Columns Retired Columns & Blogs |
Loudspeakers Amplification | Digital Sources Analog Sources Featured | Accessories Music |
Columns Retired Columns & Blogs |
Loudspeakers Amplification Digital Sources | Analog Sources Accessories Featured | Music Columns Retired Columns | Show Reports | Features Latest News Community | Resources Subscriptions |
Jim,
You said that your stimulus would include money for the military and a tax cut. Where would you get the money? You would wind up printing it as well.
Would you rather he said that we shouldn't live within our means and that it's business as usual?
If "W" hadn't screwed us, the economy and everyone but his buddies we wouldn't have this problem. Puleeeeeze, a war in Iraq because Saddam sent a hit squad after his dad!
Ain't that the truth! The war in Iraq is the elephant in the room, sucking $2 Billion every week. During the debates I thought Obama could have countered pretty much every single statement by McCain with, "Yeah, but you guys started the war that costs us $2 Billion every single week. And I voted against it."
Actually, it's even higher than $2 Billion, no?
--Ethan
He voted against it?
Was he a Senator when we started that war?
I'm not much of an expert with current events, but I know he was opposed to the war. I thought I remembered him saying he "voted" again it. I know he said he opposed it. I'm pretty sure that however he opposed it, it is on record.
--Ethan
I agree with the President on this one. No more fucking overpriced stereo equipment in your house on credit. No more subscribing to magazines you barely read. You know, things like that.
Another fallacy of the Progressive Thinkers of America.
He was a "community organizer" once it started. When got in position to vote in the Illinois and US Senates, then he voted "Present" more times than he voted "Yay" or "Nay". He didn't want a pesky voting record to weigh him down. I don't think you'll find him voting against that war.
Yesterday he sent another 17,000 troups to Afganistan.
Dave
Iraq is wrapping up. The current president wants to finish up in Afghanistan as well. We only need treaties or even bases in Iraq and Afghanistan to have a strategic card to play with Iran. Who wants to be invaded on two fronts?
I freely admit what I'm not knowledgeable about. I only wish others would do the same. However, that doesn't mean I don't pay attention! I'm more of a concept guy, and less concerned with dates etc. Sort of like my objection to most schools - they make kids memorize a mind-numbing list of president's birthdays and other irrelevant dates, but never teach them how to reason or think logically. Now, if I were the king, things would be mighty different around here!
--Ethan
State senator. See second paragraph:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama
So I take back my apology for not paying attention enough.
Also, find this farther down the page:
I wish he would practice what he preaches...a recap over the last year
$125,000,000,000 - Bush Rebate
$810,000,000,000 - Bush/Democrat Bribeout (TARP)
$1,100,000,000,000 - Obama/Democrat Porkfest
$75,000,000,000 - Mortgage bailout
$1-2,000,000,000,000 - Geithner's proposed treasury spending
What does all this have in common? Not a dime is in budget. It is ALL deficit spending.
How is the government 'living within its means', or is that phrase restricted to the little folk.
$125 billion a year is the actual number...or, less than 1/6 the money we have flushed away in under 9 months with no end in sight. The war was chump change compared to all this pork.
He voted against it in a symbolic vote as a state senator in Illinois. That is a diversion anyway as the entire issue is simply not relevant to today's massive spending.
Let me put this in terms the left can grasp. The dems spent 8 years hammering Bush for adding 5 trillion to the deficit (by ignoring the war and vastly bloated social spending). So far, in 1 month, Obama has proposed or passed over $3.1 trillion. At this rate he will spend more magic money in 1 year then Bush did in 8, and with a lot less to show for it other than a lot of pork and bribes to democrat special interests.
Can the Obama administration be anymore tone deaf? After pushing his $1.1 trillion Generational Theft Act of 2009 through the House last night, the White House apparently decided to throw itself a swank cocktail party. According to ABC
Folks,
It may behoove you to remember that we're on the verge of another Great Depression. In order to stave it off, there has to be injection of funds into the economy. Deficit spending or no deficit spending, unless something is done, the economic collapse would dwarf any deficits we may incur. Let's keep the big picture in perspective rather than worrying about a $100 dinner plate.
You have no idea what was the "Great Depression". Go back and read some more. Books.
Plus, Obama lives in that giant frigging house with all the lighting on at night and that giant lawn - the average American can't do that. Fuckin' Obama.
He flies on the giant fuel inefficient plane, too, and sends his kids to private school.
Probably has all his clothes cleaned and ironed without doing any of the work.
Bet he pirates cable TV, too.
He should immediately move to a two bedroom house in the nearest area where that house costs under 150K if he's sincere.
Most expensive inauguration, ever. What a jerk. Hey, wait a minute, isn't every fuckin' inauguration the most expensive one ever?
Bush spent 42.3 million in 2005, and he is only the 36th best President.
Clinton spent 33 million.
Bush is worse than Clinton, I guess. The numbers match up, too. Bush was a huge spender!
All told, the Obama event is expected to cost over $150 million
The problem with this idea is that it casts all ones fate into one throw of the dice. Either the pork and spending works, or it fails. If it works, the left will get the credit and the country will pull out in a year or so If it fails, we will stay where we are or get worse, unemployment will hit 10% or more and we will see double digit inflation by 2010. The problem with the 'doesn't work' possibility is that we have already spent all our wealth on the failed plan. There is no more money to simply throw at the problem. Money gone!
We could have the economy crash as you note despite the spending and once it does we have no resources to do anything about it at all. As this spend until we drop program has never worked anywhere it has been tried, the lack of optimism amongst serious folk is understandable.
Every day more folk are assuming the government does not know what it is doing and are taking their personal and families security into their own hands. Folk are stockpiling gold, silver, guns, ammo, and food as well as removing themselves as far as they can from the economy. As this tendency grows, it creates a self fulfilling prophecy. The more inept government is seen to be, the more folk look out for themselves, MAKING that government more inept as the best and brightest opt out.
Yeah, 'cause that plan always works out so well.
If you bought gold in 1980, and sold today, you'd flip at about a 30-ish percent or so profit. About 1.35 percent per year return.
Genius.
If you just bought a Dow average fund in 1980, when the market was 759, you'd still be sitting at about a 1000% profit.
Stockpiling guns, ammo, gold, and food and leaving the economy.
Sounds like those cults who marry their own 12 year old daughters. That's not fiscal planning, that's psychopathology.
Do those Chicken Little stockpilers have a date for the end of the world yet? How about if they quit with the stockpiling and start getting to work?
Yeah, but times how many years? So in truth it's more like a Trillion, no? And the war is mostly money down the toilet, versus stimulus spending and social programs that at least would help many Americans.
To be clear, I am opposed to spending borrowed money. GW did that for years borrowing money to give rich folks tax breaks. It wasn't right then and it's probably not right now either.
--Ethan
And you do?
Jim,
You yourself said that you thought a stimulus was needed. The only difference was that your stimulus involved funneling money for military projects. If your stimulus doesn't work, we will be in the same predicament as we would be if Obama's doesn't work. So, the choice is to either have a stimulus or do nothing. I vote for stimulus. We tried the do nothing approach with Herbert Hoover.
This debate deserves honesty and facts IMHO. Here are some numbers that shows the unemployment rate during the Great Depression. It's peak year was 1933 at 24.75% with FDR taking office in April. With his deficit spending on public works programs of all types, each year the unemployment rate dropped until 1938 when a secondary recession hit and spiked unemployment back up from 14.81% to 18.91%. Some of it was due to certain works public programs ending. In 1939 it began dropping once again to 17.05%, and 14.45 in 1940. A solid portion of this drop was the pickup in military manufacturing to assist Great Britain against Nazi Germany.
It is obvious that Obama's goal is to spend the stimulus bill $$ to stop the notorious cycle of layoffs, less spending, more layoffs. It's a vicious circle that must be stopped. FDR's various jobs programs did exactly that, stopped the bleeding, then slowly began turning the tide. of course, it took WWII with massive rationing of consumer goods and big buildup in savings to truly end the economic storm. Luckily, for Obama, unemployment nationally is still under 8%, easier in some ways to deal with. But, since the USA manufacturing base is smaller, job creation is harder. Plus, he has the mortgage mess that BOTH parties helped to create. First things first, stop the job losses. Then, and only then will the economy have the traction to move forward again.
In 1980 we were on the verge of the Reagan revolution and times were going to get better. Today we are in ObamaLand and it is not at all clear things will even remain as they are, much less get better. Good heavens, there are idiots in Washington who want to screw with 401K plans....shudder.
2003-2008 = 5 years times $125 Billion is $625 billion...more like a half trillion than a trillion.
Basic math
The social spending will probably NOT help Americans. The idiots reversed welfare reform in this thing. Welfare reform caused a drop in welfare roles, an increase in employment and a reduction in child poverty over the last decade...the social services industry is bringing generational welfare back! Yea Gods!
The situation was worse two years into FDR then Hoover left it. Hoover just did not have the FDR propaganda machine. My military spending is a lot less than the Pork in the bill that did pass. I estimate about $200 billion v half a trillion.
Let's see. Basic math, eh?
March of 2003 to present would be one month shy of six years.
750 billion, which, by YOUR math may still be closer to half a trillion than a trillion, but to us people who care, a hundred billion here, a hundred billion there, after while the numbers really start to add up!
I'm with you on welfare reform, one of the great accomplishments of the Clinton Administration...oh, wait, I'm sure since it was good it's the one time you'll say that the Republicans in Congress weren't powerless victims of the Democratic minority.
But the cost has dropped over the last year so it is not a straight amount. It was also the end of march, not the start. Still well short of a trillion.
My problem with the Obama plan is pretty simple. I have been reading a lot about the 1st World War of late. Just like today's economic advisers, Generals then were in a situation they had never seen before or prepared for and like today, they had one and only one solution. Then they would step onto the firing step, wait for the whistle and the bombardment to stop, crawl over the top, and be cut down in their tens of thousands by machine guns and artillery while they advanced a few hundred lines before being thrown back. The Generals would all gather and decide the issue was not the machine guns and artillery, no, it was that the attack did not have enough men involved. After they lost 20,000 dead at Ypres in 3 hours, they didn't worry. When they lost 250,000 in the Dardanelles, they realized the plan had a few problems. When the French lost 500,000 in a months long battle at Verdun, the strategy was in doubt. They decided even more men were the answer and we come to the 2nd Somme. They learned zip.
Today we have an administration and congress who are throwing hundreds of billions and then trillions at the economy, equally without success, and the answer to this lack of success is to...print more money.
I'm actually with you with regard to being dubious as to the virtues of the bailout.
I think the real plan is to borrow all this cash, then induce hyperinflation at some point to make the money worth less, then pay it back with cheap dollars.
Which does make reliable eating difficult...Gold topped $1000 briefly....watch the companies who advertise gold this and silver that bump their prices on the pretense.
Here is the TARP in pictures
http://home.att.net/~mlnj2/bailout_in_a.pdf
We just paid off our mortgage 15 years early. So, I have room to help other people pay their mortgages. Mr. President? Did you catch that? We worked really really hard and paid off our house and cars. You can come after us now. Only one thing. We own guns. That makes us citizens. So, please ring the bell at the door. It does work for a reason.
I expect the government to be caught going door to door to check for the change in ones couch and overstuffed chairs...
There is loot in that furniture...
Obama plans to announce a new 4.6% tax increase for small business and the evil rich....watch the markets drop on that one.
He considers "rich" as the media likes to call it at >$250k. That's ridiculous. $250k couldn't buy you shit in NYC.
You're talking out of your ass again. I lived in NYC on a lot less than that and guess what? I was pretty comfortable.
Bums in the YMCA don't count.
Well, if you want to afford audiophile grade speakers, then you got to hit the Y, push the bums out and set up your little corner room.