Obama--the grumblings

[Aliantha]

Some great friends he has. lol

[capnhowdy]

MICHAEL:

We love your stroke even though you smoke.

[Shawnee123]

Your stroke is long, even with a bong


You swim like fish, even though you smoked a dish.


NP, man...people don't really care.

[classicman]

Just to get back on topic....

Where's the President Obama who promised to unite us?

Before it gets lost in the mists of time, here's a fact worth recalling. Prior to President Obama's inauguration, his team had big dreams about the stimulus bill. As Politico.com reported early last month, "Obama aides have said they want to get 80 votes in the Senate to demonstrate bipartisan support and so that Democrats alone cannot be blamed for the breathtaking spending."

That's only six weeks old, but already it feels like ancient history. The hopes of our government uniting to face the staggering financial crisis have been dashed. Instead, we have a deepening mistrust that is so infuriating because it is so ordinary.

With only three Republicans supporting the $800 billion stimulus package, and with its 1,100 pages getting a final vote before they are read, the measure that was supposed to lift the nation has added to the sense of breakdown.

The solution is now part of the problem.

Obama deserves most of the blame. Because he's the President with a mandate and a congressional majority, Republicans would have had to go along - if the President had kept his word to change Washington.

But Obama isn't keeping his word. He is shutting out views that don't match his own, and is back on the campaign trail, as though giving a speech to adoring crowds liberates him from the burdens of the White House. After more than two years of campaigning to get there, one would think he would be ready to govern.

The evidence that he is instead choosing a partisan path and a permanent campaign lies most recently in Sen. Judd Gregg's abrupt withdrawal to be commerce secretary. The New Hampshire Republican's decision to join the administration was hailed as proof of Obama's sincere bipartisan outreach, so Gregg's withdrawal over his unease with Obama's policies must be seen as proof to the contrary.

This is no small moment in the making of an administration. The sense of disappointment in Obama is spreading, as are concerns about the consequences of a bait-and-switch presidency.

The global selloff in stock markets after Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner put out a half-baked plan for fixing the financial system is a clear verdict. His arguing that investors missed the point is telling.

Once again, a White House has all the answers and everybody else is wrong. Obama, like his predecessor, doesn't lack for confidence, only for others who share it.

Originally Posted by classicman

Just to get back on topic....

Where's the President Obama who promised to unite us?

I'm not sure I get your point?

One conservative columnist at the NY Post who thinks Obama deserves most of the blame for the continued partisanship after one month....represents what? Public opinion?

You could have simply posted Limbaugh.

Obama--the grumblings?

Where are the grumblings coming from other than Republicans who are unwilling to budge from their rigid ideology at all (the stimulus plan MUST be mostly tax breaks!) Damn, you got 1/3 of the package in tax breaks - an accommodation by Obama.....(the Democrats are passing the burden on to our kids)....hypocrites...look at your own record and policies that contributed to the mess we're in before you start throwing stones.

All I have heard for the last few weeks is a lot of misrepresentations of the stimulus bill (the mouse, the mouse!) and lots whining when they don't get everything they want.

Suck it up...you're the minority. You have to give a little. In fact, you have to give alot to get a little. That's what it means to be the minority.

But I honestly don't believe the Republicans want to compromise or build consensus. I think they have chosen the strategy of putting all their eggs in the basket that if Obama fails, it will be to their advantage in 2010.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Redux

You could have simply posted Limbaugh.

Maybe he should have just posted a poll.

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

Maybe he should have just posted a poll.

Nah...you and Classic can keep posting your partisan editorials and claim they represent something resembling public opinion.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Redux

Nah...you and Classic can keep posting your partisan editorials and claim they represent something resembling public opinion.

And I'll just keep laughing at your polls and pointing out how weak of statistical significance they have among real number crunchers.

[classicman]

Originally Posted by Redux

I'm not sure I get your point?
You could have simply posted Limbaugh.
Obama--the grumblings?

That’s what this thread is for – to post grumblings about Obama.
Who else do you think they are going to come from other than the R’s?

Originally Posted by Redux

look at your own record and policies that contributed to the mess we're in before you start throwing stones.

The R’s have a lot of culpability for their actions – AGREED!
Repeating the R’s mistakes will not help. Obama ran his campaign on “Change.” I’m still hopeful that this is what we are going to get.

Originally Posted by Redux

Suck it up...you're the minority. You have to give a little. In fact, you have to give alot to get a little. That's what it means to be the minority.

Agreed. The R’s need to deal with it and stop whining. Whining isn’t going to accomplish anything.

Originally Posted by Redux

But I honestly don't believe the Republicans want to compromise or build consensus. I think they have chosen the strategy of putting all their eggs in the basket that if Obama fails, it will be to their advantage in 2010.

I am not really blaming Obama as much as those involved in the congressional war that is taking place. This is where real change needs to take place. The D’s are doing what the R’s did when they were in power. Nothing has changed at all. The R’s are going to do NOTHING for the next two years and play everything off, as it was the D’s plans and programs. That is bullshit on both sides. I think the R's really believe that the public is stupid enough to believe that. Well good – then those idiots won’t get elected either. The party needs to be purged of those people anyway. They are delusional. The D's want some R's to sign on so that they can claim bipartisanship and not be solely responsible for the success or failure of Pelosi's plan. I think there is plenty of culpability on both sides. This is the same old shit - not change at all.

Additionally, I do not see a rebalancing in the 2010 elections where the R’s regain lost seats. If anything I think they will lose more. If Obama's programs don’t work the D’s still have the “We didn’t create this mess” or “It takes time” to respond with. Both of which are relatively reasonable.

I hope the natural cycle of the economy combined with whatever measures the Gov’t has done so far will enable that to happen.

That’s my grumble for the moment with a ray of sunshine - perhaps.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Actually, said "rigid ideology" is better called adult thinking. Being sloppy about this drives inflation more powerfully than anything else: I'll predict that the Act will cause noticeable inflation at a greater rate.

Simply put, Government debt drives inflation, and the Government is going to create dollars out of nothing. Real antiinflationary measures mean retiring at least eight tenths of that debt. Libertarians like me consider that outside of genuine emergencies like prosecuting a war, there's really nothing a government does that necessitates borrowing money to cover anyway.

You cannot, however, absolve the Democrats of fiscal blame -- not while Barney Frank yet lives and whose record is one of mandating that financial institutions make those poorly secured loans rather than erring on the side of security; nor can you with the Democrats' record of doing things that declare their economic illiteracy. I've never encountered a display of sound, conservative, anti-deficit management by Democratic Administrations in all my fifty-two years. Clinton may possibly have approached it, some argue, but we'd've needed another ten years of peacetime to actually have achieved a paydown of the national debt or a genuine surplus.

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Actually, said "rigid ideology" is better called adult thinking. Being sloppy about this drives inflation more powerfully than anything else: I'll predict that the Act will cause noticeable inflation at a greater rate.

Simply put, Government debt drives inflation

Adult thinking is not limited to one economic model...unless you are a rigid ideologue.

Another equally adult economic model is that government spending gets you out of deep recession and hundreds of thousands of job losses every month.

We tried the adult thinking of deregulation and supply side trickle down economics....and it that didnt work....in fact, it contributed to the problems we're now facing.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Why do you believe that one?! Read Hazlitt's Economics In One Lesson to repair your thinking.

Name, if you can, one example of a government EVER ONCE ANYWHERE spending a nation into prosperity: public sector spending doesn't make prosperity -- it can protect prosperity generated elsewhere. An antelope's horns don't contribute to him fattening up or increasing bone and muscle, yet they cost him some energy and materials (resources) to make. But those horns not only attract mates, they stick a lion pretty good too. The antelope benefits, but the benefits should be correctly understood.

The New Deal was recently and authoritatively deconstructed, was it not? The Depression continued right through the New Deal, altogether unaffected -- though the public works projects of the time were indisputably helpful afterwards. Only the increase of production and employment caused by the Second World War, combined with not getting those factories and producers of the sinews of both war and wealth bombed or even hardly damaged (Port Chicago's dockside explosion being perhaps the loudest exception to the trend), ended the Great Depression.

The scales have long fallen from my eyes, Redux. Should you therefore remain blinded, not quite off your road to Damascus?

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Name, if you can, one example of a government EVER ONCE ANYWHERE spending a nation into prosperity: public sector spending doesn't make prosperity

The short term spending is to get out of the deep hole created by supply side economics and deregulation. It is not intended as a long term growth strategy but rather a short term fix to stabilize the economy.

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

The scales have long fallen from my eyes, Redux. Should you therefore remain blinded, not quite off your road to Damascus?

Hey..im still waiting for you to respond to my post on your claim that Republicans have more integrity....but you went silent on that one.

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Why do you believe that one?! Read Hazlitt's Economics In One Lesson to repair your thinking.

I'm more of a Keynesian.

Nice revisionist history on the New Deal.

The New Deal raised the GDP significantly between 32-37...until FDR slowed it down in 37 because of pressure from Republicans that it was creating deficits. Then the growth stopped until WW II.

[sugarpop]

Originally Posted by Redux

I'm more of a Keynesian.

Nice revisionist history on the New Deal.

The New Deal raised the GDP significantly between 32-37...until FDR slowed it down in 37 because of pressure from Republicans that it was creating deficits. Then the growth stopped until WW II.

That bears repeating...

Have you heard some republicans now trying to blame Roosevelt for the great depression? apparently he found a time machine somewhere...