Romney wants to do the exact same shit Bush did.

7/25/2012 2:25:41 AM

Which is the exact same shit Obama is currently doing.

7/25/2012 8:39:46 AM

double post

[Edited on July 25, 2012 at 9:00 AM. Reason : .]

7/25/2012 8:39:58 AM

Quote :

"It is 2012. Why the hell are you using a graph based upon estimates from early 2009?"

And the straw grasping begins. Do you really think those tax cuts and wars got any cheaper since then? Here's another chart from May 2011. Pretty much all that's changed since then is the effects and projections of the wars and the tax cuts have turned out worse than projected in 2009.



Another



And here's another visualization for the hell of it.

Quote :

"And yes, I blame Obama for not ending the wars,"

Nobody, including liberals, are happy about this, but to take that and go on to make a statement like "maybe Obama can't be blamed for the whole budget. But Bush certainly can't be blamed for any of it." outs you as either a disingenuous prick or a spectacular moron. Starting two wars, based on lies, costing well over a trillion dollars before Obama even takes office is a little more egregious than trying (with mixed results) to end them gracefully without plunging two countries into complete anarchy.

Quote :

"ending the bailouts, ending the stimulus, bailing out the states, and on it goes. "

That's because you're an idiot. The bailouts and stimulus were small fries compared to the wars and the Bush tax cuts, and both of them have landed us in a much better economic situation than we would be otherwise.

But, please, keep on thinking that if the major banks and manufacturers of the US failed, the market would correct itself within a few months and we wouldn't now be knee-deep in the teens as far as unemployment rate goes with far, far more poverty and food stamp payouts. Nothing inspires confidence and investment like the collapse of the finance and manufacturing sectors, and nothing creates jobs like closed banks and shuttered factories.

Every economist outside of Fox News panels and the Austrian echo chamber agrees that the stimulus paid for itself, and the Bush tax cuts completely failed to create jobs as promised, and instead just made our debt problem today much much worse than it could have been.

You're just as bad as the Republicans, you know, except instead of refusing to acknowledge Bush's mistakes because of partisanship, you refuse to acknowledge that maybe some of the things he did that you like (TAX CUTS YAAAAYYYYYYYY) weren't the best idea at that time and place, because your ideology places things like tax cuts and bailouts into moral categories unhinged from pragmatism.

Seriously, are you just afraid that if you acknowledge some of Bush's influence that somebody might think, "Oh my, maybe Obama ISN'T Satan incarnate and the worst President of all time!"? Seriously, try to put your propagandizing aside and be remotely objective for a few minutes.


[Edited on July 25, 2012 at 9:06 AM. Reason : .]

7/25/2012 8:48:21 AM

Quote :

"That's because you're an idiot. The bailouts and stimulus were small fries compared to the wars and the Bush tax cuts, and both of them have landed us in a much better economic situation than we would be otherwise. "

Your assumption. There is no evidence to support it.

Quote :

"Starting two wars, based on lies, costing well over a trillion dollars before Obama even takes office is a little more egregious than trying (with mixed results) to end them gracefully without plunging two countries into complete anarchy. "

And I'm sure some other guy raped puppies. But they aren't president and that has nothing to do with how bad a president Obama has turned out to be.

The budget must be passed every year. To assume what came before is somehow set in stone that must be chipped away at is a lie politicians tell so they can spend money and blame someone else for it. If you could get 51% of Congress to vote for it, they could slash spending to a few million for the year. So to pretend all that matters is what Obama has done to the rate of change from the figures is a bold faced like. Blame Congress, but don't blame Bush, the guy that didn't even sign the budget in question. Hell, you can't even blame the Republicans, as I suspect they voted against the 2009 budget. Yet all your graphs continue to attribute the 2009 budget entirely to Bush.

Quote :

"Seriously, are you just afraid that if you acknowledge some of Bush's influence that somebody might think, "Oh my, maybe Obama ISN'T Satan incarnate and the worst President of all time!"?"

You got me there. I am genuinely frightened by the possibility of not enough people being completely disgusted by the political process and those who participate in it, because it is on that day the government will achieve the power people like you wish it already had, with disastrous consequences for all of us.

7/25/2012 1:14:54 PM

Quote :

"If you could get 51% of Congress to vote for it, they could slash spending to a few million for the year."

Hey everyone, LoneSnark really DOESN'T understand how shit works.

7/25/2012 8:52:40 PM

Quote :

"You realize that the repeal of Glass-Steagall is a red herring, right? The financial instruments created in the 70's and 80's had already blurred the line between investment and deposits, so the repeal of sections 20 and 32 of Glass-Steagall was an inevitiblity. The mortgage-backed securities at the heart of the crisis had zero to do with a repeal of the Glass-Steagall restrictions. Europe does not have any laws separating deposit and investment banks. Neither does Canada or Australia. There is absolutely no proof that the repeal of Glass-Steagall laws on banks led to the financial crisis. In fact, the investment banks and financial institutions which got in the most trouble (Bear Stearns, Lehman, Merril Lynch, AIG) never took advantage of the repeal, while the banks which did take advantage (JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, etc) fared much better. The only thing you can say about Gramm-Leach-Bliley is that it contributed to the formation of a few mega-banks which knew that they were too big to fail, who took excessive risks because of the implicit guarantees from having the entire financial system by the balls. This "too big to fail" issue is best addressed with legislation specifically targeting banks which pose a systemic risk to our financial system, rather than archaic laws to prevent bank diversification. The Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, by deregulating over-the-counter derivatives, was a much larger culprit in the financial crisis. Irrelevant, I know, considering that Clinton signed both, but still, I hate the wasteful energy spent on such a red herring."

you make a lot of good points, but the Glass-Steagall issue is NOT a red herring. the repeal is a major part of the problem. the cowboy nature of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act is also a major part of the problem, as is the excess liquidity in the system...

wish i had more time to discuss all this (and should probably do it in another thread), but in the meantime i defer to Sandy Weill's and Sheila Blair's comments on TV today..

7/25/2012 11:43:52 PM

Quote :

"Starting two wars, based on lies"

LOL. So the Afghan war was based on a lie. Please tell me more. The argument over going to war in Iraq is fine, I can understand the lefts take on this, but what the hell was Bush supposed to do after 9/11. Not go after the Taliban?

As for all of the criticism of Bush, the guy was 8 months into his presidency when 9/11 happened. Much of the debt was incurred in response to 9/11. Bush was no conservative and his debt record is a disgrace, but his debt was more justified IMO than much of Obama's.

Obama and the Democrats controlled Congress for two years , but could not pass a budget? The administration picking winners and losers by giving money to car companies and green energy while neglecting other industries is repugnant.

As for the Bush tax cut, everyone has benefitted from this so complain about it all you want, but the idea of repealing these will simply further harm the economy by reducing the amount of money in the private sector.

IMStoned4 makes it out like Clinton is some kind of God, but fails to acknowledge that the years Clinton balanced the budget, Congress was controlled primarly by Republicans. Clinton was a moderate Democrat, in much contrast to Obama, and actually embraced some Republican ideas and vice versa. The fact that military spending was obliterated following the Cold War and the dot bubble emerged helped play a huge role in the balanced budgets under Clinton.

Just as you cannot place sole blame anything bad on one person, you cannot also assign credit for anything good. Democrats like to pretend Clinton was solely responsible for the balanced budget.

7/26/2012 8:58:08 AM

Quote :

" So the Afghan war was based on a lie."

Well.. we went into Afghan because the Taliban was "harboring terrorists".

Using that logic, we should be attacked (and we will be) for harboring terrorists like James Holmes.

Obama is already attacking the second amendment.... here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/25/obama-gun-control_n_1704246.html?ref=election-2012-blog&icid=maing-grid10%7Chtmlws-main-bb%7Cdl5%7Csec1_lnk2%26pLid%3D184230


And will pass the UN gun treaty on the first day of the olympics (tomorrow)

7/26/2012 2:10:14 PM

Quote :

"Using that logic, we should be attacked (and we will be) for harboring terrorists like James Holmes."

7/26/2012 2:12:32 PM

Quote :

"As for all of the criticism of Bush, the guy was 8 months into his presidency when 9/11 happened. Much of the debt was incurred in response to 9/11. Bush was no conservative and his debt record is a disgrace, but his debt was more justified IMO than much of Obama's."

Are you fucking stupid? His debt was incurred in order to give more money to the top 2% of the country. You're just a fucking shill. GTFO.

7/26/2012 2:28:39 PM

And Obama's debt is being "incurred in order to give more money to the top 2% of the country"

That is how things in Washington work. Just because it is a different section of the top 2% doesn't change shit.

7/26/2012 3:07:19 PM

Actually, most of Obama's policies have benefited the bottom 98% more than anyone else. Just because you say something, doesn't make it true.

7/26/2012 4:10:07 PM

^

Quote :

"Just because you say something, doesn't make it true."

7/26/2012 5:35:26 PM

7/26/2012 5:39:17 PM

So the people who will now get health care, who work for the auto industries who still have their jobs, and who benefited from the stimulus bill money with jobs didn't benefit the most from Obama's policies?

7/26/2012 7:57:14 PM

nope.

7/26/2012 8:23:25 PM

Obama gave me a million dollars

Prove me wrong, faggots.

7/26/2012 11:14:25 PM

Quote :

"So the people who will now get health care, who work for the auto industries who still have their jobs, and who benefited from the stimulus bill money with jobs didn't benefit the most from Obama's policies?"

Well, they will not now get healthcare, what they get is a tax. The workers of the auto industry earn more than twice that of the average American and would have only lost their jobs temporarily besides. And the only people that benefited from the stimulus bill money (other than rich special interests which raked in tax breaks and subsidies) are government workers, which also earn far more than the median American.

Borrowing vast sums of money to give it to already rich government workers does not help the majority of Americans, just as Bush giving vast sums to defense industry workers (which similarly earn far more than the median) does not help the majority Americans.

7/27/2012 12:35:33 AM

You think the average government worker is rich? You're insane. But I already knew that.

7/27/2012 1:06:55 AM

Speaking of people benefiting from the new healthcare laws, by 2014, almost every state in the union will have switched fully to a "managed medicaid" model (http://www.kff.org/medicaid/upload/Medicaid-and-Managed-Care-Fact-Sheet.pdf) to save money, and will be dropping their "Fee for service" models. What this means is that if you are enrolled in medicaid in a state, the state, you will be enrolled with an MCO (basically HMOs run by a massive medical group rather than the insurance companies), and that MCO will be paid a fixed dollar amount per year to manage your care. If you rack up a lot of medical costs, they lose money, if they manage to keep your costs down, they make money. Essentially, your MCO is vastly incentivized to get you the cheapest care they can. Whether that means providing you with potentially expensive up front treatments in exchange for lower recurring costs, or it means getting you the absolute minimum care they can to get you to shut up and go away remains to be seen.

Because of the way this works, by 2014, it is estimated that 90% or so of physicians of all types will either be directly employed by an MCO, or employed by a hospital or other large medical group contracted with the MCO. In other words, if you thought the insurance company interfered with your doctor's ability to treat you, wait until the people paying your doctor are also the ones deciding what care your eligible for.

As they say, I told you all of that so that I could tell you this; this past month, two of the largest MCO groups, comprising managed medicaid in 19 states across the country announced that they will be merging (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303343404577516393834465420.html) with more mergers occurring country wide and more expected over the next few years as companies struggle to remain competitive under the new laws. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to decide whether the ever increasing consolidation of medical services is a good or bad thing for the consumer

7/27/2012 1:24:56 AM

^^ Every industry employs janitors. But just because not everyone at Citibank is rich doesn't make my statement that "Citibank employees earn far more than the median income" any less true.

Check the statistics. The average government worker earns far more than the average American. So diverting more resources from average Americans to government workers will increase income inequality.

7/27/2012 9:18:02 AM

I'll read it when you provide it. Until then you're just bullshitting.

7/27/2012 11:53:44 AM

Quote :

"You get no points for guessing that the BLS numbers unambiguously show public-sector workers making more than equivalent private-sector workers. Total employer compensation cost in 2011 averaged $40.76 per hour for state and local workers; for private industry workers it was $28.24 per hour. The disparities are also big for federal workers. A janitor working for Uncle Sam makes $30,110 a year, while his or her private-sector peer makes $24,188. Federal graphic designers, “recreation workers,” and even P.R. flacks all make between 50 percent and 100 percent more than their private-sector colleagues. ABC’s sources faulted those stats for failing to “take into account workers’ level of education."

http://reason.com/archives/2012/04/11/bad-apples

7/27/2012 12:15:48 PM