinpa is frothing at the mouth, as usual. He even said, just above my missive here, that he has no respect for me!
.
I’ll give you two guesses as to how long ago I knew that already. A hint:
.
It was not immediately after I read his comment…

Isn’t it a rather cramped, stuffy place with about 2.5 atmospheres of pressure and talc up the yingyang, stinking of neoprene, spinning all the time and noisy as hell?
.
As good a place as any for the devil to set up shop, I guess…

Its interesting that freeinpa always calls me a racist.
.
I wonder. Now, if I were a racist, then how come I don’t have problems with my relatives, friends, and other people in the Black community here.
.
Now, seriously, if they were to say something, I’d take notice…

sacred:
.
Actually, it is raining. We are currently the coldest chunk of the lower 48.
.
bleh…

” But somehow you declared that leftist or anti-capitalist. This comes from someone who wants nationalized HC, unions controlled industries and regulations on what people eat (but hey you will let illegals wonder freely.

You are as dump as I have seen.”
.
I was using your own language you Fascist, Communist, Satan worshiper Christian!
.
However, you were talking about paying people NOT TO work.
.
The stimulus package is about paying people TO work.
.
Better yet, they would spend their money at PRIVATE BUSINESSES. When those private businesses MAKE PROFITS and need more employees, that is when the economy gets stimulated.
.
There are two reasons for the stimulus package: jobs LOCAL and STATE government needs done and to get, in those same areas, people to spend money on PRIVATE BUSINESSES.
.
Paying them to stay home motivates people to ask to get laid off.

BTW: How “dump” are you?

“Another wrong assumption — what is that 300-400 this week alone. I know perfectly well the difference.”
.
I don’t know what significance there is to 300-400, but, if you need help with your math, the answer is 100.
.
So, how “dump” are you?

It didn’t come out: the answer is negative 100.

“..dum and dumber of the loiberal blog set.”
.
I guess you consider proof reading and making corrections a liberal idea and, therefore, are vehemently opposed to it.

It wonderful here in New York.
It’s one of those days where you can just open the window and let the fresh air in. No heat and no AC.
I just have an apartment in Queens, no yard.
So, no yard work.
Nothing came in from Netflix until this afternoon, and, not having a TV, either (I never had my own TV) I was bored and dying for a new post.
.
Instead Freeinpa can make rusty returns since Newfreedom isn’t even around to be irritating.
.
Not very interesting.
.
Maybe 3X will, eventually, learn the difference between liberals and Marxist, but, I bet you can’t teach that old dog any new tricks.
.
I am watching the 1998 HBO series From the Earth to the Moon.
.
Damn! People adored government back then. If Obama proposed any space missions the Tea Party would shoot him.
.
It’s too bad that that last proposal from Bush to send himself back to Mars never worked out.

“Patrickturd being deliberately dense or genuinely stupid?”
.
3X is mixing metaphors in a dumb way and you are calling me dense?

“Says the man who has his own facts, throws up his hands and declars himself brilliant. Usually after his obligatory tirade of name calling and race baiting.”
.
Listen, we are all union supporters here.
.
Creating facts is a right wing job description. We don’t cross that picket line.
.
Race baiting, like when you accuse all people who cross the border of being rapists?
.
Sorry, that is your job.
.
Tirade of name calling?
.
Listen, you really are an incredibly deluded person.
.
I take things you say and remind you of how nonsensical they are. Almost everybody on the liberal side provides links. 3X just brings up how he used be a CEO, etc, etc. You just take random news articles totally unrelated to the issues and post them.
.
You can look at facts and read them beginning to end with us.
.
You just come up with random sht and call it facts.

Patrick,
.
“Don’t be ridiculous! A huge portion of entrepreneurs are liberal!”
.
Patrick I’m sorry to be the one to inform you but you are totally nuts.
.
That is the dumbest comment I have ever heard a person make. You are totally out of touch with the real world.
.
I have dealt with thousands of entripreneurs over the years and almost none of them was a liberal. Making such a statement like you made is beyond ignorance. It show a near total void of any reality.
.
Where you come up with this kind of stuff is hard to understand.
.
Regarding some of your other equaly ignorant comments.
.
President Obama and many leading Democrats have said on many occasion that they are for Income Redistribution. For you to say their not for it makes no sense.
.
Then you say Liberals are not anti business. All you have to do is read Swampland and you will find tons of anti business comment made every day by Liberals.
.
Patrick, You appear to be an intelligent person. How can you come up with these obviously contradictory facts on almost a daily basis.
.
Your obviously false comments cause you to lose the credibility you might have as an intelligent but young and inexperienced person. I have 3 children that are older then you.
.
Are you now going to accuse me of lying about my children as you do about any other comments I make about myself?
.
Your comments accusing me of lying about my life experiences only illustrate your lack od maturity.

Also, it’s not like all the stimulus money goes directly to employees/workers. That’s like saying all the money allocated to enforce HCR will go directly to hiring 16500 IRS workers.
.
Much of that money is going to fund projects, meaning paying for raw materials in addition to the workers themselves. And don’t say that’s socialist. Were it “socialist,” the government would own the materials already…

If you would read a little bit about world news you would know that half of Europe is already in major financial trouble and the other half is not far behind.
.
No, see, I am asking for you to provide some evidence of this.
I know Greece is in trouble, I know there are concerns about its effect on the rest of Europe, but I haven’t seen anyone engaging in major freakouts about the end of Europe.
.
If you and Patrick wish to not believe in my life experiences, I could care less.
.
Then why are you offering these anecdotes as evidence for your stupid statements?
.
And who the f–k cares if you have kids?

“Patrick I’m sorry to be the one to inform you but you are totally nuts.
.
That is the dumbest comment I have ever heard a person make. You are totally out of touch with the real world.
.
I have dealt with thousands of entripreneurs over the years and almost none of them was a liberal.”
.
“If you and Patrick wish to not believe in my life experiences, I could care less.”
.
So, let me reconcile those two statements:
.
“Patrick I’m sorry to be the one to inform you but I have this overwhelming compulsion to call every person who disagrees with me is totally nuts.
.
You are totally out of touch with my view of the world.”
.
I can not find one – even one – study done showing the political affiliation of business owners.
.
Mike Bloomberg, entrepreneur billionaire and Mayor of New York is Liberal.
.
George Soros is a self made billionaire and liberal.
.
Warren Buffet Backs Obama For President.
.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/19/warren-buffet-backs-obama_n_102451.html
.
I can not find one article at all saying that there is one political affiliation over the other for entrepreneurs in the United States.
.
Movie studios, advertising firms, computer graphics companies, internet businesses are almost always owned by liberals. I am in contact with such people.
.
Just because with you being so right wing and not having somebody get in your face about how much they disagree with you at an entrepreneurs convention of some kind does not mean that, as soon as you walk out of the room that they are going to discuss voting for Democrats.
.
3X, your mind as closed as the vaults of the federal reserve.
.
“President Obama and many leading Democrats have said on many occasion that they are for Income Redistribution. For you to say their not for it makes no sense.”
.
Within extremely specific contexts of using tax payer money to pay the medical care of the working poor and, momentarily, through the stimulus package to jump start the very same businesses people you like you own.
.
“All you have to do is read Swampland and you will find tons of anti business comment made every day by Liberals.”
.
No. You will find people upset when Goldman Sachs breaks the law. You will find people upset when Enron cheated it’s investors. You will find people upset when BP’s accident put hundreds of SMALL, PRIVATE BUSINESSES in jeopardy due to their negligence. You will find objections to Haliburton getting sweetheart deals given huge sums of TAXPAYER money. You will find an objection to a PRIVATE MERCENARY ARMY of Eric Prince previously known as Blackwater.
.
Here is what you will never, ever find:
.
People against stores other than Walmart.
.
People against restaurants or coffee shops.
.
People against industrial companies which, unlike the auto makers, produce goods people want, so long as they pay a fair wage (as the automakers do) to their workers.
.
Democrats are pro-small business. Dumping millions of gallons of oil in the gulf of Mexico, taking taxpayer money for an unneeded war for overpriced services, running a mercenary army, bamboozling your own investors by cooking the books at Enron or bamboozling your own clients at Goldman Sachs is not helping small business, investors, consumers or any part of the economy.
.
You, obviously, have never been the financial capital of the United States where graphic artists create jokes about Bush and make them into posters on the wall. You have not heard movie producers praise our Democrats. You live in a conservative little bubble in a financially depressed part of a financially depressed state nowhere near the centers for world commerce.
.
3X, your world view is bent and your ability to both read and comprehend the words written in front of you are totally compromised by your ideology.
.
Now, write on the blackboard one thousand times “Democrats love honest businesses.”

“I have 3 children that are older then you.”
.
When responding to applause from announcing the birth of his daughter to the audience Chris Rock said “Hey, even cockroaches have babies”
.
Claiming to, which I have no reason to doubt, that you have fathered children tells me that you once had a high enough sperm count. That does not mean anything about fact.
.
Linking to an article about researched facts tells you facts.
.
Looking through Swampland, everybody – everybody – hates it when HONEST BUSINESSES close and/or lay off people.
.
Show me one – just one – categorically anti-business entry. JUST ONE.
.
I am glad to know that, before the age of 33, you had a woman in love with you (apparently now divorced from unless she was a child giving birth if you, also, have a twelve year old now) and a healthy sperm count.
.
I am happy for you, but not more willing to believe that you know more about how the economy works than the many, many sources I look at and send links to.

Carpevis,
.
If you really think you are a moderate, you are doing a fantastic job of deceiving yourself.
.
Your views are either extreme Left or show a near total lack of knowledge of either of our two major political parties.
.
The vast majority of Republicans are not ideologues and neither are the vast majority of Democrats.
.
The vast majority of both parties only want what is best for our citizens and our country. Their views on how to achieve these goals may be different but both are patriotic Americans trying to do what is best for all our citizens.
.
There are extremist on both sides. They are a small group that makes a lot of noise.
.
It appears you have allowed yourself to become part of the extreme groups. Either you are young and idealistic and don’t have the breath of experience to understand the real world or you are simply one of the ideologues that can not open there minds to the truth about the world we live in.
.
In a Democracy citizens of all parties must be willing to work together for the betterment of our citizens and our country.
.
Always remember that there are two sides to every story and truth is almost always somewhere in between. If someone tells you this statement is not true you will know positively that there is an extremist ideologue. Don’t listen to what they say. They will only lead you astray.

“Survey: Small Business Owners Say Unions Good for Business

by James Parks, May 18, 2010
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Despite U.S. Chamber of Commerce propaganda, the nation’s small business owners recognize the value of employees forming a union, according to a new survey by Americans Rights at Work (ARAW). The survey was released yesterday, the same day the Chamber opened its annual small business summit.

Some 80 percent of the small business owners and self-employed individuals surveyed agreed that “strong unions make the free market system stronger.” A significant majority—54 percent—strongly agreed.

ARAW Executive Director Kimberly Freeman Brown says:

We are learning that small business owners across America support the rights of employees to organize unions, believing not only that it makes good business sense, but also that strong unions make the free market system stronger.”
.
http://blog.aflcio.org/2010/05/18/survey-small-business-owners-say-unions-good-for-business/
.
Sorry 3X, if not knowing facts, indeed, is insanity (not by a legal nor a clinical definition, but, your definition) you, sire, are nuts.

You want proof of just how reasonable 3xfire3 really is?
.
Just look up thread…

3X,
.
Let’s see what Businessweek has to say about Unions:
.
“… unions typically boost rather than hurt business productivity. Unionized firms are able to exercise greater selectivity in hiring, so they end up with a higher-quality workforce. Higher wages translate into lower turnover, which means less waste in recruiting, selecting, and training people to replace departed workers. Lower turnover, in turn, makes it economically rational for a firm to invest in worker training, which makes the workforce more productive. Additionally, the presence of unions encourages firms to implement the kinds of high-performance work systems found in many of America’s most competitive companies.

Many in the business community are not blind to these benefits, but they still fear that more robust unions will cut into profits and thereby slow down investment and growth. This concern, as far as empirical research can tell, is simply misplaced. Within the U.S., there is no correlation between unionization and the probability of a firm’s failure, and looking around the world, there is no correlation between the extent of unionization and aggregate rates of growth.”
.
http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/jun2009/ca20090623_995100.htm
.
It looks like, if you do find anything pro-union in the Swamp, it will not fit your criteria of “anti-business” nor against what small business owners want and believe in.
.
Should I call you “nuts” or is that too combative?

“Supreme Court tackles global warming
Corporate America is split on whether the EPA should regulate carbon dioxide, says Fortune’s Marc Gunther.”
.
http://money.cnn.com/2006/10/25/news/economy/pluggedin_gunther_epa.fortune/index.htm
.
It looks like very close to a majority of even big businesses support a government based reaction to climate change.
.
3X,
.
Would it be insulting if I told you that you are “nuts”.
.
Please don’t tell me about your sperm count being high enough to create children. It really, has nothing to do with economics.
.
The grandfather of modern economics John Maynard Keynes was bisexual
.
As you and any other heterosexual like myself would find that strange, it is a reminder that there is no correlation between business success (Keynes was famous for making outstanding investment choices in addition to his academics) and impregnating a woman.

freeinpa:
.
Would you kindly explain how a recovery isn’t a recovery?
.
I look at every curve, every curve, and the slope is up (positive) now.
.
Can you explain just how you figure that the slope isn’t up?
.
While you are at it, would you also explain how down is up, and up is down?

patrick:
.
I think that freeinpa has fat fingers. Really, really fat fingers.
.
Either that, or he gets so p!ssed that his slingers fip when he types…

“All or Europe? No, just the problem of the PIGS under the same currency as the powerhouses such as Germany, France and Italy. (PIGS: Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain.) The remainder of the countries are doing well.
.
Sharing a common currency is the problem and sharing a common currency is neither Capitalist nor Socialist in nature.”

.
This couldn’t be further away from the truth if Santa Claus came out and said, “spread the wealth, only poor children get Christmas gifts this year”.
.
Europe’s common currency, the Euro, is not the problem. However, the neo-socialist governments they have moved towards since WWII is the problem. When for example in Greece you have nearly 60% of the entire population who either are on some type of Government assistance or retired with their Government gauranteed retirement benefits, plain common sense tells you that it is not sustainable.
.
In the NYT, this article explains it all real well, titled, “Payback Time”, “Europeans Fear Crisis Threatens Liberal Benefits”.
.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/world/europe/23europe.html?hp
.

“But all over Europe governments with big budgets, falling tax revenues and aging populations are experiencing rising deficits, with more bad news ahead.
.
With low growth, low birthrates and longer life expectancies, Europe can no longer afford its comfortable lifestyle, at least not without a period of austerity and significant changes. The countries are trying to reassure investors by cutting salaries, raising legal retirement ages, increasing work hours and reducing health benefits and pensions.”

.
In other words, fully unsustainable. The neo-socialist system which liberals in this country are asking us to abandon our more capitalist economy in favor of.
.
By 2050 in Europe there will only be 1.5 workers per every 1 non-worker. It just doesn’t add up.

There is a lesson to be learned from the article but ikt’s not necessarl;ity the one you think:
.
Unemployment has risen as traditional industries have shifted to Asia. And the region lacks competitiveness in world markets.
.
Businesses migrate to where the workers are hungriest. Do you think it’s an accident that India, China and Mexico all have a surging manufacturing sector? Promising benefits without the means to pay for them is indeed unsustainable. But if you think that by giving Corporations and wealthy individuals free reign to do as they see fit with their money that the result will be jobs for all in America, then you are no less delusional. The key to prosperity is balance.

“This couldn’t be further away from the truth if Santa Claus came out and said, “spread the wealth, only poor children get Christmas gifts this year”.
.
You remind me of the funniest Christmas song I know.
.

.
I bet it makes you cry when you hear it since it is about giving, not taking.
.
Don’t tell me, your favorite Christmas song is WHITE Christmas.
.
We all have seen your entries about your preference for white.

I have seen this type of thing before, also, true with Japan.
.
There is a solution: import more people who are ready to give their right arm to be in your country and work their butts off.
.
The argument from this is: immigration.
.
Do the math (and I know you’ll have to take off your shoes to count to eleven and pull down your pants to count to 21) but, how much can private sector investments handle if there 40% of the public are investors only and 60% are investors and workers?
.
The problem with low birth rates requires the solution of immigration.
.
If people in the developed world won’t have enough babies and the people in the third world have all of the people they could ever want but no physical or academic infrastructure then you let Middle Easterns and Africans into Africa.
.
Sorry, you won’t have a very white Christmas in 2050 in Europe, but, there will be many more people from many other places to enjoy the benefits of the developed world.

Mr Dirks:
.
I fail to see where in my comment I said …
“But if you think that by giving Corporations and wealthy individuals free reign to do as they see fit with their money”
.
Yes there has to be a “balance” in Capitalism, but it is also a very fine line you balance on when you allow our Government Representatives make the decisions as to how much regulation is needed in order to create that balance. Some regulation is necessary, but mainly allowing the free market restraints to greed, corruption and power hungry corporations will in the end work themselves out by the principles of supply and demand.
.
It is usually when Governments interfere with this process that we see the damage done. When Governments set up monopolies such as our power suppliers, that stiffles competition. This is why cap and tax is so dangerous as well. When the Government decides what you pay, it is most always more than it should be otherwise, or it will fail as we see with the Post Office.

“3X is mixing metaphors in a dumb way and you are calling me dense?”

==
Yes. He may be mixing metaphors or offends your sense of spelling or grammar but you respond to a thread with utter nonsense and arrogance but no knowledge. Yes you are dense.

”
Either that, or he gets so p!ssed that his slingers fip when he types…”
.
I have this feeling that soon we will see this headline:
“Chat Rooms Kill!
Man dies in basement of massive stroke when debating online.
.
Body found four weeks later.
.
Sarah Palin today in a speech demands that liberal leaning chatrooms be shut down under the Patriot act since good Americans are dying every day when exposed to Liberal chat rooms overwhelming them with fact.”
.
I think Freeinpa is uncontrollably p!ssed.
.
After one marathon with him, he was offline for almost week.
.
Let’s hope for a month this time.

“freeinpa, that was a parody of your tactics!”

==

And your tactics are a joke wrapped in stupidity! Now you and patrickturd can go back to patting each other on the back and telling delusional selves how brilliant you are and how dumb conservatives are.

Each post you do i snore bizarre and addresses less and less. But then if your not accusing someone of being a racist you are out of commentary.

“I was using your own language you Fascist, Communist, Satan worshiper Christian!”
==
Satan worshiper Christian? Your ongoing idiocy proves then remainder of your statements have no intellectual value and you really need professional help

“I look at every curve, every curve, and the slope is up (positive) now”

==

Does that include the Unemployment Rate (9.9%) and the U-6 (17.1%), public debt and budget deficits. Actually, the U-6 is a positive curve in a twisted way. It is the third consecutive month that the unemployed, underemployed and those who quit looking has risen. The canard about it being Bush’s debt and deficit is gone, It’s all Obama.

What curve has gone up? The number of lies Obama has told, The number of businesses government has taken over the number of problem banks and bak failures.

Every look at? You scope like your IQ is limited.

Yet again Sartor is wrong, but what can we expect?
.
Immigration is good when the laws are being upheld and enforced by the Government. When immigrants follow these laws, and come into this country legally.
.
We all were immigrants at one time or another. Immigration has nothing to do with sustaining the neo-socialist government which you and most all liberals would like to see for the US. It simply does not work. Europe has had basically unfettered immigration and they are still going down the tubes.
.
Again, no matter how many people you bring over on boats, planes or allow them to cross our borders illegally, it will not make up for the basic structure of a country. When workers in the beginning of our own socialist experiment with social security and other welfare programs started you had 9 out of 10 people working to support the ONE individual who was not working. Today, that number is more closely to 5 to 1 and falling rapidly as we move closer to the European model of neo-Socialism.
.
In the case of comparing workers to retirees, in 1941 it was 4.5 to 1, now it is more like 2.5 to 1.
.
Just like there are so many “rich” people to pay Obama’s “tax the rich people” scheme, there are only so many workers to non-workers.
.
And, to add even more gloom and doom, the recent upswing in Government workers versus private workers is also swinging heavily towards a non-producing, money gobbling Government. A system which has failed time and time again as Socialism has proven for nearly a 100 years.
.
When you have a bloated big Government which is only consuming tax dollars and not producing. Soon you will run out of tax dollars to spend. Just like the shop-a-holic with their credit cards, eventually they go bankrupt.

“If we put one tenth of that into, so called, shovel ready jobs, we would be out of this recession.”

If idiot rhetoric were gold you would be Ft. Knox. The only shovel ready job is the crap that the left has been shoveling to make excuses for and hide the ever creeping grip this government is trying to exert over Americans lives.

“…but it is also a very fine line you balance on when you allow our Government Representatives make the decisions as to how much regulation is needed in order to create that balance…”
.
With the exception of TARP, when UberCapitalist (and three time failed business owner) GW Bush, these reforms are all a part of campaign promises by centrists and/or progressive candidates. Conservatives seem to act as if, after elected to office, people morph into some totally different kind of creature unlike the rest of the human race. In a huge number of cases including all of the ones since Obama has been in office, these have been fulfillment, or, for actual progressives,a partial fulfillment of a campaign promise.
.
So, please use “the people” in the future such as, “…but it is also a very fine line you balance on when you allow the voters to make the decisions as to how much regulation is needed in order to create that balance…”
.
You dislike that way of writing it since it implies strongly, big brother corporations know best, however, the reality of conservative/libertarian ideology, even if their supporters are in denial about this, is the big brother corporations know best.
.
“Some regulation is necessary, but mainly allowing the free market restraints to greed, corruption and power hungry corporations will in the end work themselves out by the principles of supply and demand.”
.
Obviously this is not true.
.
Regulation is necessary because free market restraints to greed, corruption and power hungry corporations so often fail miserably.
.
When they do not, then there is nothing to promise in campaign.
.
You can’t run a campaign on “for all of those well run supermarkets providing reasonable customer service, a huge variety of foods meeting consumer needs and providing well for the community, I want to create an agency to watch over them.”
.
A campaign like that would be lucky to get support from the 100k member American Communist Party.
.
Winning campaigns including regulation in their platform only exist AFTER market failures.

“I wonder. Now, if I were a racist, then how come I don’t have problems with my relatives, friends, and other people in the Black community here.”
=

Your stupidity knows no bounds. You only see racist in conservatives. you never see racism by any other color but white. You are part of the structure that has a vested interest in maintaining the “racist mantra” that has become a cottage industry with liberals.
=

Answer any of these:

The Congressman (Lewis Clymer ) who claimed Tea Party people called them racial names no proof. Who is really the racist in that case.

The Baseball coach and football coach of Savannah State were fired (white). The baseball coach has one of the longest winning streets in the country. No warnings, just fired. As he said if it was reversed, Sharpton and Jackson would have shut the school down.

Obama passing judgment on the Cambridge cop without any facts (actually he had 53facts).

Holder and the AZ immigration law without reading the law.

Dropping of the New Black Panther case and stonewalling the investigation where even the liberals on the Civil Rights Commission have stated that it was the most egregious case of voter imitation they have seen.

The Duke lacrosse case with a Democratic DA…. The list goes on. You ignore these because they don’t fit your pathetic beliefs which is why no progress will be made.
==
“Now, seriously, if they were to say something, I’d take notice…”

I am sure they have the same opinion as you on these and roundly ignored or some pathetic excuse.

“Immigration is good when the laws are being upheld and enforced by the Government. When immigrants follow these laws, and come into this country legally.”
.
Look for the word “illegal” in my statement.
.
Have your wife take a look at that ankle of yours to make sure that you didn’t sprain it making that jump to a conclusion since that was a big jump.
.
With the, as you call it “neo-socialist” system where your taxes are higher but your college education and health care come from the government, it is less tempting to be an illegal immigrant since you’ll miss out on most of the benefits. In the US you are welcome to all of the health care and education you can buy yourself. So, legal and illegal immigrants do not have as much of a difference in lifestyle here as they do there.
.
“Europe has had basically unfettered immigration and they are still going down the tubes.”
.
“Eurostat data[10] reveal that some EU member states are currently receiving large-scale immigration. The EU in 2005 had an overall net gain from international migration of 1.8 million people, which accounted for almost 85% of Europe’s total population growth that year.[11] In 2004, a total of 140,033 people immigrated to France. Of them, 90,250 were from Africa and 13,710 from elsewhere in Europe.[12] In 2005, the total number of immigrants fell slightly, to 135,890.[13]

In May 2009 the European Commission adopted the ‘EU Blue Card’. This permit will make it easy for skilled third-country workers to live and work in any of the participating EU member states. Legislation is now in place on a European level, gradually member states will start accepting applicants to this program. Pre-registration starts in January 2010.[14]”
.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Europe
.
If you speak with Middle Eastern and African Immigrants, the US, with easier immigration policies is often, due to the lack of social services and reduced union protections for workers and fewer workers rights, a second choice, not their first choice.
.
I, myself, am a little disappointed that, due to our lack of government services this country my ancestors chose to call home while leaving Europe now has deteriorated to being second choice to Europe.
.
You have not explained how increasing the number of working people does not decrease the ratio of retirees to workers.
.
If you have two scenarios, one with 0 immigration and a second one with easy immigration and put them side by side, this is a no brainer.
.
If you import 1% immigrants per year for the next 40 years, then you will have 40% more people.
.
1.5 multiplied by 1.4 = 2.1 people working for every retiree.
.
So, the rate might be best at 2.5% per year so that you will have 3 people working for every one retiree.
.
Additionally, since people worldwide are no longer dropping dead at age 55 as they were eighty years ago, it, also, would be reasonable to raise the retirement age to meet longevity.

I guess you consider proof reading and making corrections a liberal idea and, therefore, are vehemently opposed to it
==

No, just hurried responses. Liberals use precise language because their ideas if spoken plainly or truthfully die a slow death. You use red pencils, denigrate the individual or shift the subject, to avoid answering an idea that you cannot intellectually oppose, if in fact you even understand it. Given the answers you have given (perfectly spelled) you need to harp on spelling because your arguments either don’t address the issue or you can’t understand the issue. Probably explains why your area cabbie and used car sales dropout.

“And, to add even more gloom and doom, the recent upswing in Government workers versus private workers is also swinging heavily towards a non-producing, money gobbling Government. A system which has failed time and time again as Socialism has proven for nearly a 100 years.
.
When you have a bloated big Government which is only consuming tax dollars and not producing. Soon you will run out of tax dollars to spend. Just like the shop-a-holic with their credit cards, eventually they go bankrupt.”
.
If you were talking about government in terms of troops attacking extra countries for no known reason or the government expenditures on such through private business, I could easily agree with you. World War One drove Germany into such extreme economic straights that the people rebelled and forced the Kaiser all the way down to the lowest aristocrat to step down even banning the noble attachments to royal names “Von” such as “Manfred von Richthofen” aka, the feared “Red baron”.
.
In some cases, however, if you took all of our private sector insurance company bureaucrats and all of our university bureaucrats supposedly being productive, then you would, most likely, see something very different: the government providing services worth money and contributing to economic growth.
.
So, I would need a somewhat detailed description of what these government employees are doing before I can figure out if they are adding to or taking away from the wealth of the nation.

Seth Klarman, one of the most successful investors of all-time gave the best summation of the current economic environment in yesterdays WSJ.

“Everything today is being manipulated by the government (sounds like socialism). Interest rates are being held near zero to trick the population into buying every security but cash. Returns are not matching the risk. Government is now in the business of giving bad advice”

==

That sound about right.

Out of idle curiosity, what happened to all the comments?

139 in header – 22 numbered on page. An hour ago there were two pages.

“…Liberals use precise language because their ideas if spoken plainly or truthfully die a slow death….”
.
Actually, I almost never use a word here that I did not know the meaning of since the eighth grade or earlier. Either you are less educated than your seventh grade daughter and she is teaching you what she learning in school today, or you want cartoonishly simple answers to every question, which, as your man GWB showed us, creates a cartoonish excuse for government.
.
“You use red pencils”
.
I am unfamiliar with that terminology or metaphor. I don’t remember using a red pencil since I was about your daughter’s age and had to take an art class, which I did not like.
.
“..denigrate the individual…”
.
Look at every single post after post after post and this is one of the few where you do not call everybody either stupid or delusional. When that is your response, you become a clown to people who disagree with you and you get a response in kind.
.
“..or shift the subject, to avoid answering an idea that you cannot intellectually oppose..”
.
Freep, I sited the same article as I did the other day about how studies have shown that unionized companies have the same bankruptcy rates as non-union when you were going off on unions destroying America and have not responded or acknowledged your error as one of innumerable examples of you doing this.
.
I do not recall you posting the same question to me two times. If you have, it has been very rare since I, basically, always respond to the exact question asked but, to your disappointment, come to a different conclusion than you do almost all of the time.

“”Everything today is being manipulated by the government Interest rates are being held near zero to trick the population into buying every security but cash.”
.
The government, mostly through the 97 year old Federal Reserve is manipulating things so that people will invest in PRIVATELY OWNED BUSINESSES which seek to MAKE PROFITS.
.
It sounds as capitalist as Adam Smith to me.

The debt has nothing to do with the recovery, except in a tangential way. It is not used as an indicator. You’re throwing bullsh!t against the wall to see if it sticks. Since no economist uses it in determining recovery status, it doesn’t.
.
You got me on the UP, but it really doesn’t help you. It’s slope is zero, but it is a lagging indicator.
.
Another interesting thing is that the state of Washington’s unemployment rate has gone down.
.
http://www.bls.gov/lau/

“And your tactics are a joke wrapped in stupidity! Now you and patrickturd can go back to patting each other on the back and telling delusional selves how brilliant you are and how dumb conservatives are.

Each post you do i snore bizarre and addresses less and less. But then if your not accusing someone of being a racist you are out of commentary.”
.
“You… denigrate the individual or shift the subject, to avoid answering an idea that you cannot intellectually oppose, if in fact you even understand it.”
.
This would mean that either you are liberal and we are conservative or you are a very confused man. The first quote was you towards the rest of us. If that is not denigrating, I do not know what is.
.
“Each post you do i snore bizarre and addresses less and less.”
.
I don’t know the term to “snore bizarre”.

Aah. Freeinpa’s famous “magic wand” argument. He believes that we believe Obama is “the Messiah”, and he has clearly said he doesn’t.
.
Of course, none of us has ever did believed that he was a messiah. That’s only trash talk from the crackhead right. We have some common sense.
.
So now, freeinpa, if you believe that Obama isn’t a Messiah, then why do you want to blame him for what no one else has ever been able to do?
.
Oh. Don’t give me that “8%” argument, either. That’s a load of crap and has nothing to do with it. Talk straight to the question.
.
As for blaming Bush, it was he who deregulated, it was he who was in office when it happened, and it was he who, under threat of panic, signed on along with other sensible GOPers, to the first TARP.
.
So which is it freeinpa? Are you saying that Obama is the messiah? Or is it possible that, like every other POTUS in history, he does not possess the ability to magically transform the economy in a single stroke?
.
Chooze, freeinpa, chooze…

“Satan worshiper Christian? Your ongoing idiocy proves then remainder of your statements have no intellectual value and you really need professional help.”
.
A Satan worshiper Christian is just like a Fascist Communist: an Oxymoron, used by morons who do not have any idea what words are for other than to make cool sounds with their mouth or make pretty pictures on the page.
.
For those of us who know that words have meaning, Satan worshiping Christian is exactly the same as Fascist Communist – nonsense.

It sounds as capitalist as Adam Smith to me.

==
That is because you are an idiot. Your knowledge (haha) is well documented.

“…The only shovel ready job is the crap that the left has been shoveling to make excuses for and hide the ever creeping grip this government is trying to exert over Americans lives.”
.
So, you are saying that when a person fixes potholes on your street or does landscaping in your public park that it is “controlling” you or somebody?
.
This is what “shovel ready” means. These are jobs with minimal capital investment and minimal additional training already done in boom times and average times by city and state government.
.
The only “control” being put in is on forbidding Goldman Sachs to lie to you about your investments and making sure banks don’t put the money in your checking account or it’s own into risky investments so that you will have a 100% chance of getting your money from the ATM.
.
I do not like being lied to by a financial adviser with fiduciary responsibilities to me. If you do, then that is your problem, not mine.

Rustyblog:
.
I was about to take apart this tired old “proof of the European model’s failure lies in my waiter’s opinions” narrative piece by piece, starting with the author’s (Steven Erlanger) history of producing “Europe is in trouble” stories for the Times (just click on the link embedded in his name to see his bread n butter “Can Europe Deal with X???!!!” brand), but Peter Dorman over at Yves Smith’s Naked Capitalism (link to “Another Clumsy Attack on the European Social Model”) does a superb job, so I don’t have to:

The New York Times, supposedly the reliable voice of bleeding-heart liberalism, has repeatedly attacked European welfare state institutions in its news pages. The latest assault was published today, informing us that pensions and other social benefits are no longer “affordable” and that the coddled European public must wake up and face reality. All such “analyses” require the reader to accept without questioning the strange notion that social programs that were instituted decades ago when Europe was substantially poorer have now become, after a long run of economic growth, too expensive to bear.
.
You might wonder how the article’s author (Steven Erlanger) deals with this conundrum. Wisely, he doesn’t even try. A quarter of the article is taken up with man-on-the-street interviews, in which selected students, workers and pensioners say what Erlanger wants them to say. (No one says anything different; apparently European public opinion is monolithic on this issue.) The article tells us that the dependency ratio, the number of retired people as a proportion of the working population, has increased, but it doesn’t point out that economies have grown even faster. (The ratio of real economic growth to growth in the dependency ratio over the period 1980-2005 is 2.4 for the countries that now make up the Eurozone, and a whopping 6.6 for the US. Don’t let Pete Peterson hear about this.)
.
The article suggests that all sorts of damage has been caused by excessive concern for the old, the sick and other insufficiently productive citizens, with the result that “the region generally lacks competitiveness in world markets.” I have to rub my eyes every time I see a comment like this. Let’s get this straight: journalists tell Europeans to emulate America’s high-octane approach to economic efficiency when the Eurozone has approximately balanced trade with the rest of the world, while the US runs the largest trade deficits the world has ever seen.
.
It is true that the current economic stall, combined with immense, ill-considered financial bailouts, has diminished the fiscal space available to governments everywhere. This is a problem of, well, stalled economic growth and unwise bailouts. Europe, like the US, needs to deal with this. But those problems have nothing to do with “unaffordable” social welfare programs. On the contrary, maintaining transfers to the most vulnerable households is not only the right thing to do, it is also an excellent vehicle for sustaining effective demand in a downturn.
.
Maybe, if you prowled the cafes and restaurants of Europe long enough, you might find an interviewee or two to stick up for social solidarity.
.
Posted by Peter Dorman at 5:18 PM

Rustyblog:
.
Maybe if you rightist idiots stopped attacking the socialists in the liberal media for a second, you might find that they’re perfectly comfortable with the type of reality-denying jingoism and bailouts-for-pensions bait and switch policy that you conservatives love so much, just like the Obama Administration and the New Democrat leadership generally.

“.
It sounds as capitalist as Adam Smith to me.”

You are right. Why should we listen to a Phi Beta Kappa and Harvard MBA who has worked in the investment field for decades providing returns in excess of 21% since 1991 (S&P low single digits), has written a book on investing (now out of print) which sells for over $2,000 when we can listen to the “wisdom” of a drop out cabbie and used car salesman.

“What curve has gone up?”
.
Nonfarm job gains, and UP rates, though flat, have some interesting trends:
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
.
Outlook:
http://smallbiztrends.com/2010/05/long-term-jobs-trend-smaller-establishments.html
.
Housing starts:
http://www.nahb.org/generic.aspx?genericContentID=45409
http://www.census.gov/econ/index.html
.
Auto Sales:
http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3022-autosales.html
.
I may not be the economist Patrick is freeinpa, but hells bells, keep telling us that up is down and down is up…

.
“The Congressman (Lewis Clymer ) who claimed Tea Party people called them racial names no proof. Who is really the racist in that case.’.
.
“Republican House members encouraged protesters outside and inside the House gallery, some of whom carried messages like “Vote no or else” or “If Brown won’t stop it, a Browning will” — a reference to newly elected Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown accompanied by a silhouette of a pistol.

Since the vote, an Alabama blogger has launched a “window war” against Democrats and has kept a tally of the recent incidents of damage, including ones in upstate New York, Arizona and Kansas. A message left for Michigan Democrat Bart Stupak, whose last-minute decision to support the bill helped give Democrats the votes it needed to pass, warned that “there are millions of people across the country who wish you ill, and all of those thoughts projected on you will materialize into something that’s not very good for you.”

Clyburn, who is African-American, said he has received a fax in his office with a picture of a noose drawn on it and had threatening telephone calls at his home.”
.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/03/24/congress.threats/index.html
.
I guess he did not have a tape recorder in his pocket when he was being called names, but, I guess that the noose drawing was just peachy with you.”

“Bobby Wells was the first white football head coach at Savannah State University. He won 5 games in his first season, but only 2 games in his second season…
.
Whats strange about the whole thing is that Art Gelow, another white coach at the university who coaches golf, says he’s never encountered discrimination at the university. The bottom line is that a head coach position really has no promises. You can basically be fired at anytime, and your really owed no explanation of why. Discrimination may not be the reason why, but at the end of the day the race card does’nt come into play when it come to a coach being fired.”
.
http://ruel-raphael.newsvine.com/_news/2010/05/17/4293957-savannah-state-university-gets-rid-of-head-football-coach-bobby-wells-?category=sports
.
This story, Freeinpa, looks completely and totally ambiguous.
.
“Dropping of the New Black Panther case and stonewalling the investigation where even the liberals on the Civil Rights Commission have stated that it was the most egregious case of voter imitation they have seen.”
.
I saw the video. A black man with a knight stick was pacing around and a white guy with a camera asked him questions while both blacks and whites behind the black man walked in and out unmolested.
.
You may not be aware of it, but, people far to the left of me believed after incidents in Ohio in 2004 and Florida in 2000 that Republicans would commit voter fraud. So, this man, inappropriately, stood guard against any potential Republican threats.
.
He, however, did not break election laws at all on that video, so, unless you have other footage or if you have access to any other affidavits regarding the matter, it sounds like Republicans are just crying since they didn’t win and want to prosecute people for voting against them or walking pacing around and inappropriately holding a knight stick.

“That is because you are an idiot. Your knowledge (haha) is well documented.”
.
This is your third grade response to being shown that you make no sense. A Communist plot to convince people to invest money is as much of an oxymoron as a Christian Satan Worshiper.
.
It is a complete contradiction!

Oh, I see freeinpa is still grinding those axes. Some of those have been resolved to everyone’s’ satisfactions. Others are his interpretation of events, which, in delving into them, have proven to be unfounded.
.
But of course, what freeinpa doesn’t include is much more telling than the list he has included. I doubt very much he has a problem with Rand Paul’s position for example. It dovetails perfectly with his lack of knowledge about the Black community.
.
BTW, I haven’t been criticized by white people either. It appears that my educating people about the true nature of the Black community is considered racist by freeinpa.
.
I don’t have a problem with his opinion, but I doubt seriously that he can make that one stick.
.
As a matter of fact, freeinpa frequently brings up race before I ever do…

freeinpa:
.
Why don’t you just go back to your basement, and wish for a return to the good ol’ days of the Atlantic triangular trade…

freeinpa must have gotten hold of some really good meth this morning, patrick.

“And, said Mr. Klarman, one of the best ways to protect against a decline in purchasing power is to buy whatever is “out of favor, loathed and despised.” So forget about gold or other trendy hedges. Instead, wait patiently for markets—European stocks, perhaps—to get so cheap that they turn most investors’ stomachs. Then you can pounce. ”
.
Here is that article you were afraid to link to.
.
He supports investing in European stock!
.
Remember that lefty article bad mouthing gold?
.
He is against investing in gold, too!
.
“..when we can listen to the “wisdom” of a drop out cabbie and used car salesman.”
.
What school did I tell you that I was studying Economics in Boston was?
.
Technically it was Cambridge.
.
Yes, it was Harvard.
.
I took my one and only Economics of investing class in the Summer of 1992 and by no means say that I know more than he does.
.
Unlike you, however, I read his articles in full and find out that he LOVES Europe as a good source of investment!
.
Next line from Freeinpa: “Why would you ever trust somebody like Seth Klarman?”

“You use red pencils, denigrate the individual or shift the subject, to avoid answering an idea that you cannot intellectually oppose, if in fact you even understand it.”
.
You mean you, don’t you. I’ve just posted a bunch of links, patrick has posted a bunch of links, and all you ever post is those idiotic “tinyurl” he-said-she-said links where some obscure crackhead blogs an opinion, which, everywhere else on the planet, is not proof.
.
As for insults, go count upthread the number of insults you’ve tossed (23).

My point was that, if you know political science 101 that communists are vehemently opposed to investment and profits.
.
Then I found out that in your meth induced haze you didn’t read the article which, actually, says that this man you, rightly said, has amazing academic and professional credentials says that Europe is the way to go.
.
He trumps 3X by a long shot.
.
Freeper foiled by facts again – and, once again, from HIS OWN ARTICLE!
.
Read first, make opinion later.

My eyes watered, too.
.
Social Darwinist death panels, anyone?

“Freeper foiled by facts again – and, once again, from HIS OWN ARTICLE!”
.
I’ve tricked him into kicking his own arse more than once in the past, and it pleases me no end to see someone else enjoy the rather unwitting conundrums he boxes himself into.
.
I still have one pending conundrum with freeinpa, over the “principles” he cites in turning up his nose at the Black community’s conservative sector.
.
But that one will wait for a while. When the time comes, it will be a knock-down drag-out fight, with only freeinpa in the ring. It will be pure entertainment watching him furiously kick his own arse, then, declare it a win!

“I am sure they have the same opinion as you on these and roundly ignored or some pathetic excuse.”
.
Well, freeinpa, I know better, but, the real issue is this:
.
Why do you believe that they do?
.
Don’t evade the question, freeinpa

Do you think we should send freeinpa to innertube hell?
.
__Yes
__No

The best I can figure is that freeinpa is a methhead that “snores bizarre”.
.
He said it his own self, so I’ll take his word for it, but, I have no idea how he would do that.
.
And I’m not sure I want to…

X Yes
_ No

Is Greece Socialist?
.
“Greece has a capitalist economy with the public sector accounting for about 40% of GDP and with per capita GDP about two-thirds that of the leading euro-zone economies. Tourism provides 15% of GDP. Immigrants make up nearly one-fifth of the work force, mainly in agricultural and unskilled jobs. Greece is a major beneficiary of EU aid, equal to about 3.3% of annual GDP. The Greek economy grew by nearly 4.0% per year between 2003 and 2007, due partly to infrastructural spending related to the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, and in part to an increased availability of credit, which has sustained record levels of consumer spending. But growth dropped to 2% in 2008. The economy went into recession in 2009 and contracted by 2%, as a result of the world financial crisis, tightening credit conditions, and Athens’ failure to address a growing budget deficit, which was triggered by falling state revenues, and increased government expenditures.”
.
“Unemployment rate:
Field info displayed for all countries in alpha order.
9% (2009 est.)
country comparison to the world: 100
7.7% (2008 est.)”
.
” GDP – per capita (PPP):
Field info displayed for all countries in alpha order.
$32,100 (2009 est.)
country comparison to the world: 43
$32,400 (2008 est.)
$31,600 (2007 est.)
note: data are in 2009 US dollars”

- CIA Fact Book
.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/gr.html
.
Those leftist liberal Communist… CIA Agents?
.
How’s Toledo Ohio, where 3X is from doing?
.
“The per capita income for the city was $17,388.”
.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toledo,_Ohio
.
Unemployment Rate 11.8 %
.
http://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.oh_toledo_msa.htm
.
Well, Greece is not socialist and is, on average, doing far better than Toledo, Ohio.
.
It appears to me that conservatives have been damaging our economy over and over for personal greed for the wealthiest at the cost to overall wealth of the country.

Once again patrickturd and IQ53 offer nothing but excuses, diversion and their own facts throw up their hands and declare victory

Pathetic at best
=
”
I guess he did not have a tape recorder in his pocket when he was being called names, ”

No but the TV cameras did and not one was recorded.
==
“Clyburn, who is African-American, said he has received a fax in his office with a picture of a noose drawn on it and had threatening telephone calls at his home.”

And with no proof of who did it but the Tea Party folks were blamed. Judging by the action of the SEIU (which you approve) it could have been them.
And it would not be the first time that something was sent to implicate another group would it?
==
You use red pencils”

And you question the intellect of anyone else who do not get you & IQ53 inane reference. Teachers use red pencils to correct in school. I guess cabby school didn’t use them

=

“A black man with a knight stick was pacing around and a white guy with a camera asked him questions while both blacks and whites behind the black man walked in and out unmolested”

Yes the night stick was not for intimidation. Did the video show the folks who never tried to go in? That certainly explains why the Civil Rights Commission is appalled and Holder stonewalled. And true to form you head straight for a diversion with FL et al. Keep lying to yourself cab boy BTW you weren’ the basis for Rev Jim in Taxi were you? You certainly have his mental capacity

==
“Whats strange about the whole thing is that Art Gelow, another white coach at the university who coaches golf, says he’s never encountered discrimination at the university. The bottom line is that a head coach position really has no promises. You can basically be fired at anytime, and your really owed no explanation of why. Discrimination may not be the reason why

Golf team is all white with one black golfer. School settled for millions didn’t want to go to court. Didn’t wan to push a losing proposition like you will. But then you aren’t very bright. Another nice try. But the coach was right if it was reversed Sharpton and Reve Jesse would have shut the school down.
==
“Oh, I see freeinpa is still grinding those axes”

Another nice diversion without answering again. Now declare victory and tell us how brilliant you are. At least patrickturd gave feeble answers before hos diversions.

==
“. I doubt very much he has a problem with Rand Paul’s position”

Have you seen me defend his position? But I will bet you jumped write to the looney left version of what he said.

=

“As a matter of fact, freeinpa frequently brings up race before I ever do.”

Yes i do because you are a racist and you support a racist infrastructure which this country needs to remove so we can move forward. Bu then what would racists like you do?
==
”
I don’t have a problem with his opinion, but I doubt seriously that he can make that one stick.”

No they never will because you deal in 53 facts and not truth and reality. Just obfuscate then declare your opinion fact— as always

“This is your third grade response”

I need to keep it to you & IQ53′s level.
==
“that Europe is the way to go.”

But obviously I overestimated both your intelligence. European stocks not government
==
“But that one will wait for a while. When the time comes, it will be a knock-down drag-out fight, with only freeinpa in the ring.”

Your right because you aren’t a match fo ranything or anybody with a post.

Now you and Patrickturd can tell each other how brilliant you are you are how your facts are superior to reality. Get your tin foil hat and don’t worry mom will be home soon.

“Unlike you, however, I read his articles in full and find out that he LOVES Europe as a good source of investment!
.
Next line from Freeinpa: “Why would you ever trust somebody like Seth Klarman?”
==

I see your knowledge of economics remains in tact- you have none but that exceeds your investment knowledge. He was speaking of investments not governments. And yes Europe when they get trashed (meaning more downside) and not the US. Does that make you wonder why? Careful you may hurt yourself.

It does explain why you took one level of econ. and then became a cabbie and used car salesman.

Now you and IQ53 can hold hands and scream how “your facts” are brilliant–

Shorten your tiresome answer

You hate conservatives and America. We know that.

OK, I’ll be #26. In the event page 2 transcends the always compelling “you’re an idjut” theme:

The Great Shame: America’s Pathetic Response to the Gulf Catastrophe
Peter Daou
Posted: May 23, 2010

A calamity is unfolding before our eyes – the greatest oil spill in history – and America’s response is little more than a big yawn.

Bob Herbert writes:

The vast, sprawling coastal marshes of Louisiana, where the Mississippi River drains into the gulf, are among the finest natural resources to be found anywhere in the world. And they are a positively crucial resource for America. The response of the Obama administration and the general public to this latest outrage at the hands of a giant, politically connected corporation has been embarrassingly tepid. … This is the bitter reality of the American present, a period in which big business has cemented an unholy alliance with big government against the interests of ordinary Americans, who, of course, are the great majority of Americans. The great majority of Americans no longer matter. America is selling its soul for oil.

Where is the outrage? Where are the millions marching in the streets, where is the round-the-clock roadblock coverage tracking every moment of the crisis, every effort to plug the leak, every desperate attempt to mitigate the damage?

Where is the White House? Where are Republicans? Where are Democrats? Where is the left? Where is the right? Where is the “fierce urgency of now?”

Prominent oceanographers [are] accusing the government of failing to conduct an adequate scientific analysis of the damage and of allowing BP to obscure the spill’s true scope. The scientists assert that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other agencies have been slow to investigate the magnitude of the spill and the damage it is causing in the deep ocean.

In the movies, pretend heroes like Bruce Willis and Will Smith save the planet while the whole world watches with breath and belief suspended. In real life, a global catastrophe is treated like a mere annoyance, mismanaged by a rapacious oil company, while drill-baby-drillers double down on their folly and the White House puts out defensive fact sheets about how they were on it from “day one.”

Is this really the best we can do?

America is capable of greatness — but our reaction to this unprecedented event is anything but great.

In some parts of the country, the sight of oil drifting toward the Louisiana coast, oozing into the fragile marshlands and bringing large parts of the state’s economy to a halt, has prompted calls to stop offshore drilling indefinitely, if not altogether. Here, in the middle of things, those calls are few. Here, in fact, the unfolding disaster is not even prompting a reconsideration of the 75th annual Louisiana Shrimp and Petroleum Festival. “All systems are go,” said Lee Delaune, the festival’s director, sitting in his cluttered office in a historic house known as Cypress Manor. “We will honor the two industries as we always do,” Mr. Delaune said. “More so probably in grand style, because it’s our diamond jubilee.”
Granted, some scientists are telling us the truth, some reporters are digging up unpleasant facts, some citizens are rising in anger, some federal agencies are doing what they are tasked to do. People are working to fix this. But by and large, America’s collective response to this crisis is disproportionately anemic.

Leadership is virtually non-existent. Blaming BP for being greedy and destructive is the least we should do, not the only thing we do. We need to turn the tide once and for all against those whose ideological rigidity is ravaging the planet.

A month before the spill, I wrote about green-bashing:

Of all the wrongheaded ideas proudly trumpeted by America’s right, anti-environmentalism occupies a unique position: it is at once the most devoid of a rational or moral foundation and the most dangerous. It is selfish, crass, illogical, willfully blind, a denial of the undeniable reality that humans are pillaging irreplaceable natural resources and spewing filth into the air and water and soil at unsustainable rates. Green-bashers stubbornly negate what is directly before them. There is no moral imperative underlying their belief (or lack thereof). It’s about unbridled hostility at the suggestion that we must all make shared sacrifices. It’s about refusing to acknowledge that the environmental movement has been right to sound the alarm. It’s about laziness. And greed. And irresponsibility. And colossal shortsightedness. Green-bashing exposes the rot at the core of modern conservatism.

The Gulf disaster is a singular moment – an opportunity to bring the human race together to save itself, to protect its only home. This should be a rocket-boost for the environmental movement, a time to finally put to rest the notion that environmentalists are misguided alarmists, a chance to finally marginalize green-bashers and put an end to their fatal obstructionism. Instead, this grand debacle will gradually fade into the background once some political gaffe or sports game or celebrity scandal occupies us.

Lawmakers can say that the law mandates BP take responsibility for clean-up and costs; federal officials can list all the things they’re doing to fix the problem; President Obama can launch as many fact-finding commissions as he sees fit. But we shouldn’t be impressed that they are doing what we elected them to do – it’s their job to deal with emergencies promptly and effectively. Far more is called for in this uniquely cataclysmic circumstance: a level of outrage, alarm, intensity and focus worthy of the size and scope of the spill.

We need, and must demand, boldness and resoluteness worthy of a planetary emergency – true leadership, rallying the nation and the world to action. Offense, not defense. We’re not getting anything close to that from Democratic leaders. And from Republicans, far less.

The administration seems miffed and mystified that it is being criticized. After all, it can reel off dozens of swift actions taken in the aftermath of the spill. The White House’s defenders want the spotlight aimed exclusively at BP. But this is a situation where body language and words are just as important as actions. Scheduling an ‘angry’ presidential news conference weeks after oil started gushing into the Gulf waters is exactly the wrong thing to do. Authentic anger isn’t something you turn on for the cameras and leak to the press the previous day. Indignation and defensiveness are precisely the wrong message…

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs faced a barrage of questions at his daily briefing about why the federal government is not intervening to take over responsibility for the cleanup from BP. “Again, we are overseeing the response, OK?” Gibbs said just hours before the news about the commission broke. “I don’t know what you think – we’re – we’re working each and every day. That’s why Secretary (Steven) Chu – the Department of Energy – it sounds technical. The Department of Energy doesn’t have purview over oil, oil drilling. That’s not in their governmental sphere.”
That this lame response from various quarters of the administration, Congress, the media and the public comes on the heels of a banner year of climate denialism is no coincidence. We are at an inflection point, one that will likely determine the fate of our species. Green-haters have been winning the message war, the all-important battle of public opinion. If those of us who want to salvage and protect our earth don’t rise in righteous anger and use this moment to cement our case, then we have failed ourselves and future generations.

America is perfectly capable of extended, intense, undivided attention. Michael Jackson’s death is a good example. But for some reason, the Gulf disaster can be sidelined by an offensive remark from Rand Paul or a meaningless debate over Elena Kagan’s sexual orientation. And BP is taking its cues – America’s apathy is their cover:

BP has told the Environmental Protection Agency that it cannot find a safe, effective and available dispersant to use instead of Corexit, and will continue to use that chemical application to help break up the growing spill in the Gulf of Mexico. BP was responding to an EPA directive Thursday that gave BP 24 hours to identify a less toxic alternative to Corexit — and 72 hours to start using it — or provide the Coast Guard and EPA with a “detailed description of the alternative dispersants investigated, and the reason they believe those products did not meet the required standards.”
Why has this unfolded so badly?

Democratic leaders have been blindsided by this spill, having just come out in favor of offshore drilling to appease Republicans.

The right, for the most part, is stuck in the 19th century, consumed by a manic hatred for anything green.

Oil companies are after one thing: money.

The press and punditry are busy chasing the story du jour.

Defenders of the administration are loathe to critique it, out of a sense of loyalty.

Consequently, we’re left with a halfhearted and halting, shameful response to a profound tragedy.

This isn’t Katrina II, it’s worse. As the oil keeps gushing and the damage keeps growing, we are squandering a rare chance to turn the tide against those whose laziness and greed and ignorance is imperiling every living thing on our wonderful and beautiful – and wounded – planet.

Words are a necessary precursor to deeds, anger is an essential ingredient for social change. Speaking up and speaking out is the difference between apathy and action. 30 years of conservative message dominance is a function of the right’s ability to master outrage. Now is the time for Democrats and progressives to muster (and master) the kind of outrage worthy of this calamity.

Very, very smart freeinpa:
.
Empty rant. Patrick covered some and I covered the others.
.
Most of your comments cover events in the past that were resolved (the Black Panther thing was retaken up, and I do favor prosecution if that is what happened.)
.
What Sharpton did was resolved, and even in the Black community, he’s not well liked, as he’s an opportunist.
.
You remind me of spob, before he collected some sense and realized that there isn’t any trend of persecution of whites. You are stuck on stupid, as well as the past.
.
And your comment about Rand Paul’s position (actually, I don’t think he’s a racist. He’s just stupid.), you gave yourself away.
.
As for the teabaggers, not only do they endorse Rand Paul, whose dysfunctional politics is the very embodiment of that movement, his endorsement by them supports my arguments. Also, I have posted numerous videos documenting hatred and intolerance in the Tea Party.
.
It’s very apparent that you don’t want to walk into that wall I was walking you toward. Nice move.
.
For now…

“And with no proof of who did it but the Tea Party folks were blamed. Judging by the action of the SEIU (which you approve) it could have been them.”
.
And Ronald Reagan could have shot himself, too since he was momentarily down in the polls.
.
“Teachers use red pencils to correct in school.”
.
Not at Harvard, where I went to school, nor my high school nor my elementary school. All of the teachers I had were very self assured and used a red pen, not a red pencil. Since you haven’t gone beyond fourth grade art classes where they use all of the pretty colors, you wouldn’t know.
.
“Yes the night stick was not for intimidation.”
.
He defined himself as “security” since there was a belief that there would be REPUBLICAN vote fraud as there had been in Ohio in 2004 and Florida in 2000.
.
“Did the video show the folks who never tried to go in? ”
.
No, the video did not show people who were not there to be filmed. Unless it is there but you refused to link to it, there were no affidavits saying there were any people who saw this man and walked away.
.
“School settled for millions didn’t want to go to court.”
.
Sounds like one of those frivolous lawsuits you right wingers say is destroying America.
.
Any links to show that they paid this man millions or just his court fees gas money to go back home and stop whining?
.
“But the coach was right if it was reversed Sharpton and Reve Jesse would have shut the school down.”
.
On what basis do you say that the coach was right if the decision was in favor of the school? When were Jessie Jackson or Al Sharpton in this story?

“He was speaking of investments not governments.”
.
He loves Greece as a place for sound investments due to the fact that it has a sound economy.
.
It has a sound economy due to the government of Greece having at least reasonably sound economic policies.
.
No moron invests money in a country with a failing government since the government fails, so does the economy.
.
You must be loosing your mind if you can not see that one invests money in only countries with strong governments.

I’ll shorten my answer: I love America, Republicans hate America.
.
Feeinpa, STOP BURNING AMERICAN FLAGS! STOP DRIVING OUR COUNTRY INTO POVERTY AND CHEERING WHEN GREECE DOES BETTER THAN MANY PARTS OF THE US!
.
Nice and short.

You know what freeinpa?
.
I see several facts in patricks’ “tiresome” answer, with links.
.
You rant about facts, and in this post, there are several provided here.
.
Are they tiresome because it takes too much brainwork? Is it because you are dyslexic? Or are the facts themselves tiresome and this whole thing is really about what you think rather than what’s out there?
.
It’s really too bad you spend so much time giving conservatives a bad name, freeinpa. I think what you need to do here is sit down and ask yourself if this really is the type of image you want to promote.
.
I mean, really. There is no way that you can be doing fellow conservatives any type of favor by behaving like this…

jcapan:
.
I agree with a lot that is said here. Carville was on yesterday with the same message.
.
But one of the problems I see is just who has the technology to stop that leak? I’m not sure that the military does, except unless one considers actions that might have even worse, and uncontrollable side effects.
.
Other than that, who?
.
I really don’t want to see yet another round of false equivalency. This may be Katrina II, but, it is not at oll similar in response, and nor does it have any similarities in action.
.
I point this out with emphasis because there is a possibility that several acts in re Katrina might have been deliberate.

Patrick:
.
Didn’t I say that freeinpa would call it a win?
.
You posted all those links to all those facts, and all he does is talk a lot of sh!t, not one fact, not one link.
.
Oh, that and a whole lot of insults…

So, where are your facts, freeinpa?
.
All I’ve seen, despite your rabid ranting, is your rabid ranting…

Damn!
.
Freeinpa, I know how a scam artist could steal all of your life savings.
.
He’ll nod and say he agrees with you.
.
Then he will tell you about “great investment opportunities” and then, knowing he sold you crap, sell short or buy a naked derivative on it and, when it fails, comes back and blames liberals for it. Then, you’ll invest all over again, but this time, with money borrowed against your house.
.
Define a government failing.
.
It could mean something very mild when you say that a party’s government is failing in parliament. That just means that they will loose the next election. That is unlikely to have a great deal to do with the investments of that country.
.
However, if you say the entire government of, in this case, Greece, is failing, that would mean that companies are going to LOOSE MONEY and be forced to LAYOFF employees who, in turn will not buy from other businesses and cause more businesses to LOOSE MONEY.
.
So, if the total government of a country, not one party loosing popularity, is failing, it means that it’s COMPANIES ARE LOOSING MONEY OR SOON WILL.
.
So, if somebody recommends investing money in Greece, it means that he believes that the GOVERNMENT is not going to screw up the economy.
.
If you hear that Detroit is going down the toilet (old news – it’s been flushed down already from what I understand) do you a) Invest money or b) invest money anywhere but there?
.
The correct answer if B.
.
So, if the Greek government can not keep unemployment under control, then Greece is the LAST PLACE you would want to invest.
.
If somebody recommends that you invest there, it means that the government is going to control unemployment.
.
You really are loosing your mind, Freeinpa.

“Didn’t I say that freeinpa would call it a win?”
.
Knowing him, in 2012 when Obama gets re-elected and Democrats come back in larger numbers than ever he will call that a victory for Republicans.
.
He just makes no sense!
.
I have this strange feeling that Freeinpa is very short and frail. Maybe he is very fat, too. His philosophy is always about somebody coming into town and taking things away or doing harm. Terrorists, the IRS, the ATF, the Unions, the EPA and black people scare him.
.
I was unaware of the voter intimidation story, but, the links he sent showed me nothing useful.
.
When it happens, voter intimidation is always awful.
.
I remember how disgusted I was hearing stories in 2000 and 2004 that black and poor neighborhoods with high Democratic registration “accidentally” ran out of ballots or had only one quarter of the wealthy Republican districts voting machines so that voting was a five minute deal in Republican dominated precincts but an all day ordeal in the Democratic ones.
.
I would not want to see anything like that done to either party or even an independent party. But he showed me nothing but a useless little film from a camera where it didn’t look even slightly intimidating.

So, where are your facts, freeinpa?
.
Pfft, freeinpa doesn’t believe in facts.
.
He prefers to avoid the step wherein you do research, collect facts, and assemble them into a coherent and compelling argument, and just skip right ahead to the step where he brags about how good his argument was. The one he never made.

Why should we listen to a Phi Beta Kappa and Harvard MBA who has worked in the investment field for decades providing returns in excess of 21% since 1991 (S&P low single digits), has written a book on investing (now out of print) which sells for over $2,000 when we can listen to the “wisdom” of a drop out cabbie and used car salesman.
.
Oh, so credentials matter now?
.
So when it comes to the economy, you’ll listen to Paul Krugman with his own Phi Beta Kappa, Yale BA, MIT Ph.D., and Nobel Prize in Economics and tell Joe the Plumber and Sarah the Half-Term Governor to shut the f*ck up?

a book on investing (now out of print) which sells for over $2,000
.
Here’s a small tip for you, freeinpa — if a book is out of print, it’s generally considered worthless by the experts in its field.
.
There are countless publishers out there, including large numbers of boutique shops and university presses, who regularly snatch up properties if they think they can get even the slightest profit out of them.
.
If the book were any good, a publisher would be bringing out a new edition. But clearly the market has spoken.

“Feeinpa, STOP BURNING AMERICAN FLAGS! STOP DRIVING OUR COUNTRY INTO POVERTY AND CHEERING WHEN GREECE DOES BETTER THAN MANY PARTS OF THE US!
.
Nice and short”
==

See you are learning. Short and wrong as anything else you post. Saves everybody time and we get the same result.

==
IQ53
“I see several facts in patricks’ “tiresome” answer, with links.
.
Yes and it was not what I was addressing was it? But then you freely give idiotic answers to questions not asked but avoid the ones you are.

=
“It’s really too bad you spend so much time giving conservatives a bad name, freeinpa

And what favors do you do anybody? You certainly have an overinflated sense of intelligence and importance. Shame you really don’t have them.

You and Patrick spend countless bytes condemning everything and everyone conservative and what frosts both of your backsides is you are called on it. When your snarky answers and self-declared victories are swatted back at you you fall to or what you are doing to perception of conservatives. Check both of your drivel and see what yours is doing to the human race, but then I heard a new vote is schedule and you must have at least 95 IQ. Looks like you and Patrick will have your own species

“But one of the problems I see is just who has the technology to stop that leak?”
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I agree that having the technology to stop the leak (gush) is the problem. If any good comes out of this disaster at all, hopefully it will be the realization that sometimes the risk isn’t worth the reward unless there are contingencies in place to deal with problems such as this. Obviously there weren’t this time. BP is going to be on the hook for billions of dollars in cleanup and restoration, if restoration is even possible.
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I’ve often thought that we don’t act unless we’re absolutely forced to. Make no mistake, ultimately the consumer is going to bear the brunt of the costs while BP keeps racking up the profits. Big businesss doesn’t give a sh!t about the people. They never have and never will. All the commericals in the world telling us how they make our lives better have only one goal in mind, to increase the bottom line. Drill baby drill my ass. We’ve been f**ked by a slogan.

Selective quotes from Paul Krugman.. eh.. MS?

What about this latest blog post from Mr Krugman?

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/on-blaming-bush/

And one thing is clear: the financial crisis occurred on Bush’s watch. To demand that everyone let Bush off the hook for where we are now because 16 months have passed under his successor is to defy the overwhelming evidence of history.

Wow, sacredh, you are eloquent when you’re compelled to be.

April 2, 2010:
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“I don’t agree with the notion that we shouldn’t do anything. It turns out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills. They are technologically very advanced. Even during Katrina, the spills didn’t come from the oil rigs [i.e. a f'ing lie] they came from the refineries onshore.” – Barack Obama
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April 20, 2010: Explosion on rig
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April 24, 2010: Obama “did not retreat from his plan to expand offshore oil drilling and in fact portrayed the commission as a means to make that possible despite the disaster.”
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“Because it represents 30 percent of our oil production, the Gulf of Mexico can play an important part in securing our energy future,” the president said. “But we can only pursue offshore oil drilling if we have assurances that a disaster like the BP oil spill will not happen again.”
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So, yeah, Sacred, I totally agree: “Drill baby drill my ass. We’ve been f**ked by a slogan.”
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Unfortunately, it’s not some out of work moose killer that’s assaulting us.

SZ: Eloquent? I thought it was a rant. I believe in a clean environment (slowly exhales from a menthol). The world is a pardise and our bodies a temple (scratches nuts/altar).
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jcapan: Yeah, the moose killer really has nothing to do with it. She may be good at spouting bumpersticker catch phrases, but she has little to do with policy other than firing up her followers. This was a huge failure by everyone involved. We need regulations and safeguards out the ass. This disaster goes far beyond any monetary loss BP is going to suffer.

53,
. Your comments are becoming more irrational all the time. In fact they don’t even make any sense.
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I speak the truth and you make some dumb comment like it’s supposed to mean something.
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I think you’ve been associating too much with Patrick. Your comments are getting as ridicules as his.

Drill baby drill my ass. We’ve been f**ked by a slogan.
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The slogan that f*cked us was never “Drill Baby Drill.”
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It was always “Change we can believe in.”

I thought President Obama was against pointing the finger at someone else? Oh I forgot that was only related to BP and other oil companies. Pointing the finger at Bush is still OK.
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Rahm says, I have a great strategy. Whenever we have a problem let just say it’s Bush’s fault. The MSM will print anything we say and we won’t have to take the blame for all the problems we have created or helped to create.
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Obama says great idea Rahm just like we always did in Chicago. Blame the problems on someone else.
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Lets go shoot some hops. OK.

3xfire3 I think there is plenty of blame to be shared. We might look at ourselves. As consumers, we have accepted the use of oil. Any efforts to lessen our dependency is thwarted by the American voter who doesn’t want to put in action what is needed to end our thirst for oil. We are easily disuaded by corrupt pols and corporations to avoid taking the steps we must.
Americans have a hard time looking forward. It is all about what I need now. You and I are both guilty.

3x, There is no need to point finger at Bush.
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FACT1 – the financial crisis occurred on Bush’s watch.
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FACT2 – Economic recovery takes time (more than 16 months) – Krugman has linked to a pdf full of evidence to support this economic fact.
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Can you deny the above 2 FACTS??? To deny the above two facts would be similar (not in magnitude though) to denying the inalienable truth that the Holocaust ever took place or that there was a terrorist attack on US soil on Bush’s watch.

Freeper,
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“…if I were on a desert Island I would have wanted to take Salma Hayek.”
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“He may be mixing metaphors or offends your sense of spelling or grammar but you respond to a thread with utter nonsense…
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If you don’t know what would happen if a man is stranded with a sexy woman on an island, I think you and your daddy need to have a little talk about something we call “the birds and the bees.”
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Personally, as much as I find politics interesting, I think, a few years ago (she is over 40 now) I would have more fun with Selma Hayek.
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If you’d prefer the surveys… well you and Karl Rove seem to love your politics more than you love women. That would be your business.

“I think you’ve been associating too much with Patrick. Your comments are getting as ridicules as his.”
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3X,
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What I find ridiculous is that you claim to be somewhere other than to the right of Genghis Khan.
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I found a study showing that 80% of all business owners see Unions as good and that approximately half of all large businesses (far less likely than small businesses to agree with this) that global warming is real and needs the government to do something about it.
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So, only 20% of all business owners agree with you on labor and only about half of them, also, agree with you on the environment.
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Also, I have shown that the average per person income of Greece is far higher than that of Toledo, Ohio, where you claim to hail from. (I say “claim” regardless of how humble or insignificant the claim – such as having children is irrelevant and the norm – since I do not know your real name).
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So, one can judge since Greece was decimated during World War II and, far more so, during the Greek Civil War and Toledo, like any other industrial city in the US at that time, was booming in 1950, you have to wonder what happened.
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How, over the past 60 years did a twice decimated Greece end up with a higher per capita income than Toledo, Ohio?
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Answer: Good government in Greece, bad government in Toledo.
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BTW: You may be older than I am, but, when you were a wee lad of 39, given the choice between a survey and an amazingly attractive Latina, would you have chosen the survey. (Since you fathered children, I think you, like me, prefer an evening with a nice woman over reading a poll).

“You and Patrick spend countless bytes condemning everything and everyone conservative and what frosts both of your backsides is you are called on it.”
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Wrong!
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“condemning ..everyone conservative..”
Just look at what I said to xxception.
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I was not rude since he was not rude.
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“…what frosts both of your backsides is you are called on it.”
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Actually, we are calling out conservatives who invent their own facts such as yourself.
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“Check both of your drivel and see what yours is doing to the human race, but then I heard a new vote is schedule and you must have at least 95 IQ.”
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First, if want to know, my IQ is 137. Only one is one hundred and twenty five people score that highly.
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Second, if you are not spouting at least mock Social Darwinism, which was the philosophy of the Nazis, in that sentence, I don’t know what else is.
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I have called out the conservative assumption that what is good for short term profits for big business is, also, good for everybody. This is just false.
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The IQ test is series of puzzles and word problems. I, personally, do not believe that it alone has very much significance since it matters most not how well you can figure things out, but, what you choose to do.
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If somebody had an IQ of 200 (Most versions of the test do not go up that high) but spends all of their time watching Americas funnies home videos, they will not be able to do much. Garbage in – garbage out.
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You, sir, appear to woefully misinformed regardless of IQ or any other measurement of intellectual potential.
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This does not mean per se that you are of low or high intelligence. It just means that you limit your world to garbage in and, as we can all see, the result is garbage out.

3X,
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Bush spent seven years running on September 11th holding Clinton responsible as if he were flying one of the airplanes and ignored many other of his own mistakes.
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Nobody at all believed that Rome was built in a day nor, after Nero Fiddled as Rome burned that it was rebuilt within a century, either.
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No, our nation has not literally burnt to the ground, but the government agencies designed to prevent everything from financial fraud to ecological disaster were castrated by underfunding and emasculated by anti-government policies.
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The sad truth for Obama supporters is that, even though he was a dramatically better choice for our country of the two candidates, he has been far more timid in pursuing an effective agenda to rebuild these agencies to make them effective again.
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On the one hand, had the previous president been Gore, Kerry or anybody less of a far right winger than GWB, he wouldn’t have this issue. Also, with only sixteen months on the job, it would have been impossible for him to have gotten all of those agencies back into functional order. On the other hand, he put these matters far too low on his agenda until the media brought them up.
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To pretend that Bush as a part of a distant historical record rather than somebody who had done harm that takes years to repair would be to miss most of the story. On the other hand, nobody is saying that this particular matter in particular that Obama was inches behind solving this before the disaster. It appears as if the administration knew as little about MMS as the general public did: very little – far too little.

I just found Freeinpa’s picture online:
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http://nerdapproved.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/hannibal.jpg
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When he behaves nicely and doesn’t bite the nurses they let him go online.

It isn’t necessay to blame Bush for the current economic crisis. After all he didn’t actually write the “Government is the problem – Taxes stunt growth – Markets can do no wrong” mantra that represents the key tenets of the Church of Reagan. He merely implemented them unencumbered by opposition from either party.

While I will agree we consume far more than is needed with oil, you also cannot say that we as consumers are guilty of it solely because we need to get from point A to point B.
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The problem lies in the fact that there is no other alternative to oil. Sure there are “electric cars”, but how far can you go before you have to “hook it back up to the outlet”? 40 miles? 50 miles? 100 miles?
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Your sense of always wanting to “blame” someone as usual falls on the wrong people. Cap and Tax, which is the only alternative being proposed by this administration is nothing short of a big scam to make more money for the likes of your party henchmen and women, Obama, Gore, Jones and the rest of the far left crazies. It’s nothing about alternatives, and everything about putting money in their individual pockets.
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Do some of your own research, and read about it online. It’s not difficult to find.

27.4: Freep, is that you?

Someone should push a sock in Krugman’s mouth to shut the idiot up. He is nothing but a far left liberal zealot who wants to spend more tax dollars on pie in the sky liberal and neo-socialism failed policies.
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It’s easy math. Idiot proof explanations of Krugman policy. DOH!! Caveman on Welfare. Big Government give Caveman tax dollar from rich Caveman, but Big Government wastes and abuses 60 cents of the dollar before he give to Caveman. Caveman screwed out of 60 cents. Rich Caveman screwed out of his dollar. Rich Caveman move to another part of the world or sets up off-shore holding company, because the Big Government is taking too much.
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The real problem continues to go unsolved. If Caveman was educated to be more individually responsible instead of dependent on the Government then he wouldn’t need the Rich Caveman’s money to survive.

Actually the problem is the the ‘cost’ of oil consumption is not reflected in the ‘price’ of oil consumption. If we were paying more at the pump, we would quite naturally use less. But any effort to accomplish that results in banshee-worthy screaming.

“Here’s a small tip for you, freeinpa — if a book is out of print, it’s generally considered worthless by the experts in its field.”

==
Here is the Amazon link that was also quoted in the article. But then liberals know better about everything—in their own mind. Here’s is a small tip for you STFU unless you actaully know something.

“First, if want to know, my IQ is 137. Only one is one hundred and twenty five people score that highly”

And no one is as impressed with this as you are. I bet you were at the head of Taxi cab school!
==
”
You, sir, appear to woefully misinformed regardless of IQ or any other measurement of intellectual potential.

An IQ of 137 and unable to comprehend anything.

“Check both of your drivel and see what yours is doing to the human race, but then I heard a new vote is schedule and you must have at least 95 IQ.

My quote was that you and IQ53 combined IQ was under 95 and unfit for the human race, the sarcasm apparently lost on one so brilliant. But thanks for continually proving my point that you are an arrogant dumb ass.

…and surely, SZ, you jest that we’d be better off with the PONer in charge???

Apr,
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We don’t often agree but most of the time you are logical with your posts. Yes there’s blame enough to go around. Bush’s policies of spending didn’t help our economy. Obama’s approach has made the problems worse not better.
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Only an ideologue would support all the economic policies of Bush or Obama. Keep an open mind and truth will show through.
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Good Post

I have been spending way too much time commenting on this blog. Even a retiree has things to do. My wife has a long list of projects for me.
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As a way to spend less time on Swampland, I have decided to respond only to people who are rational in their comments and not ideologues.
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Two people I will no longer respond to are Patrick and 53. They are totally irrational ideologues who are not capable of having an open minded discussion or debate. There is no common sense or even reality to most of their posts.
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Patrick and 53 if you choose to respond to any of my future posts, you will not receive a response from me.
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Please go bother someone else with your insanity.

“A 1943-S copper cent graded VF-35 sold for $207,000 in 2010. ”
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http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_value_of_a_1943_copper_penny
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“Sarah: How a Hockey Mom Turned Alaska’s Political Establishment Upside Down (Hardcover).”
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Formats
Amazon Price New from Used from
Hardcover $17.05 $2.20 $0.01
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WTF do can you do with a copper 1943 penny that is so special?
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Nothing.
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So, if price of a book = quality of the writing that looks bad for Sarah Palin where a used copy will cost you only one penny – and not a 1943 penny.
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Sorry, Freeper.

“..unfit for the human race..”
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That’s it.
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From now on I will call you Fuhrer, not Freeper.
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You are the one who wants maintain purity of race now, Fuhrer.

“The real problem continues to go unsolved. If Caveman was educated to be more individually responsible instead of dependent on the Government then he wouldn’t need the Rich Caveman’s money to survive.”
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So, do explain your how your Paleolithic period philosophy can explain that Greece without “individual responsibility” has a much higher per capita income than Toledo, Ohio.
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It appears as though those of us who are aware that this is the twenty first century know that simple answers are not always the correct ones and, sometime, counterintuitive answers are the winners.
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Imagine this: you are 18 years old and in the housing project you grew up in. You can no longer stay there since you are no longer a minor. Your mother began to get government assistance after your father’s death. You went to a terrible high school. You were not in the top 1% for grades to get scholarship to college. Your budget is $0 for college. You love your girlfriend and she is in the same boat as you are….
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How do you become a Daddy without getting partial assistance from the government?
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What store do you go to buy some of that “individual responsibility”?
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You need GOVERNMENT BACKED student loans to cover ALL of your tuition.
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They do not exist for most schools because our government is from the Paleolithic period.

“My quote was that you and IQ53 combined IQ was under 95 and unfit for the human race, the sarcasm apparently lost on one so brilliant. But thanks for continually proving my point that you are an arrogant dumb ass.”
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freeinpa, you are hilarious! Telling some else they are arrogant when in the same breath your own arrogance reaches it’s maximum extent i.e. the point where you decide that others are “unfit for the human race”!
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Again, as always, you have tried to divert attention from the faux pas you committed in labeling Partick’s response as “tiresome” and too long.
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I’m not worried in the least freeinpa.
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Do you realize just how deep the hole you are digging for yourself is?
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Like I said, you can’t be doing any of your fellow conservatives any favors. About the only thing successful you’ve done so far is to polish the image* of conservatives as hateful, intolerant, and also, relentlessly stupid to a very high shine!
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*I do not think all conservatives are like that. Exiled, appollyon07, and others are certainly not. I am speaking of how freeinpa’s conduct feflects on the movement, which is decidedly not good…

I usually don’t expect one when I post. My intent has always been to defray your most flawed presentations. That will continue.
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It has been extremely instructive to watch you walking into walls while talking a bunch of sh!t, anyway, 3xfire3.
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Don’t expect me, however, to avoid pointing out some of the more obvious flaws in your responses in the future…

“The problem lies in the fact that there is no other alternative to oil. Sure there are “electric cars”, but how far can you go before you have to “hook it back up to the outlet”? 40 miles? 50 miles? 100 miles?”
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Rusty,
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This is, by far, the most accurate and reasonable thing I have ever seen you post.
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Thank you.
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I sold Nissan Hybrids. I have relatives who own Toyota Hybrids. They are half way solution and, as I said here earlier, can go 85 MPH and I have the speeding ticket to prove it.
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Although they are not on the market yet, there are plans for plug-in hybrids. That is it will go the fist 50 miles on battery, then the gasoline engine takes over to generate more electricity for the car.
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What we disagree on is how to bring these cars onto the market. There is a carrot and there is a stick.
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The carrot is to, as has been done with Nissan’s Altima Hybrid and, previous with the Toyota Prius is to provide a tax break covering the difference between the cost of a Hybrid and a regular car.
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The stick is to let gasoline prices rise higher and higher based upon carbon permits similar to cap and trade.
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Demand creates supply. Supply does not create demand.
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Although it will be very painful, higher gasoline prices will convince consumers only to buy hybrids, to buy solar panels for their homes (so that very little of the electricity for the home or the car come from outside sources such coal burning power plants).
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I, myself, do not see the Green movement and government encouragement of such a limitation as much as an opportunity to release the engineers to invent some really cool stuff.
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I bet you agree with me that I can find little more annoying than the people who want to turn down the heat in Winter and turn down the AC in the Summer to save the world when all you want is to not shiver or sweat when you are indoors.
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Technology, if pushed by the carrot or the stick of government, my friend, can make some really exciting changes for this world.

3X,
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I presented a comparison between the country of Greece and the city of Toledo, Ohio, using the CIA Fact Book and The US Census.
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This is your response:
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“Please go bother someone else with your insanity.”
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Then, as I would call the pot calling the kettle black you accuse me and 53_3 of being “…totally irrational ideologues who are not capable of having an open minded discussion or debate.”
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Not to throw 53 under the bus, but, I am not 53_3. Offline I never met 53_3. He is harsher on you than I am.
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If you say that Greece is Keynes and Keynesian Economics is socialist, I will correct you. They, as all things in the field of Economics, are ideologically under the umbrella of Capitalist.
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If you say Greece is Socialist, I will show you that the CIA will not define Greece as such.
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If you say the Greece is headed for additional problems, I will mention the same Economist from the same article Freeinpa uses to point out that this does not seem to be the case.
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If you ignore the elephant in the room with Euro that it covers some very varied economies with the same currency as has never been done before, I will point it out to you.
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When you claim that small business owners are, on average, anywhere near as conservative as you are, I will bring you studies showing that you are, with your opinions about Climate Change and organized labor, combined, among the most conservative 10% of the business community and, likely, among the most conservative 3 to 5% of the United States.
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If we have the same facts, we can debate.
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I am more reluctant to insult you than 53, but, that may not be a strength of mine since you are often completely incorrect with what you are sure are facts.
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You respond to people presenting fact to you by saying that they are insane.
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Sir, did you do that when you ran a company?
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If you made any innovations which were not your own, the answer very likely is no.

nflfoghorn:
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You’ve missed the point, haven’t you?
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Obama’s agenda, the agenda that posits a “post-ideological,” technocratic, elite-salvaging cooperation between government and finance/industry, the New Democrats’ policy agenda was sold to liberals who bought it instead of negotiating for a true coalition.
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They were able to do this precisely because of the unseriousness, tribalism and shortsightedness emblematic in “we’d be better off with the PONer in charge???”
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It isn’t rightism (“Freep, is that you?“) to be able to see clearly that “Change we can believe in.” never meant change Americans can believe in, only change New Democrats have always believed in.
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The only hope we had was to run the Democratic party as a real, self-aware coalition, as opposed to putting New Democrats in charge of everything without a shred of accountability to the people who elected him. The slogan that f*cked us, the slogan that convinced so many to work so hard to elect people who had no intention of enacting that majority’s will, the slogan that allowed the New Democrats’ agenda to be temporarily blurred with a liberal agenda was “Change we can believe in.”
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The point isn’t that we’d be worse off with Sarah Palin in charge, the point is that we didn’t elect the “Change we can believe in,” we elected the change elites can believe in. At least “Drill Baby Drill” doesn’t hide what it is.

As 3x pointed out in Monday’s thread, it is a waste of time responding to the 2 of you. When you argue with idiots (which you 2 clearly are) people have a hard time telling the difference at some point.

You can continue your circle jerk and congratulate each other on your brilliance

“You can continue your circle jerk and congratulate each other on your brilliance.”
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I knew that you and rusty congratulated each other on each other on your brilliance, but, I really didn’t need to know that the two of you had such a… personal relationship.
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53_3 are on opposite sides of the country while you and rusty are both at some undisclosed location in PA.

Someone should push a sock in Krugman’s mouth to shut the idiot up. He is nothing but a far left liberal zealot who wants to spend more tax dollars on pie in the sky liberal and neo-socialism failed policies.

Rustyblog, Classic neo-conservative approach to debate – When the message starts making sense and cannot be refuted, start attacking the messenger and call him names .
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Krugman makes it very plain that he is a liberal, his blog is called “The conscience of a Liberal”. But you have not clarified as to why he is an idiot.
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By all accounts, Krugman is a successful economist who won the Nobel prize + columnist at NYT + professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton University. Unlike your blog, a lot more people actually visit his blog and comment on it. And unlike you, he does respond to criticism without resorting to name calling.
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Your brand of Neo-conservativism is just a thinly veild disguise to present greed and jealousy as a virtue. So I guess calling someone an “idiot” is a coward’s last line of defence against the world finding out that he is one.