Deconstructing "Progressive " thought
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Rifleman62 said:
I think a fair number of Americans think the "hopey changey" thing is starting, albeit slowly, to work. And I doubt anyone who isn't a complete moron misses Bush. His ineptitude as POTUS is pretty clear, his legacy includes around a trillion dollars borrowed from China to kill 4500 American soldiers in Iraq to settle a personal score and enrich his cronies, justified only by lies. Oh, and there's tens of thousands of Iraqi civilains killed or maimed as well.
What's Obama accomplished?
- A start to meaningful healthcare reform (which polls before the repeal vote showed most Americans do not in fact want repealed).
- A start to meaningful financial reform that is necessary to prevent the mess of 2008 from recurring.
- Don't Ask, Don't Tell repealed by legislative means, not just tossed out in the courts (though, for good measure, the courts have also ruled it unconstitutional).
- Operations in Iraq scaled down substantially, and plans to wind up operations in Afghanistan
- New START Treaty about to be ratified
- Provided travel expenses to families of fallen soldiers to be on hand when the body arrives at Dover AFB (I like this one- a good move indeed, wonder where he got the idea)
- Related: Reversed the policy of barring media coverage during the return of fallen soldiers to Dover Air Force Base (when the family consents)
- Added $4.6 billion USD to the Veterans Administration budget to recruit and retain more mental health professionals
- Created more private sector jobs in 2010 than during entire Bush years (like this one a lot too)
The complete list is at http://whattheheckhasobamadonesofar.com/ - I just cherrypicked a few good ones.
Redeye said:
Those must the min0rity of Americans who voted for his Party & political program last November, when he got, in his own words, "a shellacking".
He has one talent - he makes great speeches.
Otherwise he seems to have some severe limitations. His handling of the US economy is tragic.
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After which polls actually showed his popularity being higher than where both Clinton and Reagan were at their first midterm. He got a strong message sent - great. So did the GOP, and they don't seem to have acted well on it. What have they done to address the deficit? What have they done to create jobs? They claimed that if the Bush tax cuts were extended somehow businesses would be relieved of "uncertainty" and suddenly start hiring. That hasn't happened. What have they done to actually deal with the economy, which is what it seemed voters wanted in November?
Haletown said:
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ModlrMike said:
When the contrary view isn't a view based on a reasonable position of fact, but on an asinine argument (or one that is false), as in the case of the blog to which I referred, I don't deem them worthy of any particular respect. I have no problem with contrary opinions when they're presented reasonably and based on fact. Some idiotic claim that "ZOMG OBAMA IS GOING TO GET AN ARMY OF BOTS TO PROPAGANDIZE PEOPLE" deserves the respect I give it: none.
Redeye said:
Tuscon happened, he does what he does best, he makes a nice speech. He gets a bump in the polls.
CNN just released a poll that says Donald Trump is within 2 points of Obama in a presidential preference poll.
2 points off without even campaigning ! Wouldn't it be sweet to see The Donald lean forward across his boardroom table and say "Barack, your Fired !!"
Americans will rue the day they drank the bathwater of closet marxist/Community Organizer/Unionista and voted for him to be their president.
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Haletown said:
Speaking of moronic comments...
As to your claim about his handling of the US economy being "tragic", let's actually discuss something of substance, because that'd be refreshing. What, in your opinion, has been tragic? Bear in mind the economy he inherited (and I'm even going to make a concession to not blame anyone in particular for it, because the roots of the mess are varied), and the state of fiscal policy when he took office.
The idea some people had that he could wave some kind of magic wand and fix the US economy, which has been a complete basket case for a couple of years, or the US budget, which has been a mess since the last administration, was ridiculous. However, for all their complaining, I have yet to see how his opponents plan to do anything. They talk of "spending cuts" but when pressed on what specifically they will cut, they offer nothing. What have the GOP accomplished since taking the House? A pointless repeal of ACA (a bill which, according to the non-partisan CBO, would actually decrease the deficit). A pointless attack on women by defunding Planned Parenthood the other night? Sure, that'll save a princely $75 million/year. Except that the long term social costs of reducing access to preventative healthcare, contraception and sexual education will probably cost a lot more in the long run. What else have they done? Defunded NPR and PBS? Yeah, another huge savings.
What have they done that promotes economic recovery? Nothing. What plans do they have that will do so?
Tell me, Haletown, since apparently I'm missing something, what exactly should the President be doing differently?
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What should the President be doing to promote economic recovery?
Absolutely nothing.
Stop helping.
Edit;"Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things." Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations 1776
Absolutely nothing.
Stop helping.
Edit;"Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things." Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations 1776
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Rifleman62 talking to himself:
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Redeye said:
You need to understand something very clearly. Not everyone holds your opinion. No one is obligated to engage you or your views or try convince you they are right in their opinion. No one is obligated to cite sources or proof for their beliefs because you say so. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, uneducated or not, whether you like it or not.
Your general and all encompassing use of morons and imbeciles, and any other detractors, to anyone not of your persuasion is to cease now.
Keep presenting your case and facts as you wish, but you'll keep the descriptive comments to yourself.
That goes for anyone else here that wants to tread that path.
Milnet.ca Staff
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Redeye said:
Actually, I'm going one further than RG, you can consider this your freebie warning.
Bruce
Staff
Redeye said:
Let's see . . . just off the top
300 - 400% increase in the US deficit, 3 budgets in a row . . . just for comparison purposes the Parliamentary Budget Officer in Canada figures Canada will have a deficit this fiscal of about $35 billion. Using the standard 10:1 conversion ratio, the US deficit, to be equivalent, would be $350 Billion. Obama just released a budget that calls for a deficit of $1.57 Trillion, that's trillion with a "T".
If Harper put forward a budget with a $350 Billion deficit, he'd be gone in weeks, if not days.
Obamacare . . . massive cost increases, massive paperwork burden on businesses, massive over regulation of health delivery services. Let there be Death Panels.
Unemployment - officially north of 9% but when you factor in the folks who have quite looking, probably in the 20% range
Real Estate market collapse - Obama refuses to reform Fanny & Freddy and the egregious race based laws requiring mortgage lenders to make loans to unqualified people.
Card Check legislation . . . so Unions can intimidate when they organize - really a pro business action that will make employers want to hire. Not.
Unknown tens or hundreds billions wasted on boondoggle projects like High Speed Rail and useless Greenie Climate change projects.
The list could go on an on . . .
The only good news for Americans is he doesn't control the American purse strings anymore . . . the Republicans do and they can and appear to be slowing down the Democrats/Obama's spendthrift ways.
Look, I get you like the guy and his policies. I don't dislike him - I think he is a very slick sales guy for what he believes in. But his policies aren't working and they'll never work, just like they didn't work in Greece.
Borrowing your way to prosperity?
Un huh.
Rifleman62 said:
Did you even bother reading the site you posted? This is all speculation and hearsay something you would find on an Alex Jones website or Fox News. . I understand it's easy to skim over an article and think it's fact but please do a little critical thinking. Also the writer of this blog loses all credablity by calling President Obama a communist. I can't believe this shit is allowed on this website (army.ca) as a source. If I posted a website accusing Bush or Harper of being Hitler or a facist I would be laughed at and banned.
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Redeye said:
The POTUS should have and could have sent the Congress a budget that served the people's needs: major cuts to unaffordable 'entitlements,' major cuts to the defence budget - including, probably, a strategic plan to disengage from West Asia and, yes, < gasp > a new, national VAT, modeled on Canada's reasonably (not perfectly, not even well) structured HST. That would have been leading. Instead Obama choses to play politics - to fiddle while America burns.
Look, Bush was not a good president, he wasn't even just an OK president; but Obama is not any, not one iota, better.
Political irresponsibility in the USA has reached epic proportions - amongst both the Democrats and the Republicans, including some/many/most of the Tea Party people.
Obama is America's Pierre Trudeau - a dilettante; someone, additionally, who has, in the great Isiah Berlin's model, the intellectual characteristics of a hedgehog: one "big" idea that precludes considering lesser things, like the economy or the national interest. For Trudeau it was destructive nationalism - something which never, much, existed in Canada, hors de Québec; for Obama it is redressing some of the grievances of poor, urban, black Americans. Trudeau managed to reduce Canada from a prosperous, 'leading' middle power to a debt ridden international lightweight (in fairness, he didn't do it alone and Mulroney did not reverse the "project' when he could have done so - Canadians liked Trudeau's vision, poisonous to their own best interests though it was); Obama may do the same for America; charisma is a terrible thing.
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TheHead said:
Actually as repulsive as that guy is, we have links all the time to CBC stories [comments] that call Mr. Harper and Mr. Bush a lot worse than that, so I believe you to be quite incorrect.
Bruce
Yes the comments sections which has nothing to do with the content of the article itself but assholes in the peanut gallary. Should that shit be allowed on CBC? Of course not whoever moderates the site is obviously a moron and has the same mental capacity as idiot who call Obama a socialist or communist, regardless. If I posted a SOURCE calling Mr. Harper or Mr. Bush, Hitler and accusing George Bush of going to war in Iraq for oil I would be doggie piled and banned. I'm saying the user who posted the blog should be banned, he obviously didn't read it. A little care from not only the Liberals but the Conservatives also on this site need to be taken when posting sources that are nothing but bullshit.Bruce Monkhouse said:
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I'm sorry but I must ask who considers a 'blogger' a source anyway?
IMO, a blog is no more, or less, a source than the comments section of CBC so here we are again......
IMO, a blog is no more, or less, a source than the comments section of CBC so here we are again......
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Haletown said:
A direct comparison of Canadian and US budgets isn't really apt, though. Canada doesn't channel anywhere near as much money to defence as the US does, for example. Defence spending is a massive, massive contributor to the US deficit, and it is a very difficult political animal to tackle. Obama's budget did include some cuts to program spending, but without tackling the might military budget and trying to figure out further reforms to entitlement programs, which is a substantial undertaking, there's little room for him to move.
Remember, part of what forced up the US deficit was the Democratic Congress elected in 2006 forcing the Iraq War to be included in the budget instead of keeping it "off the books". Many on the right seem to like to claim that this means that the Dems caused the deficit. They didn't. They just forced it to be recognized.
Haletown said:
The CBO (which is non-partisan) disagrees with you on the cost increases, if you have a source countering them I'd be interested to see it. The paperwork burden on businesses, again, I think that's an inflated claim as well. Of course, my solution to that would be a single-payer system of some sort. Massive over-regulation? In what specific ways? And death panels? Are you serious? The closest thing to a death panel one faces in the US is the prospect of your private insurer rescinding your healthcare because their post-claim underwriters find some way to declare your condition "pre-existing". Incidentally, this happens primarily to people not in group plans - ie entrepreneurs, the engine that drives the economy. In the US there are some 119 million people who have such "pre-exisitng conditions" who would find themselves at risk of this. Since ACA ("Obamacare") passed, that's no longer going to be a risk.
Haletown said:
Well, that's how unemployment numbers are measured. That is the way it is - to be classified as unemployed you need to be actively seeking a job. We use the same methodology (basically) in Canada. The US job market is terrible, that's beyond question. The fact is that in order to get going, the US economy is going to have to fundamentally change, that's simply reality. The "green economy" concept, knowledge based industries, these are the things that will HAVE to lead the US economy forward, because the days of manufacturing in the US are gone. Those jobs have been exported overseas and they are not coming back. This is a challenge anyone in office would face, regardless of their party.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2011/jan/21/judging-job-killing/ - interesting notes on some of the sillier GOP claims on "job killing"
Haletown said:
Er, this is false. Obama's much-vilified financial reform bill actually deals with this, to an extent. "Race based laws" is a not-so-slight exaggeration of the "Equal Housing Lender" program, which was itself established to deal with egregious discrimination in the mortgage market. Both sides of the spectrum bear responsibility for the mess in the US mortgage markets, and more reforms are needed. One thing I'd like to see proposed to deal with the deficit is the end to mortgage interest deductibility in the US - but it, like the military, is political kryptonite. Not so long ago I read an interesting article, I think in The Economist, about all the policy efforts in the US to encourage home ownership - it contrasted them with Canada, which hasn't got things like deductibility and noted that home ownership rates in Canada are about the same.
Interestingly, as a Senator, Obama saw the problem on the horizon and sent a letter to the Treasury about it. See http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2008/oct/08/barack-obama/obama-sounded-the-alarm-on-subprimes/
Haletown said:
I'm not a fan of Card Check (or unions, generally), but I think the impact of business of it is dramatically exaggerated. If you have some facts that suggest otherwise, let's see them.
Haletown said:
Well, a lot of that money hasn't even been spent. As far as stimulus type projects go, infrastructure is generally where you want to spend the money, assuming that the projects are beneficial. A shining example exists in Halifax where under the grand "Economic Action Plan", Halifax spent inordinate amounts of money to build a highway underpass to nowhere that went way over budget and really makes no sense. Some of the rail projects seem to be that way and not all of them will go forward. That being said, there are examples (like Amtrak's Acela service on the Northeast Corridor) of rail service being profitable, more fuel/energy efficient etc. One would have to look at the projects on a case-by-case basis, but there certainly seems to be an argument for some of the projects anyhow. As for your comment about climate change, I will simply say that amongst the scientific community there is about as much dissent about the realities of climate change being an issue as there is about the theory of evolution: pretty much none. Therefore, I am fine with investing in technologies that will reduce our dependence on fossil fuels (especially petroleum, but also coal - moreso coal in some ways because it's such an environmental nightmare even ignoring CO2). I'll further tie this back to the point above that development of such technologies will probably be vital for the US economy to adapt to the changing world. There's big market for them, after all.
Haletown said:
Really? Again I ask, in what tangible ways have they done anything meaningful about spending so far? Or about job creation? Or about the economy in general?
Haletown said:
Actually, I'm fairly ambivalent about the guy. I think his policies are better than the ruinous policies of the last administration. But they don't go nearly far enough, the USA has to accept some very, very tough realities that both parties seem content to ignore. I don't get the comparison to Greece, because, well, Greece is nothing like the USA - the problems it faced, and the roots thereof, have little similarity.
Haletown said:
Well, that's been the Republicans' plan as much as anyone else's - and look what they blew the money they borrowed on.
