Sock Puppet Theater, Act II

The GOP amendments would make permanent all of the tax cuts or extend all of them by five years.

Which is the GOP’s way of saying allow taxes to go up now and take the blame for it OR let it come up again 1 year before the next presidential election so that we can make that election about tax cuts.

I say let them go up instead of swallowing the blackmail.

Thanks, Jay. Did you draw the short straw to cover tomorrow’s hearings? If so, hope you can sneak decent in and bring an earpiece so you can listen to fave football or b-ball game on your cell phone / blackberry. And yes, both sides are playing politics with the issue.
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Granted this is venturing into tea leaves, but what’s your best guess + your secret sources’ best estimates on the final deal? Think of the betting pool opportunities with Scherer, Katy, MC, Alex, Kate, etc. I’ve guessed before that all cuts as is extend two years but no more. Second option is all deals fail thanks to R filibuster, all cuts expire, and all hell breaks loose on cable TV. Enjoy your weekend, Jay, and hope this post’s comments are milder than yesterday’s.

Governing:

The Democratic amendments (mounted on H.R. 4853, a shell bill as all spending must originate in the House) would make permanent the tax cuts on incomes up to $250,000 or those on incomes up to $1 million. They are also tied to an extension of unemployment benefits, alternative minimum tax relief, an estate tax fix, a repeal of the 1099 provision in the health care reform bill and other tax-related items.

vs. not governing:

The GOP amendments would make permanent all of the tax cuts or extend all of them by five years.

Meanwhile, some “journalists” say both sides are accusing one another of playing politics with the issue.

So both sides are saying the same thing. Weird.

Funny how the deficit, which is all over the news these days, doesn’t appear in discussions of tax policy. Nor is there any discussion of American history– little-known fact: with tax rates at the 1990s levels that they might revert to, we had terrific economic growth!

While economic growth is possible under those tax levels, I’m starting to get annoyed by the complete dismissal of the computer boom and consequential bust that powered that economy.
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Its as if you are saying raising taxes helps the economy work, which isn’t true…..

I’m arguing nothing of the sort, gumOnShoe. The tech bubble was a real thing, for sure, but the economic growth at that time was not all tied up in the tech boom. I’m not sure there’s any evidence to support the argument that marginal tax rates at 1990s levels harm any aspect of economic well-being. (I’m pleased to backtrack from that, if there’s evidence that would compel it).
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In fact, a quick Google search finds this info from ’04, and I don’t think the economy was so awesome in Bush Jr.’s second term as to make the Bush Jr. tax policies look better: http://www.ppionline.org/ppi_ci.cfm?knlgAreaID=107&subsecID=295&contentID=252964

I’m not saying that higher or lower taxes affect the economy in any specific way at all.. in fact I’m saying just the opposite. Statisticians are supposed to know that correlation does not imply causation.
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Taxes up means less government debt, but also clearly means less money in people’s hands. I can understand the argument for the necessity of taxes, and I’d agree with it. But I don’t think you say increasing taxes (or having them at a specific) necessarily helps the economy, just as I don’t think you can say lowering taxes helps the economy.
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Perhaps, at times when taxes were raised there were other things going economically that would cause widgets to move around more and cause revenue flow, but taxes themselves seem an unlikely cause for that flow regardless of which direction they flow. Which is the main argument we always make against supply side economics.

Jay Newton-Small:
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You write:
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“The Democratic amendments (mounted on H.R. 4853, a shell bill as all spending must originate in the House) would make permanent the tax cuts on incomes up to $250,000 or those on incomes up to $1 million.”
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Thank you so very much for describing the tax cuts accurately, it is greatly appreciated.
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These Democratic amendments are indeed tax cuts for everyone on the first $250,000 of income, or tax cuts for everyone on every dollar of income until $1 million.
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Thanks once again for making the effort to precisely describe the legislation in question, Jay Newton-Small.

“The tech bubble was a real thing, for sure, but the economic growth at that time was not all tied up in the tech boom.”
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Also the bubble was a speculation bubble, not a technological one. Technological advancement happens on curve, if you plot it from the bronze age, we’re still at the beginning of the nearly straight-up, exponential increase, part of the curve.

To summarize, the GOP does not care about:

- Unemployment benefits
- Fixing the AMT
- The deficit

I have to wonder if being in a lame duck session is the fire under their seats that Democrats need in order not to turn third way on us as usual.

When was this eagerness to handle this issue before the election?

Obviously this is the beginning of Republican obstructionism. I wonder when the investigations of Obama will start?

Did he lose money in a bad real estate deal like Whitewater? It looks like he has been nothing but loyal to Michelle, so, they can’t attack him for that.

BTW: I did lose a gentleman’s bet. If the Republicans gained a majority more than, I believe, four, I said that I would agree to be offline for one month. One month expired at Midnight.

It’s a bit late to comment, but, I am disappointed that 2010 was a year when you can fool a majority of the people this time.

Nice to see you Patrick.
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As far as I’m concerned, the Dems need to draw the line.
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Let the tax cuts expire, if the GOP’ers don’t budge.
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I’ll take my medicine. Why?
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Because I know the rich will have to take theirs, right along with me. Misery loves company, I always say.
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I know one thing for sure if they lapse because Beener can’t stand the dog doing the tail wagging:
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I’ll be a better soldier about it than freeinpa….

You left off START, DADT, small business tax relief, fixing Medicare payments to doctors, sustainable energy policy, ethical behavior by Congressmen, etc. etc. Save yourself some time: Republicans don’t care about America. It’s simply not where they allegiance lies.

Thanks 53.
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I’ve only checked a few posts back.
I haven’t seen his diarrhea yet, but, i guess Freakinpa is still posting, huh?
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I wonder what bet would keep him offline for a month… or a few years, preferably.

patrick, welcome back. You were missed …including matter of earljr. He’s still claiming to be a doctor, evidence lacking of course no matter how often pressed on it (of which you did a great job before your lost bet). Check out today’s Wikileaks Disclosures post from Michael Scherer.

patrick, congrats also on honoring your bet (too bad it was lost); too bad freeinpa welched on his with Kevin. Bad times. BTW, re: earl the MD???, he once quoted an obsolete term and got busted…
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http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2010/11/23/waking-the-president/comment-page-1/#comment-218735
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…so we’ve tried to hold down the fort but you’ve been really good at raising such red flags here.

He is not a doctor. HIPAA is the law that protects your private health information from being disseminated without your permission, any healthcare provider would know this.

Maybe I’m not very aware of the arguments of both sides. But, what are the pro’s and con’s of increasing and decreasing tax? If the GOP is complaining about the debt, then why not increase taxes to lower it. And for that matter why wouldn’t the Dems try to slow down spending. While I do identify my self with one of these parties, I’m beginning to become annoyed that they can’t compromise on decisions to do whats best for this great Nation.

Someone please explain the pros and cons for me. Because If this were my household, I would try to make more money and spend less to balance my budget!!!

You’re a man of your word, patricksartor.
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Nice to see you back.
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“Don’t settle for the lesser evil! Cthulhu in 2012 ”
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http://ljforestier.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/cthulhu-4-prez.jpg.png

I was the one who asked if he knew what HIPAA is and all earljr. could answer was “yes, I know it”, but he never gave me an answer as to what it is. I would have known if he’d tried and gotten it wrong, too, as I must follow HIPAA guidelines every day.

I wonder what bet would keep him offline for a month…
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The answer is that there is no such bet, because freeper is a filthy goddamn liar.
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all earljr. could answer was “yes, I know it”, but he never gave me an answer as to what it is
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In that thread decon linked to, earljr came back and replied that:
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HIPAA, as I recall, is the health insurance accountability act and it protects people who have lost their job and need a continuation of their health insurance.

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which I have no idea if that’s accurate or not.

First off, I’d say you need to realize that the government is not analogous to your household.
“Tightening the belt” is necessary at the personal and household level, but it’s disastrous at the state and national level in this sort of economic climate.
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The GOP claims that the lower taxes go, the more money can be invested back into the economy. And as the economy expands, the more revenues the government collects (ie it’s taking 15% of a much larger pie rather than 25% of a small pie).
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In theory, at least. The problem is that it really only works when taxes are ridiculously high.
Keeping taxes low for the riches people really does nothing for us at this point:
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-13/rich-americans-save-money-from-tax-cuts-instead-of-spending-moody-s-says.html
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Also, when you say “why wouldn’t the Dems try to slow down spending”, do you have specific spending in mind?

First:
@patrick: Nice to read your voice again! I hope that you enjoyed lurking this past month. Moving forward, I’d have only one suggestion: choose your shoutfests.
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@Decon&Cliff: Nice catch on stinging the fake doctor. Wow. Gets asked about HIPAA and gives the definition of COBRA?!? Doesn’t know what HIPAA is? I brought my kid to the ER not too long ago and couldn’t walk 20 ft or go in an elevator without reading a NOTICE that discussing patient care in earshot of 3rd parties was a violation of HIPAA (The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) Privacy and Security Rules).
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Maybe it’s time to ignore (shun) the Doctor. (I believe that rose83 suggested something like this a while back.)

Earl is even to lazy to google HIPPA???

Geez

great ‘doctor’.

dmorton,
This is introductory Marcoeconomics, which I remember well.
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Spending is what creates jobs. That is – when you think of it, it is very obvious – that the one and only reason your employer ever put the help wanted sign in the window was because without adding on an additional person, he/she/they would not be able to take care of all of the people spending money at your company (presuming you do not work for a non-profit or government agency).
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When households (individuals and/or families) stop spending, for some reason like the housing crisis (at first) companies in order to make a profit must remove workers. This then takes away more money from households, which then takes more money away from businesses, which, again takes more money away from households.
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So, somebody somewhere must, if you will, loosen, not tighten their belt. In theory, I guess, a church group or a non-profit could get together millions of people and convince them to buy, buy buy even if they don’t want anything and that they would endanger their credit ratings and so on from spending, but, in history, this has not happened even once.
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In theory private businesses could be inspired by a church group or some other non-profit to have a policy to screw making a profit and voluntarily lose money hand over fist by hiring people to sit there and do nothing (since their are no spenders – aka clients/customers) and hand out paychecks. But, of course, in human history this has never happened even once, either.
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In reality, city, state and federal government tends to wait to the last second to repair roads, bridges and sewers until they are ready to cause a catastrophe. So, without venturing into private sector-type work, the government can take over in the short term for getting paychecks into pockets which, quickly leave those pockets to right back into the hands of private businesses and, after businesses have no other reasonable choice, into creating or re-creating those private jobs.
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Better yet, the best time to get cheap workers dying for something to do is during a recession. So, this is the best time to get those bridges and roads fixed.
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Just to top it off, with far fewer businesses and households qualified to or interested in borrowing, if the government must go into debt, the best time is a recession.
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Next, if you are making $250k per year and somebody hands you an additional $1, you will not spend much of it. You will, likely, try to put it in the stock market. The stock market does many good things, but, creating jobs is not one of them. If you buy 2,000 shares of company A while I sell 2,000 shares of company A, how many jobs were created? Zero new jobs.
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By contrast, if you find a construction worker with an unemployed wife and two children who is two months behind on rent, waiting for food stamps to fill up the refrigerator and give him $1 in pay, how much will he hand over to private business (as in the grocery store)? He will give all of that $1 to the grocery store.
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So, taxing a household which would have spent, say, 85 cents on a dollar and hiring somebody who would spend $1 on $1 leads to additional spending and, therefore, an improved economy and job creation.
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If you do not have the government spend, then nobody is getting out of this rut.
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If the government gets people out of this rut but does not tax the lowest spenders, then our debt will grow more. Even though debts as a temporary solution may be the best idea, excessive debt is not a good long term policy. So, if not now, then when households are over spending (the forming of a bubble, during inflation and other times) these proportionately low spenders, the wealthiest, have to be taxed to pay off the deficit slowly.

Thanks everybody for welcoming me back.
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I didn’t lurk for the same reason that you don’t do well on a diet by hanging around a bakery.
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I am glad to see that “Doctor” Earl is being called out for the liar that he is without me.
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First, it is ridiculous to lie online. Readers are interested in what you write, not in what you say you do when you are not writing.
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Second, Earl uses “I am a doctor” as an excuse to do a victory dance and say that this statement, all alone, is called winning an argument. Presenting facts – augmented by personal experiences or not – is what debate is all about.

Cliff, HIPAA does indeed provide for portability of health insurance coverage if you lose or change your job. So earljr is right as far as that goes. But in practical consideration, the privacy provisions are far more important on a day-to-day basis than portability.

It appears obvious that the Repubs are willing to let all the tax cuts expire so that they can play the blame game for their political benefit, rather than actually do what they said they were going to do. And the Dems are going to let it happen (or are powerless to stop it). Either way, a pox on both their houses.

I’m feeling left out. You all welcomed Patrick back but not me.
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Patrick lost a bet to me and I lost a bet to Sacradh and we’ve both been gone for 30 days.
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I really thought you would all miss the mature wisdom that I bring to this site.
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November 2 was a great day for America. The will of the people spoke loud and clear. They are not happy with the Liberal direction of the Obama Administration. Hopefully now we will get some common sense political directions for our great country.

Thank you Patrick. Well said, easy to follow.
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And welcome back.

I see that the immature and ignorant Liberals on this site are still claiming that Earl is not a Doctor. How stupid can a group of people be? Just because they disagree with someone’s political views they must attempt to demonize them and call them a liar.
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Let me share some mature wisdom with you. At the enlightened age of 72 I have many experiences that no one else of this site has. I have served of the Board of Trustees of a Regional Hospital. In that position I infaced with the Chief of Staff of the Hospital as well as Doctors from every area of specialization. Also since I live in a relatively small community I interface with Doctors through many church and civil organizations.
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Through my experiences, I would know who is and is not a Doctor better than anyone on this site. Earl is definitely a Doctor. For you Liberal/ Progressives to continue your lies that he is not a Doctor is simply your ignorant way to try and marginalize him because you disagree with his political views.
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Are you not capable of debating the issues without trying to Demonize and Marginalize those that don’t share your political views?
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Real men and women are capable of debating the issues without trying to degrade the other person.
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Stop the garbage of trying to say you have proof that Earl is not a Doctor. You do not. You simply have some statements that you claim as proof. It is your biased opinion.
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Debate the issues like men and women and stop acting like children.

JNS – saw you early this morning on CNN. You’re looking good, glad to see it.

At the enlightened age of 72 I have many experiences that no one else of this site has. I have served of the Board of Trustees of a Regional Hospital. In that position I infaced with the Chief of Staff of the Hospital as well as Doctors from every area of specialization.
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Well, there’s no possible way you could be lying about this, so I guess we have no choice but to trust you.
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Seriously, I love that you don’t get it at all.

Thanks. Looks like HIPAA knowledge isn’t the best way to figure out if earljr is a doctor or not.

The direction of the Obama Administration has not been liberal, although it hasn’t been conservative, either.
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Welcome back and thanks for keeping your word, 3xfire3.

what bet with freeinpa?

Moo tee, er, I mean, mee too!
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Why didn’t I just go online to learn dialysis and how to operate this danged NextStage dialysis machine from these Chosen Wisdoms among us!
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I’m slapping myself even now for the oversight. OW! That hurt!
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My wife is looking at me very strangely and reaching for the phone.
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At least they coulda told me that I didn’t need to order coal to fire that sucker up with…

sniffle…

Well, the millionares and billionares can sleep easy tonight, knowing that the lazy unemployed won’t be taking any of their precious dollars.

Of course, the millionares and billionares will immediately convert their wealth into jobs, right?

As a bonus, we’ve solved the Federal deficit by transfering wealth upwards, toward the people who know how to spend it responsibly.

Thank you, 3xfire. I have grown accustomed to their vitriol by now and understand it is simply frustration driving their emotions. I actually find it quite humorous and enjoy the spluttering and squawking sound of an offended liberal. We take humor where we find it and swampland, with its liberal base, is a virtual treasure trove! Welcome back, we have missed you.

“Through my experiences, I would know who is and is not a Doctor better than anyone on this site. Earl is definitely a Doctor. ”
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Well that just settles it then, doesn’t it? Your assertion of authority in defense of earl’s assertion of authority is certainly enough for me without any evidence whatosever to back it up. Got any, ya know, evidence, “doc?” Earl speaks in only vagaries and has never used any medical terminology that isnt common knowledge. You just talk like an old crank.
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My question is, why is it that of the 4 regular Wingnuts who have populated this site since Obama’s election, 3 of them claim to be physicians? Freeinpa is the only local Wingnut who to my knowledge has not claimed to be a doctor (Rusty’s numerous personalities, 3xfire and earljr rest their authority on their fake “doctor” personas since they lack the intellect and facts necessary to support their loud assertions… oh wait, I guess I answered my own question. Cheers)

http://cr4re.com/charts/charts.html#category=Employment&chart=EmploymentRecessionsNov.jpg
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Freeper, Exile, Earl, et al:
Take a look at the attached graph covering recession recoveries since 1948. Open your eyes and note how long the current recession has lasted while having the Bush tax cuts in comparison to the length of other recessions without the lower taxes.
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I know this is hard for you to accept. Trickle down does not work. It is “voodoo economics”. Historically the lower taxes theory has proven bogus.

My question is, why is it that of the 4 regular Wingnuts who have populated this site since Obama’s election, 3 of them claim to be physicians?
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Maybe because pretending to be astronauts, award-winning economists, and porn stars would’ve jumped the shark. Too bad; watching them use adult film terminology and providing video proof of their work would be worth moderation hassles and watching Scherer and Newton-Small blush. But the “doctors” forgot that we can look up medical stuff on google and webMD too. And if 3x has proof to back up claims, provide ‘em please.

apr, you p1ssed off Exile again, this time at Mark’s last Capt. Bligh post. You have the Catholic background to address him properly. Then again, watch the thread quickly shift topics over to Catholicism or Israel the Evil Galactic Empire (again). I tried to stay on topic after your reply to Mark. Oh well…

Thanks for these charts! They’re pretty informative

…and you were literally typing at same time I was: just saw your replies at Bligh post. Good stuff.

H.P. Lovecraft is laughing from the realm of the Old Ones. I don’t mean Arizona or Florida either.

Don’t you just LOVE it? Their feathers are all ruffled and they are squawking to beat the band. Frustrated old liberal hens with bile in their throats. Now tell me, where else can you find comedy like this? This is priceless and commercial free, too.

Welcome back 3xfire3. I came back around Thanksgiving and released you from our bet. You must not have been lurking either.
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“Real men and women are capable of debating the issues without trying to degrade the other person.”
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Preceded by:
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“I see that the immature and ignorant Liberals on this site are still claiming that Earl is not a Doctor. How stupid can a group of people be?”
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I missed that kind of stuff.

I’m one who would benefit from either the House or GOP’s bill. Let me say, people in our bracket can and need to contribute more, and will only strengthen our Nation; let the current law expire. Any other position is purely political grandstanding.

Letting the tax cuts expire would put a small dent in my middle class income. I want them ALL to expire. Period. Stop the negotiations. They aren’t going anywhere. I want Harry Reid to stand at the podium, look over to the republican side and say “F**k you. No vote. They’re all going to expire. By the time I’m up for re-election I’ll be dead anyway.”.

This is total nonsense and had been discredited. The voters have spoken. Keynes is dead. Supply-side lives. There won’t be ANY tax increases and the deficit will be closed by reversing some explosive spending increases that started under Bush. The model is Virginia and New Jersey. Va Gov. McDonnell has already delivered a budget surplus and Christie says he’s already in balance and has many more cuts coming. If big Gov economics were the answer Europe would be much wealthier than America. It ain’t close.

It’s a very cool irony that in Obama you elected an incompetent who in advancing Big Govt so poorly has destroyed the concept for generations.

What are you taking about? The Bush tax cuts of 2003 were intended to boost the economy after the 2001 recession and 9/11. They had nothing to do with 2009. The length and depth of a recession depends on what the President does to end it. This recession has lasted so long because Obama has been an inept economic manager. Are you aware we just had elections and you got your clock cleaned?

Actually rdw, if Keynes is dead (which he still is, literally, thanks for noticing), re: spoken voters, how do you explain that most D losses came from Blue Dogs and other less-prograssive, more right-leaning copycats? And that more true Liberals held onto their seats than did the B-Dogs?
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(okay, this might set rdw off on several long threads arguing with himself, as apr pointed out earlier. But what the hell, we don’t get real weekend open threads except when “1000 words” sorta become them. I’ve asked Adam to provide them but nothing’s happened.)

Historically the lower taxes theory has proven bogus.

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Ya think so do ya? So why can’t Obama raise taxes just 1% on even just millionaires? Reagan changed the world in one of the greatest legislative achievements in our history. He lowered taxes from70% to 28%. That’s a 42% drop. No one since has changed then more than 5% and Obama won’t change them even 1%. We are now a society where 70% would be unthinkable and even 50% preposterous.

Obama and liberalism is so weak you are only proposing a 4% tax increase on only 2% of the population and you CAN’T GET THAT DONE. Reagan got 42%. Obama 0%. Let me guess. Reagan is the dumb one.

Is someone stopping you from paying more in taxes?

kevin made a bet with freeper: if Angle lost the election in Nevada, freeper would cease posting on Swampland forever.
If Reid lost the election, then kevin would stop posting.

secredh,
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“I want Harry Reid to stand at the podium, look over to the republican side and say “F**k you. No vote. They’re all going to expire. By the time I’m up for re-election I’ll be dead anyway.”.
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Will never happen. Even Liberal Democrates will give in to common sense. Both tax rates will be extended.
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Swamp Liberals have a very difficult time understanding reality.
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After January you will see a lot of common sense in government policies. Obama is a Liberal/Progressive. He just not as Extreme L/P as most of the Swamp L/P.

It’s really quite simple. They’re called blue dogs because they’re from conservative districts. They could afford to be moderately democrat as long as they were fiscally conservative. They pissed off their district voters. The reason liberals did fine is they represent liberal districts. The people from my old home town of Philly would vote for Marx. There are 150 house seats Marx could control. You lost 63 seats and the GOP now has 242 votes, 24 more than needed. This was a total ass-kicking and rebuke of liberalism.

“I really thought you would all miss the mature wisdom that I bring to this site.”
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Smart move, return with a joke. Well done.

Quite right, they’re going to have a very hard time learning we elect Presidents and not Kings. Obama suffered two huge losses and created a monster that isn’t going away. Boehner with 242 seats has more power than Newt. While he still had 53 Senate seats he also has 23 incumbents up for re-election and at least 10 are from red states. The monster is the Tea party which wisely has refused to form as a 3rd party. If you are a conservative from a red stay you damn sure better vote against all tax and spending increase or you will lose your job. Any Senator such as Jim Webb from Va who supports a tax increase can be assured he will face a well financed primary challenger in the Democrat primary with a very good chance the 25% of the electorate calling themselves at one with the tea party will register to vote against Allen. If he survives that primary he will of course have a very well financed GOP opponent, possibly George Allen. Sherrod in Ohio just saw the Democrat candidate lose by 15%.

Where Obama will really have a problem is on spending and taxes. If he wants to keep funding going to the NEH, PBS, NPR, etc. he’s going to have to offer the GOP a lot. I don’t see it. If they want to just do continuing resolutions which hold spending flat I think the GOP takes that deal.

decon: I p1ss exile off quite often. He lured me into going off topic. I did apologize to Mark about the gender question. After reading the article that was linked I saw gender was an issue. I just wish he made this clear in his post.
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Exile is very defensive about his faith. I respect his beliefs but have a right to my own. The Church and my parents taught me a great deal about caring for others. However, I believe that many have learned these lessons from other perspectives, religious or not.
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The Church is not something you can sort of believe in. I see too many fallacies in their teachings and too much hypocrisy. Also, a belief in God is something you have or do not have. I spent years coming to terms with that.

I guess “forever” isn’t that long when you suffer from ADHD

Welcome back 3x. Now if freeper only had your an Patrick’s integrity.

Do you think that maybe someone could head up The Party For The Dead?
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We could make it The Rent Is Too Damn High vs. TPFTD in 2012.
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How’s that for a too party sytsem…

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/23/AR2010112306280.html
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Freeper, Exile, Earl et al:
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Explain the German economy.
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Strongest in the world.
Trade balance second to China.
7.5 unemployment, lowest since reunification.
Manufacturing sector strong.
German cos. do not slash wages or off-shore to boost profits.
Strong unions.
Strong social programs.
“stakeholder capitalism not shareholder capitalism”
Read about their really progressive unemployment system.

rdw, please tell us how the stimulus is any kind of referendum on Keynes?
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The single biggest expenditure, 35% of the package, was tax-cuts. There was modest expenditure on food stamps unemployment benefits, and the majority of the rest of it went to the states. It enabled states to pay contractors for work already done and construction already planned- it kept them in business for a little longer. There was almost no involvement in new initiatives (ie, modernizing the electrical grid, solar panels on every Fed building, etc) to create jobs and increase supply. There were no ditches, as it were. It was a referendum that the same-old-thing still doesn’t work so well.

“It’s really quite simple. They’re called blue dogs because they’re from conservative districts. They could afford to be moderately democrat as long as they were fiscally conservative. They pissed off their district voters. The reason liberals did fine is they represent liberal districts. The people from my old home town of Philly would vote for Marx. There are 150 house seats Marx could control. You lost 63 seats and the GOP now has 242 votes, 24 more than needed. This was a total ass-kicking and rebuke of liberalism.”
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But there’s nothing that show, factually and by who lost and where that this was a rebuke of liberalism.
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Thats the meme that you and others drive without analysing the data.

ADHD? That’s mighty generous. I always figured freep suffered from stupid-assh*le-itis.

“I see that the immature and ignorant Liberals on this site are still claiming that Earl is not a Doctor. How stupid can a group of people be? Just because they disagree with someone’s political views they must attempt to demonize them and call them a liar.”
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There’s nothing that speaks, shows or whatever that he is anything including a administrator in our healthcare industry. Outside the odd words he have no convincing knowledge of the medical industry or his so called profession.
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“I see that the immature and ignorant Liberals on this site are still claiming that Earl is not a Doctor. How stupid can a group of people be? Just because they disagree with someone’s political views they must attempt to demonize them and call them a liar.”
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This is of course doubly ironic considering what earl, freeinpa, you and others like you post not only in response to others here, but in a generalized fashion about anyone arguing against and ‘liberals’ in average.
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You simply cannot win with a argument like yours

@ 9.7, should read
“…and increase demand“

From apr’s link (read the whole, short, column)
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“Germany’s large manufacturers – Volkswagen, Siemens, BMW – surely feel market pressures, but they, unlike a growing number of their American counterparts, still invest quite profitably at home. In large part, that’s due to Germany’s system of co-determination, which places an equal number of union and management members on corporate boards. The German metal workers union, IG Metall, has been working with automakers to train workers, for instance, to mass-produce electric cars. “Our goal is to really retain high-value-added manufacturing in Germany,” says Martin Allespach, the union’s policy director. It’s hard to identify any group with real input into corporate conduct that’s pursuing such a goal in the United States”

“If you are a conservative from a red stay you damn sure better vote against all tax and spending increase or you will lose your job.”
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That explains why ideologues don’t get reality. We’ve had this tax rate all this time and our jobs have been exported in an ever quickening rate.
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Continue ask for tax cuts for rich people and they will keep on exporting our jobs while leaving us with crumbling infrastructure and a completely sunk economy.

.
George Carlin on our owners.
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Being Carlin, language is a “little” salty.
They’re coming for our social security.

3X,
.
I’ll grant you that you do have integrity.
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I wasn’t sure if I would find you here or not, but, apparently, you, also, kept your word.

It’s like I never left.
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Why does anybody doubt what Earl and 3X do for a living?
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Well, 53_3 and Stuart, will, on occasion – not to prove a point – will state that their work is in computers as Apr will state that she worked as a teacher and I did many minor jobs and am in commercial real estate. None of us have ever sat there and said, “Since I program computers…. since I used to teach… Since I lease office space to tenants… etc…. I know more about government than you will ever know.”
.
Does being a CEO mean that you are a great candidate for Senator? Ask Linda McMahon that. She’s got time on her hands. Connecticut is the wealthiest state in the country (with the greatest disparity between the wealthiest and the poorest as well). Look how unimpressed a state with more big business people were with CEOs.
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Although I rarely go to a doctor (I am not yet 40, so, this is not unusual) but every doctor I have ever met is very diplomatic. I know that doctors are only slightly more likely to be liberal than conservative, but, Earl is both very extreme and has the manors of barnyard animal.
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In my job, I cold call business owners. One thing they have in common is that, since they represent a business and, therefore, feel obliged to refrain from saying “get F off my phone! My lease isn’t up yet!” and almost always take this healthy behavior home. Yes, if you cover all business owners, they are somewhat more conservative than liberal, but, 3X is both far to the right and has been far ruder than any business owner I ever dealt with except for one. I then looked up his name and found out that he was under indictment for investment fraud.
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What is, by far, a bigger issue than the two of you not being who you claim to be is that you, unlike real doctors and CEOs, are both rude and believe that being really good at one thing means that you know everything under the sun and that your word is worth more than 100 news articles or scholarly papers on the topic.

a rebuke of liberalism
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Hippooath, this is a testament to the power of corporate media to create powerful and pervasive narratives, regardless of accuracy.
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Obama is not liberal. His policies are decidedly centrist (corporate with something thrown in for the regular folks). The problems we face are the result of a corporate-centric and militaristic swing in US policy over the past few decades peaking with the housing bubble and war-on-terror. Obama has not fixed the problems with his slight adjustment in trajectory. Yet, the oligarchs are greedy and want those little scraps back. Therefore, corporate media has decided the narrative should be as follows:
.
You are hurting, Obama is liberal, the steps he’s taken haven’t improved your life much… such is the Failure of Liberalism.

Does the term ‘shovel ready’ ring a bell? As stimulus it SUCKED. Yesterday unemployment rates was reported at 9.8%. Are you really going to try and argue it worked? Larry Summers was on record as saying the stimulus had to meet the three T’s, timely, targeted and temporary. It met NONE of them. My understanding is there’s still $200M unspent. We live in the post-Reagan world. Govt is NOT the solution to this problem. He tried to sell the New Deal because in his Harvard/Liberal bubble he still thinks the new deal worked. It DID NOT. You elected a man with a shocking lack of private sector / business experience. What little he knows about business and economic is wrong.

“. The voters have spoken. Keynes is dead. Supply-side lives.”
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So, according to that reasoning, if the voters vote for candidates who do not believe in gravity, then we should all be floating around the room.
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Sir, Economics is about a bunch of nerds (and I mean that the same way African Americans use their N word with one another – this is my n word) spend year after year compiling statistical fact the same way chemists, physicists and biologists do.
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There is one and only one difference between economics and the natural sciences: no lab.
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It would, obviously be unethical to do random things with the economy to see how many people starve to death in poverty and so, not to mention that it would require a dictator in a lab coat to take notes on what good or harm is done.
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Many of the voters – but not enough to take the senate – have rejected economics and we will all suffer the consequences.
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It is a sad occasion when many people are so mistaken.
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2012: voters will chose to blame two years of slow growth, high unemployment on either Obama or the Republicans in congress. One thing seems extremely unlikely is a recovery.

But there’s nothing that show, factually and by who lost and where that this was a rebuke of liberalism.

*****************************************************
Come on! You lost 63 house seats, 6 Senate seats, 6 governorships and a near record number of state seats. This was worst than 1994 and worse than anything in at least 60 years. The only reason it wasn’t worse is the Tea Party nominated some whacko’s.

The tea party by itself is ironclad proof of the rejection of liberalism. We found out today the Senate, with 59 Democrats cannot pass a tax increase of just 1% on millionaires. If that’s not a total rebuke of liberalism what is it?

But there’s nothing that show, factually and by who lost and where that this was a rebuke of liberalism.

*****************************************************
Come on! You lost 63 house seats, 6 Senate seats, 6 governorships and a near record number of state seats. This was worst than 1994 and worse than anything in at least 60 years. The only reason it wasn’t worse is the Tea Party nominated some whacko’s.

The tea party by itself is ironclad proof of the rejection of liberalism. We found out today the Senate, with 59 Democrats cannot pass a tax increase of just 1% on millionaires. If that’s not a total rebuke of liberalism what is it?

rdw56,
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Making a proclamation without documentation from an outside source does not make you correct.
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“Obama and liberalism is so weak you are only proposing a 4% tax increase on only 2% of the population and you CAN’T GET THAT DONE. Reagan got 42%. Obama 0%”
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Well, all else being equal, who want to pay higher taxes exclusively for the sake of higher taxes? 0%.
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With all else being equal, if it will not increase the debt nor cut needed services, who wants lower taxes? 100%
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So, Ronald Reagan told you a comfy bedtime story and you, still, haven’t woken up and smelled the bulls hit.
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If there were some way to keep 100% of the services we need, not increase the debt and stimulate the economy while cutting taxes, I would favor it.
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Since cutting taxes or keeping the highest bracket so low would require a cut in needed government services and/or an increase in the deficit I would support a tax cut. Since that mathematically does not work, I, with no better option, support resuming the tax on the wealthiest.

“The tea party by itself is ironclad proof of the rejection of liberalism.”
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Short term memory.
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If a large defeat in one election means the death of that ideology, then one should have said that conservatism was dead in 2008.
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This is a referendum on the economy.
.
The stimulus was far too small, jobs did not return. liberals continue to vote for Democrats, conservatives continue to vote for Republicans and the middle just wanted to express how pissed off they were that they lost their job or did not regain a new job.

So, according to that reasoning, if the voters vote for candidates who do not believe in gravity, then we should all be floating around the room.

***********************************

You should write for the NTYs. Thomas L Freidman makes a fortune writing these senseless metaphors.

Economics, aka the dismal science, is a wonderful thing. So is common sense. One of the great movie lines of all time, from Forest gump, is the anti-elitist mantra, stupid is as stupid does. Yesterday the BLS reported an unemployment rate of 9.8% and liberals want to talk about how successful big govt is. Are you kidding me?

Does the term ‘shovel ready’ ring a bell? As stimulus it SUCKED. Yesterday unemployment rates was reported at 9.8%. Are you really going to try and argue it worked?
.
“Shovel ready” is what I referred to as “construction already planned”; it allowed the states to conduct business as usual for a while longer.
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And yes, it sucked, quite predictably. Relying on tax cuts and having no Keynesian-like component doomed it to inadequacy. Prior expert testimony before the House warned lawmakers as much.
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If that’s not a total rebuke of liberalism what is it?
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As liberalism never entered the equation, I’d call it a triumph of deception. See 9.10.

Obama is not liberal.

You are hurting, Obama is liberal

*********************************************

A little spastic here, which is it?

rdw @ 9.16. I’m saying that this is the media’s inaccurate yet powerful narrative.
.
Please re-read my post. Maybe imagine quotes around that last paragraph. That part is what the media is telling us (leading to that “ass-kicking” you delight in), in essence taking blame from where it belongs and putting it on liberalism- which didn’t even make it to the party.

“Also, a belief in God is something you have or do not have. I spent years coming to terms with that.”
.
When I was five, six and seven years old, every time I asked my father about Santa Clause he used to extend the story further and further. It wasn’t one man, it was an association. It wasn’t through the chimney, they left the door unlocked….
.
When I was eight, my mother dropped it like a bombshell that it was all a lie.
.
When I was nine I was trying to figure it out. If you are good,Santa Clause will give goodies. If you are good, God will give you heaven… Santa wears an outfit. The priest wears and outfit…
.
One night, after my brothers and sister were asleep,. I asked my mother “there is no god is there?”
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She was and is a practicing Catholic.
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At the moment I was convinced that, like the guy in the Santa Suit, Father Howley would one day sit down with us and say, “God… ha!… I just do this for the kids! I’m a stock broker during the rest of the week. This whole not married thing… I’ve been married 40 years, five kids, six grandkids..”
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Obviously that’s not what happened. My mother was shocked at the question and asked me why I waited until late at night. Well, if I was supposed to keep it a secret from my younger brother that there was no Santa, I guessed that I had to keep in a secret that there was no god. Maybe they would tell us this when we big, big kids like 13 or 14, I figured.
.
It took 17 years before I had the only really serious issue with the Catholic Church when I was 26 years old, “We believe, God, the father almighty, creator of heaven and earth….”
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Nope. I don’t.
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I liked the mass. Liked the smell incense. I liked the organ, the choir, the architecture of the churches. Gradually, though, priests, ministers, rabbis and the like began to look more and more like men in Santa suits, yet delusional ones who believed that they were Santa’s elves…
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Even though I didn’t belong to any church groups and, therefore, didn’t have any friends through the church, it was hard to say goodbye to, but, once it all seemed transparent to me, I couldn’t walk into a church again to pray (but was in one for my father’s funeral a couple of years ago, of course, I just didn’t kneel nor pray.)

And yes, it sucked, quite predictably. Relying on tax cuts and having no Keynesian-like component doomed it to inadequacy. Prior expert testimony before the House warned lawmakers as much

*****************************************

Well they sold it as keynsian and that was the entire point of shovel ready.

I have a feeling we agree on more than we disagree. We disagree on his liberalism. I say he is without question. I think where we agree is that Obama is simply incompetent. The man has lived a shockingly sheltered life tightly esconsed within a very liberal/left wing bubble. As a black man at harvard there is simply no way he could get honest feedback in that hyper-charged PC environment. I suspect he was totally bored by economics and just swallowed the marxist crap he was fed without questioning any of it.

On top of that he’s simply not very good. He said he’d focus like a laser on the economy. He never has. DADT is as big an issue in Congress as taxes. That’s just stupid.

“The tea party by itself is ironclad proof of the rejection of liberalism”
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The TPers are proof of the rejection of anything but the far right of the republican party. The TPers had a VERY good 2010 but the “bite off your nose to spite your face” phase is coming soon.
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Watch Indiana, if the the TPers toss a safe win (Lugar) away like they did in Nevada the fun will start.

Common sense?
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Definition of “Common sense”: I can’t explain, define, rationalize or make any coherent point, but, it is true because I said so.
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What is reasonable is that spending creates jobs.
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Please use reason not “common sense” (aka bulls hit) to tell me why this is untrue and start from there.
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I would call Keynesian economics, since, unlike the Classical school of economics or the Monetarists something that should make sense to everybody, no matter how common you claim to be since it has a narrative about what people do in the economy and what will happen to people.

If a large defeat in one election means the death of that ideology, then one should have said that conservatism was dead in 2008

*******************************************************

Actually books were written on the death of conservatism. But the fact always was Obama never ran on liberalism. He never promised this level of spending or the amount of tax increases necessary to sustain them. He ran a very generic campaign on hope and change and sweetness and light and he seemed like a very nice guy with a beautiful family and it sold. He never paid a price for listening to the Rev Wright for 20 years but we were to find out he did listen. Obama was all packaging.

“I suspect he was totally bored by economics and just swallowed the marxist crap he was fed without questioning any of it.”
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First, he studied at Columbia for his undergraduate.
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Second, at Harvard – and any other college outside of North Korea – Marx is only studied in the political science department.
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A Marxist Economist is as nonsensical as an Atheist theologian. Marxism is anti-economics by definition.
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Obama, as he should have, looked back to the New Deal as a successful model for non-wartime recovery. Unfortunately he was attempting to accommodate the Republican mantra that local government is always better and more efficient than the state government and that the state government is always better than the federal government. So, many states bungled it badly and the money is gathering interest in the state,city and town coffers instead of being used.
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Obama came in right as the sht was hitting the fan in terms of the meltdown and under reacted to it, in part to being too new at the job and in part to accommodate conservative unfounded fears of “big government”.

What is reasonable is that spending creates jobs.
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Please use reason not “common sense” (aka bulls hit) to tell me why this is untrue and start from there.

****************************************

I am guessing these sentences belong together. While Spending creates jobs that’s not good enough. What is driving the spending? It has to be sustainable. If the spending is driven by higher wages that’s great. If it’s by unemployment checks it’s bad. That’s not sustainable. You are taking money from one pool and moving it to another. It had to be paid back. There is no free lunch.

“Actually books were written on the death of conservatism.”
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This would be a great time to link to Amazon.com or somebody else, but, I’ll take your word for it.
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However, it proves my point, not yours. Liberalism in 2010 is no closer to dead than conservatism in 2008 no matter what pundits write what based upon how both had significant minorities. It’s not like Wig Party leaving only the Democrats in the 19th century.
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“He ran a very generic campaign on hope and change and sweetness…”
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You, apparently, were not living in the US or were not reading nor watching any reputable news source at all in 2008. Obama and Clinton were defining their differences in great detail months into John McCain’s campaign.
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All candidates who hope to win have their family smiling into the camera. That’s not exactly a new campaign trick. Reagan didn’t bring his adult children along since they were all liberal and disagreed with him on everything, but, he had Nancy do some smiling with him.
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“He never paid a price for listening to the Rev Wright for 20 years but we were to find out he did listen…”
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He was supposed to “pay a price” for going to a church? He got elected president, not Pope. How he prays or does not pray tells you nothing about his abilities, his plans or his character. Of the past five presidents Carter and Clinton were the ones who took the most trips to attend church and GWB took the fewest. Is that my business? Should I care?

But there’s nothing that show, factually and by who lost and where that this was a rebuke of liberalism.

****************************************

There absolutely is, it’s called the tea party.

“If the spending is driven by higher wages that’s great.”
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Well what causes higher wages?
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Remember Supply and Demand?
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What increases wages is increased hiring.
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So, if no companies want to hire, then who should?
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Government, to fix roads, bridges, etc.
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When wages get high enough, the government cuts spending and the high wages from before keep the economy rolling.
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It worked from 1930 through 2010.
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Too little spending in a stimulus package means that government hiring does not offset private sector layoffs and wages do not go up and unemployment, even though lower than it could be, is not decreased enough.

A Marxist Economist is as nonsensical as an Atheist theologian. Marxism is anti-economics by definitiion

**********************************************************************

Actually if you are a serious atheist you had to reject God and to do that you had to learn a lot about God. Marxism is NOT a rejection of economics. It’s a rejection of capitalism.

It worked from 1930 through 2010.

****************************************

It did not work in the 30′s. Unemployment was 20% in 1938. The New Deal failed.

“There absolutely is, it’s called the tea party.”
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A group of uber conservatives existing proves that liberals do not exist in large numbers?
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Well, does the existence of Philadelphia (where I have never been – but will visit someday) who would elect, as you say, Karl Marx prove that conservatives do not exist in large numbers?
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If one party wins 70%, 80% … or 100% of the total vote that proves that the opposition does not exist. That’s not what happened.

He was supposed to “pay a price” for going to a church? He got elected president, not Pope. How he prays or does not pray tells you nothing about his abilities, his plans or his character. Of the past five presidents Carter and Clinton were the ones who took the most trips to attend church and GWB took the fewest. Is that my business? Should I care?

**************************************************************

He was supposed to pay a price for going to the church of a racists and marxist. The rev Wright was/is a nasty piece of garbage. Oprah left. Not Obama.

All candidates who hope to win have their family smiling into the camera. That’s not exactly a new campaign trick. Reagan didn’t bring his adult children along since they were all liberal and disagreed with him on everything, but, he had Nancy do some smiling with him.

******************************************

What Obama did is politics 101. The criticism isn’t of him. It’s of the media.

1932 23.6
1934 21.7
1936 16.9
1938 19.0
1940 14.6

Read more: United States Unemployment Rate 1920–2008 — Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0104719.html#ixzz17CXYtJbt
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Without that context of unemployment going down year after year through the last year of the New Deal before World War II your argument may work.
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Unfortunately pre-Keynesian economics had unemployment at 23%. The New Deal brought it down to 14%. Had the government been more aggressive, it would have gone down to even more acceptable numbers as government spending went through the roof as it did during WWII.
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1942 4.7%
1944 1.2
1946 3.9
1948 3.8
1950 5.3

Read more: United States Unemployment Rate 1920–2008 — Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0104719.html#ixzz17CYME8nx
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At peak government spending, unemployment was 1.2%. It is a shame that Hitler, the Nazis, Mussolini and the imperial existed so that we had to go to war with them and we couldn’t convince the people to spend like this without war.

However, it proves my point, not yours. Liberalism in 2010 is no closer to dead than conservatism in 2008 no matter what pundits write what based upon how both had significant minorities.

*************************************************

I think it is closer to dead. There will always be liberals nut they might not be the same. Joe Klein a few weeks ago wrote a post about his dinner with a wealthy Vinter who reflected back well on the 70% tax rates of the 60′s and 70′s. Joe got so much negative feedback he issued a ‘correction’ to make it clear he’s NEVER support 70% tax rates. IN fact he would but it’s a political impossibility and would be to anyone under 60 an abomination. This is the liberal disaster. In 1980 the liberal goal was 70% rates. Now they’re trying to go from 35% to 39% and failing. I think after some of the changes of the deficit commission are passed liberals will be trying to get to 30% tax rates.

A group of uber conservatives existing proves that liberals do not exist in large numbers?
.
****************

Well we have decades of polling data showing conservatives being 40% of the population and liberals 20%. What this election proves with a 63 vote turnover in the house is that Obama sucks.

Unfortunately pre-Keynesian economics had unemployment at 23%.

**********************************

Hoover was not pre-keynsian. He was hyper-activist. He followed Keynes. He raised taxes, spending and added regulations to slow trade.

1932 23.6
1934 21.7
1936 16.9
1938 19.0
1940 14.6

***************************************

doesn’t this make my point? Unemployment was 23% in 1932 and after 6 years of the New Deal is was 19%. That SUCKS!.

“Actually if you are a serious atheist you had to reject God and to do that you had to learn a lot about God.
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So, that would follow to say that during the cold war that the overwhelming majority of communist country’s citizens were unserious atheists?
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One thing I can say about all atheists besides not believing in a deity is that we are not particularly likely to have any other thing in common.
.
Many atheists, especially in the US – the most religious country in the developed world by church attendance – is that we had access to all of the theologies and found none of them correct, but, I can not call a person who is from someplace else any less of an atheist than I am.
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Having an organization of atheists is like having an organization of people who do not believe in UFOs. The absence of a belief is not a unifying factor and there is no way to be on a scale of more or less serious atheist.
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“Marxism is NOT a rejection of economics. It’s a rejection of capitalism.”
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“Marx·ism: The political and economic philosophy of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in which the concept of class struggle plays a central role in understanding society’s allegedly inevitable development from bourgeois oppression under capitalism to a socialist and ultimately classless society.”
.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Marxism
.
“Definition of ECONOMICS
1
a : a social science concerned chiefly with description and analysis of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services ”
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By definition, Marxists do not analyze the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services, they, in their philosophy, ideology rule out any possibility of doing anything other than using government to, by fiat, determine such.
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Marxism is more similar to a religion than anything else, except for the fact that they do admit that Marx does not, say, walk on water, part the Red Sea, etc, etc.

At peak government spending, unemployment was 1.2%. It is a shame that Hitler, the Nazis, Mussolini and the imperial existed so that we had to go to war with them and we couldn’t convince the people to spend like this without war.

***********************************************

You are on exceptionally bizarre ground here. You are also without question a fool and you should not be arguing economics with sane people. Yes, 1944 was a very good year for unemployment. All that government spending you day. Hmmm. Ya think the fact most males between the age of 16 and 46 were in uniform might have had something to do with it?

We all say stupid things. Even me. I hope for your sake this is at the top of your list of stupid.

“I think it is closer to dead.”
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Are we debating or just making proclamations?
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I think that conservatism will, over time, self destruct. I, honestly do. But that is not debating, that is just making statements which contradict other statements..
.
Nobody prefers higher taxes to lower taxes if the impact of lowering taxes or not raising them will not be a large deficit or a decrease in needed services.
.
With the Cold War over for 19 years, even if we go to single payer health care and actively pay off the deficit, we can do so with less than 70% taxes. But, under 40% doesn’t seem likely to do so.
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We will run out of things to cut unless we want to send the Armed forces and the FBI among many other appreciated services if we do not either raise taxes up to at least 40% at the highest bracket and when you ask Americans where they want cuts, none of our major expenses have a majority wishing to cut them. Public Broadcasting is funded only a small percent by the government is a fraction of 1% of the total budget, for example. Add these together and we will need to increase taxes.

“Well we have decades of polling data showing conservatives being 40% of the population and liberals 20%.”
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The term “liberal” has been demonized for decades.
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If you go policy by policy, liberals do very well.
.
If you add together “liberals”, “progressives” and people who dislike conservative policies, liberals do better.

If one party wins 70%, 80% … or 100% of the total vote that proves that the opposition does not exist. That’s not what happened.

***************************************************

Actually the magic number is 51%. This might be in part why you miss the critical role of the tea party.

they are somewhere near 25% nationally. Take out the left coast and NE and it’s probably 40%. Ben Nelson of NB can be fairly certain as much as 40% of his state supports the tea party. There won’t be 50% of registered voters vote in the primary. You do know it’s very easy to change registeration. Ben has to be very concerned the tea party doesn;t cross over to vote against him. At a minimum he is gping to have to treat his primary as the general. He is going to have to campaign at 100% and spend as much as possible on ads. There are 10 liberal senators from Red states who know right now they are going to have very hard primaries and not all will make it.

We don’t have a crumbling infrastructure. Our roads and bridges have never been in better shape.

“He was supposed to pay a price for going to the church of a racists and marxist. The rev Wright was/is a nasty piece of garbage. Oprah left. Not Obama.”
.
I know that you are unaware of what Marxism is, so, I doubt that Wright was a Marxist.
.
Overall, GWB claimed to believe in Christian eschatology where all humans who are not a part of that specific belief will never go to heaven even if they were never introduced to Christian eschatology and that the true believers would be pulled up from the earth into the sky at the end of days. This is a bigoted theology considering all other theologies worthless.
.
Yet, he never “paid the price” for this.
.
Why should any politician at all be judged by his or her belief?

“He followed Keynes.”
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Keynesian economics did not start until 1936.
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Hoover was out of office in 1933.
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The first book containing the money multiplier, named The Means to Prosperity was not published until 1933.
.
So, unless Hoover was a psychic, he could not have followed Keynes.
.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Maynard_Keynes#During_the_Great_Depression
.
http://www.gutenberg.ca/ebooks/keynes-means/keynes-means-00-h.html
.

Some things suck worse than others.
.
More unemployment sucks more than less unemployment.

“You are on exceptionally bizarre ground here. ”
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You brought up the New Deal.
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“You are also without question a fool and you should not be arguing economics with sane people.”
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It’s funny that I did very well economics at Harvard. My paper about the US dollar being strong causing our trade deficit got me an A.
.
You must, according the 3X, be a liberal. Since he says Liberals insult conservatives but conservatives do not insult liberals first.
.
“Yes, 1944 was a very good year for unemployment. All that government spending you day. Hmmm. Ya think the fact most males between the age of 16 and 46 were in uniform might have had something to do with it?”
.
“16,354,000 men & women served in the U.S. Armed Forces during WW 2. This number includes members of the Army, Army Air Corps, Navy & Marines.”

Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_Americans_fought_in_World_War_2#ixzz17CnFAH4Q
.
“1942 134,859,553″
.
http://www.demographia.com/db-uspop1900.htm
.
People serving in the military did not count as members of the workforce.
.
So, why was employment so high among the 117 million not serving?
.
Government spending.
.
Now, stop calling people stupid.
.
You were the one who just argued that Herbert Hoover looked into a Crystal ball and copied Keynesian Economics out of the future. Now that, sir, is an unfounded argument if I ever heard one.

“Actually the magic number is 51%”
.
No, if that were the case then when Democrats got more than 51% in 2008 conservatives would all disappear.
.
Please explain what the difference is between the Tea Party and the Republican Party?
.
Both believe in:
.
Cutting taxes.
.
Cutting the deficit.
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Cutting government spending (which, mathematically must be extremely large cuts to serve both of the above with no specific plan from the Tea or Republican Party how to do this without cutting out services always appreciated such as Social Security, the FBI, The Armed forces, National Parks among many others).
.
Stopping health care reform.
.
Decreasing immigration.
.
Higher penalties for illegal immigrants (but not for the employers).
.
What else?
.
The Tea Party, apparently, has no official stand on abortion, the death penalty or gay marriage while the Republican Party has specific party stances.
.
As for your switching parties theme, in theory, Democrats can do that, too, but, neither party likely would do that.

That explains why ideologues don’t get reality. We’ve had this tax rate all this time and our jobs have been exported in an ever quickening rate.

************************************************

Actually it’s not an ever quickening rate and trade is a very good thing. Obama finally signed a free trade deal with South Korea that was negotiated years ago adding some ‘union protections’. GWB benefitted with trade adding an average of 1% to GDP his term. Obama paid the price of being anti-trade.

The TPers are proof of the rejection of anything but the far right of the republican party

**************************************

I disagree. They are #1 fiscal conservatism. The problem with GWB with conservatives is he was never a fiscal conservative. He was generally good on Taxes but was awful on spending. To his credit he never pretended to be anything else. Compassionate conservatism wasn’t about reducing govt but trying to give it conservative values. People like me, mainstream conservatives, accepted Bush as the best choice to defeat Gore. The TP is set on making sure fiscal conservativism rules.

Marxism is more similar to a religion than anything else, except for the fact that they do admit that Marx does not, say, walk on water, part the Red Sea, etc, etc.

**************************

I could not agree more. Substitute liberalism for marxism.

So, why was employment so high among the 117 million not serving?
.

That would be Rosie the riveter. Females had to work as welders because all of the men were in uniform and not around. When you take 10M men out of the work force there are labor shortages.

So, why was employment so high among the 117 million not serving?

hnnnnnn, Making tanks? Ships? Jets?

good comeback! Lets tell the world FDR was so sharp the New Deal got unemployment to 19% after 6 years and then he abandoned it.

So, unless Hoover was a psychic, he could not have followed Keyne

Read more: http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2010/12/03/sock-puppet-theater-act-ii/#ixzz17CyxFXcA

So, unless Hoover was a psychic, he could not have followed Keynes,

****************************

Actually he could. Keynes was very famous long before 1933. He was a key negotiator at the 1919 peace talks having famously left the negotiations over Wilson’s Bonehead stupid demands on Germany. Keynes hardly invented Govt activism.

piper1,
.
“Freeinpa is the only local Wingnut who to my knowledge has not claimed to be a doctor (Rusty’s numerous personalities, 3xfire and earljr rest their authority on their fake “doctor” personas since they lack the intellect and facts necessary to support their loud assertions.”.
.
Let’s see how honest you are.
.
Show me an example of when I have said I was a Doctor.
.
Also how about an example of other regular commenting conservatives who have said they are Doctors in addition to Earl?
.
Why do some of you Liberals [not all] find it necessary to question the profession of someone posting on this site? Why do you only do this to conservatives?
.
The only person I have ever made a comment about their profession was Patrick. Because of the large quantity of posting he does on this site during the daytime I assumed he was a part time commercial real-estate salesman. He corrected me and said he was full time and I accepted that as fact and have not made an issue of it since.
.
I have stated in the past that I am a retired CEO of a small business that employed 65 people. Again some of you have questioned my career. Many Liberals on this site have mentioned their professions and I have never questioned any of them.
.
I don’t understand why some Liberals question a conservative’s stated profession and even accuse them of lying about their profession. This makes no logical sense.

As for your switching parties theme, in theory, Democrats can do that, too, but, neither party likely would do that.
********************

Limbaugh was fairly successful in 2008 getting conservatives to re-register to vote fo rHillary. He was not trying to get her wins as much as keep her in the race as long as possible. The prospects for a state such at VA are outstanding. Limbaugh doesn’t have to defeat Webb to weaken him. As soon as Webb understands he is going to have to run hard in he primary it effects everything. There is no chance Webb can support tax increases this week and the TP won’t tag him as a tax and spend liberal. It’s not impossible they so frazzle Webb he decides he does not want to spend the next two years fundraising and just retires.

If you go policy by policy, liberals do very well

************************

What are you babbling about? You are under water on almost everything. GW is a scam. You can’t raise taxes. There is no support for illegal immigration. DADT will likely go down. People are livid over spending You just lost 63 house seat and you think you are doing well. How is that possible?

Please explain what the difference is between the Tea Party and the Republican Party?

***************************************

There is no one TP. It’s a grass roots movement. At it’s core it’s about minimal spending and is more libertarian than conservative.

If you never claimed you were a doctor, I do apologize. My apology is tempered by this, though: “Through my experiences, I would know who is and is not a Doctor better than anyone on this site. Earl is definitely a Doctor. ”
.
So, you know who is a doctor better than anyone else even though you’re not a doctor? That seems a fairly strange assertion. What is it you “know” about earl that would lead you to assert this? Its certainly not based on any evidence that he has provided here, unless of course you can point to that (if there was, I’d assume “doctor” earl would point to it himself).
.
Other have addressed why it is relevant and I’ll quickly add my 2 cents: earl and rusty have both used their claim to being physicians to argue from a position of authority (and you as a CEO, not a doctor if that was never claimed) in which their views on anything cannot be challenged by us mere civilians because of their unique knowledge of the inner workings of the industry. Arguing from authority is always a fairly loaded game, but it is particularly ridiculous coming from earl who writes like an 18 year old Randoid, asserts endlessly without evidence, and spews venom like a spitting cobra, all while, for months, ignoring the many requests for him to back up his assertions with some evidence.
.
Your assertion of authority is just as lame, whether it be CEO or doctor. Your logic and mental dexterity should be able to stand on their own. This is the internet, man. You are essentially an anonymous voice, and thus your (and everyone else’s) every assertions would be wisely taken with a grain of salt, whether “CEO, doctor” or janitor. Back your political statements up with evidence, show where it is you are getting your information, and try offering a little respect to the others here who don’t bother to argue from the authority of their respective positions.
.
I’m a real estate developer married to a pediatrician. Does that make my every assertion untouchable?

Public Broadcasting is funded only a small percent by the government is a fraction of 1% of the total budget, for example. Add these together and we will need to increase taxes.

**********************

We are not going to stop cutting spending until it’s less than revenues. While it’s true NPR isn’t a huge target financially they are shockingly annoying. They don’t have an obvious protector. As for financial the regiion is solid.

For the record, although ultimately proven wrong to significant degree, Marx did greatly contribute to economic theory, like others ultimately proven wrong: Ricardo, Malthus, Mill, von Mises, Pigou, etc.
.
One doesn’t have to subscribe to political or philosophical Marxism, nor base one’s economic theories on his to know that Marx was an authentic economist with credible, rigorous theory for his time.

Making tanks? Ships? Jets?

I believe that qualifies as gov’t spending. Maybe not so much on jets, though. Turbines were pretty much experimental in the US program at that time. We did end up with a huge surplus of radial piston engines after WW2, but that surplus provided an economic boost in the private/commercial aviation industry for decades after 1945.

“We are not going to stop cutting spending until it’s less than revenues. While it’s true NPR isn’t a huge target financially they are shockingly annoying. They don’t have an obvious protector. As for financial the regiion is solid.”
.
So, after you reduce spending one twentieth of one percent and NPR remains on the air with it’s 97% private funding and Big Bird still teaches your children to read and write with private funding, you are going to cut into absolutely everything?
.
So, all of the housing projects gets sold?
.
All of the disabled people who are not in housing projects but in section 8 housing get sent to sleep on the sidewalks?
.
Then you stop paying soldiers?
.
Is that what you are trying to say?
.
The American people will not stand by and let those things happen. You can cut the National Endowment for the Arts and a couple of other projects to get to about a 1% in the budget, go into some of the R & D for the military like the Star Wars Missile defense which has produced nothing but fat CEO paychecks for the past 30 years, but there isn’t enough space in there to cut.
.
Also, if the government lays off, that will lead to private sector layoffs.
.
Wake up! You’re dreaming!
.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_States_federal_budget
.
Show me where all of this money is getting cut from or just admit that you are dreaming.

9.28

“We are not going to stop cutting spending until it’s less than revenues. While it’s true NPR isn’t a huge target financially they are shockingly annoying. They don’t have an obvious protector. As for financial the regiion is solid.”
.
So, after you reduce spending one twentieth of one percent and NPR remains on the air with it’s 97% private funding and Big Bird still teaches your children to read and write with private funding, you are going to cut into absolutely everything?
.
So, all of the housing projects gets sold?
.
All of the disabled people who are not in housing projects but in section 8 housing get sent to sleep on the sidewalks?
.
Then you stop paying soldiers?
.
Is that what you are trying to say?
.
The American people will not stand by and let those things happen. You can cut the National Endowment for the Arts and a couple of other projects to get to about a 1% in the budget, go into some of the R & D for the military like the Star Wars Missile defense which has produced nothing but fat CEO paychecks for the past 30 years, but there isn’t enough space in there to cut.
.
Also, if the government lays off, that will lead to private sector layoffs.
.
Wake up! You’re dreaming!
.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_States_federal_budget
.
Show me where all of this money is getting cut from or just admit that you are dreaming.

“Actually he could. Keynes was very famous long before 1933.”
.
Until 1933, if Hoover followed Keynes, he would been in the pre-Keynesian Classical School of Economics.
.
Keynes did come out of the womb with a new theory. He followed the old theories that Friedrich Hayak supported since it was the one and only school of economics until the money multiplier was discovered in 1933 by Keynes.
.
It would be like saying that Thomas Edison was born under a light bulb. John Maynard Keynes was not a Keynesian until 1933 just as Thomas Edison was not using light bulbs when he was a child.

“I could not agree more. Substitute liberalism for marxism.”
.
Liberalism is vehemently anti-communist and an ideology most similar to conservatism since both believe in Democracy, Free speech and debate.
.
Being liberal is no closer to a theology than being conservative. We physically, fought side by side in defeating far right Nazi Germany and stood side by side at Strategic Air Command in the missile silos, fought side by side in Korea and Vietnam against communism.
.
The difference between 2010 liberals and conservatives is that 2010 liberals go to seek out established facts from historical records, economic PhD thesis’ and modern conservatives remove their ideas from their bowels.
.
Obviously since both liberals and conservatives agree that one must not be forbidden by government from speaking, I am asking you not to not write or speak, but, to look to reliable sources before you do so.

He got everything, and I mean everything, wrong. His ideas were more destructive to man than Hitler and Stalin and Mao combined.

Stuart,
.
Without available statistics at all to anybody at that time, Marx was relying upon rough estimates of how the wealthy and poor were living.
.
He is usually referred to in the field of philosophy or, occasionally, sociology. He may have attempted to do what economists now do, but, unlike an economic theory, which is dynamic, he had an unbending solution of complete government control.
.
I will, though, grant you just as the Wright brothers benefited from all of the previous people who crashed into the ground and got killed, Marxism was both in theory and in practice a valuable experience which teaches us many things not to do. The human losses at times, such as Stalin’s, was a terrible price to pay, but, something we learned to stay away from.

I know what is being proposed. It’s not passing. You could propose 1%. It’s not passing either. There will not be tax increases with the Tea Party. We are going to cut spending.

the middle just wanted to express how pissed off they were that they lost their job or did not regain a new job.

***************************************
Quite true. The delicious irony of electing an incompetent. You elected a big govt liberal with zero experience and without a clue and he butchered the stimulus package and your party, and left wing ideology, is taking a beating. This is generational my friend. This is a true disaster from an ideological perspective for Big Gov. It isn’t just that the stimulus failed but that Obama is in so far over his head. He is not a good communicator nor is he smart. He could not even talk the Europeans into more stimulus. You would think that’s impossible. The fact is they now realize they took the wrong path and are trying to reduce Govt. The German and Canadian economics did only very small packages, did them better, and are doing fine.

This is a bigoted theology considering all other theologies worthless

*******************************************

Liberals love to use charges like racism and bigotry but the fact is the more you use them the less value they have. Thinking someone else is wrong is not bigotry. By that definition you are bigoted regarding conservatives and independents.

nothing you said in 25.1 makes any sense. Govts never cut spending. If we are lucky we’ll get a freeze and a drop in the rate of increase.

“At it’s core it’s about minimal spending and is more libertarian than conservative.”
.
Libertarians have existed for many decades in one form or another. What party did they overwhelmingly prefer?
.
Republican.
.
If the secondary leaning of the Tea Party is conservative, what party would they vote for?
.
Republican.
.
So, the Tea Party = a group inside the Republican Party believing in the same thing they believed in since the 1950s and earlier (arguably Barry Goldwater was the founder of libertarian-like conservatism).
.
Hence, there is nothing new under the sun. It’s just Barry Goldwater followers wearing George Washington costumes.

“There will not be tax increases with the Tea Party. We are going to cut spending.”
.
Since spending by households, businesses and governments is how jobs are made and businesses and households are driving each other down each with an inability to spend, it means that being obstinate and obtuse your Tea Party will sink employment down to the bottom of the Harbor and drown us all in unemployment.
.
I have no doubt that the Republicans and the new uber Republicans known as the Tea Party will be, as you say they will on government, be obstinate and obtuse.

Show me where all of this money is getting cut from or just admit that you are dreaming.

**************************************************

There are plenty of models. Look at Gov Christie in NJ or McDonnell in VA. The real key is to cut the organizations that are useless and parasitic. While NPR and the NEH are small potatoes they serve no purpose. The end of the stimulus and reductions in many of these programs and then a freeze while GDP grows will allow revenues to catchup with spending as happened in1998.

A 2nd problem liberalism has are the states. There is a clear relationship between high taxes and regulation and low growth. Texas is creating about 10,000 jobs a month while California is losing about 10,000 jobs a month. Even the hollywood freaks have figured out you don’t want to make a movie in California. VA is in a way an economic competitor to MD, DC and NC and Governor McDonnell is going to make sure he lowers spending relative to state GDP so he can lower taxes. VA is growing faster than those other states and will continue to do so. People see this and they see what Christie is doing in NJ and they LOVE IT.

This is what is going to happen at the federal level. The Tea Party owns the House and they own the 2012 election cycle. Ben Nelson cannot consider supporting any new spending and he voted against tax increases on anyone making less than $1M. We are not gong to lower the deficit by raising taxes. It’s not an option. We are cutting spending.

“Govts never cut spending. If we are lucky we’ll get a freeze and a drop in the rate of increase.”
.
Never?
.
At the end of World War II, government spending plummeted as it did with the end of every war.
.
Right before we entered World War II, hundreds of thousands of government New Deal jobs were cut in preparation for war in 1939.
.
Reagan, Bush Sr. and Clinton all reduced spending when adjusted for inflation.
.
Once again, just like the Obama campaign, it seems as if you were either living outside of the United States since 1980 or have not being using reliable news sources.
.
You remind me of a cult member. Facts don’t matter, only the belief that the great creator from outer space will come from the spaceship matters no matter how unreasonable it is. You believe that cutting government under all circumstances is the answer.

“There is a clear relationship between high taxes and regulation and low growth.”
.
Really?
.
Here is growth in GDP by state;
.
http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/regional/gdp_state/gsp_newsrelease.htm
.
Here is a state by state comparison of taxes:
.
http://www.kiplinger.com/tools/retiree_map/index.html?map=8#anchor
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Your wonderful state of New Jersey is called a “tax hell” by this measurement.
.
The correlation is not at all clear one way or the other.
.
Please find a study or, if you like, find a correlation between tax rate and income yourself. It just isn’t that simple.

Bill Moyers Journal: The Death of Conservatism?
(Photo by Robin Holland) This week on the JOURNAL, Bill Moyers spoke with author Sam Tanenhaus about his new book, The Death of Conservatism,

“Thinking someone else is wrong is not bigotry.”
.
This is true, but not the case with the religion GWB practiced.
.
Catholics, Jews, Lutherans… all religions believe that they have the fast track to God’s ear. Only the sect GBW believed in said that all other people, including Catholic Mother Theresa was going to eternal damnation.
.
If one wants to care about who the president prays with, a minister who, most likely, overemphasized the place of race as Wright did or one who believes that all people who are not praying exactly the same way GWB is are going to roast for all eternity regardless of personal character, GWB had a more offensive religion.
.
So, if Obama should have “paid a price” than the price for GWB should have been far, far larger. Or, as Democrats did with GWB, Republicans can be gentlemen and fair and let the president pray as he wishes without making him “pay the price” for an unpopular theology.

“Bill Moyers Journal: The Death of Conservatism?”
.
If, indeed, there is a question mark at the end of the title, then you have not proven a point I did not contest. I did not contest that some, incorrectly in 2008 believed that conservatism is dead.
.
If Moyers places it as a question, then he does not seem to stating it as fact.
.
You’re starting to learn how to debate.

Reagan, Bush Sr. and Clinton all reduced spending when adjusted for inflation

**********************************************************

None of them reduced spending. They reduced the rate of increase. Yes it’s true we cut spending after WWII but that’s a one-off event and obviously not valid now. There are other one-off events which can distort the pattern such as the $200B for Katrina but aside from one time events the federal govt spends more each year than the year before.

“. This is a true disaster from an ideological perspective for Big Gov.”
.
You have three arguments swirled together like a milkshake.
.
One you are saying that the president is not good at being a liberal and not achieving liberal goals nor following liberal ways in a competent way. In that case, it would be the president not doing the job well, not liberalism that loses.
.
Second, you are saying that people who do not care about politics as much we both do see their paycheck shrinking or, worse, replaced with an unemployment check and, without ideology, vote against whoever was in office to punish them (which is my argument).
.
Third, you are saying that liberalism failed. If Obama was not competent at being liberal, then liberalism was not practiced.
.
Also note, Obama ran to the left of what he practiced. He ran as a moderate/liberal and, by doing things like cutting down the stimulus package to a size which did not scare Republicans too much and by appeasing the Republican mantra of local and state government superiority, he added two conservative aspects to a liberal idea of stimulating the economy through public works.
.
So, pick one argument:
.
A) This is not competent liberalism, it is incompetence, not ideology which lost.
.
B) This is competent liberalism (which I disagree with vehemently).
.
Or
.
C) The 20% floating between Democrats and Republicans upset about unemployment were blindly anti-incumbent handing things over to Republicans not due to a love of Republicans or conservatism, but, just plain, simple anger.
.
Your milkshake of arguments just doesn’t make sense.

“None of them reduced spending. They reduced the rate of increase. Yes it’s true we cut spending after WWII but that’s a one-off event and obviously not valid now.”
.
Look at the second graph titled: Government spending in terms of GDP.
.
http://www.chadwickresearch.com/blog/?p=124
.
It dips and raises many times.
.
You are just factually incorrect.

He followed the old theories that Friedrich Hayak supported since it was the one and only school of economics until the money multiplier was discovered in 1933 by Keynes.
.
*****************************************************************
It’s a lot more complicated than that and well beyond the limits of this post. Keynes did not invent macro-economics nor the idea that governments have a huge role to play. Hoover was already doing some of the things Keynes articulated in the 30′s. He was every bit as progressive and activist as FDR. That was the problem. The Govt caused and extended the great depression. This is the only place where they called it a great depression.

rdw,
.
The best analogy I can think of is that of a submarine.
.
When a submarine is so deep in the ocean as to touch the ocean floor, air must be pumped into the ballast tanks to get it to rise. The more air, the higher it rises.
.
Once the air in the ballast tanks, it stays there.
.
I imagine you as the captain of a submarine putting some air into the tanks, raising part way and then saying “Hey, we didn’t reach the surface, so this whole, liberal ‘air theory’ is garbage” and refill the tanks with water until we all hit the ocean floor.
.
$1 in additional spending creates two and half parts per 45,000 of a job (since the money gets passed on many times, it has $2.50 worth of bang for your buck when you are hiring otherwise unemployed people).
.
To hire 15,000,000 people, with an average pay of say $45,000 per year, to start the process of moving back up again, you need the government to hire either directly or though contracts for government services 6,000,000 people at $45,000 per year or, perhaps, 9,000,000 at $30,000 per year.
.
Then, those nine million people will spend enough to get the other six million jobs at for profit private sector jobs.
.
Spend too little or get it stuck in local and state government, fewer people get hired. Then confused people like you want to fill the tanks with water again and sink us all.
.
Oh, thanks. No economy for any of us since you hate government. Great! (Note sarcasm)

“Keynes did not invent macro-economics nor the idea that governments have a huge role to play. Hoover was already doing some of the things Keynes articulated in the 30′s.”
.
No, he did not invent Marco Economics, but, you are 100% wrong on what the 1920s views and earlier of government was. It was hands off from Adam Smith until Keynes.
.
If there was an economist before Keynes who believed that government could help, please find him for me. I never, ever heard of one economist before Keynes who thought government could do anything about the economy.
.
The fact is, all economists were anti-government just like the Tea Party before 1933. Since you are so eager to call Hoover, the poster boy for failed conservatism (but, also, a wonderful humanitarian and an amazing CEO who meant well but failed) you just pulled this out of your butt and called it a fact.

No I am not. We were not talking about spending as a percent of GDP. We are talking about total dollars. Aside from one off events like wars and natural disasters we spending more each year than the year before. I expect 2011 to be an exception because of the one off event of the Stimulus package.

It was hands off from Adam Smith until Keynes.

*******************************************************

Are you out of your mid? You think Wilson was hands off? You have to be kidding. My historians consider Teddy R the 1st progressive President followed by Wilson, then Hoover and FDR. These men were very active in trying to manage the economy.

The fact is, all economists were anti-government just like the Tea Party before 1933

****************************
This is nonsense. The Tea Party is not anti-gov. We need police, defense, regulators and many of the services. We don’t need things like NPR. The idea is to get the budget back to near 19% of GDP by cutting waste and nonsense like the NEH.

“We don’t have a crumbling infrastructure. Our roads and bridges have never been in better shape.”
.
http://apps.asce.org/reportcard/index.cfm?reaction=full&page=6
.
So, where is a better source of information, the American Society of Civil Engineers regarding the infrastructure of the country, or rwd’s butt.
.
I say, since not only have I not personally seen every major piece of infrastructure myself, nor, if I did, am I a civil engineer, would I know what I am looking at, that ASCE is who to ask, not RWD’s butt.
.
Learn facts first, make informed statements with those facts = good, reasonable debating.
.
Have wishes of what works first, make unfounded proclamations, get proven wrong and deny that you are wrong = bad debating.
.
Please debate well.

If 1% of people are born handicapped in 1960 when the US population is 100 million and 1% of the US is born handicapped in 2010 when the population is 300 million, then, with that fact alone, to do the same thing, the dollar amount is tripled.
.
If to provide basic sustenance via welfare to this handicapped person is $X in 1960 and with inflation it is, say, $5X in 2010, that factor would explain why five times as many dollars are spent.
.
Put the two together and the dollar amounts should, without any changes, be 15 times as much over 50 years in absolute dollars.
.
So, absolute dollars are worthless measurements.
.
Nominal GDP raises because of inflation, population growth and economic growth.
.
So, measuring in terms of GDP is better if you would like to understand if the role of government is increasing, not number of Americans and inflation is increasing.
.
So, with that in mind, you are factually incorrect like I said.

The difference between 2010 liberals and conservatives is that 2010 liberals go to seek out established facts from historical records, economic PhD thesis’ and modern conservatives remove their ideas from their bowels.

********************************************

Is that the difference? I was wondering. How cool is it that the guy you probably consider the dumbest President of all time actually had a degree in economics, followed all of the economic debates of the 30′s and 40′s, and not just in newspapers but also in economic journals, read the Road to Serfdom the month it was printed, and by the way, changed the world.

We are living in the post-Reagan era. If you are under 55 today you don’t remember 70% tax rates and in many cases still have no clue. When you ask them what they thiink of 70% tax rates they’ll say it’s insane. It seems impossible any govt could be that stupid. Joe Klein just a few weeks ago after remembering the 70% era favorably printed a correction the next day making sure people knew under no condition were liberals advocating 70% tax rates understand just how toxic the notion would be.

It was funny when Obama tweeked Clinton by saying Reagan was the transformational President. Ya think!!!

There are few things more enjoyable than liberal condescension. And you wonder why liberals can never gt above 20% of the population while conservatives are currently 42%. Bob Schum the day before the Bush-Gore debates realize disaster was pending because Gore was so, so. so much smarter Bush merely needed to avoid slobbering to win. Scrum was right.

Look at the Federal budget.
.
Conservatives can find between 1% to, maybe 3% you want to cut.
.
Look at how much you would need to cut spending to both pay back the deficit over the next 50 years and not raise taxes.
.
You are either going to have to:
.
A) Ignore your anti-deficit belief.
.
B) Ignore your anti-tax beleif.
.
C) Cut things like the military, police, social security, national highways, etc.
.
Look again at the federal budget and show where you can make these cuts without C, cutting police, National Parks, etc.
.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_States_federal_budget
.
This isn’t economics. This is third grade math.
.
If the Tea Party holds onto both goals of cutting the deficit and not increasing taxes or even cutting taxes you will have to dismiss and layoff major parts of the military and law enforcement among other things.
.
Knock yourself out and get back me with a real, not an imaginary answer.

Reagan did not follow very much besides Hollywood from the time he was a C student at D level Eureka College.
.
All would agree that both Stalin and Hitler transformed the world in a way far, far, far more dramatic than Ronald Reagan, so, “transformational” can be a compliment or an insult.
.
Yes, Reagan showed Republicans that you can cut taxes for the wealthiest, raise taxes on the middle class and balloon the deficit while running on cutting the deficit and cutting taxes for “regular folk” and, with enough smiles not only be re-elected, but take decades to be discovered as a failure.
.
Clinton had far less of an impact than Reagan, but, many Americans think Reagan’s impact was a terrible one.
.
He was the one who used the term “The L word” for liberals and caused the name of an ideology to be demonized.
.
Add together “progressives” (meaning liberal) and “liberals” and we are as popular as self identified “conservatives”.

I read the above 3x’s. You make no sense. Why not just have the govt hire everyone?

Whatever you are thinking the political reality is it doesn’t matter. The election delivered a clear consensus and the left is now entirely out of it. If there is a tax increase, and the GOP could cut a deal on those over $1M, it will be because Obama swapped spending cuts. I’ve mentioned NPR but only to suggest there won’t be many sacred cows. They’re small potatoes unlikely to be carved out completely but they will see cuts.

Also, as I mentioned in a lot of posts. Big things are happening at the state and local level in terms of size of govt and it’s become a competitive issue. Some states have bloated budgets and far too high taxation and they are losing jobs to better managed states. They have no choice. States like VA are already more business friendly than their neighbors and they are reducing spending as a percent of GDP so they can lower taxes. This is in part why NY is dying economically. Either NY is going to become more competitive or they will continue to lose 2 house seats each census. NJ gets it.

Liberalism is getting shredded. Obama was the wrong guy to sell it.

“You think Wilson was hands off? You have to be kidding. My historians consider Teddy R the 1st progressive President followed by Wilson, then Hoover and FDR. These men were very active in trying to manage the economy.”
.
TR and Wilson were not Economists.
.
They, as did FDR at first, ignored all of the economists at that time.
.
Being elected to office and getting a PhD in Economics is not even vaguely similar.

Also, Reagan completed his double major with sociology in 1933, the very same year a brand new school of economics called Keynesian Economics was formed starting with John Maynard Keynes.
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It was new and not well known for years to come.
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Reagan went straight to Hollywood and never took classes after Keynesian Economics was created.
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He did not ever formally study Keynesian Economics in any classroom at any time in his life. It is unlikely that, while doing B movies that he read PhD thesis’ of anybody. Not many actors do. For that matter, not many people who are not getting PhDs themselves in that field do.
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I never ready a PhD thesis. I do not know any non-PhD candidate who has.
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Do you read PhD thesis’s in your spare time?

Reagan did not follow very much besides Hollywood from the time he was a C student at D level Eureka College.

*******************************

Does one have to be a snob to be a liberal? History is going to be very hard for you. Reagan was a long time subscriber to the Journal of Economics and read widely on economics. He published a newspaper column for years and did hundreds of radio bits. He wrote and researched all of his own articles. Here’s the good part. He kept all of his notes and references. It’s in his own hand. If he referred to something in the journal of economics or the road to serfdom he attached it when possible and always cited it. Now a hack like you or Joe Klein can deride his intelligence and education all day long but no credible historian can. Not with search engines. Those books are scanned before they hit the shelves. Any historian prints lies about Reagan they will be nationally humiliated and almost certainly fired. Moreover the publisher won’t be able to print the book.

“Why not just have the govt hire everyone?”
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First, 91% of us have jobs.
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Second, the goal of choosing this time to spend is not for government jobs only or primarily. The primary goal is to get some people to have enough money to spend so that the private sector will have enough business to have to hire the unemployed. (Also they make profits when this happens and, to top it off, without a rate increase, pay taxes to pay back for the road construction).
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Third, the Senate and the White House still belong to Democrats. So, if the Tea Party proposes unreasonable cuts, the Senate stops them. If the Senate proposes spending, the Tea Party stops them. If the Tea Party gets enough Democratic Senators go along with unreasonable cuts, the president will veto it.
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We don’t have the Tea Party in power. We have deadlock in power.

I do not know the budgets of all 50 states in detail.
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As a matter of fact, I do not know any detail about any state government’s budget.
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Please state where the bloating is in the federal government or admit that the money is not there to cut.

“Reagan was a long time subscriber to the Journal of Economics and read widely on economics.”
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Any documentation of this or is this your idea of “common sense” (you wish it were true so you’ll call it a fact).
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“Does one have to be a snob to be a liberal.”
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People on welfare can afford to read at the library and learn. Only people making over $250,000 per year will benefit from the Tea Party.
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You have the party of snobs.
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We are the party of blacks, Latinos, union members, college students and college professors.
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You are the party of CEOs.

“Now a hack like you or Joe Klein can deride his intelligence and education all day long but no credible historian can.”
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Wait, are you a liberal and am I conservative?
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According to conservatives, liberals launch personal insults and conservatives are the victims of liberal liable.
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My work is leasing office space. It non-government and apolitical. Yet you insist that I am a “hack”?
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I am a well informed citizen, nothing more and nothing less.

I’m an hour late for going somewhere I planned to be.
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I’ll be back if you want to.

Great Reagan story to highlight the dilemma of the liberal historian.

Reagan and Gorby held an important summit in Iceland to discuss serious missle reductions, star wars and other issues. Gorby was terrified of star wars but it wasn’t a negotiable item. Near the end after a great deal of progress everywhere else Gorby throws a grenade. He wants Star Wards ended. Reagan says no. His advisors are so impressed with the other progress they all advise him to take the deal because the beating from the press will be terrible if they don’t leave with something. He refuses. It ends badly. On the flight home Michael Deaver gets the press people working on a rollout to try to blunt the damage. They know starting with the morning shows they’re getting hammered. Reagan didn’t fly well and never slept. He stayed up writing a speech he planned to give in primetime the next night. The next morning, before the plane landed in DC, Deaver asked to see Reagan. Before he had a chance to brief him Reagan handed him the speech to read and told him to get him airtime. Deaver was astonished. Reagan delivered the speech as written. It was something like 6 pages in long hand. The original copy is in the lobby of the Reagan library under glass. Next to it is the typed copy of the actual speech. It was virtually identical. He wrote one speech, there were no cross-outs or ripped up pages. The speech was well received and he maintained his polling support.

That’s a communicator.

You want to do the liberal thing and portray him as a dope. Go ahead and make a fool of yourself. Historians won’t have that option. The library contains over 300 of Reagan’s speeches written in his own hand with the supporting research.

People with just a little class don’t belittle the efforts of others. Reagan worked his way through college in the 20′s when few people did and you criticize the school he went to?

That qualifies you as a classless hack.

Any documentation of this or is this your idea of “common sense” (you wish it were true so you’ll call it a fact).

***************************************************

The man lowered marginal rates from70% to 28%. That’s a reduction of 42%. Obama is trying to raise them 3% and can’t. Joe Klein has to put out a new post to explain he was not advocating going back to 70% so toxic is the thought.

I don’t need to prove what Reagan read. We can just look at what he did. He changed how we look at the world.

You have the party of snobs.

********************************************

I think we can get a wide agreement liberals own snob. GWB won 4 major elections and you still think he’s the dumb one. It takes a staggering level of snob to think like that. He even told you straight up he loved being mis-underestimated. Al Gore went into those debates so certain of his intellectual superiority he made a total ass of himself and lost 5% immediately.

GWB had a C average at Yale and a Harvard MBA while Al had a D average and no graduate success. You hacks still think Al is the smart one. GWB still wants you to think that way just for the laughs.

Sarah Palin has made $20M off your snobbery. People like Olerrmann, Andrew Sullivan, Joy Behar have dedicated themselves to making sue you know she’s stupid and she’s laughing all the way to the bank. Yeah, that’s it, she’s the dumb one.

You people mock yourselves

I hereby crown rdw as the new freeinpa!

We are the party of blacks, Latinos, union members, college students and college professors.

******************************************

You have the mind of a child. Why on earth would you cite college professors? As a group they’re total buffoons. These are the last group on earth to believe in socialism. Do you see any of the campus protest on the Iraqi war? There weren’t any kids. They were the old farts on the faculties. They’re pathetic.

rdw, I don’t know how to say this more clearly. Obama is far from liberal. He is painted as a liberal by the corporate media in order to discredit liberals and deflect blame from our dominating corporatist policies, where it belongs. Please re-read my comments, it’s all there.
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they sold it as keynsian and that was the entire point of shovel ready
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Yes, thank you for making my point. They sold it as Keynesian, but it was nothing of the sort. “Shovel ready” is another term for “work already planned”. There were no new initiatives in the stimulus that would create jobs (only keep those already held) and create demand– as Keynes called for. It was a tax-cut, plus some money for the states.

Reagan attended Eureka College, where he became a member of the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity, and majored in economics and sociology. He developed a reputation as a jack of all trades, excelling in campus politics, sports and theater. He was a member of the football team, captain of the swim team and was elected student body president. As student president, Reagan notably led a student revolt against the college president after he tried to cut back the faculty.[17]

***********************

I didn’t know some of this. Double major, played football, captain of the swim team and student body President. What a dope!!!

If the Tea Party gets enough Democratic Senators go along with unreasonable cuts, the president will veto it.

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The House had the edge. If they are unable to cut a deal that just means continuing resolutions passing the same numbers as last year which means a true freeze. The Tea Party would take that. There’s also the probability of the budget getting approved in pieces. The Tea Party has a long term view and they don’t expect a balanced budget soon. A true freeze would be a food start. I think both would prefer some cap and then moving things around and that’s cuts to things like NPR.

No, you can argue with yourself all day. I said total spending. I did not say spending as a percent of GDP. I know what the difference is. If we spend $1 more in 2010 than 2009 we increased spending. That’s an irrefutable fact.

I do agree spending as a % of GDP is a relevant term and more useful in other contexts but I was very specific. IN fact I like what the debt/debit commission did in laying out the discussion of targeted spending in terms of percent of GDP. I’d like to delink taxes and spending but putting them in the context of % of GDP. There s/b an optimum level of GDP above which the govt is too big and the individual too small and for keeping that balance we’d cap spending. I think they suggested 21% I’d offer19.5%. Once there we design a tax system that gets us 19.5%. History has shown the less progressive the rates the more progressive the results. That is when you cut the marginal rates at the top the rich declare more income and pay more taxes.

Oh my, picking up on this thread after Church this morning and I see that patrick is accusing me of having bad “manors” and piper is insisting that I identify myself to her. First of all, my bedside manners are quite good, patrick. I am a surgeon by trade, so putting my patients at ease is something both necessary and expedient. About 50% of my work is trauma related, (auto accidents, shootings, stab wounds, etc.) so no time for niceties there….it is simply slice and dice and repair internal damage. I can tell you this, though, post op, these patients are VERY appreciative of the work I’ve done and I don’t remember any complaints about my bedside manner. Besides all of this, my wife tells me I am a “most charming” fellow and I consider this the highest compliment of all. As for you piper, you strike me as mostly frustrated, ill tempered and could well be a stalker for all I know. For me to identify myself to you would be an open door for harassment and I want NO part of that. Thank you, but no thanks. I would suggest however, that you quit trying to find evil in every conservative you encounter. Some of us, like 3xfire and myself, are really nice guys. Moderate your temperate somewhat…your Pediatrician husband can tell you that being mad all the time is potentially damaging to your psyche.

Thank you, rdw56, for taking the time to illustrate, quite effectively, I might add, the difference between conservative and liberal ideology. Your points were salient and entirely accurate. Our progressive friends have lost all touch with reality and still think entitlement is simply a way of life. I doubt this will ever change, but fortunately, their numbers are rapidly shrinking…only 21% of people now identify themselves as liberal and I say thank God for this. There is STILL time before they completely bankrupt our country and I think Americans are becoming fully cognizant of this fact.

If we spend $1 more in 2010 than 2009 we increased spending. That’s an irrefutable fact.
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But totally irrelevant, as spending per GDP is the relevant measure. You’ve got the wrong units of measurement. I hope you aren’t an engineer for a living.

Try reading a factual review of the Reagan years.

So, where is a better source of information, the American Society of Civil Engineers regarding the infrastructure of the country, or rwd’s butt

Partick: It’s a peculiar feature of modern conservatism that expertise in a subject is actually considered a disqualification.

That’s why conservatives don’t listen to economists about the economy, or climate scientists about climate, or constitutional scholars about the constitution, or the Joint Chiefs of Staff about START, or the CBO about the budget.

Hence the constant railing against professors, teachers, and scientists, and against money for scientific research.

Well of course it did. No one is saying Government doesn’t have a role or that govt spending is never stimulative. As Larry Summers said stimulus has to be Timely, Targeted and Temporary. Obama’s bill was a mess and he’s since admitted as much. Even when done well it’s not a zero sum game. The money borrowed has to be paid back and it’s rare politicians will pick the most effective means to invest.

No thanks but it is cool to see the legacy has grown so powerfully liberals feel a powerful urge to revisit the Reagan years. I had to advise a good friend from work many years before Reagan died to play on a trip to a deserted island for a week because it wold kill him to hear accolades from the likes of Peter Jennings and the rest of the MSM. I even predicted it would take a full week. He sent me a note after, that he should have taken my advice, he was enraged.

Art,

Let’s think things through a little bit. The American Society of Civil Engineers depends on large public projects to earn their livings. Of course we need more construction. We will always need more construction. But I drive and I have eyes. Much of route 202 near philly has been completely rebuilt with a huge interchange in King of Prussia with new links to Route 422, route 76 and the Pa turnpike. Route 76 all the way into Philla had been rebuilt along with route 95 and route 676. Right now two bridges are being reburbished and when done out 6 biggest bridges will all have been repaved in the last decade.

We learned from climategate global warming is a scam and you don’t have to be a scientist to recognize intellectual fraud. You fools nominated Al Gore are your genius when everyone knows he’s a chronic liar and a hypocrite. We all have to cut our energy use. Except for him. Anton Scalia is my constitutional scholar and even liberals admit originalism is the dominant school. Obama appointed two lightweights and they know Scalia will be the leading expert until he dies. Actually Roberts and Alito would do but they lack his charm.

The joint chiefs work for Obama so they’re not exactly unbiased are they. Colon Powell also supports Start. But McCain and kyl don’t and I trust them over Powell. Democracy sucks sometimes doesn’t it.

Children, children, children…

Has rdw been posting lately? Anyone hear from him?

Eh, I love Scalia, but charming he certainly is not.
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Democracy sucks sometimes doesn’t it.
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Nah, it just about sucks all the time.

Art, have you been following Cancun? You should. There won’t be many more. This is almost as big a disaster as the meeting last year in Copenhagen. How perfect was that? Obama has to leave a global warming summit because Europe and the East coast were in the middle of a major freeze. I think DC got 30 inches of snow.

They’re making great imagery again. I think Sweden just broke a 100 year record for cold. Europe is freezing and those clowns are in Cancun doing nothing more than creating a huge carbon footprint. From what I’ve read Japan, India and China have affirmed when Kyoto expires in 2012 they’re done. That’s it no more annual meetings no more treaties no more monitoring, etc. The gravy train is shutting down.

Please answer me this, if you so prize truth and fact why on earth make Al Gore your pitchman? He’s a lifelong liar. The man has an established record of making things up on the fly. MY favorite Al story is of him on the campaign trail at some appearance to a union group and telling them, “when I was a baby my mother used to sing the union jingle to get me to sleep” Now just set aside the weirdness of that Al said it as if he remembered it, as a baby. Now that’s just an insult to anyone’s intelligence. It was so weird a columnists googled the song. It was written when Al was 16. I’m thinking mommy wasn’t still singing him to sleep. Al did what he does so often. He made it up.

This scam wasn’t going far anyway. I did follow the science and it’s not hard. They don’t have the facts. They simply cannot go backwards very far. The data sucks. The long ordeal with the clown at Penn State, Michael Mann, was because he would not release his data or his methodology. Pity the Freedom of information act forced him too. After years of delays we found out he lost much of his data and much was already discredited. It’s also an absurdity to think you can use tree rings to discern 1/10 of a degree temperature changes.

This was always a scam. What is going to happen in the next couple/few budget cycles is they’ll lose 95% of their funding. Boehner is already announced the house committee on GW is being eliminated. It’s going to take a while but every dime now going to academia and to the UN to support this scam will be zeroed out.

Anton is a very good guy and very popular with the other justices. His best buddy on the court is Ruth Ginsburg. The man is shockingly bright and a natural optimist. It’s more than fine to hate his positions. You are not supposed to like them. But not liking him says more about you than him.

Huh? I just said I love Scalia. He’s brilliant and witty and he sees the world much as I do. But, he tends to come off as abrasive to most people who disagree with him, so I wouldn’t say he is charming. But, I rarely disagree with him, so not sure what the hell you’re getting at. Or is it that because you and I disagree on Israel, I must be some fringe-lefty?

Enjoying the Skins-Giants game. I wanted to Skins to win to give my beloved Eagles an edge over the Giants but alas. I am reminded of what a trainwreck McNabb has become. Luckily via the marvels of modern technology I was watch the game in HD while enjoying my hobby of educating liberals. My brats brought me one of those small laptops a while ago and I can be more prolific than ever.

Lucky you!!!

Ah, you’re an Eagles fan. That explains alot. I’m currently watching the dirtbag Flyers play the Islanders, though I am a religious Rangers fan.

Well that arena isn’t for the feint of heart and we can agree it’s pretty high stakes. Anton is blunt and aggressive but he is also clear, often elegant and consistent. The supreme court is no place for wallflowers. If you are going to make a decision the minimum we should expect is a coherent explanation and a willingness to defend it in debate. Scalia is by far the best writer on the court and for my money the best thinker. I saw him on c-span in front of an audience with Breyer and they were both fabulous. I didn’t see the entire thing but it was really good stuff. I sat there wondering about what I geek I’ve become enjoying two old bastards arguing law and enjoying it as much as a football game. They argued the idea of citing foreign law and Scalia made it clear he thought it ridiculous and pointless. He was respectful of Breyer but mocked the concept. Some might think that rude but Breyer is no slouch. At that level he has the responsibility to engage and defend his perspective.

I am aware I can’t be an honest judge because I am conservative to the bone and really like Scalia. But I am confident Scalia kicked ass because Breyers argument was essentially, “why not, what are you afraid of?” That’s not an explanation of WHY do it. It’s mostly taunt. It’s defensive. Breyer I thought needed to say why it was a good thing.

I gotta tell you, this is a GREAT time to be an Eagles and Flyers fan. I am 57 and I have never seen two teams better stocked with young talent. Pronger is old but he is terrific. The debate here on who is their best player was quickly a debate between Giroux and Bobrovsky. They’re both 22. He’s looking like their best keeper in 30 years. He’s got this town saying to itself, “He can’t be this good”. The Eagles have two WRs who will be among the top 7 in NFL history for receivers younger than 24. Weird stat I know but DeSean Jackson just turned 24 and someone looked at what he and Jeremy Maclin are doing. Their best RB, who is in the top 10 in total yards in the NFL, McCoy, is 22. It’s actually stunning how well they are doing.

Reagan went straight to Hollywood and never took classes after Keynesian Economics was created.
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He did not ever formally study Keynesian Economics in any classroom at any time in his life. It is unlikely that, while doing B movies that he read PhD thesis’ of anybody. Not many actors do. For that matter, not many people who are not getting PhDs themselves in that field do.

**************************

I don’t know how you can know this. I think it’s meaningless but you are citing something as fact you cannot know. Reagan has a degree in economics. Keynesian economics isn’t physics. Keynes writing speaks for itself. If Keynes did even a decent job there is no reason for an interpreter and certainly not for someone with an economic degree.

It is good to have Patrick back. He is the only poster who has enough energy to consistently take on the overly verbose rdw. Rdw is so reactionary and so prone to unedited commentary, he wears me down. I find I can’t be bothered reading more than a couple of his comments before becoming weary.

We are going to end up deciding what level of spending as a percent of GDP makes the most sense. Then we are going to debate how to best spend that amount. That’s a HUGE step forward. It shifts from an argument of should we tax this group more to pay for that or should we give more money to this rather than that. The knowledge there is a limit is powerful. It becomes a matter of OK, this is hw much money we have to spend, how best spend it. As a political matter that’s very good, for conservatives,

Your commentary is edited?

I had no idea we disagreed on Israel not do I care. You are entitled to your opinion.

I am not an engineer but I understand facts. If you spend a dollar more in year 2 versus year 1 you increased spending. There is nothing debatable there.

Or perhaps it is an aversion to fact, april, that makes you weary and unwilling to gain understanding. patrick’s verbose commentary is often fraught with error and speculation. rdw56 has proven the master of countering liberal “pie in the sky” delusions. Keep up the good work, rdw56.

To put it mildly, we disagree.
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But, if you didn’t recall our many battles on the Palestine question -which has been our only interaction- what else would make you suspect that I am your political opponent? I said I love Scalia and you immediately assumed I was being facetious and then you went into one of your typically long-winded diatribes saying if I don’t like Scalia the man that reflects more on my character than his. Nevermind that I do like Scalia the man.

rdw56 has proven the master of countering liberal “pie in the sky” delusions.
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I never can understand these partisan loyalties most people share. Certainly no one here in the Swamp has shown themselves to be the master of anything, save for perhaps being short-sighted tumescent slaves to ideology.

I suspect you are a political opponent because you find Scalia rude. He isn’t. Even when he dissents he is thoughtful and polite.

But it’s irrelevant. You’re talking about velocity when you ought to be talking about acceleration.
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FACT: In 1921, there were only 13,253 traffic fatalities in the United States. In 2003, there were 42,643. That is up 330%!

http://www.saferoads.org/federal/2004/TrafficFatalities1899-2003.pdf

Obviously cars are becoming more and more dangerous.

We learned from climategate global warming is a scam
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This is exactly what I’m talking about.

2010 Tied With 1998 as Warmest Global Temperature on Record
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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100919104002.htm
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Global weather: 2010 in running to be warmest year on record
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http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2010/1203/Global-weather-2010-in-running-to-be-warmest-year-on-record
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Even if 2010 fails to capture the top spot, the first decade of the 21st century already has gone into the books as the warmest since 1850, when the instrument record began.

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This is the difference between long-term global trends and short-term global variability. (Considering that conservatives like to invest in the stock market, I would think they could understand this point.)
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Yes, the Cancun talks are going nowhere. That’s a political question, not a science question.
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Personally, I don’t listen to Al Gore on this issue, I listen to the scientific research community.

short-term global variability
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D’oh – Sorry, I mean short-term local variability.

I don’t find him to be rude. I said he is not charming and that those who disagree with him find him abrasive. In any case, even if I thought him to be a rude man, that speaks in no way to my political leanings. Hell, I find you to be very rude, yet I think we share fairly similar views on domestic politics.

And I kind of like Scalia, even though I disagree with him approx 93% of the time.

“For me to identify myself to you would be an open door for harassment and I want NO part of that.”
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First, Stuart and I, among a few others use our real names. I had a bad incident with Groenhaggen, but, can and gladly will tell you how to address that situation by making use of local law enforcement. (Stuart is far more careful what he says so that he is very unlikely to be harassed).
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Second, saying that all liberals are a “waste of a life” is extremely rude to say the least. I have known many conservatives and see no difference between the personal character, intelligence, height, weight or any other factor differentiating them from liberals other than ideology and, less likely to have obtained a college degree and/or more likely to have a very high income. (That is, it seems, some – absolutely not all – conservatives hate their tax bill on their high income and bend their view of reality to fit a justification for lower taxes and, some – absolutely not all – people find long winded, complicated, academic based liberal explanations too complicated and, as incurious people prefer quick, non-academic conservative solutions.)
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I can tell you without any doubt whatsoever that if your speaking tone matches the tone of your writing (mine doesn’t, both in facial expression and tone of voice I am very dead pan – like say Bob Newhart, not Glenn Beck but believe I come across differently online) if you ever slipped and addressed a bedridden patient in this manor, you would scare the living sht out of them. Even your words, if used to a bedridden patient would scare the fck out of them since they are, often, so extreme.
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That’s not to mention you being unable to identify many medical terms and other failures.
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So, since intelligent debate is not about “I am an expert, so I win” but presenting a good argument using outside facts, you should not mind in the least if we all presume that you are an uneducated 18 year old and not a doctor. This presumption should have no impact on anything unless you intend to use your claimed status to pretend that you won an argument due to your claimed status.

“The Tea Party has a long term view and they don’t expect a balanced budget soon.”
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If, like I said, the 20% who float between Democrats and Republicans do not see the Tea Party succeed, they are very likely to launch anti-incumbent anger back at the Tea Party in 2012.
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“A true freeze would be a food start.”
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The 1995 Gingrich-Clinton showdown (with a Republican Senate – an advantage the Bonner doesn’t have) the closing of all government offices at Christmas time was one of the biggest reasons Clinton won re-election in 1996. Democrats, most Republicans and swing voters hate day to day life of government (which includes many things Republicans, also, love) being stopped and are prone to punishing the side who is held responsible.
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Republicans lost some seats in the 1996 election as well.
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If I weren’t concerned about America – as you are not – and only loved my political party – as you do – I would be dying to see that government shutdown.
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As an American, I would hate it.
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Enjoy the government shutdown since, if it happens, it will cost the Tea Party very dearly in the polls.

“No one is saying Government doesn’t have a role or that govt spending is never stimulative.”
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Then WTF have you been arguing for? If the government can stimulate the economy, why are you so opposed to it doing so, just as it had?
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“Even when done well it’s not a zero sum game. The money borrowed has to be paid back and it’s rare politicians will pick the most effective means to invest.”:
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Really?
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Then please explain this:
1946 3.9
1948 3.8
1950 5.3
1952 3.0
1954 5.5
1956 4.1
1958 6.8%
1960 5.5
1962 5.5
1964 5.2
1966 3.8
1968 3.6
1970 4.9
1972 5.6
1974 5.6%
1976 7.7
19781 6.1
1980 7.1

Read more: United States Unemployment Rate 1920–2008 — Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0104719.html#ixzz17IZdTChv
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Unemployment remained low for decades after World War II while the debt was getting partially paid off slowly until Reagan ballooned the deficit.

“We are going to end up deciding what level of spending as a percent of GDP makes the most sense. Then we are going to debate how to best spend that amount. That’s a HUGE step forward.”
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We have been debating this all along.
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Once again, I have to wonder what country you were living in.
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Economic politics has always been how much to spend and where to spend it in addition to where to get the money to pay for it.
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At no time in history since the Magna Carta has this not been debated.

“Reagan worked his way through college in the 20′s when few people did and you criticize the school he went to?

That qualifies you as a classless hack.”
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First, Reagan did not pay for his own education.
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Second, with many delays, I am.
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So, therefore, wouldn’t this qualify you as a classless hack?

“Gorby was terrified of star wars but it wasn’t a negotiable item. Near the end after a great deal of progress everywhere else Gorby throws a grenade. He wants Star Wards ended. Reagan says no. His advisors are so impressed with the other progress they all advise him to take the deal because the beating from the press will be terrible if they don’t leave with something.”
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Straight from your butt.
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First, Gorbachov had “star wars” surrounding Moscow since 1971.
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“Jump to: navigation, search

The A-35 anti-ballistic missile system, or A-35 Aldan, was a Soviet military battle management radar complex deployed around Moscow to intercept enemy missiles targeting the city or its surrounding areas. In development since the 1960s and in operation from 1971 [1] until the 1990s, It featured the nuclear-tipped exoatmospheric interceptor ABM-1 Galosh. The missile was the first Soviet ABM in operation. The A-35 was supported by the Cat House radar, Dog House and Hen House radars as designated by NATO.[1]

The A-35 system was followed by the A-135, currently operational as of February 2007.”
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-35_anti-ballistic_missile_system
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He was totally unimpressed by this but could not afford an arms race.
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“Gorbachev then suggested eliminating all nuclear weapons within a decade.”
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reykjav%C3%ADk_Summit
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When Reagan did not want an end to arms race, Gorbachev and Reagan for that summit found no common ground.
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To this day, 24 years later, Star Wars has succeeded in doing one thing: Bleeding tens of billions of dollars out of taxpayers pockets and into the pockets of military contractors without a reliable means to prevent ICBMs from entering our or our allies airspace.

For a second time, who wants to hear that cutting their taxes will not result in reduced government services nor a deficit? 100% of all constituents.
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Who wants to hear that a tax raise is needed? 0%
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Next you are going to say that Reagan was brilliant since when he handed out candy to children at Halloween, they took the free candy.
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Reagan told the wealthiest that they can get free tax breaks not causing an increase in the debt.
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The wealthiest along with others ate the free candy.
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Reagan tripled the deficit.
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Now we have to pay for Reagan giving treats to the wealthiest 30 years ago plus 30 years interest.
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This is a good thing to you?

If you think income equals intelligence then Hollywood is 100% brilliant people and residents of Red States, where the income is lower, is full of dopes.
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I believe learning facts and understanding how things work is intelligence. Being entertaining is a skill, but, not tied directly to intelligence.
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You are the snob who call all of the poor and middle income dumber than the wealthiest.

“Why on earth would you cite college professors? As a group they’re total buffoons. ”
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So money equals intelligence and knowing how to do things and teaching that to others is not a noble pursuit, but, instead, stupidity?
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Wow you are a super snob!
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“These are the last group on earth to believe in socialism.”
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College professors believe in Marxism?
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What country did you say you lived in, North Korea?
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” Do you see any of the campus protest on the Iraqi war? There weren’t any kids. They were the old farts on the faculties.”
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You, obviously, did not see any of the protests since it was students, not teachers who protested.
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Are you sure that you are living in the United States? If you did and saw one of those protests with your own eyes, you would know that it was a student protest.

“…played football, captain of the swim team ..”
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So, you don’t want a president who learns, you want a president who we can tackle (I’m 6′ 2″, I’d love it if politics was about who can tackle his opponent, since I will win almost all of the time).
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It’s great that conservatives want a president who can swim since we would love to tell the conservatives to go jump in a lake.
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Liberals want presidents who have learned, not ex-jocks.

“This is exactly what I’m talking about.”
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Art, should we tell him that the climatologists were absolved of any wrongdoing and that there results were verified starting on March 31st (interestingly Al Gore’s 62nd birthday) or should we just let him live in his dream world?
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BTW: rwd, have you inspected the sewer system lately?
Since you, unlike me, know far more than engineers, please go down to the sewer system in PA and tell me how it’s doing? You get all of your facts from the sewer and post all of the crap you can find, so, while you’re down there tell me how many leaks there are, how old the pipes are, how much pressure they can tolerate under what temperatures and so on.

Exiled_At_Home: living proof that sane conservative is absolutely not a contradiction in terms.
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Even if we do not agree, it is always good to see sanity from the right.
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Thank you.

230 comments!

60% of them made by 2 commenters.

Now 233.
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I wonder if I should make this a full time job and forget working for a living.
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rdw56 really can spew out a huge amount of crap. I should consider myself a volunteer septic tank cleaner when dealing with him.

Whatever records I have held in this regard are now history.

SZ,
I suspect you still hold the record for quality posts, though.

Um, thanks, I guess. Not too sure that I should feel complimented for being seen as the only one who believes what I believe that is not a fool. But, I guess it’s the thought that counts. Cheers.

Sometime in the near future rdw, I’ll take you behind the woodshed for an old-style schoolerizing on science.
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I’ve got things to do but I’lm sure that by the time we’re done, you will know what foramenifera are and why they are important.
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Can you say ‘core’ and stomp your feet while you’re at it? You’ll get a free education on those too…

jcapan:
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If you’ll note that it does say “Sock Puppet Theater: Act II”.
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And the paricular sock puppet I’m thinking of is not the sane conservative…

patrick:
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Until I had little time, I had to do the same, but I will admit I got more help. Sorry I can’t contribute the time, but I understand the feeling….

We can easily agree 2010 was the warmest year on record as long as we limit our search back to 1979 because we have good satellite data. From 1979 back to the 40′s we have pretty good data but it’s far from comprehensive and we don’t have anywhere near the accuracy to measure differences to the 10th of a degree. As we get before 1900 we don’t have anything approaching global data and before 1800 it’s all guess work. Using tree rings is absurd. In terms of geological time saying 2010 is the wamest year on record based on 30 years of data, or even 130 years of data is utterly worthless. That doesn’t even get to the fact the theory it’s becaused by excessive carbon isn’t close to being proven and then when you look deeper they’ll tell you other gases are worse, like methane for example. PA suffers more pollution from cows farting than cars. What’s your solution for that one? On top of that Kyoto was itself a total scam. Al Gore is a friggin moron. The USA got fleeced. The Europeans picked a start data that favored them. Germany and the UK were never as risk because the UK has been switching from coal to natural gas having recently discover massive supplies in the North Sea. Germany by benefit of reunification with the East was in the process of shutting down old coal plants and other russian designed pollution machines. Conservatives opposed Kyoto for a dozen reasons but put Al Gores stupidity at the top of the list. It was insutlingly stupid to sign that of piece of garbage which is why 95 Senators told Clinton not to. On top of that those fools said they’d spend a mountain of money to at most slow warming by 1/10th of a degree. Oh year, that’s worthwhile.

Thankfully Obama is incompetent because Copenhagen marks the end of the road. The cool thing is they all know it. This thing is Cancun was nothing more than an expensive junket for them to piss away more money. There will not be another Kyoto. The gravy train is coming to an end. The GOP is going to do to federal funding for GW what Christie did in NJ. It’s headed to zero.

BTW: Climategate really is a great story and it’s not over. Michael Mann of Penn State and Phil Jones of the U of East Anglia are total frauds. It took almost 10 years to get them to release their data so they could be fact checked. This so-called peer review process was/is a scam. It was physically impossible for the.people at Science Magazine to do any level of peer review without having seen the data. This process is rotten from top to bottom. They are frauds. They never asked to see his data. We know this because after Penn State was sued and ordered under the freedom of information act to release the data Mann admitted he lost much of it. Phil Jones had a very similar problem. Funny how that happens isn’t it?

It was comical last week to see the NYTs admit they made a mistake in refusing to cover “climategate’. At the time they decided since the files were not intended for public consumption it w/b wrong to print them. And they know their readership, liberals, would believe what is an utterly preposterous lie. The NYTs has no problem printing state secrets as they did last week and when Fox read their statement as to why they printed Wikileaks and then read their statement why they didn’t print the climategate leaks even the morons on their editorial board knew the mocking would never stop until they admitted their fraud. The cool think about being a conservative in 2010 is only liberals believe the NYTs on anything. We find out about things like climategate, Dan Rather, the SBVs, etc., and there isn’t a friggin thing the MSM can do to stop it.

So cry yourself a river my friend. Your side blew it.
Al Gore, what were you thinking?

Yes, the Cancun talks are going nowhere. That’s a political question, not a science question

************************************************************

It’s not going anywhere because the science sucks. As an issue it’s going to disappear. This is a generational lesson. Whenever politicians get involved with sciences and there are grants involved we get massive fraud. The system is always rigged. In the case of global warming the only way to get a grant was to do a study to prove GW existed. The only way to keep the gravy train running for everyone was for global warming to be real. It’s not possible to get good science from such an arrangement. To make things work you get people like Michael Mann who are often a bad combination of dishonest and inept but know how to game the system gain a lot of notoriety. As soon as one of the hero’s of climategate, Steven McIntyre, started demanding to see the data the jig was up. Yet Mann refused for years before he was exposed. At 1st McIntyre thought Mann was just arrogant and then realized sometihing was wrong He initially suspected fraud but after dealing with Mann realized he was so sloppy he almost certainly didn’t have it and didn’t want to admit it. That would of course expose the entire peer review process as a total scam. Mann was a major player. His work could not possibly have been reviewed. This is what happens when everyone has the same vested interest. Federal funding for GW is enormous. The science was co-opted.

The good news is we know. The NYTs still hasn’t covered climategate but we know. Some liberals are still ignorant but that’s always going to be the case. Steve McIntyre is a retired mining engineer with a nose for statistical fraud and that’s why he started looking at Mann’s now infamous hockey stick. This is why the internet is so cool. If this was the 70′s we’d never see the scam because the NYTs would cover it up as it still does. Mann is the classic academic who thinks he’s smarter than everyone else. For every professor at a university there are two dozen experts in the private sector who know more than they do. Mann knew the game was up the second he got a request from an engineer to see his work. He knew he was going to be an authentic peer review from someone not dependent on the system. This is a really great story. The days of one liberal ‘peer-reviewing’ another and the NYTs reporting that as science are long gone. if the public paid for the data it belongs to everyone. It goes on a public server and is publically reviewed. That’s how we found out global warming is a scam. And that’s how we’ll find out about the next scam.

Scalia has had an amazing career. He is almost always the smartest person in the room such as when he’s listening to the state of the union address. He was 1st in every class he’s ever been in and never got less than an A. A devout Catholic he has, I think, 8 kids. Many legal experts consider him the sharpest writer and thinker on the court of the last 100 years. While he didn’t invent originalism he’s done more to advance it than anyone and has to be considered one of the most influencial jurists of all time. He is said to be very upbeat and fun person to be around and devastating in debate with a sharp tongue to match a sharp mind.

Smart libs are upset with Obama for this reason. They wanted someone to counter Scalia and if not him then Roberts and Alito. All three are very bright and accomplished. Sotomayer is at best mediocre and Kagan grossly inexperienced. They’ll be reliable liberal votes but with little influence.

Liberals love to whine. I don’t blame you for being a little down once in a while. Your messiah isn’t all that and liberalism is on the run but you don’t have to wallow in it. You live in the greatest country in the history of man, buck up.

Author claims we’re in the grip of a mini ice age

Dec 5 2010 by Mike Kelly, Sunday Sun

AFTER nearly two weeks of snow and sub zero temperatures rivaling those of Siberia, the old joke about global warming being a good thing has had a new lease of life. So what has happened to doom-laden predictions of the world heating up as glaciers melt? Mike Kelly reports.
A satellite image of the UK taken during last year’s harsh winter

FIRST the good news. These bitter winters aren’t going to last forever. The bad news is that they will go on for the next 30 years as we have entered a mini ice age.

So says author Gavin Cooke in his book Frozen Britain. He began writing it in 2008 and it was published last year when experts were scratching their heads at the cause of the bitter winter of 2009/10 which brought England to a standstill. Some said it was a one-off event, with experts predicting snowfall becoming increasingly rare.

Now, 12 months on, the current sub zero spell makes last year look just a bit chilly. Just like kids enjoying ‘snow days’ off school, Gavin ought to be delighted with the cold snap. After all, he can justifiably say ‘I told you so’. But he’s as glum as the rest of us.

“Your messiah isn’t all that…”
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Ronald Reagan, the messiah isn’t all that?
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That’s what I have been saying all along!
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Obama was never anybody’s messiah, he was just the guy ten times better than McCain and 50 times better than GWB. If you can grasp what a low bar being 50 times better than GWB means it’s like poll vaulting over an ant hill.
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In your distorted world, apparently living in North Korea (you surely know nothing about life in the US and believe that there are Marxists hiding everywhere, so, my guess is that you’re living in North Korea and posting from there) only a god-like person could be better than GWB. Historians are treating GWB even lower than the 25% approval ratings he is getting from the general public and Reagan has been, in the history books, been getting a slow slide downwards since January of 1989.

As a resident of North Korea, unable to access many sources of news in the United States, rdw56 couldn’t find this article only three weeks ago about “climategate”.
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http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/19/reviewing-the-bidding-on-the-climate-files/?scp=1&sq=climategate%20&st=cse
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“That dispute was worked out and had no bearing at all on the broader question of the causes and consequences of global climate change. I sent Ebell a note on Thursday asking for a bit more detail, noting that, “Overall, this seems to be a pretty constrained “gotcha” given the fireworks a year ago.””
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If you came to America, rdw56, and saw our news, you’d discover many interesting things and no secret communist conspiracies to put solar panels on your house.

If you had even a vague understanding of climate change – which I am sure they do not teach you well in North Korea – rdw56, you’d know that it is chaotic weather which would result from an average global change in temperature over the entire years and not only is not debunked by random, chaotic cold spells, but, can explain these random cold spells.
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Come to America sometime and study in one of our colleges. You’ll learn debate, the scientific method, economics and many things they do not teach people like you in your isolated part of the world.

Patrick,

Climategate blew GW out of the water in the USA and Europe. The movement is D E A D. The last person to comment on it fairly would be Revkin who himself in one of the emails comes off as a weasel. There was no grand conspiracy, just classic liberal incompetence. You guys lost. You had a poor hand you played poorly. Were you one of the clowns who bought into peak oil as well? It’s another liberal habit to bring this out of the closet every 20 years or so. The fact this this decade has been fantastic for discovering oil and gas including in the USA. While liberals had their hair on fire we not only discovered massive gas deposits but we’ve come nearly 180 degrees on nuclear. China and India have massive programs and several European countries has rescinded bans. In te USA there are 14 plants at some stage of construction with the 1st coming online in 2014. The Baaken formation in the Dakotas is now supplying nearly 4% of our needs and is still expanding while the Marcella formation in WV, Western PA and NY is just starting to be tapped. The OIl companies have been booming and will continue to boom.

Historians are treating GWB even lower than the 25% approval ratings he is getting from the general public and Reagan has been, in the history books, been getting a slow slide downwards since January of 1989.

*************************************************

Actually polls show GWB would beat Obama today and Reagan is the most widely respected President of the post-wwII era except possibly for Truman. The worst President of this era was Jimmy Carter and Obama is giving him a run for his money. With unemployment at 9.8% and absolutely no clue he’s got a real shot. How are those middle east talks going? The only thing working for Obama is defense and national security and that’s because he’s doing everything BUsh did even using the same people. He veered off once with trying to close Gitmo and made an ass of himself.

Obama was never anybody’s messiah,

*****************************************************
Actually he was. It’s rather funny to look back at his preposterous rhetoric. No need to worry about GW, he’s going to lower the oceans. He said so. You twits ate it all up. It’s a delicious irony that had GWB been president during the Copenhagen meetings he would have been blamed for the failure. But you could not do that with Obama and he was abysmal. Once the rest of the world realized the liberal American President was not going to be able to deliver a deal they essentially all gave up. It was never about the science for the 3rd world. It was only about the money. Now with the global recession and the end of Kyoto the European can’t even think about a new treaty. They had fleeced Gore but that sap is gone.

It is so over. I’d bet at least 80% of the people making a living off this scam are onto other things by 2013. The grant money is going to dry up with all of these budget cuts. Boehner already defunded the house committee on GW and is going to do to the various programs what Christie did in NJ. Obama killed their golden goose. GW is going to disappear as an issue because there’s no money to be made off it.

The Impending Tax Deal
December 6, 2010 6:45 A.M.
By Daniel Foster

It looks like this: Republicans get an extension of current tax rates for all Americans, on the order of two years (but possibly three, or even five, depending on your source), and in exchange Democrats get an extension of unemployment insurance benefits.

The mechanics of the deal remain unclear though. Will Republicans and Democrats alike let each piece of the compromise go through the regular order without a filibuster, or will each caucus have to cough up the handful of votes necessary to get to 60?

*********************************************

The left will have his hair on fire over this. The fact is Obama has no control over the Senate and he’s lucky to get this.

“Actually he was”
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No.
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You ‘guys’ invented the whole Messiah thingie including ‘teleprompter’ meme while ignoring the worship of everything GWB and Reagan, including the facts that apparently Sarah and George are the only ones ignoring teleprompters while others don’t (the last 2 being the reasons why it’s good to have teleprompters).
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So I get back here on Monday to read you essentially sticking your head in the sand on anything regarding to facts while making up your own and the only ones that held your hand in your ‘awesomesauce’ job in telling those ‘them there’ libruls were…earl.
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Anyways – you’re entitled to your own opinion, not your own facts. While the constitution gives you the right to make up whatever sh1t you want reality proves you wrong every single time and day and that’s good enough for me.
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Patrick – you have the patience of an angel…I’ve ‘debated’ RDW before when he like a 3 year old claimed that Fascism and Socialism is the same (on the left) because they lead to totalitarism and fascism is not on the right hand scale because conservatism believes in small government.
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When one use that kind of logic it’s not about the facts – it’s believing that having an opinion constitute a factual position. It’s like ‘I stayed in Holidays Inn last night’.

“The left will have his hair on fire over this. The fact is Obama has no control over the Senate and he’s lucky to get this.”
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But, But, But…I thought we worshipped him and he was a socialist liberal?
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How can this be? It’s funny how you prove yourself so wrong by providing the very reason why Obama isn’t a liberal or progressive in any way shape and form. He’s a centrist. Plain and simple. He asks liberals to suck it up while compromise away everything before there’s even a debate.
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If that’s liberals than I’m Santa Claus.

But, But, But…I thought we worshipped him and he was a socialist liberal?

***************************************************
You did, until the wheels started coming off. Heck, he got off to a great start. Remember when he ordered Gitmo closed? Always a stupid idea but it was for the libs. This I suspect will be very painful. This is right to the heart. Tax cuts for the rich is unthinkable. He’s got no choice. He’s not a centrist. Clinton was a centrist. Obama is a liberal. As you should expect he’s also incompetent. This will be the final straw for many in the far left.

You ‘guys’ invented the whole Messiah thingie including ‘teleprompter’ meme while ignoring the worship of everything GWB and Reagan,

*******************************************************************

No, he was adored as the Messiah on the left and especially in the MSM. He even promised to lower the oceans. Only liberals could listen to crap like that. I’m not quite sure what you mean about the teleprompter. Are you referring to the fact he was the 1st person in the history of the Indian parliment to use one? His addiciton? Well it is pretty weak.

My side doesn’t worship everything about GWB and Reagan. We worship everything about Reagan. But it’s only to drive liberals bonkers. We know he wasn’t perfect. Damn close though!

you’d know that it is chaotic weather which would result from an average global change in temperature over the entire years and not only is not debunked by random, chaotic cold spells, but, can explain these random cold spells.

***************************************************

That’s the cool part. You’ve covered all bases. If we have a warm patch it’s due to global warming. If we have a cold patch it’s due to global warming. Rain, drought, both due to global warming. It can explain anything and everything.

For saps maybe.

You lost. It’s dead. You now have a front row seat to watch it all crumble. In another year there’s no Kyoto. Gone, poof!! Do you even realize how badly Gore screwed this up? Well, he’s a very wealthy man. I mean screwed over the kool aid drinkers? He negotiated the timelines in the original deal either ignorant of the fact the USA was getting screwed or he didn’t care. He almost certainly wasn’t smart enough to know. Pity, everyone else did.

He asks liberals to suck it up while compromise away everything before there’s even a debate.

*********************************************

He doesn’t even do that. He knows you have no where to go. You’re not going to vote for Palin. Boehner and McConnell have several tactical advantages while both Reid and Nancy are weak. It’s going to be a hard adjustment.

Cancun climate conference: the warmists’ last Mexican wave
The global warming scare was fun while it lasted, but the joke’s over, says Christopher Booker.
Ange of the North
Western Europe shivers to a halt and our energy bills soar through the roof

By Christopher Booker 7:30PM GMT 04 Dec 2010

If, last week, frozen behind a snowdrift, you heard a faint hysterical squeaking, it might well have been the sound of those 20,000 delegates holed up behind a wall of armed security guards in the sun-drenched Mexican holiday resort of Cancun, telling each other that the world is more threatened by runaway global warming than ever. Between their tequilas and lavish meals paid for by the world’s taxpayers, they heard how, by 2060, global temperatures will have risen by 4 degrees Celsius; how the Maldives and Tuvalu are sinking below the waves faster than ever; how the survival of salmon is threatened by CO2-induced acidification of the oceans; how the UN must ban incandescent light bulbs throughout the world.

“Scientists”, we were told, are calling for everyone to be issued with a “carbon ration card”, to halt all Western economic growth for 20 years.

Meanwhile, Dr Rajendra Pachauri was telling us that we must spend hundreds of billions on covering the world’s oceans with iron filings, on building giant mirrors out in space and on painting all the world’s roofs white to keep out the heat from the sun.

The most obvious thing about all this ritualised scaremongering was how stale it all was. Not one of these points hasn’t been a cliche for years.The only scientist who believes we should all be issued with carbon ration cards is a Prof Kevin Anderson, who has been saying it since 2004. It is only those same old computer models that predict that Tuvalu and the Maldives are about to drown, when real measurements show the sea around them not to be rising at all. Far from the oceans acidifying, their pH currently ranges between 7.9 and 8.3, putting them very firmly on the alkaline side of the threshold, at 7.0.

The prediction that global temperatures will rise by four degrees in 50 years comes from that same UK Met Office computer which five weeks ago was telling us we were about to enjoy a “milder than average” winter, after three years when it has consistently got every one of its winter and summer forecasts hopelessly wrong. (And the reason why our local authorities are already fast running out of salt is that they were silly enough to believe them.)

When Vicky Pope, the Met Office’s Head of Climate Change Advice, wanted to fly out from Gatwick to Cancun to tell them that 2010 is the hottest year on record, she was trapped by inches of the same global warming that her £33 million computer had failed to predict.

As for all that “geo-engineering” make-believe which has been peddled for years, about giant mirrors and covering the sea with iron filings, it comes straight from Swift’s Academy of Lagado – as fanciful as the idea that we can save the planet by forcing everyone to use those miserable mercury-vapour “low-energy” light bulbs, or that we can pipe away all the carbon dioxide from power stations to store it in holes under the North Sea.

What we are seeing here is one of the greatest collective flights from reality in the history of the human race. As western Europe shivers to a halt and our energy bills soar through the roof, the time has come when we should all start to get seriously angry with our politicians for being carried away by all this claptrap.

Why, for instance, when our public debt is still rising by £3 billion a week, do we allow our Government to ring-fence £2.9 billion of our money to help the developing world to build useless wind turbines and solar panels?

Why do we tolerate a Parliament which blithely commits us to spending £18.3 billion every year for 40 years under the Climate Change Act, without having the faintest idea how we are going to keep our lights on?

The global warming scare may have been fun for the children while it lasted. But the time has come for the joke to be declared well and truly over.

Halpern on Obama

The coalition that got Barack Obama elected President just two years ago has been shattered. Gaming out the trajectory of the next two years can be done any number of ways, but Obama’s efforts to rebuild a politically robust alliance will be the most telling. It may be the biggest challenge of his career — and he will need happenstance along with skill if he is going to get it done.

A survey of the political landscape shows that many groups who were part of the 2008-09 Obama coalition have turned on him. Liberals believe he is an overcompromising wimp. (See blistering recent columns by progressive icons Paul Krugman and Frank Rich of the New York Times for a taste of what the left thinks of “their” President now.) The business community considers Obama ignorant about markets at best, a socialist at worst (O.K., some business people entertain an even harsher assessment). The media, after aiding and abetting his ride to the White House, now see the President as incompetent and overwhelmed. The independents and Republicans who backed him for office currently feel he is too liberal and too weak to do the job. These trends are all worse in Washington and among opinion leaders than they are in the country at large, but the views of elites are clearly shaping how the President is perceived by the nation in general.

*******************************************************

You elected a man with a huge ego and no reason for it. He’s accomplished nothing and experienced nothing. Hillary is even worse.

“Patrick,

Climategate blew GW out of the water in the USA and Europe. The movement is D E A D. The last person to comment on it fairly would be Revkin who himself in one of the emails comes off as a weasel.”
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“Whatever the reasons, meteorologists are far more likely to question the underlying science of climate change. A study published in the January 2009 newsletter of the American Geophysical Union, the professional association of earth scientists, found that while nearly 90 percent of some 3,000 climatologists who responded agreed that there was evidence of human-driven climate change, 80 percent of all earth scientists and 64 percent of meteorologists agreed with the statement. Only economic geologists who specialized in industrial uses of materials like oil and coal were more skeptical. ”
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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/science/earth/30warming.html
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Like I said, it would be nice if you left North Korea or wherever it is that you live to visit the United States. You’re sources of information are unrecognizably distorted.
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Here on the planet earth, there is a consensus regarding climate change.

“Actually polls show GWB would beat Obama today and Reagan is the most widely respected President of the post-wwII era except possibly for Truman.”
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I know where you live in North Korea when the Great Leader makes a proclamation everybody treats it like irrefutable fact, but, here in the United States, one needs to site outside sources.
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“By 47 to 45 percent, Americans say Obama is a better president than George W. Bush. But that two point margin is down from a 23 point advantage one year ago.”
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http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/10/08/cnntime-poll-was-bush-better-president-than-obama/
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I hate to inform you that the number 47 is greater than the number 45.
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We’ll see what will happen after the Boner in the House leads to a Clinton-Gingrich showdown shutting down government. It will, most likely, make the president’s numbers skyrocket as they did with Clinton.

Obama isn’t to the left.
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He is getting more and more third way by the hour.
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It looks like, despite the Tea Party unemployment benefits will not be cut off, too.

“My side doesn’t worship everything about GWB and Reagan. We worship everything about Reagan.”
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If you didn’t suffer from severe reading comprehension problems, you would notice that you had made every other post about Ronald Reagan. If you were a woman, I would believe that you used to have sex with Reagan and are still in love with him. Since, as far as I know you are a man, I have no idea why you write so often about a president 20 years ago.
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By contrast, look for posts saying that Obama is a great president here.
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You won’t find it.
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He ran from the left and governed from the center and soon after he started bending over for John Boner – as many suspected he might – we found him only 50 times better than GWB – who most Republicans today forget after only two years.

“You’ve covered all bases. If we have a warm patch it’s due to global warming. If we have a cold patch it’s due to global warming. Rain, drought, both due to global warming. It can explain anything and everything.”
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Wrong.
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If the average temperature worldwide does not increase over a one year average, then you would be proven correct.
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The average temperature over the planet over a one year cycle keeps on going up. Hence, we do not “win”. Climatologist are proven correct.
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When doctor #1 believes you have terminal cancer and doctor #2 says you are fine, if doctors #3 through 10 all say you are about to die within a year, does doctor #1 “win”?
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Maybe if you were doctor #1 you would be singing and dancing about how your patient is about to die, but, for people who are not sociopaths, if they were doctor #1, you would unhappily correct. There is a big difference.

“He knows you have no where to go.”
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And, therefore, does not govern as a liberal and never did govern as a liberal.
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I know.
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That is exactly what we have been telling you that Obama is a third-way president and not a liberal president but you chose to waste time on this.

If you would like to see the Island of Tuvalu and pictures of it losing land right now, help yourself:
.
http://www.islandvulnerability.org/tuvalu.html
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Of course you would have to be up to your neck in water before you believe in anything other than your own crap.

“You elected a man with a huge ego and no reason for it. He’s accomplished nothing and experienced nothing. Hillary is even worse.”
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The irony of course is at the same time you’re all gungho about a person like Sarah. Why is that?

“You elected a man with a huge ego and no reason for it.”
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1) Near the top of his class at Columbia University.
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2) President of the Harvard Law Review.
.
3) Highly paid (and this should make you ejaculate – highly paid) lawyer for (take a cold shower) private law firm.
.
4) University of Chicago Constitutional Law Professor.
.
5) US Senator.
.
Compared to Ronald Reagan:
.
1) Lifeguard
.
2) Captain of the football team for an unranked college.
.
3) Captain of the Swim team.
.
4) Actor in B movies.
.
5) Governor.
.
Only governor matches Obama being Senator.
.
Most people would describe Obama as having a self deprecating humor, not arrogant.
.
His biggest flaw, he ran from the left and governs from the middle. What do you find in the middle of the road? Dead raccoons, dead squirrels and injured deer, but, he had to bend over backwards for nuts like you so that you can rape this country.

Rwd56,
.
I believe you mistake writing large amounts of words for “winning”.
.
Like the doctor example above, the fact that global warming is real does not about somebody “winning’ more than if your doctor says that you have terminal cancer and that he is correct.
.
This is not a competition for the largest number of words written.
.
Give it a break.

If JNS gets paid per page hits and # of comments she must be giddy with delight: enough cash earned to buy new wardrobes for her TV appearances, go on House Hunters to buy a new home, etc., all thanks to rdw.

Patrick, one of the more comical aspects of the Obama experience is we don’t know anything of his academic accomplishments and that smellls awfully fishy doesn’t it?

The answer is yes.

We knew about Clinton, Bush, Kerry and Gore but not Obama. Gee, I wonder why??? That would not be liberals being PC would it?.

Hmmm. If he had a 4,0 we’d know wouldn;’t we? Yes, we would. This is 2010 not 1990. The MSM is inept. commonsense tells us the reason they won’t report Obama’s grades is even within a hyper PC environment as Harvard they STILL won’t report means he SUCKED.

No, it’s not volume, it’s clarity, accuracy, context, etc. You’ve been played for a buffoon and you met the challenge. You twits want to run away from Al Gore. Here’s your problem, you ARE Al Gore. We don’t know about Obama ‘s academic performance because the NYTs is protecting him.

“You twits want to run away from Al Gore.”
.
Al Gore is to Democrats what Bob Dole is to Republicans: somebody who lost a presidential election.
.
But, you twits run away from reasonable, respectable Bob Dole while we, relative to his status as a “recovering politician” (as he says) very much respect what Al Gore has done.
.
Here is how man made climate change would “lose” (since you think we are playing football, not debating the future of our country): If, over 3 months the temperatures taken worldwide begin to show a decrease over the past 12 months, there is grounds to have some questions. After six months, if the 12 month average of the average of worldwide temperatures show that they are not rising, there is some reason to check the theory more carefully. At five years, the theory is dead.
.
However, if the theory, by facts not by loud shouting, is proven incorrect, there will have to be a search for the causes of climate change since the climate is changing.
.
You threw GWB, Dole and Bush Sr under the bus.
.
Relative to his status, Al Gore is held in very high esteem by “the left”.

Captain of the football team for an unranked college.

*******************************************************

Did not know he was captain of the football team. I did know he was captain of the swim team and class President. Was Obama class President? Captain of any team?

Here’s the thing. On the Harvard campus Barak Obama in the 1970′s or 80′a would have been able say to any white liberal, “” I need you to pay attention to my penis” and you would have focused on his penis. Male, Female no difference. You would have been in your knees.

rdw56,
.
I have two relatives who were on the law review of their laws schools. There is only one way to get asked to be in the law review at Universities in the United States (not your homeland of North Korea, where you have not seen news from the outside world since 1949): Being in the top 10% of your class.
.
Usually the president of the law review is the valedictorian .
.
By the fact that he was on the law review tells us that he beat out 90% of Harvard Law school students in terms of law school grades.
.
After that, if he beat out 99%, 98%….. or only 91% is something nobody gives a flying duck about.
.
Being in the law review means that you were in the top 10% and, in terms of GPA, that would be about a 3.6 or higher.
.
You do not get a chance to get into Harvard Law school even from Columbia without at least a 3.5 and top notch LSAT scores.
.
You, also, need to be in the top 5% of the top high schools in America or the top 1% of most high schools in America to be able to transfer into Columbia.
.
So, we can date back that Obama was getting mostly A’s since he was 14 years old all the way though law school.
.
But you don’t care about grades so long as he is a really, really good swimmer like Ronald Reagan so that if somebody tells him to go jump in a lake, he will not drown.

“No, it’s not volume, it’s clarity, accuracy, context, etc. You’ve been played for a buffoon and you met the challenge. You twits want to run away from Al Gore. Here’s your problem, you ARE Al Gore. We don’t know about Obama ‘s academic performance because the NYTs is protecting him.”
.
I HAVE been played for a buffoon. Here I thought you were not half as insane as you let on. But don’t I look all red faced when you drag out the birther nonsense. Consider me corrected.
.
No wonder you argue that Obama is extremely liberal eventhough there’s no evidence of it. No wonder you believe fascism and socialism is the same; you need to purify your own radicalism in order to pretend that you somehow represent the truth.
.
Sorry bud – but you can congratulate yourself in how insightful and great you are but my 7 year makes more sense with a box of crayons on the back of a serial box.
.
Here’s a hint. Leave your ideological tickle at the door. Start with facts and let it snowball from there. We might not always agree on everything but at least I’ll respect you for analysing the facts ‘your way’,
.
You’re not a challenge. You’re challenged. Not the same thing.

“Here’s the thing. On the Harvard campus Barak Obama in the 1970′s or 80′a would have been able say to any white liberal, “” I need you to pay attention to my penis” and you would have focused on his penis. Male, Female no difference. You would have been in your knees.”
.
I’m bigger than most males of all races,and am both unimpressed by and uninterested in other men’s penises.
.
I was born in 1971 and took no interest in sex until I was 12 years old and, that was exclusively vaginas, not penises.
.
When I was working my way thought the night school at Harvard, there was not homosexual activity happening in Harvard Yard. Maybe you were experiencing homosexuality in your college years, but, not many men do on any college campus.
.
“Did not know he was captain of the football team. I did know he was captain of the swim team and class President.”
.
You quoted it from the article I sent you about your hero.

Relative to his status, Al Gore is held in very high esteem by “the left”.

**************************
I would expect nothing less. His gift however is to the right. How perfect to have someone of the leff to have so monstrous an energy bil. He is an exceptionally pathetic figure.

I HAVE been played for a buffoon. Here I thought you were not half as insane as you let on. But don’t I look all red faced when you drag out the birther nonsense. Consider me corrected.

.************************

that is an exceptionally quick response. I never bought into the Birher nonsense,

“that is an exceptionally quick response. I never bought into the Birher nonsense”
.
Of course not
.
“We don’t know about Obama ‘s academic performance because the NYTs is protecting him.”
.
Just some other nonsense.

I have no idea how a person as exceptionally incoherent as you manages to turn on his computer.
.
Unless you have been bedridden for the past 30 years and been watching nothing but Limbaugh and, later, Fox for the past 20 years, I can not imagine how a human being could be more misinformed.

Patrick,

so why don’t we know his marks? The folks at the law review are probably as clueless as you. This is a black man at Harvard. As Biden would describe as clean and articulate. Surrounded by white liberals terrified of being called a racist they felt voting for him was mandatory. I don’t blame Obama for his arrogance. He’s almost certainly been getting his ass kissed since he was 18.

We can at least agree there is a reason we don’t know his marks. We know everything about everyone else but him. A child can surmise here is a reason we don’t know and that reason is protection. Obama is the classic BS artist. Even the professorship thing s a fraud. He never graded paper. He was a guest lecturer. Everything you did for him prepared him for failure. He still doesn’t know what’s happened.

nah, just commonsense. We know all about GWB, Kerry, Gore, Clinton etc, We know nothing of Obama. A child would know there is a reason for that. People like you are not even curious. Again, a child would know there is a reason for that as well.

Bush, Obama Approval Ratings in Dead Heat
December 6, 2010 4:39 P.M.
By Daniel Foster

According to Gallup, both presidents have a current approval rating of 47 percent.

nothing but Limbaugh and, later, Fox for the past 20 years

**************************************************************
It’s fascinating how Fox and Limaugh have infected the liberal mind. It’s so much worse than you know. I get to listen to Rush at most 1 hour a week and for Fox the most I can get is 2x’s a week I catch the roundtable, the last 20 minutes of the news hour. By far the source of my information is the internet. Blogs like the National Review. They’re so much better than the newspapers. While you obsess over Fox the NRO educates the masses.

Come on, white liberals own the PC stereotype on merit. We don’t know Obama’s marks because you don’t want to know. You fools mock yourselves.

Al Gore is to Democrats what Bob Dole is to Republicans: somebody who lost a presidential election.
****************

Oh he is so much more. Al Gore is a dickhead. He really is. That’s an awful thing to say about a person but he is such a total dick. He is just the perfect representative for liberalism. The man lecturing us on cutting our carbon footprint is a FRIGGIN pig. That is so perfectly liberal. Al Gore is as close to perfect as it gets

“We don’t know Obama’s marks because you don’t want to know.”
.
So you are saying that the second or third most prestigious status of any law school student in America (Yale Law school ranked above Harvard) is given to a man at random because he is black? (Or, technically half black)?
.
Did you get that from a KKK website or are you completely insane?

We don’t know about Obama ‘s academic performance because the NYTs is protecting him.”
.
Just some other nonsense.

**************************

No, it’s fact. We know about GWB, Gore, Kerry Clintion, etc for a reason. The NYTs has the ability to know. They know about Obama. Why not tell us? A child can figure out there is only one reason.

It’s not hard.

“The man lecturing us on cutting our carbon footprint is a FRIGGIN pig.”
.
I have only seen right wing sources – and not even Fox at that – cover that story, so, I doubt it;s validity.
.
Besides, you just are a shill for the Koch brothers.
.
They want to make billions more, start the Tea Party so that Retarded Dim Wit 56 will lower the Koch brother’s taxes and stop any regulation from limiting our greenhouse gas emissions.
.
You, Retarded Dim Wit 56, are selling out your grandchildren and great grandchildren because billionaire trust fund kids the Koch brothers tell you to.
.
If you want to see a dickhead, get a mirror.

“People like you are not even curious. Again, a child would know there is a reason for that as well.”
.
Obama’s biography was a best seller.
.
GWB didn’t release his memoirs until after he was president.
.
Just because you have reading comprehension problems and can’t read a whole book does not mean that it was not written.

You wrote yesterday that Bush was ahead of Obama when the last poll had Obama ahead.
.
Maybe momentarily they are in a dead heat, but, once they see John Boner screw this country, just like when the Gingrich stole Christmas and made Clinton’s ratings skyrocket and when Truman’s fights with the previous Republican congress, Obama will be beating any Republican opponent.

Well patrick, the post was in reference to his huge energy bill. What isn’t accurate about that? Are you saying it wasn’t huge? That he wasn’t a fraud? Really? I can promise you Al Gore will be the gift that keeps on giving. He will represent liberalism for many more decades. He is both a liar and a buffoon. Why you adapted him I cannot imagine but in an age youtube
you own him. He is a dick. By definition your embrace makes you a dick.

So, you get your news from other people who are as insane as you are and then wonder why your world view is so distorted.

Just because you have reading comprehension problems and can’t read a whole book does not mean that it was not written

*********************************************

OK, fair enough. i didn’t read the book. So what were his marks? How well did he do?

Here is one of many New York Times articles about Obama.
.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/us/politics/28obama.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Obama%20in%20law%20school&st=cse
.
If you know how to read, you can, from the New York Times alone, know everything you want to know about the president.

Since he is not and has never been my “messiah” I never cared too much about the details.
.
The only presidential biography I ever read was one of Harry Truman.
.
You’re the one with the hard on about him.

Pat, you attack my sources without dealing with what they report. I say Al Gore is a dick. I have reams of evidence. The NYTs thinks he is a savant. I think it’s pretty clear how that ended up. Let’s use a more topical example. I say if you get your news from ABC news or the NYTs or Time you are functionally illiterate. They reviewed the movie Fair Game as if it’s serious history. That’s of course preposterous. The Washington Post took them on and ripped the liberal version to shreds. Hollywood is so bad they harm the effort.

classic, I can’t get in your link

The only presidential biography I ever read was one of Harry Truman.

****************************

where did this come from? I didn’t write this and it isn’t true. you are a scumbag.

“Surrounded by white liberals terrified of being called a racist they felt voting for him was mandatory.”
.
The first black Harvard Graduate was in 1870.
.
http://www.blackpast.org/?q=aah/greener-richard-t-1844-1922
.
You are 120 years off.
.
Harvard Law School has had a black student organization since 1967.
.
If you thought that Harvard was impressed by having a black students by 1990, you are well over 23 years off.
.
http://www.harvardblsa.com/about/hblsa-history/
.
So, please go back to the KKK website you usually read from.

Obama’s biography was a best seller.

*******************************

Ok, so why don’t we know about his academic performance? What is he hiding.

“What isn’t accurate about that? Are you saying it wasn’t huge? That he wasn’t a fraud? Really?”
.
Extreme right wing sources lied about:
.
Vince Foster.
.
State Troopers (neither who met Clinton much less worked the governor’s mansion) were paid to lie about bringing prostitutes to Clinton.
.
Whitewater.
.
Weapons of Mass Destruction.
.
Swift Boat Captains (financed by T Boon Pickens)
.
“Climategate”
.
Global Warming.
.
Since Global Warming research began in 1967 when Gore was 19 years old and he made it clear that he was a narrator, not a scientist himself (if you watched the film). So, he is not at all a fraud.
.
I will need a source who has not pathologically lied before I trust that he really has a big carbon footprint.

Why would you write that Patrick Sartor never read any president’s biography besides Harry Truman?
.
Why is reading Harry Truman’s biography make me a scumbag to you?
.
It looks like, just like Truman and Clinton, an obtuse and obstructionist Republican congress will drive the Democratic president comfortably into a second term despite very low poll ratings before that point.
.
I guess knowing history to you is only what “scumbags” do.

Works when I try it.
.
Maybe right wing websites like porn websites put so many viruses on your computer that you can’t read any non-right wing links.

I see, you only trust news sources which tell you what you wish to hear.
.
If Plame helped write Fair Game, then it is not only a serious movie, but a biographical one.
.
In the 1970s, when a CIA agent, basically, went insane and expatriated to Cuba and outed dozens of agents getting some killed and scores of of assets either imprisoned or killed, then CIA director George HW Bush persuaded congress to pass a bill making the outing of a CIA agent actually illegal (which it wasn’t before).
.
Then when the Dick, Cheney outed Plame, it was all dandy with right wingers since, even though her life was at risk and her assets may have been killed, it was done by a Republican and, Republicans can do no wrong.

Clintons numbers didn’t skyrocket. Obama is no Clinton and Boehner is no Newt. This isn’t 1996., Fox did not exist in 1996. You are so hosed.

Because you didn’t read it.
.
Order it express delivery now, read it on Wednesday and then tell me all about the things it hides by Friday.

By contrast, look for posts saying that Obama is a great president here.
.
You won’t find it.

******************************************

Well, that’s kind of my point isn’t it?

“Clintons numbers didn’t skyrocket.”
.
Really? Why don’t you tell me what happened with Clinton’s numbers, then?
.
” Obama is no Clinton”
.
True, Obama made much more money for a Chicago law firm while Clinton did not practice law. Clinton was not president of the Yale Law review, just a member of the review. Obama has somewhat better credentials than Clinton, but, they were both law professors.
“..and Boehner is no Newt….”
.
Boner is far more extreme than the Gingrich that stole Christmas. Gingrich wasn’t backed by the extremists called the Tea Party since the Tea Party is only two years old. I am sure Boner will make Gingrich blush with his antics.
.
“This isn’t 1996.”
.
I noticed. I’ve been in the outside world and done many things since 1996.
.
“Fox did not exist in 1996. ”
.
Somebody said Fox existed in 1996? Who?
.
Are you hallucinating?

State Troopers (neither who met Clinton much less worked the governor’s mansion) were paid to lie about bringing prostitutes to Clinton.

*****************

In fact they were Clintons core problem. We never knew or could know what Clinton did with Paula Jones in that hotel room 10PM at might but we do know she left with a smile and Bill with a smile. We can’t know why they were smiling. We can know what stained the famous blue dress.

No, you’re point, if you really have one (which you may not) seems to be that rejecting Obama = rejecting progressives/liberals.
.
We are mostly self proclaimed liberals and progressives.
.
If self proclaimed liberals and progressives do not call Obama liberal but third way, then the electorate didn’t reject liberal/progressive ideology. They rejected third way, middle of the road ideology.
.
Hence, when people like Bernie Sanders, Al Franken and Anthony Wiener represent actual liberals and keep on getting re-elected, that tells you who is losing and who is winning.
.
The middle of the road is losing.

The State Troopers were about a 100% false allegation regarding prostitutes.
.
As for Clinton cheating on his wife, everybody knows that it did happen with at least Monica Lewinsky and most likely with half a dozen or more women.
.
But, just because GWB, Cheney and Reagan governed by being Dicks does not mean that to be president we need to know or should vote for a candidate exclusively on where his Dick goes.
.
Hillary should have divorced him and, as a bachelor, he could sleep with any woman who wants him.

Then when the Dick, Cheney outed Plame, it was all dandy with right wingers since, even though her life was at risk and her assets may have been killed, it was done by a Republican and, Republicans can do no wrong.
*******************************

Got a little problem here. As the post made clear the leak did not come from the WH. Hacks like you can run nonsense bu it’s not going anywhere, The state dept leaked it Robert Novack and Richard Amitage admitted so.

I have no idea what your point is regarding Prostitutes but we know clinton spent quality time with Paula late at night on the road and we know he stained the dress. Why you would want to defend him is a mystery. We can argue about his economic policy or the widsom of camp of david nut he was a pig, a whore. That we know.

Hence, when people like Bernie Sanders, Al Franken and Anthony Wiener represent actual liberals and keep on getting re-elected, that tells you who is losing and who is winning.

*****************************************

Are you out of your mind? They are very far fringe and without influence.

rejecting Obama = rejecting progressives/liberals.

Yes, that’s the point. After we get an extension of ALL the tax cuts you cam tell me where I am wrong

The middle of the road is losing.

**********************

really? The suggestion seems to be an admission the left has lost the middle. I think that’s clear.

“They are very far fringe and without influence.”
.
If a man is 6′ 2″ tall, like me, he will be prone to calling everybody short.
.
If a man is short, he will be prone to calling everybody tall.
.
Since you are a self proclaimed part of the far right Tea Party, the Center to you looks “left” and the actual liberals look like the outer fringe.
.
If you tried to see what the actual center looked like, Franken, Sanders and Wiener are liberals and Obama is in the middle of the road.
.
The middle of the road guys got hit by a truck. The actual liberals got re-elected just fine.

But you are wrong.
.
Obama is in the middle, not liberal.

Patrick, you could not have screwed this up more if you tried. Al Gore does not believe in global warming. Al Gore considers GW a total scam. Al Gore sees GW as a profit center. PT Barmum would worship Al Gore. All we need to do is look at his electric bills to see his total contempt for you.

Obama passed Bob Dole’s Health care plan.
.
Republicans lost the middle in 1996 when Dole lost.
.
The middle is losing for both parties.
.
Obama’s sliding to the middle on health care reform (not single payer), and the stimulus package are costing him dearly.

Why would you write that Patrick Sartor never read any president’s biography besides Harry Truman

****************************************

I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.

The actual liberals got re-elected just fine.
******************

All three of them.

The American Spectator, an extreme right wing source – the kind you would love – paid two fired Arkansas State Troopers to say that Clinton was hiring hookers when he was governor and that they were the ones assigned to drive the hookers to the governor’s mansion.
.
It was called “troopergate”.
.
Then the “lamestream:” media found the records of the two officers. Neither one ever met Clinton. One was fired for drunk driving and the other for another unbecoming offense.
.
Later, they both said in interviews that, as unemployed ex-troopers, they needed the money and got paid a huge amount to lie.
.
So, when the American Spectator says it has Al Gore’s electric bill but the “lamestream” media doesn’t, I have to wonder if this is another lie from the right.

Those were the first ones on my mind.
.
The ones who lost were mostly Blue Dogs – Republicrats.
.
They stood in the middle of the road. Local Democrats sick of them splitting the baby stayed home. The conservatives voted Republcians.

Obama is in the middle, not liberal.

**********************************

Let’s say you are correct, and I don’t agree, This is a disaster for the left. Obama is deeply unpopular. If you can’t sell a centrist what does that mean? If Obama is a loss for the middle he’s a total disaster for the left.

“I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.”
.
And this is news?
.
You asked why not everybody knew Obama’s grades.
.
I said that you should read his biography.
.
I said that I didn’t since you were the one who had a hard on for him and, only read Trumann’s biography.
.
Then you said, “I never said that” and called me a scumbag.

.

“If you can’t sell a centrist what does that mean?..”
.
If you can’t sell a centrist but can sell true liberals, this means no more Mr. Middle of the road.
.
The 2016 Democratic Candidate and, most likely next president will be far more liberal than Obama and the Tea Party will move to Canada – where things are far more liberal than here.

Scooter Libby worked for Dick Cheney.
.
He fell on his sword for Cheney and took the prison sentence.

“Al Gore does not believe in global warming. Al Gore considers GW a total scam. Al Gore sees GW as a profit center.”
.
Really.
.
You’ve read Gore’s mind?
.
What’s funny is that he donated the proceeds from his book and the profits from the movie to help fight GW.
.
Strange thing to do if he wants to keep the money and even stranger if he does not believe in it.
.
Like Dan Quayle has boatloads of money from being former VP with speaking fees and big, big job offers, Gore made bundle, too – but not from his book nor his movie.
.
If liars like The American Spectator say they have his electric bill, then I am unlikely to believe them without outside confirmation.

How trustworthy is the far right media?
.
The first of three things named “Troopergate” (The other two being totally unrelated).
.

“Troopergate is the popular name for an alleged scandal in which two Arkansas State Troopers claimed they had arranged sexual liaisons for then-Governor Bill Clinton. The allegations by state troopers Larry Patterson and Roger Perry were first reported by David Brock in the American Spectator in 1993[1], then confirmed the next day in The Los Angeles Times.

The story mentioned a woman named Paula, a reference to Paula Jones, who later sued Clinton for sexual harassment in Jones v. Clinton.[2] Brock has since apologized to Clinton, saying the exposé based on the troopers was politically motivated “bad journalism” and said “The troopers were greedy and had slimy motives.”[2]
.
Ann Coulter, working as an unpaid legal adviser for the attorneys representing Jones, leaked questionable information about Clinton to the press.
.
Arkansas state troopers

Following Brock’s article, in 1994 four troopers conducted interviews with various allegations about Clinton and “the Daily News reveals that one of the troopers is an accused wife beater, another was caught sleeping on the job, a third pleaded guilty to starting a barroom brawl and a fourth allegedly slept with a fellow trooper’s wife.”[5] Then in 1994 and 1995, Jerry Falwell paid $200,000 to Citizens for Honest Government, who in turn paid two Arkansas state troopers who had made allegations supporting a conspiracy about Vincent Foster in the Clinton Chronicles video.[6] The two troopers, Roger Perry and Larry Patterson, also were paid after making their allegations in the Jones-Clinton trial.[6] In March 2005, trooper Patterson was convicted of lying to the FBI about an unrelated incident.[7]”
.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troopergate_%28Bill_Clinton%29
.
Now far right sources are saying that Al Gore uses a great deal of electricity…
.
I would think that a phone company person would be easier to bribe than a Arkansas State Trooper.
.
Retarded Dim Wit 56 – RDW 56 – then, not doubting the information that Al Gore secretly does not believe in Climate change and has secretly kept the money he promised to donate.
.
Do you think the Easter Bunny was involved, too?

So you think the annual electric bills were a fraud and Prince Albert was actually a piker on his usage? So why didn’t he say it?

I 1st read of Paula Jones in Newsweek in a report by Michael Isakoff. I later heard him tell how he found out about the meeting. What set him off was Bill Clinton lying to him about it. That day Clinton was at some convention for a speaking engagement scheduled for the morning and happened to stay all day and overnight. It was that night he met Paula. Isakolf had heard runmors to that effect and when taking to Clinton was told he left the convention after lunch and went back to Little Rock. Isakoff was amused because he was reasonably certain that was not true and was surprised Clinton would tell so obvious a lie. He called his editor and said he had a lead on a different story asking for the OK to stay a couple of more days. As soon as he verified with the hotel that Clinton did in fact stay that night he knew Clinton was hiding something. Isakoff broke the story before the election but Newsweek sat on it. His account is that Paula was brought to Bills hotel room at 10:00Pm and stayed for something like 40 minutes. When she left she and Bill were smiling. We have no way of knowng what happened in there but she claims she gave him a blow job and that seems likely. Bill does have a track record and we know he’s a liar.

Isakoff’s main takeaway was how reckless Clinton had been and the implication was that he was constantly on the hustle for sex. He confirmed Paula was in that hotel room and it was a weak lie from Clinton that put him on the story. He made it clear during this interview there were many more stories.

Al Gore secretly does not believe in Climate change and has secretly kept the money he promised to donate.

********************************************************

I have no idea what Al Gore believes nor about any donation. What I know without question is that he is a liar and a hypocrite. He is actually a serial liar. Thomas L Freidman and John Edward are two others who claim to be believers and act passionately on GW yet have homes bigger than aircraft carriers. They’re frauds. They are by definition frauds. I don’t know what they believe either but they don’t act according to their beliefs. Only a liberal could take either of these 3 clowns seriously.

The 2016 Democratic Candidate and, most likely next president will be far more liberal

*****************************************
In your dreams. You can’t elect a liberal President. Everyone running runs away from the term. Bill was a new democrat and both Hillary and Obama called themselves progressives. Unfortunately for them we found out that’s much worse.

Gallup has been running polls for decades asking people if they consider themselves liberal or independent or conservative and liberal always comes in last and has never been above 21%. I think the last poll showed Conservatives at 42% and liberals at 20%. That appears to be moving and it’s very possible the next poll will be 45% to 15%.

Liberalism is dead.

I called you a scumbag for demeaning Reagan’s education.

Then when the Dick, Cheney outed Plame, it was all dandy with right wingers since, even though her life was at risk and her assets may have been killed

*************************************

The Washington Post just had a neat lead editorial on this. Paula was outed by Richard Armitage from the State Dept not the WH. Plame wasn’t undercover and didn’t have any assets and her life was never in danger. We know this because she and hubby posed on the cover of Vanity Fair. It’s another one of those neat stories the liberals are trying to sell. Joe Wilson might be the only man in America with less credibility than Al Gore. His political scam generated him a ton of cash but didn’t hurt Bush even a little bit. He was re-elected easily and then after losing Congress in 2006 he still did exactly as he wanted. He shoved the surge right down the throats of the left.

When you are speaking of President of the United States, the bar for intelligence and knowledge is set very, very high – above CEOs, above Union leaders, above teachers, above everybody except college professors (who only need to know about a special topic, though, a president needs more diverse knowledge than most college professors) and to that very high bar, he was one of the most poorly educated presidents in the 20th century.
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Truman was the only one not to attend college, but, he was famous for being a hardcore bookworm. He dramatically preferred sitting home reading a book over almost anything else and, especially, over politics.
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Keep in mind that Truman and Clinton both had obstructionist and obtuse Republicans in congress who pushed their popularity through the roof, so, “give them hell Harry” was addressed to standing up to Republicans will next be applied to Obama’s second term.

“So why didn’t he say it?”
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American Spectator-like journalists would print what Al Gore, the man they fear more than death itself, says accurately? If some lunatic accused you of being an Islamic terrorist (presuming you are a white, American born Christian) would you go on live TV to call them idiots? Well, this is how Kerry felt about Swift Boat Captains for justice and many Democrats feel about right wing propaganda : why even waste the air? Only morons will believe these false allegations. Those same morons will find any excuse to slander me, so, why not ignore them so that they don’t invent something new?
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I said that I have no idea what Al Gore’s electric bill is, but do know that some of the right wing media has no problem lying incessantly and pathologically. I, also, have never met Al Gore’s meter reader (and can’t imagine how I would).

You can not know that somebody is a hypocrite if you do not know if Gore has enough Solar Panels on his roof to compensate for the building’s size and you can not call him a fraud unless you know for a fact that world temperatures on average over a one year average are not going up. Since I, myself, can not, alone be in every part of the world every day for every year to take the temperature, I trust the results of those who do so.
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You prefer the writings of right wing blogs who pull the answer out of their butts.
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I do know that he said in advance of his first book that all proceeds from that and the movie would go towards causes and not himself and have seen those organizations thank him for giving over every penny afterward. However, I have not sat down and counted the money myself. Why would I have to when I have no reason to doubt the organization’s thanking him?
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From working for an investment fund, Gore did bring in big bucks identical to the way Dan Quayle did. (Both were never president and neither had as much money before being ex-vice presidents despite both coming from well off families).

“We have no way of knowng what happened in there but she claims she gave him a blow job and that seems likely.”
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You must adore Hillary Clinton and Chelsea Clinton since, for them, this was an extremely bad thing.
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As a person who was a citizen and never going to have sex with Bill, Hillary or Chelsea Clinton, experiencing a president who maintained the longest point of economic growth in US history and eight years without serious combat, I loved it. If a blow job from a woman who is willing to give one for free is what makes a president create the longest period of peace and prosperity in US history, I hope every president gets lots of head.
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It is true that if he wanted head from other women he should have divorced Hillary first, but, that isn’t my business.

he was one of the most poorly educated presidents in the 20th century.

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You are out of your mind. JFK and his brothers has staff doing their school work. Reagan was called the great communicator even by his detractors. No one today calls anyone else a great communicator. Obama can read something off a teleprompter but he’s actually a poor communicator. College professors are among the dumbest people on the planet. If you want to find a socialist go to any faculty William F Buckleys great line was, “I’d rather be governed by the 1st 300 names in the Boston Phone Book than the Harvard Faculty. The worst President of the last Century was Wilson. Besides being a racist prick he was an arrogant fool. Keynes left the 1919 Paris Peace talks because Wilson was so dense. His 14 points were a disaster leading to the slaughter of WWII. He threw his political opponents in jail. He made GWB look like a boy scout

“Irve[1] Lewis “Scooter” Libby (born August 22, 1950) is a disbarred American attorney, convicted felon, and former advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney.

From 2001 to 2005, Libby held the titles of Assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs and Chief of Staff to the Vice President of the United States and Assistant to the President during the administration of President George W. Bush.

In October 2005, Libby was indicted by a federal grand jury in connection with the investigation of the leak of the covert identity of Central Intelligence Agency officer Valerie Plame Wilson.[2][3][4] Plame’s relationship with the CIA was formerly classified information.[2] Libby was indicted on five counts relating to the Plame affair: Two counts of perjury, two counts of making false statements to federal investigators, and one count of obstruction of justice. Libby resigned all three government positions immediately after the indictment was announced.[5]

In the subsequent federal trial, United States v. Libby, the jury convicted Libby on four of the five counts in the indictment (one count of obstruction of justice, two counts of perjury, and one of the counts of making false statements) and acquitted on the second count of making false statements.[6] [7] The day after his conviction in that trial, he resigned his later appointment as senior advisor at the Hudson Institute (January 1, 2006 – March 7, 2007).[8][9]

Libby is the highest-ranking White House official convicted in a government scandal since John Poindexter, the national security adviser to President Reagan in the Iran-Contra Affair.[10]”
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scooter_Libby
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I trust that federal courts learn the truth so long as a subordinate does not fall on his sword and lie for his boss.
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Libby was being prosecuted by a Republican Patrick Fitzgerald.
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You believe that the courts must be fools since they must have had the wrong department if you believe Richard Armitage did it.
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Both Richard Armitage and Scooter Libby worked for the administration. Since Richard Armitage is much more high ranking, you believe as well that there was a cover up and that the Bush administration helped harbor criminals inside the administration.

if Gore has enough Solar Panels on his roof to compensate for the building’s size and you can not call him a fraud

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I can call him a fraud and a hypocrite because it’s quite easy to prove. He didn’t get his solar panels until someone put copies of his electric bills on the internet. And that was before he bought his mansion on CA and huge houseboat he keeps in Nevada. You thinking he walks between his various mansions and toys? I loved the fact you named him the spokesman for GW because he’s always been a gasbag. Even his supporters in the party knew he had to be controlled because he constantly exaggerates and often just makes things up.

My favorite political moment of all time is a clip of Bob Schrum, his campaign manager in 2000, the day before the Bush-Gore debates, absolutely miserable because he just realized the constant bashing of Bush as a moron so lowered expectations all he had to do to win the debates was show up and not slobber. It’s was delicious because Schrum was the guy doing much of the bashing and because he knew Bush encourage it. Bob never figured it our. He did the exact same thing in 2004. Bush beat the snot out of him in two elections and liberals still think Bush is the idiot. It’s priceless.

“You can’t elect a liberal President. ”
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In both the popular vote and, after a post SCOTUS recount Gore, more liberal than Obama got more votes than Bush.
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After eight years of Bush, uncharismatic McCain was easy to beat.
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You are ignoring that there are an additional 20% of the people who call themselves “progressive” which make up for your numbers.
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In party membership there are 72 Democrats for every 55 Republicans and 42 Independents.
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Guess who are disappearing? Independents, AKA moderates.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._party_affiliation.svg

“I can call him a fraud and a hypocrite because it’s quite easy to prove. He didn’t get his solar panels until someone put copies of his electric bills on the internet.”
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On the Internet you can find a movie called Lose Change which is a documentary claiming that GW Bush created 9/11 himself.
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I do not believe it even though Bush was despicable as president.
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Give me an hour with a real electric bill and a Microsoft Paint (a free program) and I can make up that your electric bill is a million dollars and make it look fairly real.
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Of course I am not at graphic artist. A graphic artist could make up a flawless one in about 20 minutes.
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I would need real verification, not just somebody’s post.

If you want to find a bigger gasbag than Al Gore go to Hollywood. Sean Penn and his ilk have made at least two dozen political movies this decade and all have bombed. Fair Game is the latest disaster. Here’s the Washington Post explaining why Historians are going to find it impossible to trash Bush and why the current MSM isn’t writing the 1st draft of history for anyone. This was their lead editorial.

Hollywood myth-making on Valerie Plame controversy

Friday, December 3, 2010; 8:54 PM

WE’RE NOT in the habit of writing movie reviews. But the recently released film “Fair Game” – which covers a poisonous Washington controversy during the war in Iraq – deserves some editorial page comment, if only because of what its promoters are saying about it. The protagonists portrayed in the movie, former diplomat Joseph C. Wilson IV and former spy Valerie Plame, claim that it tells the true story of their battle with the Bush administration over Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and Ms. Plame’s exposure as a CIA agent. “It’s accurate,” Ms. Plame told The Post. Said Mr. Wilson: “For people who have short memories or don’t read, this is the only way they will remember that period.”

We certainly hope that is not the case. In fact, “Fair Game,” based on books by Mr. Wilson and his wife, is full of distortions – not to mention outright inventions. To start with the most sensational: The movie portrays Ms. Plame as having cultivated a group of Iraqi scientists and arranged for them to leave the country, and it suggests that once her cover was blown, the operation was aborted and the scientists were abandoned. This is simply false. In reality, as The Post’s Walter Pincus and Richard Leiby reported, Ms. Plame did not work directly on the program, and it was not shut down because of her identification.

The movie portrays Mr. Wilson as a whistle-blower who debunked a Bush administration claim that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from the African country of Niger. In fact, an investigation by the Senate intelligence committee found that Mr. Wilson’s reporting did not affect the intelligence community’s view on the matter, and an official British investigation found that President George W. Bush’s statement in a State of the Union address that Britain believed that Iraq had sought uranium in Niger was well-founded.
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“Fair Game” also resells the couple’s story that Ms. Plame’s exposure was the result of a White House conspiracy. A lengthy and wasteful investigation by a special prosecutor found no such conspiracy – but it did confirm that the prime source of a newspaper column identifying Ms. Plame was a State Department official, not a White House political operative.

Hollywood has a habit of making movies about historical events without regard for the truth; “Fair Game” is just one more example. But the film’s reception illustrates a more troubling trend of political debates in Washington in which established facts are willfully ignored. Mr. Wilson claimed that he had proved that Mr. Bush deliberately twisted the truth about Iraq, and he was eagerly embraced by those who insist the former president lied the country into a war. Though it was long ago established that Mr. Wilson himself was not telling the truth – not about his mission to Niger and not about his wife – the myth endures. We’ll join the former president in hoping that future historians get it right.

“JFK and his brothers has staff doing their school work.”
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So, from 1960 until the creation of the internet thirty five years later this was a secret, but, suddenly, records from the 1930s by professors and tutors from 80 to 100 years old came out and proved this?
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You don’t know anything about Harvard.
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Harvard is stricter than strict about cheating and always has been.
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Teddy Kennedy got caught cheating and even though his father was bootlegger with muscle and his brothers were on their way up in politics they tossed Teddy out on his ass.
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I have no doubt that Jack and Robert passed all of their classes without cheating.
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“Reagan was called the great communicator even by his detractors.”
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Yes, he did an excellent job of making really bad ideas sound like good ones. A good salesperson can make a good idea sound like an amazingly good idea, but, only an amazing salesperson can (if they lack awareness of what they are selling or lack ethics) can make a bad idea look like a good idea.
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Reagan’s ability to make really bad ideas look like really good ideas was on the same level that Hitler made really bad ideas look like good ideas and Reagan didn’t even need to shut down democracy to institute bad ideas. Sheep like you just followed him blindly.

“Besides being a racist prick he was an arrogant fool.”
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Once again, a Princeton friend of his made Birth of a Nation. To humor his friend he watched it.
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The publicists, without WIlson’s consent, said that the president loved the movie.
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Wilson did more to help black people than Theodore Roosevelt and all of the Republicans (and Democrats for that matter) since Lincoln.
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“Keynes left the 1919 Paris Peace talks because Wilson was so dense.”
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Wilson was not there long since he had had a stroke.
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“His 14 points were a disaster leading to the slaughter of WWII.”
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Wilson tried to create the League of Nations which is the exact model for the UN after WWII. The UN has been responsible for ending wars again and again.
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The reparations, which Wilson never agreed to, was the biggest foreign cause of the rise of Hitler.
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Wilson, by opposing reparations played a failed role in preventing WWII.
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“He threw his political opponents in jail. ”
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He threw socialists and communists into jail to the great applause of Republicans and to the horror of the ACLU and liberals.
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An Anarchist terrorist had already assassinated president Garfield. Communists, Socialists and Anarchists were the Al Qada of the early 20th century.
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“When Wilson acted to the right of Republicans he was wrong”
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“He made GWB look like a boy scout.”
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What’s the difference between the nineteen teens red scare and Gitmo?
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You get tortured at Gitmo. Wilson did not torture.
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Sorry.

Since Richard Armitage is much more high ranking, you believe as well that there was a cover up and that the Bush administration helped harbor criminals inside the administration.

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There was no coverup. There was no scandal. Bush comes out quite well. The two scumbags are Armitage and Colin Powell for refusing to come clean until after it was over and only them because Robert Novak was threatening to break his vowel. Novak three week running went on a national TV program and said Rove and Libby were not his leakers and that he wanted his leaker to identify himself. Novak made it clear he lost all respect for him and that what he did in allowing Rove to take all of the heat was despicable. Armitage called Powell the day the story came out and told him that he was the source. He told Robert Novak Valerie Plame worked at the CIA and was Wilsons wife.

You might note Colin Powell was the only cabinet officer not asked to join GWBs team for the 2nd term. Powell disgraced himself. He wouldn’t get republican votes today if he ran for dogcatcher. Fitzpatrick didn’t come out well either. He learned immediately Armitage was the source of the leak and that no crime was committed. Valerie was no spy. No charges were ever filed related to the leak.

“Robert Novak was threatening to break his vowel.”
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Which of his vowels was he going to break, the O in Robert, the E in Robert, the O in Novak or the A in Novack?
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If you meant “vow” there is not legal vow for journalists. But good journalists should be willing to go to jail to protect any source they promise to keep.
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“You might note Colin Powell was the only cabinet officer not asked to join GWBs team for the 2nd term.”
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Powell quit despite being very popular and an asset to the Bush team because he was forced to lie to the UN. He was given false information about Iraq and was furious about it. As a military man, he sat quietly and waited until after the election to resign.
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If he was so bad for Bush, Bush could have canned him and gotten more votes for doing so.
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The Republican prosecutor was Patrick Fitzgerald, not named Fitzpatrick.
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Patrick Fitzgerald was sent to Chicago where he took down Democratic governor Rod Blagojevich among other things.
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All in all, I would say that Fitzgerald is kicking ass and taking names while Bush is the one who is a failure.

I would need real verification, not just somebody’s post

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I have no idea why you are defending Gore on this when Gore didn’t defend Gore. The bills were authentic. The accuracy was never a controversy.

Are you really denying that man is a gasbag? You can’t possibly take him seriously. He has a long and detailed history of lies and gross exaggerations. And it isn’t like he’s your only problem. Just about everyone associated with GW is a gasbag. Thomas L Freidman writes constantly on GW while sharing a house with his wife the size of an aircraft carrier and he keeps it lit up like a xmas tree at night. You had Teddy kennedy and Warren Buffet as your spokesmen for the estate tax. Neither of them are going to be paying estate taxes. Warren wants a tax increase for those making over $100K. He famously taked only $100K in salary and complains he pays less in taxes than his secretary. He owns a $14M jet and $4M vacation home in CA and when he parks his jet he stays in 5 star hotels.

Liberals keep on appointing fools and buffoons as their spokespeople. You mock yourselves.

Wilson was not there long since he had had a stroke

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Wilson was in Paris for over 3 months. He had the stroke in the USA after he returned,

Wilson tried to create the League of Nations which is the exact model for the UN after WWII. The UN has been responsible for ending wars again and again.
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The reparations, which Wilson never agreed to, was the biggest foreign cause of the rise of Hitler.

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The UN is a ship of fools and Wilson failed anyway. Wilson insisted on harsh reparations and is the reason Keynes left Paris. There is a very good documentary on the History Channel called I think “1919 Paris.”. It’s very hard on Wilson and it doesn’t even address his racism. He managed to alienate virtually every World leader there. Even LLoyd George tried to get hm to relent on the reparations and there is no question they caused WWII.

Which of his vowels was he going to break, the O in Robert, the E in Robert, the O in Novak or the A in Novack?

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That was good. I earned it.

Powell quit despite being very popular and an asset to the Bush team because he was forced to lie to the UN

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Powell did not quit and was disappointed. Nor did he lie.

I lean towards documentaries more than Hollywood made films and know that their non-fiction is often weak.
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I am a stickler for accuracy and, therefore, find “Based upon actual events” more irritating than just plain fiction.
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I have no idea why one would think that Sean Penn is a spokesman for anybody but Sean Penn.
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I guess that Jon Voight, Mel Gibson and Chuck Norris speak for you, then.
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I am to Sean Penn as you are to Gibson, Voight and Norris.
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Do you call them your “spokespeople”?
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I call Patrick Sartor my one and only spokesperson but find Democrats like Sanders Franken and Wiener among others people I often agree with.

Facts?
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A fact free remark I guess I should ignore it since you have no outside source.

All in all, I would say that Fitzgerald is kicking ass and taking names while Bush is the one who is a failure.

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His career has max’d out as a result of his over-reach. He’ll never get any promotion or appointment that requires congressional approval. I don’t know if Libby lied or not but he never should have been investigated. It should have ended the moment Fitzgerald learned no crime had been committed. IN any event the charges were related to Libby’s conversations with Fitzpartick and not at all to any WH business. There’s no stain on Bush or Cheney as the Washington Post makes clear in what is a rare editorial for them. This is actually at least the 3rd where they intentionally humiliated Joe Wilson and his supporters. I think they’re trying to send a message to historians, don’t even try.

“It should have ended the moment Fitzgerald learned no crime had been committed.”
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Outing a CIA agent is a very serious crime.
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So, I have no idea what you are talking about.
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His name is Patrick Fitzgerald, maybe there is a Gerald Fitzpatrick who was prosecuting somebody who committed no crimes I don’t know about you wish to tell me about.

The US took no part in Article 231 of the Treaty of Versaille and refused to ask for any money.
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So, Wilson was the only victorious leader who did not contribute to WWII.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Versailles#Reparations
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Better sources like full history books explain that he walked out of the room frustrated that he could not talk other allies out of reparations and would be out voted on 231. He failed to stop others from creating the roots of World War II, That is a much lesser accusation and totally correct.
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“The UN is a ship of fools…”
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Well, if that is what you think, then all I can tell you is that the number wars after the formation of the UN is far less than those before then. If you refuse to see the correlation or believe war is more often the best solution, I don’t know what to say about that.
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Besides, if Keynes was the biggest dope in history, why do you support his theory on reparations destroying peace?

I was mistaken.

“He has a long and detailed history of lies and gross exaggerations.”
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Home –> Questionable Quotes –> Internet of Lies

Internet of Lies

Claim: Vice-President Al Gore claimed that he “invented” the Internet.

Status: False.

Origins: Despite the derisive references that continue even today, Al Gore did not claim he “invented” the Internet, nor did he say anything that could reasonably be interpreted that way. The “Al Gore said he ‘invented’ the Internet” put-downs were misleading, out-of-context distortions of something he said during an interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN’s “Late Edition” program on 9 March 1999. When asked to describe what distinguished him from his challenger for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey, Gore replied (in part):
During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country’s economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.
Clearly, although Gore’s phrasing might have been a bit clumsy (and perhaps self-serving), he was not claiming that he “invented” the Internet (in the sense of having designed or implemented it), but that he was responsible, in an economic and legislative sense, for fostering the development the technology that we now know as the Internet. To claim that Gore was seriously trying to take credit for the “invention” of the Internet is, frankly, just silly political posturing that arose out of a close presidential campaign. Gore never used the word “invent,” and the words “create” and “invent” have distinctly different meanings — the former is used in the sense of “to bring about” or “to bring into existence” while the latter is generally used to signify the first instance of someone’s thinking up or implementing an idea. (To those who say the words “create” and “invent” mean exactly the same thing, we have to ask why, then, the media overwhelmingly and consistently cited Gore as having claimed he “invented” the Internet, even though he never used that word, and transcripts of what he actually said were readily available.)”
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So, let me correct you: The right wing has a long and detailed history of lies and gross exaggerations. about Al Gore.
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He is the scariest man to Republicans since he beat Bush in the popular vote in 2000.
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Have any other cases of Gore lying or exaggerating?

Regarding History and Wilson, there’s been a fantastic sea change in how history is written and a lot of reporting for that matter.

The scandal of Climategate was the behavior of the scientists in their arrogance and pettiness. Most of the work is federally funded and that’s true in Europe as well. Therefore the tax-payors own the research. What finally ruined Professor Phil Jones of East Anglia university was the British Royal Society (of science I think) was going to rebuke him if he didn’t put his data on their server for public review. Jones knew there were people out there in the public sector smarter than him and more skilled in statistics and other fields. He knew for the 1st time he was going to get an authentic peer review this time from someone not making their living off of GW.

What has changed now is peer-review is recognized to be a sham. All work and all data now has to be put on a public web site for public peer review.

The other great change is how Historians do their work. Doris Kerns Goodwin was shocked and humiliated when her book contained something someone else wrote and she didn’t footnote it. She had to publically apologize and issue a statement acknowledging the plagerism and ni the next edition add the footnote. It was almost certainly an honest error but of course a sharp message to Historians. It’s an easy program to scrub a book looking for that sort of thing. Michael Bellisiles was fired from Emory UNiversity after an award winning book on guns in the revolutionary war era was found to be garbage. He was trying to influence the Supreme Count reporting the founders did not intent to apply gun rights to the individual. The scandal had the reverse effect.

You can put out hack movies like Fair Game and liberals will go to get their rocks off but they won’t make money and they won’t have any influence except to prove liberals will believe anything. No Historian is going to write about Joe Wilson in a positive way if they mention him at all. While he created PR problems for the WH the President was never involved and there was never a criminal leak. As the Post has indicated may times, Joe Wilson confirmed to the CIA Iraqi agents has been in Niger asking around about yellowcake. The NYTs was played by Joe Wilson. That’s going to be the real history. If any historian tries to report anything in that movie as fact they will be charged with fraud and if they have an academic position almost certainly be fired. No publisher of history would publish something known to be a fabrication.

The way things work with search engines the book would be exposed on the internet before it’s actual distribution. It would be a financial bath for the publisher.

What you are seeing with Wilson is a total rewrite of his history. I was actually taught in school he was a great President. He was an academic and academics wanted him to be seen as Great. I was told the 14 points peace plan was a success and he was a visionary with the League of Nations and all sorts of fabulous. It wasn’t until I was an adult I learned he was a racist and in todays world would be considered a vile man. His presence in Paris was a disaster for the world. he threw his critics in jail, suspended habeaus Corpus, re-segregated the post office and much of govt and was pretty much an arrogant jerk.

We are going to find all of this out. Historians cannot ignore all that and be taken seriously. Wilson was once ranked a top 5 President. He’ll be lucky to stay out of the bottom five once people learn the truth.

It’s like the New Deal. I was taught it ended the depression. You can’t make that claim today and be taken seriously. The fact unemployment almost hit 20% in 1938 mocks the FDR frauds. You just need a simple chart of historical unemployment to see the govt caused the entire depression.

Sorry: Link.
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http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.asp

Powell announced his resignation as Secretary of State on November 15, 2004. According to The Washington Post, he had been asked to resign by the president’s chief of staff, Andrew Card.[32] Powell announced that he would stay on until the end of Bush’s first term or until his replacement’s confirmation by Congress. The following day, Bush nominated National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice as Powell’s successor. News of Powell’s leaving the Administration spurred mixed reactions from politicians around the world — some upset at the loss of a statesman seen as a moderating factor within the Bush administration, but others hoping for Powell’s successor to wield more influence within the cabinet

Outing a CIA agent is a very serious crime

yes and as the Washington Post has reported many times no crime was committed regarding Valerie Plame. No charges were filed. That’s what makes this such a great story. Joe Wilson is such a sleezy character but the only people he played were the NYTs and liberals. That’s why the Washington Post keeps going after him. They want to publicize the fact the NYTs were/are fools

So, Wilson was the only victorious leader who did not contribute to WWII

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This isn’t hard or complicated in any way. The facts of Wilsons views and position on reparations are well documented and known. They are not in dispute. The fact he was a racist is not in dispute. The reason we did not take reparations is because Europe was devastated not the USA. The war as not fought here and we didn’t lose near as many men. Europe needed the money to rebuild. France was devastated by the loss of life as well to it’s infrastructure. By the time the war ended we were headed into the roaring 20′s.

“No charges were filed”
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Scooter Libby was convicted for outing Plame..
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Charges must be filed before a person is convicted.
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“That’s what makes this such a great story. Joe Wilson is such a sleezy character but the only people he played were the NYTs and liberals. That’s why the Washington Post keeps going after him. They want to publicize the fact the NYTs were/are fools”
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It looks like Republican Patrick Fitzgerald had “fooled” a federal grand jury and a federal jury, too.
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“In the subsequent federal trial, United States v. Libby, the jury convicted Libby on four of the five counts in the indictment (one count of obstruction of justice, two counts of perjury, and one of the counts of making false statements) and acquitted on the second count of making false statements.[6] [7] The day after his conviction in that trial, he resigned his later appointment as senior advisor at the Hudson Institute (January 1, 2006 – March 7, 2007).[8][9]”
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scooter_Libby
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What planet did you say you lived on?

Do you have any sources that state why Australia took reparations for widow’s pensions and the US didn’t if Wilson did not disapprove of the reparations?
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“Segregation in the federal government

In 1912, “an unprecedented number”[1] of African Americans left the Republican Party to cast their vote for Democrat Wilson. They were encouraged by his promises of support for their issues. The issue of segregation came up early in his presidency when, at an April 1913 cabinet meeting, Albert Burleson, Wilson’s Postmaster General, complained about working conditions at the Railway Mail Service. Offices and restrooms became segregated, sometimes by partitions erected between seating for white and African American employees in Post Office Department offices, lunch rooms, and bathrooms, as well as in the Treasury and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. It also became accepted policy for “Negro” employees of the Postal Service to be reduced in rank or dismissed. And unlike his predecessors Grover Cleveland and Theodore Roosevelt, Wilson accommodated Southern opposition to the re-appointment of an African American to the position of Register of the Treasury and other positions within the federal government. This set the tone for Wilson’s attitude to race throughout his presidency, in which the rights of African Americans were sacrificed, for what he felt would be the more important longer term progress of the common good.[1][79]”
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodrow_Wilson#Segregation_in_the_federal_government
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Wilson’s desegregation of non-military federal offices make him a racist?
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You really do not know any facts of history, do you?

He threw socialists and communists into jail to the great applause of Republicans and to the horror of the ACLU and liberals.

*******************************************

The republicans opposed the war and even if they didn’t it’s Wilsons crime and that is how it will now be reported.

“U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell announced Monday he was resigning, and two senior administration officials told CNN that national security adviser Condoleezza Rice is President Bush’s choice to replace him.

In a letter dated Friday, Powell told Bush that, “now that the election is over the time has come for me to step down as secretary of state and return to private life. I, therefore, resign as the 65th secretary of state, effective at your pleasure.”"
.
http://articles.cnn.com/2004-11-15/politics/powell_1_65th-secretary-state-colin-powell-global-war?_s=PM:ALLPOLITICS
.
Powell left after the election so as to not give the election to Kerry.
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“A former top aide to Colin Powell says his involvement in the former secretary of state’s presentation to the United Nations on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction was “the lowest point” in his life.

“I wish I had not been involved in it,” says Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, a longtime Powell adviser who served as his chief of staff from 2002 through 2005. “I look back on it, and I still say it was the lowest point in my life.”
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http://articles.cnn.com/2005-08-19/world/powell.un_1_colin-powell-lawrence-wilkerson-wmd-intelligence?_s=PM:WORLD
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Powell left because he hated being given false information to the UN without knowing that it was false information.

I took the initiative in creating the Internet.

*************************************

hmmmm. That’s very close to “I invented the internet”. Is I created the internet really that different?

The real damage is it’s a fib either way and as a rule most people hate it when politicians take credit for the work of others.

You really don’t want to waste time on this. The list of Al’s lies and exaggerations as way too long. The man was a gasbag. You won’t bother me. I enjoy him. He’s your gasbag. The man was a D student and you still think he’s Albert Einstein. He has been a gift to my side ever since Clinton named him VP.

“The republicans opposed the war and even if they didn’t it’s Wilsons crime and that is how it will now be reported.’.
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“The fighting in Europe dominated the campaign. Woodrow Wilson campaigned for reelection on a pledge of continued neutrality in the Great War in Europe. His campaign slogan, “He Kept Us out of War”, was highly popular. Hughes advocated a program of greater mobilization and preparedness; some pro-Wilson newspapers claimed that Hughes, if elected, was secretly planning to take America into the war.”
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The Republicans supported World War One while Wilson, at first, opposed it and turned Third Way (as Bill Clinton would say starting in 1992).
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Sorry, it appears as if Wilson’s flaw of getting us into WWI was due to being too conservative and cooperating too much with Republicans, not his own promises.

Link:
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1916

You can’t be serious.

Identify the charge for outting Plame? Neither Libby nor Rove nor the real leaker Armitage were ever charged with outing Plame.

Fitzpatrick charged Libby with lying to him. Look up Perjury. Libby claimed he was told by Tim Russert Plame worked at the CIA and recommedted Joe Wilson for the trip. Russert said he could not have known aobut her because he didn’t know her name until he read Novaks story in the paper. Fitzpatrick thought Libby was lied to him in telling him he got it from Russert.

Fitzpartick didn’t file a single charge regarding the outting itself. All charges related to Libby’s conversation with the prosecuters and the grand jury.

“The real damage is it’s a fib either way and as a rule most people hate it when politicians take credit for the work of others.”
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His statement was 100% accurate: he wrote legislation and worked as Vice President, but did not write any software.
.
Only a moron would think that his statement about writing legislation means that he, also, wrote software and/or created source code.
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It’s very easy to unintentionally mislead the very stupid, but, for people with IQs over 70, this was 100% clear that Al Gore was writing legislation and nothing more.

did you even read what you just posted? you just confirmed Wilson was a racist.

********************************

The issue of segregation came up early in his presidency when, at an April 1913 cabinet meeting, Albert Burleson, Wilson’s Postmaster General, complained about working conditions at the Railway Mail Service. Offices and restrooms became segregated, sometimes by partitions erected between seating for white and African American employees in Post Office Department offices, lunch rooms, and bathrooms, as well as in the Treasury and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. It also became accepted policy for “Negro” employees of the Postal Service to be reduced in rank or dismissed. And unlike his predecessors Grover Cleveland and Theodore Roosevelt, Wilson accommodated Southern opposition to the re-appointment of an African American to the position of Register of the Treasury and other positions within the federal government. This set the tone for Wilson’s attitude to race throughout his presidency, in which the rights of African Americans were sacrificed, for what he felt would be the more important longer term progress of the common good.[1][79]

If Perjury meant that Libby was covering up for somebody.
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If perjury is a small crime, then why did your party try and remove Clinton, who was later charged with a lesser crime of lying under oath (which means that he lied about something which would not change the verdict of the case) on the grounds of perjury?
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In either case, the jury decided that there was a cover up stuck on Libby lying and could not proceed because he fell on his sword.
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For whom?
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If his boss was the Dick Cheney, guess who the leak really was from?

I didn’t write a word of the clip in 102. It’s from Wikipedia. The WAshington Post reported Powell was fired not me.

Wilson appears to have changed his stance after getting the black vote.
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I read the beginning, but, not all of it.

Please do tell me the rest of the list.
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Reading your total misunderstanding of climate change, which should be about 90% of the rest of your claims, should be funny.

Your thought process is absolutely bizarre. What is the grand conspiracy supposed to be? The entire story is known. Fitzpatrick found out almost immediately Armitage leaked the name to Novak and was responsible for Valerie Plame being identified as the reason her husband was sent to Niger. That was you think a crime. Fitzpartick didn’t charge Armitage or Rove or Libby or anyone else. There is no question her name was leaked. There were no charges because it wasn’t a crime.

Bad news it is for you. The Washington Post has written no less than 3 lead editorials including one on a Sunday blistering Wilson as a liar and a fraud and mocking people like you. The longer you stay fixated the more obvious you are as the fool.

“I didn’t write a word of the clip in 102. It’s from Wikipedia. The WAshington Post reported Powell was fired not me.”
.
First, CNN contradicts it.
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Second, use quotes.
.
Third, use links.

“Armitage leaked the name to Novak and was responsible for Valerie Plame being identified as the reason her husband was sent to Niger. That was you think a crime. Fitzpartick didn’t charge Armitage or Rove or Libby or anyone else. There is no question her name was leaked. There were no charges because it wasn’t a crime.”
.
“The Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 (Pub.L. 97-200, 50 U.S.C. § 421–426) is a United States federal law that makes it a federal crime to intentionally reveal the identity of an agent whom one knows to be in or recently in certain covert roles with a U.S. intelligence agency.”
.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_Identities_Protection_Act
.
“According to Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, Libby first learned of Valerie Wilson’s employment at the CIA in early June 2003 from Vice President Dick Cheney and proceeded to discuss her with six other government officials in the following days and months before disclosing her name to reporters Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper in early July 2003. Fitzgerald asserts that Vice President Cheney told Libby about Mrs. Wilson’s CIA employment as the two crafted a response to an inquiry about Wilson’s trip from reporter Walter Pincus. While her name was not disclosed to Pincus, Fitzgerald asserts that Pincus’s inquiry “further motivated [Libby] to counter Mr. Wilson’s assertions, making it more likely that [Libby's] disclosures to the press concerning Mr. Wilson’s wife were not casual disclosures that he had forgotten by the time he was asked about them by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and before the grand jury.”[87]

Libby does not dispute that he initially heard about Mrs. Wilson from Cheney, but he claims that he had no recollection of that fact when he told the FBI in October 2003 and the grand jury in March 2004 that he remembered first learning about Mrs. Wilson in a conversation with NBC’s Tim Russert on July 10, 2003.”
.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plame_affair#I._Lewis_.22Scooter.22_Libby
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How can you say no crime was committed?
.
Cheney Leaked to Libby. Libby leaked to the press and lied about it.
.
Are all US courts and all people who serve on juries biased liberals to you?

His statement was 100% accurate: he wrote legislation and worked as Vice President, but did not write any software.

******************************************
The internet was a dept of defense project that started when Gore was in school. He had nothing to do with it’s development. The reason why the line is so famous is because it’s so Al. He’s such a gasbag. He’s even worse than Biden. In any event it’s become conventional wisdom that he claimed to have invented the internet. Blame the press

I know what the wires which became the internet were from, but, it was just a bunch of wires until it became civilianized by legislation.
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Dwight Eisenhower was the one who started the DARPA project to put the wires and protocols in.
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If nobody at all made it into a civilian venture, we would be using mail to communicate with each other right now.
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Gore was the first one to write the legislation.
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If it weren’t for him, perhaps a few years later somebody else would have proposed the legislation. But, because Gore did start the legislation, the internet was civilian by the early 1990s, not the earl 2000s.

why would you do that? It’s not long. I have to be honest I like talking about Wilson as much as Gore. Wilson is perfect for this era. Once you identify Wilson as a racist he can’t be defended in this politically correct environment. Liberals have essentially stopped talking about him. You have to see what this is going to do for his reputation. It’s all down hill from here. I saw the documentary on the 1919 Peace Talks and it was very well done. But they were brutal on Wilson and that’s without touching his racism. Yet of the reviews I saw none defended Wilson. When Jonah Goldbergs book came out on the era called Liberal Fascism all of his liberal attackers were very circumspect in defending Wilson. He’s a loathsome figure.

Entirely wrong. It was a technology drive project that advanced at the rate driven by the engineers. The people on the project did everything, they were the visonaries and it became what they expected it to become. Al Gore didn’t advance it or slow it down. His comments were creepy.

“Once you identify Wilson as a racist he can’t be defended in this politically correct environment. Liberals have essentially stopped talking about him.”
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We don’t discuss Wilson just as you do not discuss how Theodore Roosevelt ran on creating a German-like national health care system.
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I was in high school twenty years ago and we did read some of these things, but, I found Wilson less interesting than TR.
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TR, also angered the black community in the Brownsville Affair.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownsville_Affair
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Racism was the norm in both parties, but, along with how Herbert Hoover, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan all had a “Southern strategy” to get white votes, blacks knew to switch from Republican (as nearly all were after Lincoln) to Democrat (as almost all are since Harry Truman).

“It was a technology drive project that advanced at the rate driven by the engineers.”
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If you recall, Prodigy, that is what we would have had for at least a few more years if it weren’t for Gore.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prodigy_%28online_service%29
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It couldn’t do half of what the internet did.
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So, civilianizing the internet released military technology decades ahead of the private sector into the hands of the private sector.

I cannot understand why you find this hard.

If it was a crime why didn’t Fitzpatrick charge Armitage? The details are known. Armitage admitted being the leak. Novak admitted he was the leak.

I think the reason is PLame hadn’t been out of the country in the 5 years before the leak and wasn’t considered covert. Or it could be Armitage didn’t know she was covert. My understanding was that she was not considered covert. She was just a mid-level analyst. Thus no law was broken. If you read that legislation it appears the leaker also had to know the person was covert AND had been active the last 5 year.

Why don’t you read the Washington Post editorial?

The funniest part of the scandal is that the CIA looked stupid in sending such a clown. To their credit though they never did take him seriously. They didn’t pay him and they didn’t ask for a written report. I don’t think their meeting lasted 20 minutes. You can tell the folks at the Post despise him. Gotta give him credit although I read he does not come out well in the movie. Still, he made a ton of money and is a celebrity on the left.

“House of Commons Science and Technology Committee

The Science and Technology Select Committee inquiry reported on 31 March 2010 that it had found that “the scientific reputation of Professor Jones and CRU remains intact”. The emails and claims raised in the controversy did not challenge the scientific consensus that “global warming is happening and that it is induced by human activity”. The MPs had seen no evidence to support claims that Jones had tampered with data or interfered with the peer-review process.[101]

The committee criticised a “culture of non-disclosure at CRU” and a general lack of transparency in climate science where scientific papers had usually not included all the data and code used in reconstructions. It said that “even if the data that CRU used were not publicly available—which they mostly are—or the methods not published—which they have been—its published results would still be credible: the results from CRU agree with those drawn from other international data sets; in other words, the analyses have been repeated and the conclusions have been verified.” The report added that “scientists could have saved themselves a lot of trouble by aggressively publishing all their data instead of worrying about how to stonewall their critics.” The committee criticised the university for the way that freedom of information requests were handled, and for failing to give adequate support to the scientists to deal with such requests.”
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climategate#UK_Parliament
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There’s your big scandal: many scientists are terrible communicators.

“It’s like the New Deal. I was taught it ended the depression. You can’t make that claim today and be taken seriously. The fact unemployment almost hit 20% in 1938 mocks the FDR frauds. You just need a simple chart of historical unemployment to see the govt caused the entire depression.”
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The New Deal was almost destroyed in 1937 by the conservative courts. This is why there was a recession or, as one would say now, “a double dip”.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal#Defeat:_court_packing_and_executive_reorganization
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Roosevelt’s two faults were with the incarceration of the Japanese and the attempt to pack the supreme court, once again, pissing off Democrats who stopped him (without enough Republicans to stop him without Democrats).

The US used to have many economic depressions prior to the Great Depression.
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I have not read all of this, but, this source looks good:
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http://www.thehistorybox.com/ny_city/panics/panics_article1a.htm
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20% unemployment once every ten to 20 years was the norm, not the exception.
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Between the New Deal and 25 years after Reagan undid much of the New Deal the US never had such high unemployment.
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Obviously we need some aspects of the New Deal to bring us back to when 6% unemployment was shocking, not back to when 20% unemployment was not a big deal.

Please send links.
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According to previous discussions with you, you said that we had no recessions at all since 1980. We had three and all of them worse than the recession of 1980, for example.
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Send a link to who else was admitting outing plame.
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Send links saying that she did not leave the US for 5 years – totally contrary to everything I have seen.
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Please do not use the Washington Post. Use other news sources.
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According Wikipedia, it was Libby who did the second leak but it began with the Dick Cheney who told Libby.
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Libby fell on his sword for Cheney. That is the story I have heard and I have found.

We do discuss and recognize Teddy as a progressive and activist I read Theodore Rex and don’t remember anything about it. It’s also true Hoover was very progressive and activist. If you were to list the top 10 accomplishments of all the Presidents starting in 1900 and did not list their party most people would identify Teddy and Hoover as Democrats and then possibly Truman and JFK as republicans.

I also don’t think Nixons southern strategy was racist in any way nor was he personally a racist. The Southern strategy was merely a recognition the nature of the parties had shifted substantially after JFKs assassination as the Democrat party took a sharp turn left and the more culturally conservative and religious southerners were more likely to be conservative. If you listen to some of JFKs speeches he’s often well to the right of Reagan.

As far as Reagan he definitely wasn’t racist and as the 1st true conservative as we define it today it was clear Southerners were going to more closely identify with him than Carter and certainly Mondale.

To classify Southerners as racists is purely a liberal thing. I was born and raise in Philadelphia. It’s overwhelmingly democrat and there are no shortages of racists here. it’s comical to read some of the people post here about blacks being 90% democrat as if they means they’re not racist. Of course it means no such thing. Intellectually it’s silly and it’s rather cheap.

Whatever, you are entitled to your opinion. The fact is Al is not getting credit for inventing the Internet and he will be remembered as a gasbag to the extent he is remembered at all.

On September 7, 2006, Armitage admitted to being the source in the CIA leak.[22] Armitage claims that Fitzgerald had originally asked him not to discuss publicly his role in the matter, but that on September 5 Armitage asked Fitzgerald if he could reveal his role to the public, and Fitzgerald consented.

***********************************************

Why didn’t you just go to Armitage in wikileaks. Why wouldn’t you believe the Wash Post?

“It’s also true Hoover was very progressive and activist…”
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You have no reason to say this unless you believe, during the Republican administrations he served in creating the FCC to prevent radio stations from talking over each other and traffic lights are leftist ideas.
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Truman loved the New Deal so much that his campaign was called “The Fair Deal” which was very similar.
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Truman was the very first anti-racist president by any reasonable standards. FDR has his issues with Asians.
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Truman ran his 1948 campaign against the Republican congress. If Truman was a Republican, to you, then so was FDR.
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JFK did cut the very top tax rate. Outside of that he was a follower of Keynesian Economics, not Classical Economics (neither the monetarists nor “supply side” existed yet).
.
He chose the federal government over states rights during Civil Rights.
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He promised single payer health care.
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He had proposed almost everything that Lyndon Johnson later accomplished: medicare, medicaid and so on.
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His brothers Robert and Ted were his political twins – except for Vietnam (and that was years into the War when Robert did a 180 degree turn).
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So, if JFK was a Republican to you, then Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy and Ted Kennedy were all Republicans to you since they all believed in the same thing (except for the Robert Kennedy – Lyndon Johnson break on Vietnam).
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You’re knowledge of history is feeble if you believe that anything Hoover did was similar to what FDR did and that Harry Truman was anything other than a political copy of FDR (but a better view on race) and that the three Kennedy brothers and Lyndon Johnson were political twins as well.
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“Give ‘em hell Harry!”
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Give who Hell? Give those Goddam conservatives hell! He was very much a liberal on every issue of his day.
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I will grant you that TR was much more like a Democrat than a Republican of today, but, I will add that the first income tax came from Lincoln, making him more like a Democrat than a Republican, too.

Rather than some nefarious conspiracy the fact is Wilson was a low level flunky who was unemployed at the time and no one had any idea who he was. There were only 4 people at the CIA who knew who he was. The gist of Novaks story was amusement the WH would appoint such a partisan clown to anything remotely sensitive. Novak and 100 other reporters were trying to find out who he was and how he came to be hired. The CIA didn’t have any records because he was never hired ad never filed a report. They found out his wife recommended him. Before Novak printed the column he called the CIA to let them know he was going to identify her as working for the CIA and if he wasn’t supposed to they had to tell him. He told this part of the story a dozen times on TV. If the CIA told him she was covert and it would give up her cover he would not have run that part of the story. Novak was incensed at Armitage for not coming out right away and said so many times.

The New Deal wasn’t wrecked by the courts. FDR abandoned it in 1939 and the depression was ended by WWII.

“To classify Southerners as racists is purely a liberal thing.”
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So you are saying that Lyndon Johnson called himself a a racist?
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I don’t know where you got the idea that liberals call all of the South racist, but I will tell you what is racist:
.
” Atwater: As to the whole Southern strategy that Harry S. Dent, Sr. and others put together in 1968, opposition to the Voting Rights Act would have been a central part of keeping the South. Now [the new Southern Strategy of Ronald Reagan] doesn’t have to do that. All you have to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues he’s campaigned on since 1964 and that’s fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster.

Questioner: But the fact is, isn’t it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps?

Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, “Ngger, ngger, ngger.” By 1968 you can’t say “ngger” — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Ngger, ngger.”[6][7]”
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That was the deathbed confession of Atwater, the one who ran Reagan’s strategy.
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Obviously many non-racists voted for Reagan from the South, but, makings sure that racists had somebody to vote for was a Republican strategy.
.
“Southern strategy

To gain Republican votes in Southern states, Hoover pioneered an electoral tactic later known as the “Southern Strategy”. Hoover ousted many African American leaders in the Republican party, and replaced them with whites.[citation needed] Hoover’s appeal to white voters yielded substantial results, including Republican victories in Tennessee, North Carolina, Florida, Virginia, and Texas. It marked the first time a Republican candidate for president carried Texas. This outraged the black leadership, which largely broke from the Republican Party, and began seeking candidates who supported civil rights within the Democratic Party.[”
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This is, also, racist.
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“It’s overwhelmingly democrat and there are no shortages of racists here. it’s comical to read some of the people post here about blacks being 90% democrat as if they means they’re not racist.”
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What is most important is not how some of the voters feel, Boston is very, very backwards about race, but, the people they elect are wonderful about race (including a black governor at this time and, before civil rights even, a Republican black senator).
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You are one of those who are sure that they know all about what everybody else thinks and feels and that you are the least educated yet smartest in the room.
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You know nothing about liberals. You were 120 years off on blacks at Harvard. The “white guilt” is something that you can find on KKK websites I bet. You do not see, for example, Al Sharpton getting elected dog catcher since he is unqualified and very uninteresting to Democrats.
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You really have to get out of the house and see the real world sometime.

.

Please send a source since it contradicts what I linked to and my own knowledge of history.
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The New Deal became Truman’s Fair Deal which became Kennedy’s New Frontiers which became Johnson’s Great Society.
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Carter was more conservative than JFK, LBJ, Truman, FDR but was, arguably, the most anti-racist president matched only by Clinton (both Southerners and both who had a stronger view since they saw far more hard core racism than we see outside of the South).

Wilson blew the whistle on Bush’s imaginary WMDs.
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He is a hero for that.
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You just hate to admit that Bush lied to us so that there would be a new war during the 2004 election.

“Whatever, you are entitled to your opinion.”
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IOW: Gore sped up bringing us from Prodigy to the Internet since nobody else thought of it yet and told the truth about himself.

That’s a nasty allegation that coincidently was made only after he died. Not that it matters. Reagan was an authentic conservative who’s belief’s has been laid out well before his 1980 campaign during which Atwater played no role. Race wasn’t an issue in any of the campaigns from 68 until 04. The 80 and 84 races were landslides I’ve lived in the North my entire life. They have no business pretending moral superiority over any part of the country on any issue.

Albert was a clown

Every President has their programs. The New Deal ended in 1939. The only President I know who was a racists was Wilson and I think Truman desegrating the armed forces was more important and ballsy than anything the others you’ve named did. I don’t think any President since Wilson was racist and JFK gets too much credit and LBJ too little for the civil rights legislation. That’ll be taken care of by history. Liberal historians despise LBJ for Vietnam. Once this generation passes he’ll get a fairer reading. JFK more than Wilson was overrated initially. Wilson has very far too fall.

So you can see why liberals are morose. A Capitol Hill aide described Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid’s demeanor upon returning from the White House: “He looked like someone shot his dog.”

To say that Republicans are triumphant would be an understatement. They won the philosophical point (tax hikes impede economic growth) and, candidly, are more than delighted to have a repeat of this debate for the presidential campaign in 2012.
*******************************************

Looks like libs have formed a circular firing squad.

“That’s a nasty allegation that coincidently was made only after he died.”
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Only because Atwater himself did not say it until he was dying.
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“Reagan was an authentic conservative who’s belief’s has been laid out well before his 1980 campaign during which Atwater played no role.”
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“After the 1980 election, Atwater went to Washington and became an aide in the Ronald Reagan administration, working under political director Ed Rollins. In 1984, Rollins managed Reagan’s re-election campaign, and Atwater became the campaign’s deputy director and political director. Rollins tells several Atwater stories in his 1996 book, Bare Knuckles and Back Rooms.[5] He states that Atwater ran a dirty tricks operation against vice-presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro including publicizing the fact that Ferraro’s parents had been indicted of numbers running in the 1940s. Rollins also described Atwater as “ruthless”, “Ollie North in civilian clothes”, and someone who “just had to drive in one more stake”.”
.
Wrong.
.
In 1984 he was very prominent in Reagan’s campaign.
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“Race wasn’t an issue in any of the campaigns from 68 until 04.”
.
You don’t remember Jesse Jackson?
.
“On November 3, 1983, he announced his campaign for presidency.[29] In 1984, Jackson became the second African American (after Shirley Chisholm) to mount a nationwide campaign for President of the United States, running as a Democrat.

In the primaries, Jackson, who had been written off by pundits as a fringe candidate with little chance at winning the nomination, surprised many when he took third place behind Senator Gary Hart and former Vice President Walter Mondale, who eventually won the nomination. Jackson garnered 3,282,431 primary votes, or 18.2 percent of the total, in 1984,[30] and won five primaries and caucuses, including Louisiana, the District of Columbia, South Carolina, Virginia, and one of two separate contests in Mississippi.[31]

As he had gained 21% of the popular vote but only 8% of delegates, he afterwards complained that he had been handicapped by party rules. While Mondale (in the words of his aides) was determined to establish a precedent with his vice presidential candidate by picking a woman or visible minority, Jackson criticized the screening process as a “p.r. parade of personalities”. He also mocked Mondale, saying that Hubert Humphrey was the “last significant politician out of the St. Paul–Minneapolis” area.[”
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He ran because he thought Reagan was racist. (I do not believe, myself, that Reagan was consciously racist, but consciousness is something I would never accuse Reagan of at all).
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Jackson#1984_presidential_campaign
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Race was not an issue 2004.
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So, to be accurate, race was not a major campaign issue between 1988 and 2008 since, “our first black president” (said tongue in cheek do his stands being so similar to that of the black community) Bill Clinton was in office in the middle.
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McCain was wise and bit his tongue when he could have used slurs. I am not sure if I would say that race was an issue in 2008.
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I didn’t vote for a black man per se. I voted for a very clear speaking man who promised to undue some of what Reagan had done and provide health care reform who had an amazing resume outside of politics who happened to, despite being raised in the only Asian dominated state and by the white side of his family, have a Kenyan father.

Albert was a clown.
.
A clown?
.
If he got more votes than W, W must be the clown school dropout.

Party time for Bush and Cheney!
Obama extends tax cuts for the rich that the GOP passed with chicanery and Cheney’s vote. How did we get here?
By Joan Walsh

*

I know they weren’t the best of friends when they left Washington, but I bet former President Bush and Dick Cheney at least had a phone call tonight congratulating one another on one of the great heists in history. In 2001, they knew they couldn’t make their budget-busting tax cuts for the rich permanent, so they agreed to phase them out in 2010, leaving the political consequences to another administration. Even with that chicanery, the Bush tax cuts were divisive enough that they required Cheney to cast a tie-breaking vote in the Senate. No problem. That’s how Republicans play: They reward their wealthy base.

Actually, we agree.
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JFK made the speeches, Johnson, after JFK’s death, did the work.
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“The New Deal ended in 1939″
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The second New Deal, after the courts attacked it in 1937 was replaced by war mobilization in 1940.

Retarded Dim Wit 56,
.
You got to “Morning Must Reads” to post news about today.

“..congratulating one another on one of the great heists in history. In 2001, they knew they couldn’t make their budget-busting tax cuts for the rich permanent, so they agreed to phase them out in 2010, leaving the political consequences to another administration…”
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Calling it budget busting and a heist is a great argument for the Democrats.
.
Why don’t you post on Morning Must Reads where this is appropriate?

It’s called Wikipedia and why didn’t you send a link?

Another great Bob Schrum moment, “May I be the 1st to call you Mr President”. God that had to hurt to find out it wasn’t going to happen. One of those dumb bash bush movies was called I think ‘recount’ with Kevin Spacey the guy pushing for ‘justice’. You had a lot of really talented actors in these movies but they still sucked. Kevin did a nice job doing the outraged lib fighting for truth as only liberals do. Not a bad cable movie. I’d watch a few minutes here and there just to remember. I thoroughly enjoyed that episode in Florida and still get a kick out of folks like Jeffrey Toobin express his rage at Scalia. He doesn’t like to report the vote was 7-2. Ed Whalen at thr National Review does a great job reviewing Jeffrey and correcting his facts. Ed is of the opinion, and I agree, Gore himself butchered the process in asking the Courts to only recount in a few heavily democratic counties and only undervotes. In Eds mind the Supremes would have allowed a statewide recount under specific statewide standards and of all votes. Gore was too smart by half. They wasted so much time playing games.

Call it what you will, the war ended the depression. Amity Shales wrote a book a couple/few years back called The Forgotten Man that researched the New Deal from an economic perspective and savaged it. The book was very popular and started a lot of debate mostly on the right.

These are neat times to be a Conservative. I was a huge Reagan fan and having graduated as a finance major in 1978 followed his politics as regards the economy very closely and still do. He was really an incredibly President and what he did considering the MSM was at full power was simply amazing. Amity would bot have been able to write her book in 1978. It would not have been published and if she paid to print it it would not have been reviewed. The NYTs frequently has books on it’s best seller lists it won’t review because they’re by conservatives. They fact they’re on their best seller lists anyway just mocks them.

This was an important book full of economic facts that makes the case the New Deal was a failure as economics. I never read it because I already knew but I saw her frequently on TV and heard her doing radio interviews. Liberals hate Fox but talk radio is far more important to conservatism. It’s not a coincidence Beck and Hannity are stars on TV. I rarely watch either but Beck has been tremendous on Wilson and the progressive era.

Amity is not a talk radio type but a think tank person. She’s a serious researcher and thinker and one of the leading experts on the depression.

just type armitage. I assuumed you knew all this. This isn’t new news. Novak the week the story broke make it clear his leak was not from the WH nor any partisan figures. He was absolving Rove because his name came up 1st.

This is at least the 3rd Washington Post editorial attacking Joe Wilson. This is all well known. Novak named Armitage as his leaker. Armitage admitted he was the leaker, Admitted he told Powell right away and Powell admitted he knew All 3 men confirmed this in statements ON TV. How could you not know.

After the 1980 election, Atwater went to Washington

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You really need to read the stuff you post. I said Atwater played no role in Reagans 1980 election. Do you know what ‘after’ means?

Lincoln was a republican. He had to finance a war.

JFK cut taxes and was very right wing on defense and foreign affairs. The modern distinction is really between the dominant ideology of each party. Conservatives and Liberals. Liberalism took a sharp turn in 1968. Nixon was not concervative. Reagan was our 1st conservative President and one has to go back to Coolidge for a close comparison.

Jones and Mann of Penn State are toast. They can’t be fired because that would be an admisson of guilt. There’s billions of dollars in grants for this nonsense and they can’t risk it drying up. In both cases their work has been made irrelevant because the base data has proven to be useless. In Mann’s case his statistical methodology of the hockey stick was already discredited.

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I think it was in Jones’ work Steve McIntrye looked at one data set and found than 80% of the temperature variability came from one group of trees rings in russia and 65% of that from a single tree. The idea of using tree rings in any study going to 10th of a degree granularity is nonsense to begin with. Jones has since been forced to discard that ‘evidence’.

There are so many stories like this. GW is a money tree for academics and too many of them are incompetent. McIntyre made two almost immediate assumptions about Mann. He didn’t know statistics and he was personally sloppy and disorganized. It took years to get data from Mann and McIntyre predicated before Mann admitted it that he lost his base data.

Doesn’t matter. GW is dead . We have huge spending issues. It’s getting cut and many programs to zero.

CNN contradicts nothing. They reported Powell resigned. So did every one else. The Washington Post reported he was asked to do so. Every outlet reported on the actual resignation as a routine matter as they almost always do and the analysis is in a separate piece. There’s little doubt he was canned.

No he didn’t. That’s the fun part and why the Post keeps writing editorials. The reports were that Saddam was sniffing around in Niger for yellowcake. The CIA didn’t think it was true but had to check it out. Valery was working on something at the time and knew they were going to send someone to Niger and volunteered her husband, Joe Wilson. NO one at the CIA had ever heard of Joe Wilson. The Novak story was, “where did this guy come from and why him?” When he came back he told the CIA Iraqi agents were in Niger asking around. As soon as the CIA heard that they knew they had to look further. To this day British intelligence has information Saddam tried to buy yellowcake in Niger.

That’s what’s so incredible. Wilson played the NYTs for fools. They wanted to embarrass and weaken Bush and slow the war effort. They accomplished none of that. Bush was re-elected easily.

Between the New Deal and 25 years after Reagan undid much of the New Deal the US never had such high unemployment.

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Reagan didn’t undo any of the new deal. We had record unemployment throughout the new deal and it came down in WWII. They we had a return to 10% unemployment and for the 1st time in many decades 10% inflation and if you remember high interest rates in the later 70′s. We had a significant recession in 1981 and Reagans supply-side tax set off what was essentially a near 30 year boom with only two small and short recessions, the smallest and shortest in our history. Regan cut inflation and unemployment by more than half and had a fabulous stock market.

“Reagan didn’t undo any of the new deal.”
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Actually, Carter undid part of the New Deal regarding airline regulation, but that came out to work out fine.
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Don’t forget that the New Deal was not just work programs like the WPA. It included unemployment benefits, welfare, the securities and exchange commission…. huge changes.
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At the end of the New Deal we had unemployment at about the same as the last six months of Carter and the first two years of Reagan: about 10%.
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Since I was a nine year old when Reagan got elected, I had to read about Stagflation in the history books.
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In Economics Inflation, recession and stagflation are three different things even though for somebody not paying attention or uninterested in Economics and/or politics it seems similar.
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Recession: Low consumer demand, high unemployment, very low inflation, low interest rates and a decrease in GDP for two consecutive quarters. This is caused by excessive consumer debt, war (fought on the land in question, not abroad, where capital equipment and buildings are destroyed in vast numbers) after a readjustment of vital commodities such as securities (stocks and bonds) or housing (now) often, also, due to poor government regulations. The solution has always been to increase the money supply, increase government spending and to maintain or lower taxes.
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Depression: an extreme recession.
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Inflation: Also known as a superheated economy has low unemployment, rapid growth in GDP and, most unfortunately, price increases. This is caused by an excessively high money supply, low taxes, low interest rates. All in all, it is too many dollars (or other currency) chasing the same amount of goods. The solution has always been to cut government spending, increase taxes and decrease the money supply.
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Hyperinflation: Extreme inflation in the range of 100% per year and, in some cases 1,000% per year always due to extremely bad monetary policy as Germany had in the early 1920s. The solution has been to issue a totally different currency set to be exchanged at a rate many times higher than the old currency (such as 1,000 to one). Extremely rare in the developed world, except for Germany in the 1920s.
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Stagflation: High unemployment, high interest rates with price increases. Caused by the decrease in supply of an irreplaceable commodity required for the economy to function. So far, this commodity has been oil and never has there been a case of stagflation other than oil.
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In both Oil Crisis’, under Nixon (short lived) and under Carter (lasting longer) stagflation has never been cured. The proposed solutions: solar energy, renewable energy from plant life, wind energy, tidal energy (the neighborhood of Roosevelt Island between Queens and Manhattan with about 20,000 people are completely supplied by tidal energy) and, to a lesser extent, efficiency with existing fossil fuel consuming devices. Time needed to make the transition: between 5 and 20 years.
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Carter was the poor SOB standing there when the oil Crisis hit. As a famously poor communicator, he got 100% of the blame when he was due, at worst, 10% of the blame.
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So, if you thought renewable energy was for rural, hippie tree huggers, think again. Renewable energy is how we can economically give Saudi Arabia the finger.

“Reagans supply-side tax set off what was essentially a near 30 year boom with only two small and short recessions, the smallest and shortest in our history.”
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If you look at this graph starting in 1947, not only were the post-Reagan recessions mild, so were the Truman to Reagan Recessions.
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http://www.data360.org/dsg.aspx?Data_Set_Group_Id=230
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Supply side economics was never taught in schools since it came from conservative think tanks independent of other academic research, rarely accepted for PhD thesis’ and only existed as a concept that conservatives toyed with between about 1975 and 1995.
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“In 2003, the Wall Street Journal declared the debate over supply-side economics to have ended “with a whimper” after extensive modeling performed by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) failed to support the most extreme claims of supply-side policies.[50] It was also suggested that Dan Crippen may have lost his chance at reappointment as head of the CBO for failing to support supply-side inspired dynamic scoring. This research undermines the claim that tax cuts can completely compensate for the initial loss of revenue due to the cut, but does acknowledge that resulting growth from the tax cut does replace some of the lost revenue, and the CBO has come under fire[by whom?] for using low estimates.”
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply-side_economics#Research_since_2000
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This is the original article from famously conservative Wall Street Journal:
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http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/882137/posts
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Reagan lead us down the garden path. To his credit, he may well have deceived himself, too, making him more ethical than Bernie Madeoff. (If you say he is brilliant, then he is just Bernie Madeoff who got the best house in DC with his con – so I would prefer dumb if were you and such a Reagan fan).

Off the top of my head, FDR created the FDA as a government funded agency to say “no” to all drugs until the government itself tested it to find that it did good.
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Reagan required pharmaceutical companies to pay for the FDA to cut the budget. This was, in part, response to the slow reaction to AIDS drugs getting onto the market as reaching out both gays and others for votes as well as to drug companies.
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So, this is one thing that Reagan undid from the New Deal.
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Since Reagan, drug recalls have happened far, far more often as the FDA responds to pressure from their corporate sponsors to approve most things.
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Between FDR and Reagan, the percentage of drugs recalled were far, far lower.

This research undermines the claim that tax cuts can completely compensate for the initial loss of revenue due to the cut, but does acknowledge that resulting growth from the tax cut does replace some of the lost revenue, and the CBO has come under fire[by whom?] for using low estimates.”

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The WSJ states the most ‘extreme’ views of supply-side for a reason. There are views all over the map and much depends on the size and design of the cuts. The marginal rate cuts odf1986 were designed to be revenue neutral. Reagan wanted a simplified tax code and the government out of the business of picking winners and losers. He wanted to eliminate as many exemptions and deductions as possible to lower the rates as low as possible and lesson the incentive to defer taxes. Most supply-siders believe smaller cut such as what we have in 2003 will eventually make up the revenue shortfall over time due to higher growth. Bush had decreasing deficits every year after the cuts despite being a spending pig himself.

The other aspect of lower progressivity is the top brackets actually pay more as a percentage of total revenues. In other words the less progressive the rates the more progressive the results.

So, if you thought renewable energy was for rural, hippie tree huggers, think again. Renewable energy is how we can economically give Saudi Arabia the finger.

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Renewable energy isn’t nearly ready for prime time and we need to deregulate oil and gas markets even more. Blocking drilling in ANWR is absurd. We’ve had a great decade of discovery with huge reserves off Brazil and steady progress driving the cost of Tar Sands Oil down. The technology has advanced rapidly. There are now major gas deposits accessible in the Dakota’s, WV/PA/NY and then in Louisana. We need to back off ethanol having driven up the cost of food and let markets allocate properly.

Carter was the poor SOB standing there when the oil Crisis hit. As a famously poor communicator, he got 100% of the blame when he was due, at worst, 10% of the blame.

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Carter has a lot of the management issues we see in Obama although Obama is far more of a delegator. Jimmy was also Wilsonian in his arrogance and stubbornness. I shock people who know me because I give him credit for a lot of the deregulation that occured (but not for oil – he was a disaster) and for appointing Paul Volcker to the Fed and allowing him to fight inflation by increasing interest rates knowing this was going to drive down economic growth and drive up unemployment. At the time it was thought high Inflation and high unemployment cold not co-exist. The standards tools at the macro level was how the Fed set the Federal Funds rate and at that time the prime rate. If they wanted to goose growth lower interest rates. The problem is this would set off inflation while lowering unemployment. Carter took the 1st steps to breaking the back of inflation with high rates and the poor economy killed his re-election chances. After the Iranian hostage crises he wasn’t getting re-elected anyway. Reagan had an elegant plan. Let Volcker continue to fight inflation while he would cut taxes to stimulate growth. Borrowing rates were up to 20% and it caused a nasty recession. It took too long to pass the tax cuts but they eventually worked and Reagan had a booming economy when his re-election came around.

“There are views all over the map and much depends on the size and design of the cuts.”
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Actually, the views are in a very limited range today.
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The original thesis that decreasing taxes will increase revenue has failed completely as your quote clearly states.
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“The marginal rate cuts odf1986 were designed to be revenue neutral.”
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No, Reagan promised that they would increase revenue since, according to the now debunked extreme view, tens of millions of inventors, entrepreneurs, writers, sculptors, painters… people who could, potentially add what everybody from the engineer to the artist would consider Amazing things were standing their with their arms folded like pouting children not wanting to do anything unless they gave much less to the government.
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“Reagan wanted a simplified tax code…”
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And failed miserably as Bush Sr, Clinton, W and now Obama have stated exactly the same goal yet unable to agree on what to do.
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“…and the government out of the business of picking winners and losers.” although the huge majority of exemptions to the tax code are not about economics, Democrat or Republican, but which businesses or industries gave the most to the winning candidates, there is a need for some – not anywhere near as many as we have (I would guess 5% of what we have) tax exemptions. That would be in the case of externalities.
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Read this:
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality
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“Most supply-siders believe smaller cut such as what we have in 2003 will eventually make up the revenue shortfall over time due to higher growth.”
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Where do you go to find any PhD economists who believe in supply side in 2010? They are, basically, a tiny group who went extinct. Find me a 2010 PhD supply sider and I will read it, since I thought they went the way of the saber toothed cat (AKA the saber toothed tiger, but it was not related closely to the modern tiger).
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“The other aspect of lower progressivity is the top brackets actually pay more as a percentage of total revenues. In other words the less progressive the rates the more progressive the results.’
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This conclusion is not at all supported by the article. The article says the opposite.
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Clinton made use of one of the concepts of marginal taxation: partial welfare benefits for the working poor in welfare reform.
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Pre-Clinton if you were on welfare and received a total benefit package of, say, $25,000 for a family of four and you went out and earned $1, your benefits would drop down to $0 so your gain from earning $1 would be negative $24,9999 per year. All gains between $1 and $27,500 for that family would be negative (if you take social security tax into account). Republicans loved the work incentive, but, hated that the number of welfare recipients went up dramatically as many working poor families became qualified. Now there are only only a few gaps where earning more would decrease your total post welfare benefits.
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Overall, seeking tax cuts to increase revenue and to stimulate the economy more efficiently than hiring people to fix the roads and so on was a complete failure. However, the gaps between brackets being designed to have the fewest points where earning more lowers take home income have decreased as tax laws have changed due to this.

“Renewable energy isn’t nearly ready for prime time and we need to deregulate oil and gas markets even more.”
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You’ve got that backwards.
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In industrial production for many things, including solar panels and wind turbines among many others, there are economies of scale.
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If it cost $1 million to build a small factory which can produce up to ten thousand solar panels per year with, say, $500 labor costs, then being at full capacity it would cost $600 for a solar panel. It is it at one tenth capacity, it would cost $1,500 for a solar panel.
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If oil is cheap, then nobody wants the first $1,500 solar panel and it never “gets ready for prime time”.
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“We need to back off ethanol having driven up the cost of food and let markets allocate properly.’
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Ethanol is a proven failure, but biodiesel, the original diesel fuel before oil companies made diesel fuel (See the history of the diesel engine) has been an amazing success.
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For both the environment and taxes, Ronald Reagan handed out sugary candies to diabetics promising that they were sugarless. Obama, now, has to give out insulin injections.
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So, of course everybody adored the days when they gobbled down tax decreases and gasoline like it was going out of style and dread putting up solar panels and some tax increases.
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To people like me, giving sugary candy to diabetics by telling them it is sugar free is very evil. That is what I hate about Reagan. He was a fool or a liar but he took a country with him on his trip.

“… Reagan had a booming economy when his re-election came around.”
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Wrong.
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The Stock Market crash of October 1987 after the S&L scandal of 1986 had caused a recession by 1988 that was as bad as Carters. My father lost his job as an engineer he had had for 34 years in late 1988.
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I was 17 years old and remember it well. Where were you in 1988?
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Reagan, the communicator, talked his way out of it and the slow growth which lasted until 1992.
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By 1993, before Clinton was sworn in, he threw away all of his stimulus package plans because the economy was already recovering at a better clip than before.
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“Carter took the 1st steps to breaking the back of inflation with high rates and the poor economy killed his re-election chances.”
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Carter fell on his sword losing his potential second term and his reputation for his country. Agreed.
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If nothing else, you must respect that he appointed Volker costing him his own, personal, political future. That, my friend, is a true patriot.
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That is not to sat that I worship Carter, but adding all of the charity work he has done instead of collecting huge sums of money from speaking as Ford, Reagan, Bush Sr and (with a little bit of Carter in him so as to do some charitable work) Clinton it is almost impossible not to respect Carter.

I told you how I feel about history done by Hollywood: I don’t even watch.
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Bush’s gaffs in real life were hillarious as were Dan Quayle’s. But the movie W…
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I shut off the movie W saying to myself, “I would have had more fun cleaning my bathroom than watching this.”
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I, also, hate didactic films even if it is something like an anti-drug theme (and I never even smoked grass much less anything else, so I am not exactly on the drug user’s side of this).
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You rdw56, presume incorrectly that all liberals or even most liberals watch these movies. There are 72 million registered Democrats in the US. Add in conservative/Republican and Independents curiosity and you’ll know that only if a film grosses at least $1 Billion that all Democrats have seen it.
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If a movie flops and grosses $10 Million, then bet that only about one in a hundred Democrats saw it.

Glenn Beck has no formal education, and Sean Hannity only has a couple of semesters of college.
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It’s one thing to be self taught reading the same sources as universities use and not expecting to use it for any type of work credentials, but, what Beck and Hannity among others on the right have done is not attended any college, find sources totally discredited and then become preachers supporting these books and ideas.
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Don’t get me wrong about people being self taught. One my grandfathers had to drop out high school to support his mother and brother – including his brother’s college education – back in the 1930s and became a stock broker because he sought out reliable information and was a hard core book worm and impressed stock brokers who went to Ivy League schools with how well he understood the stock market. But he was judicious with what he read and didn’t pick outrageous things and, absolutely, did not go on the radio and preached outrageous things as facts.

“There’s little doubt he was canned.”
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Then why didn’t anybody else write it?
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I have little doubt that he quit because of the false claims on WMD.

“GW is a money tree for academics and too many of them are incompetent.”
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You, obviously, do not have any academics in your family. (Mine is my generation, not an elder).
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If you want money, you aren’t an academic.
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It would be like saying that CEOs intentionally lose money so that a University will give them an award.
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Academics seek recognition within their own field and enough to support a family. My best estimate is that about a third of them come from very well off families who give them the down payment on their house and so on so that they don’t need to go out and do something they don’t like to do for a living.
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For every dollar made by universities multiply that number by about one hundred for oil companies and, unlike academics, they just want the money and don’t care about any awards.

Sorry, nobody believes the yellow cake story in the intelligence community and never did.
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Bush pestered the CIA for everything on Iraq.
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Time after time they went deeper and deeper from the most credible downwards with each of 17 searches.
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Finally, at the bottom among the least credible were the yellow cake and other things Bush used to justify the war.
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“They wanted to embarrass and weaken Bush and slow the war effort….”
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So a diplomat and a CIA agent – people who dedicated their lives and, in both cases (especially hers) risked their lives for America suddenly decide to make sure that we get blown up by nuclear weapons?
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“They accomplished none of that. Bush was re-elected easily.”
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Relatively easily, that is. It was 2% with irregularities in PA and Ohio.
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Please send something about the Yellow Cake being verified not proven to be another Bush lie.

“JFK cut taxes and was very right wing on defense and foreign affairs.”
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He cut one bracket, not many. Taxes were at 70%. That is far to the left of Obama, Gore, Kerry or Clinton.
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Second, it was the cold war. Stevenson and Eisenhower were both, also, very hardcore cold warriors. It was a non-issue.
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“Conservatives and Liberals. Liberalism took a sharp turn in 1968. Nixon was not concervative. ”
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I would say that Nixon was more conservative than Johnson, Kennedy and Truman, but not as conservative as Reagan.
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“Reagan was our 1st conservative President and one has to go back to Coolidge for a close comparison.”
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Coolidge had Hoover in his administration as did Warren G Harding.
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JFK had LBJ and RFK in his administration and were followed by younger brother, Ted.
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You are still not making sense.

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I’ve been following solar for 30 years and it’s not close to ready for prime time. It’s far too costly and inefficient. Even if I had solar panels in PA I’d still need a gas system because we don’t get enough sun. Wind is even less efficient. Spain and Germany are losing fortunes on their solar investments and starting to shut them down. There has been some progress but it’s glacial. Markets work. We are getting more efficient cars/appliances/homes, etc and we’re finding more supply. Actually I’m a big fan of Nuclear which is going to be huge in Asia.

The Stock Market crash of October 1987 after the S&L scandal of 1986 had caused a recession by 1988 that was as bad as Carters. My father lost his job as an engineer he had had for 34 years in late 1988.

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Reagan was re-elected in 1984 amid a booming economy. He won 49 states. The Stock market crash in 87 recovered within 5 months and didn’t cause a recession. There wasn’t one in 88 or 89. The recession started in the 3rd Qtr of 1990. GHWB was President 89 thru 92. I was working in philly.

Carter is a meddling horses ass. Bill Clinton loaths him. They don’t speak. I give him credit for Volcker and deregulation but he didn’t raises rates as high as he had to until after the election. What Carter did to Clinton in North Korea s/b a scandal and his hectoring of Bush was embarrassing and pointless. He’s an arrogant vile man who still worships dictators. Bush handled him quite well and still does. He totally ignores him The Iranian hostage crises was the worst period of American history in terms of diplomacy in my mind. It was a long humiliation but had the effect of getting Reagan elected. No coincidence the hostages were released 20 minutes before he was sworn in. Jimmy is not going to be remembered well even by Democrats.

Ford, Reagan, Bush Sr and (with a little bit of Carter in him so as to do some charitable work) Clinton it is almost impossible not to respect Carter.

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He was the least respectable of these Presidents. He remained a partisan jackass and constantly meddled in foreign affairs. They’ve all done charity work.

You make no sense on Reagan. He deregulated oil almost immediately and prices drooped like a stone. We had cheap oil and plenty of it. Oil is a key commodity quite important to maintaining our lifestyles. We all like driving and keeping warm. Our energy problems are either self-inflicted or political. Not drilling in ANWR is insane. We have plenty and oil as gas as does Canada.

What’s been amazing and almost ignored are the amazing discoveries of the last 5 years. Brazil discovered at least 50B off it’s coast and it might be 150B. The Tar Sands are estimated to hold 200B barrels and they’ve been making continual progress lowering the costs of production. The same thing is happening in North Dakota now as they tap the Baakan formation using horizonal drilling and fracturing. That’s at least 4B barrels and with technological discoveries could easily move above 40B. That’s only half the formation. The other half is in Canada. The Marcella formation in PA might be even bigger and there is another in Louisana. Exxon might be the best run corporation in the history of the world. They have increased inventory 22 of the last 23 years and they are the primary technological developer across all aspects of the industry from seismic studies to drill bits to drill controls and all aspects of extraction and refining.

About 4 – 5 years ago Hugo started making moves to suggest he was going to nationalize their properties in Veneuzuela. Rather than get mad they got even. They redirected two major rigs to Brazil and started dismantling their biggest rig. They eventually abandoned it and Venezuela. Hugo never replaced the production. A year later he nationalized totals holdings.

Reagan let them do their thing and they did. The less input govt has in energy the better. Natural gas is very low pollution as are card and we’re getting more efficient at using it. This is capitalism at it’s best.

Overall, seeking tax cuts to increase revenue and to stimulate the economy more efficiently than hiring people to fix the roads and so on was a complete failure.

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So why aren’t we adding jobs? Why did Obama just cave so completely? We had a long boom under Reagan, followed by a small and short recession due most likely to an s&l crises followed by a long boom followed by another very short recession due to as asset bust followed by another long boom. That’s about 28 years of boom we can trace back to the1982 tax cuts and Reagans free market policies combined with more deregulation AND a number of important free trade deals.

I think there is only one way to look at Obama’s deal and that’s a total ideological capitulation. It’s stimulus is almost all in the form of tax cuts. I suspect Obama, not an idologue on economics, saw the shovel ready thing was nonsense and decided to copy Bush and Reagan.

“Most supply-siders believe smaller cut such as what we have in 2003 will eventually make up the revenue shortfall over time due to higher growth.”
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Where do you go to find any PhD economists who believe in supply side in 2010?

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Why do you need an economist when the charts are so clear? Tax revenues surged after his tax cuts. income tax collects were 47% higher in 2007 than 2003.

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=203

Fiscal Year Individual Income Taxes Corporation Income Taxes [1]

1934 420 364

1935 527 529
1936 674 719
1937 1,092 1,038
1938 1,286 1,287
1939 1,029 1,127

1940 892 1,197
1941 1,314 2,124
1942 3,263 4,719
1943 6,505 9,557
1944 19,705 14,838

1945 18,372 15,988
1946 16,098 11,883
1947 17,935 8,615
1948 19,315 9,678
1949 15,552 11,192

1950 15,755 10,449
1951 21,616 14,101
1952 27,934 21,226
1953 29,816 21,238
1954 29,542 21,101

1955 28,747 17,861
1956 32,188 20,880
1957 35,620 21,167
1958 34,724 20,074
1959 36,719 17,309

1960 40,715 21,494
1961 41,338 20,954
1962 45,571 20,523
1963 47,588 21,579
1964 48,697 23,493

1965 48,792 25,461
1966 55,446 30,073
1967 61,526 33,971
1968 68,726 28,665
1969 87,249 36,678

1970 90,412 32,829
1971 86,230 26,785
1972 94,737 32,166
1973 103,246 36,153
1974 118,952 38,620

1975 122,386 40,621
1976 131,603 41,409
TQ 38,801 8,460
1977 157,626 54,892
1978 180,988 59,952
1979 217,841 65,677

1980 244,069 64,600
1981 285,917 61,137
1982 297,744 49,207
1983 288,938 37,022
1984 298,415 56,893

1985 334,531 61,331
1986 348,959 63,143
1987 392,557 83,926
1988 401,181 94,508
1989 445,690 103,291

1990 466,884 93,507
1991 467,827 98,086
1992 475,964 100,270
1993 509,680 117,520
1994 543,055 140,385

1995 590,244 157,004
1996 656,417 171,824
1997 737,466 182,293
1998 828,586 188,677
1999 879,480 184,680

2000 1,004,462 207,289
2001 994,339 151,075
2002 858,345 148,044
2003 793,699 131,778
2004 808,959 189,371

2005 927,222 278,282
2006 1,043,908 353,915
2007 1,163,472 370,243
2008 1,145,747 304,346

“They’ve all done charity work.”
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Carter and Johnson were the only two presidents in fifty years who did not make huge sums of money after the presidency (even Nixon made huge sums of money after the presidency).
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Carter used whatever fame he had (and even, if, arguably, failed, a former president is a higher prestige than 99.99% of the public will ever have) for charities.
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Johnson drank himself to death.

Carter and Johnson were the only two presidents in fifty years who did not make huge sums of money after the presidency

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Since when has making money ever been a bad thing? I don’t know what you mean by huge but Reagan, GHWB and GWB did not raise huge amounts for themselves. Clinton has been far more active with speaking engagements but he also has his foundation and has done a lot of charity stuff. with very few exceptions all of them have stayed out of the hair of their successors. Carter’s a hyper-partisan gasbag. He’s also pretty nasty. Clinton made the mistake of allowing him to do some diplomatic work and Carter screwed him. They despise each other. He’s been hectoring Obama but after a recent WH meeting was told, ‘hanks but no thanks’. Obama isn’t repeating Clintons error.

I have no idea how you on the left have been so infected with this marxist virus. If Bill Clinton or Colin Powell want to take a $100K check for a speaking engagement what could possibly be wrong with that?

No, We Can’t
Remember when Herbert Hoover, still bitter over his loss to Franklin D. Roosevelt, said in 1942 that he thought the Axis would win World War II? Neither do we. Not only was it before our time, but it never happened.

Yesterday, however, PBS’s “NewsHour” aired an interview in which a former president predicted the defeat of American troops currently deployed overseas. Here’s an excerpt:

Ray Suarez: What do you make of our prospects there? And is this bound to be a place where great powers come a cropper, because they just underestimate how hard it is to get anything done there?

Jimmy Carter: Anybody that has ever invaded Afghanistan has come out the loser. And I have serious doubts that we will prevail in Afghanistan, that is, to meet the present goals that we have set for ourselves.

My belief is that we will constantly reduce our expectations or our goals lower and lower and lower, until we can finally get out without serious embarrassment. But I don’t think we have the capability or the will to actually prevail militarily over the Taliban. That seems to me to be an almost hopeless case.

America elected Jimmy Carter more than a third of a century ago, and is still paying the price for its mistake.

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This was in the WSJ. You would think having been a C in C and having sent men to their deaths he’d show our troops some class and respect. He’s such an unpleasant and sour person. He is also wrong about the Afghans ever being defeated. They’ve been defeated a lot.