er.. I guess he flip-flopped again?

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/...s-i-was-completely-wrong/?hpt=hp_c1

He didn't flip flop. He was wrong with his number. Its 18%.

so... when he stood behind his 47% from when it leaked until now... and now he's saying he was completely wrong? I guess it's like saying you are pro-choice to get elected and then saying you are completely against it to get elected.

Fair enough, rev. So it's like Obama saying adding to the debt is unpatriotic to get elected then adding to the debt even more but that's fine?

it's not but that's different than writing off half the country and the debt increase was unavoidable in the situation of the last 8+ years. romney wants to add 2 trillion to military spending on top of that.

just want to be fair to each. I don't buy into the inherited debt issue. He knew what he was getting into when he ran for office, it was no surprise.

it is an issue though. he doesn't have final say in the budget. how money is spent is the challenge of politics. the fact he said adding to the debt is unpatriotic isn't a promise it wouldn't increase while in office.

That's not "being fair to each" because the two things aren't equivalent. Changing your stance on debt is not the same as getting shamed into pretending you don't hold half the country in contempt.

I mean seriously. He says it's "not his job" to represent 47% of the country because they're poor, and then "admits he's wrong" because it's actually only 18% of the country that it's "not his job" to represent because they're poor.

It's...breathtaking.

Ark, that is also the DECEPTION of politics. Promising to fix all these issues when the country has continues to plummet while adding trillions to the national debt, then crying about the evils of the Republicans and how it's not fair cuz they're big st00pid doo-doo heads. That doesn't sound like a leader to me.

Snowden, of course it's not equivalent the way you phrased it. When is it ever the same thing? Just throwing out an example for another example to illustrate the ineptitude of both. I'm not backing Romney on his 47% comment. It was a stupid thing to say and a piss poor position for a presidential candidate to have. I just refuse to acknowledge that President Obama is any better for this country.

What are we even arguing about? They're all gonna drive this country into the ground either way. Let's just get drunk at a show about it.

your first sentence could be said about any politician at any time. do you remember bush?

why is it necessary to add 2 trillion to the biggest military budget in the world combined? is that better for the country? what about a voucher program for healthcare that doesn't take into account pre existing conditions, insurance company exploits, or american medical cost cabals? you gonna tell your dad he should have saved up for private insurance? does that fix the roots of the problems insurance and health cost that this country has, that is disproportionate to the rest of the civilized world? or leaving states on their own to fix their schools and infrastructure, instead of incentive based programs to make sure the states deserve federal money? every country that is ahead of us in education has federal programs, but apparently that wouldn't work for us. corporate tax breaks, oil subsidies, corn subsidies, all of these policies that are 100+ years old from the age of slave trade capitalism? how is all this shit good for the country??

it kills me when smart guys who have some grasp of history and political science think the lesser of two evils is romney and his aging conservative base that think the answer to heal a country with a growing population and a humbling world standing is stop progressive traditions that began in the 1920's, and why the hell not, go to war with iran and call palestine 2nd class humans. fuck all.

Though the number 47 seems high, you simply can't argue that there is a good portion of voters that will vote Obama solely cause they choose to be unemployed and have the government take care of them. There are many worthless hypocritical leeches in this country that don't understand how economies work, and why companies aren't hiring; they just get a check and hope it doesn't change. The Obama campaign aims to keep these voters by exploiting comments like Romney's. A comment like that shouldn't offend anyone who's seen the labor statistics.

http://youtu.be/K9njHHyRI7g

i agree to a certain extent, but anyone will tell you being on unemployment sucks and it's not a way to live. it also doesn't last.

"Meanwhile, there were some really huge issues about the economy that were not addressed at all last night….

1 – In an hour and a half debate about the economy, the Federal Reserve was not mentioned a single time.

2 – In an hour and a half debate about the economy, Ben Bernanke was not mentioned a single time.
A d v e r t i s e m e n t
3 – In an hour and a half debate about the economy, quantitative easing was not mentioned a single time.

4 – In an hour and a half debate about the economy, the term “derivatives” was not used a single time. Considering the fact that derivatives could bring down our financial system at any moment, this is an issue that should be talked about.

5 – In an hour and a half debate about the economy, there was no mention of the millions of jobs that have been shipped out of the country. Considering the fact that both Obama and Romney have played a role in this, it is probably a topic they both want to avoid. Overall, the United States has lost more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities since 2001.

6 – In an hour and a half debate about the economy, neither candidate mentioned that the velocity of money has plunged to a post-World War II low.

7 – In an hour and a half debate about the economy, the fact that the rest of the world is beginning to reject the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency was not mentioned a single time, but this has enormous implications for our economy in the years ahead.

8 – The fact that the Social Security system is headed for massive trouble was only briefly touched on during the debate. At the moment, there are approximately 56 million Americans that are collecting Social Security benefits. By 2035, that number is projected to grow to an astounding 91 million. Overall, the Social Security system is facing a134 trillion dollar shortfall over the next 75 years. When are our politicians going to honestly address this massive problem?

9 – In an hour and a half debate about the economy, the nightmarish drought the country is experiencing right now was not mentioned a single time.

10 – In an hour and a half debate about the economy, the financial meltdown in Europe was basically totally ignored. But considering the fact that Europe has a larger economy and a much larger banking system than we do, perhaps someone should have asked Obama and Romney what they plan to do when the financial system of Europe implodes.

11 – In an hour and a half debate about the economy, the student loan debt bubble was only briefly mentioned.

12 – In an hour and a half debate about the economy, there was not a single word about the fact that the gap between the wealthy and the poor is now larger than it has been at any point since the Great Depression.

13 – In an hour and a half debate about the economy, there was no mention of TARP (which they both supported at the time). Would they both bail out the big banks if another financial crisis erupted?

14 – In an hour and a half debate about the economy, there was no mention of the economic stimulus packages (which they both supported at the time). Would they both want more “economic stimulus” if we entered another recession?

15 – In an hour and a half debate about the economy, neither candidate talked about the fact that most of the jobs our economy is producing now are low income jobs. In fact, since the end of the last recession, 58 percent of the jobs that have been created are low paying jobs.

16 – In an hour and a half debate about the economy, neither candidate mentioned that more than 100 million Americans are enrolled in at least one welfare program run by the federal government or that more than half of all Americans are now at least partially financially dependent on the government. I can’t blame Romney for avoiding this point though – he probably wanted to avoid the phrase “47 percent” at all costs.

Is this really the best that America can do?

Tens of millions of Americans tuned in hoping to become more informed about the candidates, and instead what they got was an hour and a half of tap dancing as Obama and Romney constantly tossed out buzzwords such as “education”, “energy independent” and “middle class”."

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archive...nd-romney-avoided-during-the-debate

of course, it's a presidential debate. substance not invited.

CAUGHT

Haha! Ya bastid. I'm quitting this site.

Ark, you seem to be misunderstanding my position.

Sure you raise good a good point about military spending, though the current states of tension around the world is pretty unsettling.

The voucher system proposed I believe DOES account for preexisting conditions, but that's just what he has said, and we all know what that means.

I know your position on the Affordable Care Act. You posted a pretty detailed look at it a while back. Yes, there are some good things, namely preventing insurance companies from blocking those with preexisting conditions.

I'm not some vehement tea party person who absolutely despises Obama but I think he's had his shot and hasn't done a good job. There will probably never be a candidate that espouses my views, Ron Paul came kinda close I suppose.

The thing about his remark isn't the actual number, it's that he came right out and said it "wasn't his job" to represent those people as president. Because (he incorrectly thought) that they didn't pay taxes and were unlikely to vote for him. The fact that he got the actual number wrong doesn't change the fact that this is an incredibly fucked-up way to look at the presidency.

The fact that he was willing to write off almost half the country without even thinking "hm, it feels weird to totally dismiss 47% of the country I'm running for president of, maybe I should make sure I'm reading this tax info correctly?" is still pretty fucked-up as well though. Why would a sane person run for president if they actually believed that 47% of the population were pieces of shit?

There are plenty of things I don't like about Obama, but he's definitely the lesser evil here.

Nearly all the debt spending under Obama comes from Bush policies Obama voted against or opposed: Iraq War/other bloated Pentagon weapons spending, Medicare D, 2002 tax cuts mostly for the rich.

Take those out and we'd be spending about the same amount we take in - so the net effect on the national debt over the last four years would have been if anything cutting it, not adding to it.






Obama's programs have added less federal spending than any President since Eisenhower:

By law, the Senate is responsible for the annual federal budget. The Democrat-controlled Senate has not passed a formal budget since April 2009.The last Republican budget in 2007 showed a deficit that was the lowest in five years, and was the fourth straight decline in deficit spending. After that, Democrats in Congress took control of spending, and that includes Barack Obama, who voted for the budgets. by the end of this year the Democrats will have controlled the House for four years, the Senate for six and the presidency for four. That computes to more than 77 percent of the power for the past six years.

Cute charts, shadow. Thanks for posting them. Like I've already stated, more cry baby Obama saying it's not his fault he hasn't done what he SAID he was going to do. He made it impossible for himself but that was what he ran his campaign on.

Since Romney is going to lose, what does it matter?

It matters because Obama likes Baggage.

I can't wait till Obama turns us into a third world country and I can start a company called Elite Hunting like Hostel. We'll be selling tons of 18%ers for killing.

Running Man - Worcester Edition. Hell yeah.

Abortions for some, small American flags for others,

So he should have what, burned down Congress?

He certainly reached out to them like a billion times.

One of his key promises was to not be like Bush when it came to gross executive overreach, but it tied his hands in other ways; he couldn't just run over Congress when they were screwing around.

Making it impossible for himself, though - I mean, what was the alternative? Every conservative policy Obama embraced to reach across the aisle, the Republicans suddenly said they hated it and always had (cap and trade energy policy and the health care mandate were CONSERVATIVE ideas that originated from Republicans in the 90's). Accepting your interpretation of events is not only ignoring that level of intransigence by Congress, it's rewarding it. Consider, if their strategy were to prove successful in this elections, we'd have nothing but administrations in the future where Congress of one party blocked EVERYTHING the President of the other party tried to do until everything fails to function; that's something that didn't happen until the last few years, but it will be the new normal for both parties unless the people actually have the sense to stand up and call bullshit.

Really good question.

But I think the margin does make a difference. A couple points in the popular vote and it's four more years of the same gridlock if Republicans keep the House. A larger margin means the Republicans will abandon their Congressional strategy of ignoring their jobs entirely just to fuck the President, because it didn't serve them well; Obama then really gets to enact most of his actual policies like any President before him, which will then either succeed or fail on their own merits, and his party will be rewarded or punished accordingly in the next election, instead of the clusterfuck Congress has given us where things are unclear.

Yes, he should have burned down Congress lol. Glad we figured it out. Cheers.

ARGUE ON THE INTERNET ABOUT IT BECAUSE IT WILL FIX EVERYTHING

I mean, seriously.

the budgets have to be bipartisan, correct me if I'm wrong but in 2010 or 11 Obama had to extend the Bush tax cuts so Republicans could pass on it. The budgets included increases in military spending for the 2 wars that people forget are still going on and needed both sides to pass on that, and 77 percent of the power is wicked oversimplified way to look at govt khed.

and just wanna add again that Romney thinks he can decrease the deficit without adding additional revenue, taxes or otherwise. How's your tax rate compared to his? 30 percent vs his 14 percent sounds right.

His tax rate is based on unearned income. Not the same thing. When I took money out of my investments in June to pay off my credit card I didn't pay the same tax rate as I do on my weekly pay check. Everyone is free to invest their money.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/st...s-barack-obama-has-doubled-deficit/

http://factcheck.org/2012/09/obamas-deficit-dodge/

that's another good site. they both say the same thing that obama inherited the greatest deficit in history and also increased it by another 10 percent, increasing spending in afghanistan (among the things he did i didn't approve of) and paying for a stimulus package to reinvest in the country, some parts of that i didn't like, stimulus is a different discussion.

yes, i know investments are different, but high income people still pay a higher tax rate, which is out of balance with what the federal government wants to spend money on.

I don't think Romney is the greatest thing since sliced bread. But Obamas programs have not moved the economy in a direction were I can really say he needs another four years to keep this ball rolling. And it's not cause I'm conservative. I thought Clinton was a great president even thought he was a sexual predator.

Do people honestly think that once a president takes office that he can just drastically change policies overnight? There are plenty of things that Obama did during the last 4 years that I disagree with, but do you think he was happy to do everything he did? Being the president doesn't automatically mean that you have the ability to make decisions above and beyond any legislation, and OB certainly has a lot of pressure coming from all sides to pass or veto bills.
I think he was elected as an idealist, and for his enthusiasm. I also think he still has ideals, but perhaps he has become much more jaded after 1 term.
fuck I would hate that job

Well that's it. I would love for someone to straight up ask him "Mr. President do you still want this job?". I honestly think his answer would be no.

i'm a big clinton fan especially post-president. i hate romney and obama is a moderate at best to me, but on social issues he's got me. it's the lesser evil all the way. above all i think a regime changes does a lot more harm than good.

When I hear this point made, I don't get what the basis of comparison for this is.

The last downturn this big was the Great Depression, and took over twelve years to get out of.

From over 10% unemployment three years ago to 7.8% employment today looks like the right direction to me. -800K Jobs a Month in Jan 09 to +100K jobs a month for over two years does too.

At the very least, it really seems a completely unsupported argument to want to go back to the direction that led us to the worse set of numbers - unless I'm missing something here.

I never saw an economy in my life as bad as fall 2008. No work anywhere. I don't know man, I just don't get it. It's like if FDR lost in 1936 to someone with Herbert Hoover's policies. Or if Reagan had lost in 1984 to someone with Jimmy Carter's policies. With Obama, we're just supposed to ignore the actual numbers, I guess, why I'll never know.

People absolutely believe that, which is why so much of the water cooler banter by clucking yentas is about R-money allegedly being against women's healthcare coverage for birth control. What the fuck does that have to do with anything? Has anyone's coverage EVER covered that? It's all smoke, it's all bullshit, Romney's a limp-wristed liberal but people are too busy thinking he's an alleged "republican" to notice. THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE between any of these asshats. Same thing happened when Yobama got in, people thought it'd be a 180 turn from W's policies, but nope, it was "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss" with the warmongering and ever-expanding federal govt. Fuck em all. Kang vs Kodos indeed.

I don't get the war mongering charge.

Out of Iraq, leaving Afghanistan, not warring with Iran or Syria or ever going to, lost zero ground troops and set up zero bases in Libya, willing to stand up to Netanyahu in Israel; Romney gets in, all bets are off, and we start new ground wars. No difference my ass. I have relatives in Iran who's lives would be threatened if Romney and the neocons got in. Obama will never invade Iran.

On the ever expanding federal government, well you saw the chart on how much less Obama added to federal spending than any President in decades. Anyone really serious about deficits and size of government as issues and not talking points would actually be relatively happy with Obama in comparison to any other President in living memory once having looked at all the data. They've all expanded the government, certainly, but Obama least of all. Facts > Talking Points.

Ha, fair enough. I'm not trying to be a smart ass (well any more than usual), I just honestly wonder what the suggested alternative approach for him was that would have been better. He only said change was hard and takes a long time in the '08 campaign more times than I can count. Clinton, for all the good I agree that he did, never leveled with us like than when he ran in '92. Change is good was all there was, with no effort to temper those expectations; Obama, who actually was pretty honest in speech after speech that change is frustrating and takes time, is rarely remembered for it, and everyone's like Randy Marsh in that episode of South Park after the '08 election.

My point is that I can accept the argument of Obama should have done a and not b. But when there's never a plausible a suggested, that's where I don't understand the logic. Cheers.

In 2007/2008, the biggest talking point wasn't finances, it was war, chiefly about ending it / bring the boys back home. Check out the Obama vs Clinton stuff from the time, it's all about "I'll have them home within a year." Yep. Yobama gets in and increases troops, not decreases, and then got us into Afghanistan as well. It was only earlier THIS YEAR that he brought us down to pre-surge levels.



Dude is president #44. Dude spent more money than presidents numbers 1 through 40, combined. Facts > talking points.



I don't argue that at all, Romney wants us to go into Iran NOW and it's totally bullshit. But that's the "no difference," they all have their own agendas and they all end with dead Americans.

Your first two sentences are spot on, but from there you are unintentionally mixing up Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Obama/Clinton primary was about ending the Iraq War, they never talked about ending the Afghanistan War.

Obama said in the general election and even the Democratic primary that he wanted troops out of Iraq, but an increased surge of troops in Afghanistan. He said it over and over and over:

"When I am president, we will wage the war that has to be won, with a comprehensive strategy with five elements: getting out of Iraq and on the right battlefield in Afghanistan and Pakistan..." - Barack Obama, http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2007/...d-take-war-on-terror-into-pakistan/

Google the words Obama 2007 Afghanistan and you'll find hundreds of links like that.

See, this is what I'm talking about unreasonable criticisms of Obama. They're not even based in reality. By setting up no permanent bases in Afghanistan and a withdrawal date while already bringing out troops, Obama went beyond anything he promised in the campaign when it came to ending wars. And yet somehow the perception has been spun as the opposite.




How is that possible when Obama has cut the increase in federal spending more than any President in sixty years? Is there any data to back that up like I did for what I said?




I think the question is then do numbers count or do dead Americans = dead Americans regardless of the numbers?

I'd say a handful dead (Libya) beats thousands dead and tens of thousands disabled (Iraq). That's not "no difference" to me. For as long as Obama's President, it's going to be the first approach to conflict, not the second. Given that the second kills THOUSANDS of times as many Americans and rips our deficit and national debt new assholes, I'll take it. Romney's Iran War will among other things bankrupt us.

Oh look. I can find charts too.





Are these charts accurate? Maybe. I look at any chart with extreme scrutiny. Who performed the calculations? I'm sure you well know that statistics are easy to manipulate. Here's an article from the Washington Post fact checking Rex Nutting's analysis which resulted in the chart you posted.

Washington Post Fact Checker

And Bill Clinton? Fuck that guy. He lied under OATH (awesome band btw, definitely check them out) as the chief law enforcement officer of the land. That's all I need to know about that prick. He can go suck a shitdick.

Blowies =/= sex. Problem?

Bill was a pretty good president aside from him lying about that.

Ok.

Obama should have done:

a) Prosecuted Bush administration, CIA and Pentagon officials for torture not
b) Thrown out some bullshit about "Let's move forward" while normalizing heinous and inhumane interrogation and incarceration tactics.

a) Brought all troops out of Iraq not
b) Left over 50,000 behind and pretended to have removed us from the conflict.

a) Considered a single-payer health insurance system or at least allowed advocates of single-payer into the discussion and supported a public health insurance option not
b) Let health insurance companies write the legislation to force the public into their for-profit industry, essentially giving them a permanent bailout.

a) Prosecuted Wall St. fraudsters not
b) NOT prosecuted Wall St. fraudsters.

a) Used the EPA's powers to bring an end to fracking and mountain top coal removal not
b) Rolled over for the energy conglomerates.

a) Refrained from ordering assassinations of U.S. citizens and other "terror" suspects abroad not
b) Ordered assassinations of U.S. citizens and other "terror" suspects abroad.

a) Used the bully pulpit to denounce SOPA strongly and illustrate the dangers of federal control of the internet not
b) Only addressed this threat through spokespeople and avoided a strong public stance on the bill.

a) Vetoed the NDAA not
b) Signed the NDAA.


These are 8 examples of specific acts that Obama could have taken on his own initiative with virtually no input from Congress. The Democrats LOVE to blame the GOP when their alleged progressive ideals don't seem to be borne out by their actions, but the fact is, the Democrats (with a few exceptions like Elizabeth Warren and Dennis Kucinich) are NOT at all progressive and only brand themselves as such for votes.

Blame the GOP controlled Congress as much as it deserves, as I certainly do, but you cannot blame them for distinctly harmful, anti-progressive, illiberal actions taken within the Obama executive branch itself.

Burnsy, agreed Clinton is a liar, I always felt that way, I remember being twelve when he ran the first time and thinking what a liar this guy is. I never found him at all inspiring in that campaign like a lot of people did.

On the charts, even if the ones we have on Presidents relative to each other cancel each other out because of different metrics - there's still no set of charts that differs on the fact that most Obama spending (whatever the total figure) came from three Bush policies: Med D, 2 Wars, '02 Tax Cuts, not the policies that Obama initiated. That's one set of numbers that can't be spun, and if you can find a chart that can flip that on its head then that'll be something - but I don't see how that's even possible.

TRILLIONS of dollars in "stimulus" between two rounds of quantitative easing (with a third one planned, not added in yet!), big bank bailouts, and possibly worst of all (?) the billions upon billions given to other countries, including countries that would be very happy to see Americans die and have said so (Egypt, Libya, Pakistan, every other gasolineistan). Where'd trillions of dollars go? Besides many billions to his friends, you know, the same way they're accusing R-money of wanting tax breaks for his friends (which is probably correct, but is more than a double-standard, as Yobama gave not only breaks but cold hard cash).

Bad music, hard facts: http://youtu.be/Tym9AhMNcP0

OBlackguy added more to the US defecit in 3 years than warmongering Bush did in 8 years.

While I stand by the above statements, I do have to apologize for getting sucked into the discussion with the faulty premise that there's really any fucking difference at all between Ds and Rs. They're all jewbags.

Bottom line is, best reason to vote Romney is, he's not Obama. That way, I don't have to look at that steak-face nigger for another 4 years.

I agree strongly with you on some things, disagree on others.

On Iraq, you’re incorrect, Obama finished withdrawing the 50,000 residual troops out at the end of 2011. They're not in Iraq anymore and haven't been for a while. This is also another generally unnoticed example of where Obama has been even more anti-war than the details of his campaign promises; while Obama never set an end withdrawal date for those residual non-combat troops during the 2008 campaign, he did so immediately when he got into office and followed through on that timeline exactly. What really gets me even worse is that if someone aside from Obama had become President in 2008, even if they were another leading Democrat (HRC or Edwards) who withdrew all the combat troops out of Iraq, we'd still have those 50K residual "non-combat" troops in Iraq to this day, and still holding the permanent bases that we've since handed off to the Iraqi military on top of it. No one registers how abruptly Obama broke from bad historical US policy embraced by both parties in recent years by doing these things. In fact, based on what you said, it seems a lot of people still think we have 50K troops in Iraq STILL, when we haven't had those soldiers there for ten months. How can we determine what the most progressive anti-war options are if we don't even have the right facts?

Yes, the public option should have happened and single payer would have been great, but single payer certainly wasn't going to pass if even the public option couldn't get sixty votes in the Senate (thanks to Joe Lieberman's ties to the health insurance industry). The idea that Obama pushing more forcefully on the public option than he did by waiting even more than a year for it to pass or twisting more arms on it would have somehow changed ex-Democrat Lieberman's mind makes no sense, and the idea that the Obama law was preferable to the insurance industry over the previous system is equally absurd considering the money that industry has invested in repealing the law; sure they would have hated a public option even more than the law that passed, but they clearly loved the old system the most since they're spending every lobbying dollar they have to go back to that, and to get rid of the Obama law. Why are they spending so much money to get rid of a law if they prefer it?

I agree there should have been more Wall Street prosecutions for the mortgage swap fiasco, but Obama's record on standing up to Wall Street can't be ignored: he forced the execs of Wall Street companies like AIG who owe taxpayer money to take pay cuts, he forced execs of failed banks across the country to pay for the financial losses they caused, his administration implemented the biggest mortgage fraud crackdown in history, he signed into law financial regulation that cuts Wall Street financial sector profits by as much as 20%, and his probes of Goldman Sachs and AIG resulted this past April in Goldman paying a restitution settlement totaling tens of millions of dollars. I'd love to see more, but comparatively, that's objectively the biggest crackdown on Wall Street since FDR - by far. Ignoring it hardly makes the needed case for the additional cracking down that is necessary.

Obama's EPA has also more teeth than any in history, and while you are absolutely right that fracking and mountaintop removal should not be allowed, contrary to what you said HAS denied permits for mountaintop removal, and two months into the Obama administration actually halted all of them. On the biggest issue where environmental activism has made a stand in this administration, the Keystone Pipeline extension, Obama came down on the correct side against it when all the chips were down. Obama is also responsible for progressive environmental cabinet appointments, the Wilderness Lands Law, the China Climate Deal, the Copenhagen agreement, Cash For Caulkers, $2.3B on green energy, EPA regulation of coal ash, EPA enforcement of the Clean Air Act, preventing Arctic Drilling, adding deepwater drilling regulations and a mortatorium, appealing in court to keep that moratorium in place, EPA shutdowns of coal plants, cutting fed govt greenhouse emissions, veto threats to stop legislation weakening the EPA, protecting whales, an additional $2B in solar power, the new law to reduce formaldehyde emissions, the offshore drilling ban, solar panels for the Defense Department, pushing to end oil subsidies repeatedly despite uniform opposition, the EPA limiting greenhouse gases from new power plants, and perhaps most important of all the EPA's higher fuel efficiency standards. That's an outstanding environmental record, and the most pro-active President and EPA on the environment ever.

I personally think Obama did have the right to assassinate Bin Laden and that cleric in Yemen, even though the latter was a dual citizen, and I say that as a dual citizen myself; I don't think I have the right to go to Iran where I also have citizenship through my bloodline, independently plot attacks against the US that are successful in killing innocent people, and then say that since there is no extradition treaty so my American citizenship prevents me from retaliation - that's just nuts. Now of course, there is absolutely a valid point that such a power not clearly restricted could some day create precedent for terrible shit to happen, but the idea that citizenship creates an impenetrable shield for a foreign terrorist who has denounced and waged war on the US is equally ridiculous.

I agree prosecuting torture is a must. If Obama leaves office without doing it, it will always be a shortcoming of his Presidency, likely the biggest. I also understand why he hasn't in his first term, because third-world democracies are rife with parties prosecuting each other once in power, and the argument is that combination of the Clinton impeachment and Bush being tossed in jail within a ten or twelve years might have set in place a doomed pattern in this country we might not be able to break out of, and a downward spiral of retribution that America has always steered clear of no matter how bitter politics ever got between the two parties. That's actually not an unreasonable argument to at least consider when someone has made a core campaign promise to try and bring different sides together - but on the other hand, I think if at the end of the day that level of systematic and widespread torture is never prosecuted, we're actually WAY worse off. So I'm with you that prosecutions are absolutely necessary - it's just a more fucked choice either way than I think you lay out when it comes to doing it, particularly in a first term. Obama must however pursue prosecutions in a second term, and it needs to get done. After all, it’s one thing to say it was something that could have backfired in his first term for the torture issue itself (Obama prosecutes, doesn’t get re-elected because he is cast as a partisan on that specific issue, other party gets elected and actually takes it as a popular mandate to torture, expanding the Bush torture policies instead of only reinstating them as Romney would currently do), but in a second Obama term there would be zero excuse for not prosecuting Bush/Cheney/Yoo/Gonzalez/etc. Zero. Obama ending torture and his DOJ launching investigations of it were great, but it just isn’t enough.

I agree with you that Obama should have followed through with his initial threats to veto the NDAA, although it's also fair to point out that there were enough R and D votes to override his veto.

Do you eat bacon / ham / etc?

Yup, bacon, pork chops, not ham so much but pig roasts kick ass. Mmmm... pork fat.

As you can tell, I'm not Muslim, I'm a non-believer. My parents always have been as well. It takes going up a couple generations in our family to find anyone at all religious, like my mom's mom.

Even though my grandma is Muslim, though, I'd still like Mitt Romney not to bomb her. Funny how that works.

that's false:

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/st...s-barack-obama-has-doubled-deficit/

http://factcheck.org/2012/09/obamas-deficit-dodge/

^ That second link supports the claim. Bush added 4.7 in 8 years. Obama added 5.2 as of September 30th.

Whichever version of the figures someone accepts on the relative amounts, one thing no one can dispute is that the Obama amount came mostly from Bush policies. The policies passed in the five years when Bush and Republicans controlled Congress (wars, defense hikes, Medicare D, and tax cuts) cost more than any government policies from any other five year period in world history - several trillion dollars and counting in the last ten years - costing several times more than all the programs Obama has proposed and then enacted combined (which AT BEST amount to no more than a trillion or two over the next ten years, if even that).

There's also the fact that deficit reduction attempts by last two Presidents in the last decade amount to...

Bush admin: "Deficits don't matter"

Obama admin: $124B deficit cuts from the health care law, $126B Pentagon deficit cuts, $1.2T sequestration deficit cuts, $4T deficit cut deal nearly reached but R House Speaker bails

Looking at that comparison, who is clearly making an effort on the deficit and who isn't?

Does anyone remember deficit reduction efforts by the last administration? Ever? Google 'Bush "deficit cuts"' and see for yourself; be prepared to read one article about his father, and another where the article describes the deficit cuts being proposed as not credible.

If only Republicans would dump the supply side crack smoking and go back to a Ron Paul or even Bob Dole traditional Republican budget instinct of caring about numbers instead of just denying them.

What we all have to remember in this election was that there was another Presidential candidate, aside from Mitt Romney in last week's debate, who swore up and down in the Presidential debates that he wasn't going to cut taxes for the rich really and he wouldn't add to the deficit at all really, despite the plan he had always been pushing. It was Bush in 2000.

What was that old saying he later butchered about not being fooled twice?

Fuck both of these clowns.

http://www.lp.org/

fully support voting for Gary Johnson.

shadows posts have real substance here, well done

Thanks.

One other thing to back up my point that most Obama spending comes from Bush policies, here are the hard numbers (in a clear straightforward way without relying on any charts that can be spun):



OK, let's go exactly by the policies you just listed, using only raw numbers.


Stimulus cost $833B.

Quantitative easing cost $0 since the Fed creates new money (bad for inflation as Ron Paul has pointed out, but taking no money from the treasury: "the central bank does not use taxpayer money to buy bonds.")

The bank bailouts cost $42B after all the banks have paid back.

The auto bailouts cost $25B after all the auto companies have paid back.

Foreign aid (having gone up from about $13B a year under Bush on average to $20B under Obama last year) adds up to an Obama increase of $70B over comparable ten year periods.

Solyndra was given considerably less than $1B in government money ($535M to be exact) but for the sake of easy math let's say $1B.


$833B + $42B + $25B + $70B + $1B= $971B


$4T (Cost Of Bush Wars Over Ten Years) + $2.9T (Cost of Bush Tax Cuts Over Ten Years) + $1.25T (Cost of Bush's Medicare D over ten years) = $8.15T


How is there any comparison? How can a Republican who doesn't denounce the Bush fiscal policies as a failure and credibly plan to do things differently on spending even be considered seriously as a candidate?

Quantitative easing means the Fed manufactured trillions of dollars. Not billions, trillions.

1) That's not free.
2) The radical devaluation of the dollar is rampant.

Let's say you have a copy of whatever gay record is "rare" this week, it happens to be worth a certain amount of money.
Now let's have the label manufacture a few trillion identical copies. How much is your record worth now?

Here is a cuddly sarcastic cartoon to say some things relevant to the topic that you're going to disagree with (I'm too stupid to embed vids, sorry - Tips welcomed): http://youtu.be/PTUY16CkS-k

For that matter, the Fed's printing of money is a long-standing nightmare. Here's a source you're going to disagree with, but should be read anyway, if only just to know it's out there: http://theintelhub.com/2012/09/02/audit-of...als-16-trillion-in-secret-bailouts/

And while we're at it, 9/11 will forever outshadow 9/10. Yup, it was one fucking day prior that Donald Rumsfeld announced that $2.6 trillion was missing from the Pentagon. Luckily, a fucking airplane hit the business office of the Pentagon the next day, oopsiedaisy. S'ok, the Fed will print more, right?

Bacon is awesome, I'm glad to hear you enjoy it. I hope I didn't fuck up the quotes, apologies if so.

the fed is an abomination, 9/11 was an inside job, and bernie sanders for president.

ANYONE THAT BUYS THE OFFICIAL STORY OF 9/11 IS NO FRIEND OF MINE

The whole argument against printing more money is that it's too tempting because while it takes no previously existing funds out of the Treasury and SEEMS free and easy, it causes inflation and economic downturns in the long run, downturns and job losses which then reduce taxpayer revenue to the government. That's a great reason to look at "economic downturns" on the deficit chart above and blame the Fed for those losses if you believe that argument, absolutely; it's not a reason to count those losses twice by counting the printed money as coming out of previously existing Treasury bills when it didn't. The only material cost of printing money aside from future inflation/downturns - a serious concern that you make a good point about - is a few bucks of ink and paper already in the budget every year for the Treasury Department.

I'll put it more simply: in your example with the record, you're right except one thing, the analogy to creating new money only works if the person created the record (instead of buying it) and expected it to have a certain value being the only copy in existence; the devalued record after over-mass-production {I guess by some third party who somehow manages to copyright all but the original copy, work with me here} would mean the asset (the original copy of the record) was worth that much less, but it wouldn't mean the person should think about their bank balance and deduct what they initially thought selling their copy of the record had been worth, does it? How would that make sense? The only cost in their budget math was the already factored in cost of making the record in the first place (the ink and paper for the printed money in the analogy). While the excessive mass production was clearly bad for the person in the long term as it cost them something in loss of asset value, it still doesn't make sense to deduct the prospective value of an asset from your budget math going forwards, because that's too speculative to even function (since markets in real time will also affect the value of assets/currency at any given moment). Your case is one you can only even begin to make comparing time periods (and subsequent inflation rates) retroactively and from a considerable distance; deducting newly printed currency as hard numbers in a prospective budget analysis is impossible out of the gate.


But, hey let's say for the sake of argument we do it your way anyway and add quantitative easing to the easy budget arithmetic I posted above despite all of that:

The Federal Reserve under Bush spent $800B on QE1.

The Federal Reserve under Obama spent $600B on QE1 and $600B on QE2, let's speculate QE3 is the same.


Updated spending totals:

$833B + $42B + $25B + $70B + $1B + $1.8T= $2.77T Obama policies

$4T + $2.9T + $1.25T + $800B = $8.95T Bush policies

Of course, that's not including one other multitrillion Bush item: defense spending hikes other than the wars, which consists of items like the missing $2.6T from the Pentagon you correctly pointed out - to which there is no comparable large Obama figure missing from the equation; the health care law cost of $1.7B barely changes the overall totals to Obama policies $2.79T, Bush policies $8.95T.

(That's giving no credit - zero - in those figures for any of the Obama deficit reduction policies - health care/defense/sequester - which had they been included cut the cost of his policies $1.5T to $1.29T)

Am I leaving anything out? I want to be absolutely fair here. If there's a giant Obama policy spending item or Bush deficit reduction success we're somehow overlooking, let's add it in.

So far, counting quantitative easing and if we ignore Obama deficit reduction as well as the trillions you mentioned Rumsfeld lost at the Pentagon, we're still at $2.79T Obama policies v. $8.95T Bush policies.

But isn't that the point? They're creating fiat money - Just printing it, with the expectation that it's all "worth" the same.

ITT: Serious economic discussions from people who spend their food budget on NWN reissues of albums they already own.

GBK > Obama

anything > discussing politics with regular random assholes (love you guys)

oops, i meant higher incomes pay a lower tax rate, across the board.

Not the expectation that it's all worth the same (that would require an inflation rate of precisely 0% over years which is impossible since it's never exactly zero), but they do it with the expectation that any economic upturns created by the spending outweighs any downturns caused by the eventual inflation. Whether they're right or wrong on that is a really important debate, and not exactly a simple thing to prove or disprove even in hindsight; in addition, say a person thinks its the right approach to some degree, then at what point are there diminishing returns on such an approach? Where's the line? Has the Fed crossed that line by printing TOO much? On the other side, does risking any inflation at all always mean a worse fate than any federal reserve stimulation no matter how bad the economy is? If not, then where's the line there? Tricky stuff, and I don't claim to have all the answers on that rubix cube. The 2008 economic crash isn't far enough in the rear view mirror to judge the long-term consequences of how the Fed has reacted with full certainty, since we can't see what inflation will be in five or ten years to know whether doubling the Dow and turning job losses into gains within a year or so after the first QE and the stimulus was worth the price. The results of how we got out of the Great Depression do make a more complete and convincing case for Keynesian economics in responding to a downturn, but of course not everyone agrees with even that, and even if one does, then - like I said- where's the line? And how do you EVER prove or disprove exactly where that line even is? Fuck.

All I'm saying for certain is that abstract prospective speculation can't be part of a budget projection that uses only hard numbers (for the same reason I can't play x notes on my guitar for you unless I know for certain what number that x represents). We know this especially well since failing to understand that was the same reason for the bank mortgage swap mess which crashed the economy: credit default swaps inserted abstract prospective speculation into projections that were supposed to be based on hard numbers. That's why including the costs and effects of QE prospectively as part of a ten year comparison of policy effects initiated by different Presidents is a pretty haphazard proposition. Nonetheless, even when I played devil's advocate and included the implausibly worst case scenario into the arithmetic anyway - that the cost of all QE would be as much to the economy through inflation in the long term as the trillions of new money that were created, and assuming zero dollars economic benefit from the spending to counterbalance that - it still barely makes a dent in the ratio between how much each admin's policies cost v. the other.

This monetary policy stuff is important and all, but it does get pretty fucking dry doesn't it...

Get on with it indeed:


bennyhillifier