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Phanatik wrote:
I believe the average U.S. recession is 18 months, which Obama is extending by his incompetence and leftist ideology

No, its 12 months in the contemporary period. Also, the present recession is over.

You're either incompetent, or a troll.

Phanatik wrote:Yes, our civil rights are better off when the constitution is trampled upon and we are forced by the government to purchase a product against our will. (I couldn't care less whose idea this was - it's unconstitutional.)

This isn't new. See: Car insurance.

Phanatik wrote:Yes, our civil rights are better off when the obama administration sells weapons to drug cartels.

A program that was continued from previous administrations, used to track down gun sales to try to arrest drug cartel officers and suppliers. Usually it goes unnoticed, you only noticed because someone screwed up.

Phanatik wrote:Yes, our civil rights are better off when Obama steals property from bond holders and gives it to a union (GM government takeover.)

Steals? Obama's administration basically gave them a choice; Bankrupcy or being purchased by the government.

Phanatik wrote:Yes, our civil rights are better off when Mrs. Obama (who doesn't have any kind of nutritional degree I know of) is trying to tell people what to eat and how much.

Technically, nutritionist isn't a protected term anyway. And Mrs. Obama isn't setting any laws. She's just utilizing her free speech.

Phanatik wrote:Yes, our civil rights are better off when a democrat controlled Senate illegally refuses to pass a budget, for years.

A hilariously ignorant statement.

Phanatik wrote:While McCain is a moderate, I doubt he would have used tax-payer money to fund the unions so that they could send money back to the democrats (a stimulus package for "shovel-ready jobs.) Also I doubt McCain would have given tax-payer money to Obama bundlers that started fake Solar Energy companies so they could get rich, and send more money back to Obama. Most people not from Chicago would call that money laundering, but oh well.

Wow. This is... I can't respond to this without insulting your intelligence. So I'll let your own statements insult your intelligence.

dogma wrote:

Phanatik wrote:
I believe the average U.S. recession is 18 months, which Obama is extending by his incompetence and leftist ideology

No, its 12 months in the contemporary period. Also, the present recession is over.

You're either incompetent, or a troll.

Only statistically. 1.5% isn't enough to to even tread water. But we're not going to even stay there.

SO how is everyone now compare to fives yrs ago. You as an individual. I can't answer since I spent close to 3 years overseas

Melissia wrote:

Phanatik wrote:Yes, our civil rights are better off when the constitution is trampled upon and we are forced by the government to purchase a product against our will. (I couldn't care less whose idea this was - it's unconstitutional.)

This isn't new. See: Car insurance.

Phanatik wrote:Yes, our civil rights are better off when the obama administration sells weapons to drug cartels.

A program that was continued from previous administrations, used to track down gun sales to try to arrest drug cartel officers and suppliers. Usually it goes unnoticed, you only noticed because someone screwed up.

Phanatik wrote:Yes, our civil rights are better off when Obama steals property from bond holders and gives it to a union (GM government takeover.)

Steals? Obama's administration basically gave them a choice; Bankrupcy or being purchased by the government.

Phanatik wrote:Yes, our civil rights are better off when Mrs. Obama (who doesn't have any kind of nutritional degree I know of) is trying to tell people what to eat and how much.

Technically, nutritionist isn't a protected term anyway. And Mrs. Obama isn't setting any laws. She's just utilizing her free speech.

Phanatik wrote:Yes, our civil rights are better off when a democrat controlled Senate illegally refuses to pass a budget, for years.

A hilariously ignorant statement.

Phanatik wrote:While McCain is a moderate, I doubt he would have used tax-payer money to fund the unions so that they could send money back to the democrats (a stimulus package for "shovel-ready jobs.) Also I doubt McCain would have given tax-payer money to Obama bundlers that started fake Solar Energy companies so they could get rich, and send more money back to Obama. Most people not from Chicago would call that money laundering, but oh well.

Wow. This is... I can't respond to this without insulting your intelligence. So I'll let your own statements insult your intelligence.

But you never had to buy a car before. Next, you'll have to buy the broccoli.
Created in a previous administration, but it had been found to be unworkable and so was stopped.
Bankruptcy is a normal business practice. GM thought it would be better off getting "free" taxpayer money. If you don't know they shafted the bond holders, you haven't been paying attention.
If you think a first lady has no power, you haven't been paying attention to first ladies.
I believe your ignorance is showing if you think the Senate has passed a budget over the last three years. Nothing else I can do to help you here.
Wow. This is... you don't listen to the news? You've never heard of Solyndra? You've never heard how the unions send donations to the democratic party? You've never heard how unions force their members to provide dues from their pay? You've never heard that the stimulus was used to pay government employees and union jobs? I mean, wow. I'll let your own statements...

Cheers.

Jihadin wrote:SO how is everyone now compare to fives yrs ago. You as an individual. I can't answer since I spent close to 3 years overseas

Went from college student to aaaaalmost 6 figures.

The lack of clarity around certain meaningful policy developments like Healthcare (and uncertainty around costs), Dodd-Frank, and the Fiscal Cliff means that joblessness will stay elevated for probably another year (I'm an optimist) and the averages won't improve much, but there's still plenty of opportunity for individuals to do well.

Food inflation as a result of this year's drought/exceptionally poor crop hasn't even hit. Better hope that fuel prices decline or CPI is going to take another bite out of disposable income. It's unfortunate that those costs will hit the lower incomes the hardest, but if the last 3 years haven't done anything to motivate a low-alpha, low-beta individual to revisit their choices...

Went from college student to aaaaalmost 6 figures.

Grats Sourclams

Wages have been stagnating or even regressing for decades. No real change here.

Of course, seeing as Romney wants to make things even worse by attempting to give tax cuts to the rich-- which has decades of history proving that it does not work as a fiscal stimulus-- I'd still rather go with Obama.

So are YOU better off now then 5 yrs ago

Jihadin wrote:So are YOU better off now then 5 yrs ago

I'm about the same.

Melissia wrote:Wages have been stagnating or even regressing for decades. No real change here.

Wage stagnation/regression is an inevitability of transforming the largest sectors of the economy from mass manual labor-based to individual/IP-based. In an nutshell, the broad shift from manufacturing to tech will "concentrate wealth". General Motors' market cap is roughly 30 billion, Facebook's market cap is roughly 80 billion even after their losses. GM employs far more people, facebook far fewer but those "lucky few" will be getting much higher wages. The demographics of industry are trending further in that direction, not less. A more representative index than "real wages" would be Per Capita Disposable Personal Income corrected for dollar value. This basically shows per cap income rising linearly from the 1960s until the downturn in 08-09. Then it flatlines from '10 onward. That's the real issue, the US (and much of the developed West) has hit a wall and been unable to create wealth in recent years.

From the '70s until '08, I don't really care what the GINI coefficient was; there was simply more of everything, every year. That's a prosperous nation, all you have to do is be a boat in a rising tide. Since then, the pie has stayed the exact same size (in per cap terms). That there is "the problem".

Melissia wrote:

Jihadin wrote:So are YOU better off now then 5 yrs ago

I'm about the same.

Five years ago I wasn't calculating potential college years for the boy and whether he'll graduate into a recession or upswing.

Frazzled wrote:
Only statistically. 1.5% isn't enough to to even tread water. But we're not going to even stay there.

And statistics are what matters, though you can tread water just fine at 1.5% (other countries have done it with less). Not going to make any progress, or enrich the nation, but you can tread water.

I think we're entering an era in which being as prosperous as the previous generation is the common goal, which is fine.

Jihadin wrote:SO how is everyone now compare to fives yrs ago. You as an individual. I can't answer since I spent close to 3 years overseas

Five years ago I owed more than a 80k in student loans, lived off those loans, and lead the life of a college senior. Aside from the debt, that isn't so bad.

Four years ago I owed more than 110k in student loans, was unemployed, and lived in my parent's basement. That's pretty bad.

Now I make six figures, paid off my loans, and pretty much live the good life. I'm much better off. I was even able to pay off my parents' mortgage, which was pretty cool.

Jihadin wrote:So are YOU better off now then 5 yrs ago

Why is Obama responsible for the last 18 months of the Bush administration? . It's almost like you're making a completely arbitrary timeline that specifically picks when the recession started to make him look as bad as possible despite the fact he's only actually been President since January 2009. I presume you mispoke, even though you used that number twice (spelling it out once), because I couldn't imagine anyone doing something so mindlessly partisan, so shallowly transparent.

Unless we're just having a general, non-political where are you now moment? In which case we should start a new thread. It's interesting but maybe offtopic here.

Ouze wrote:
Why is Obama responsible for the last 18 months of the Bush administration? . It's almost like you're making a completely arbitrary timeline that specifically picks when the recession started to make him look as bad as possible despite the fact he's only actually been President since January 2009. I presume you mispoke, even though you used that number twice (spelling it out once), because I couldn't imagine anyone doing something so mindlessly partisan, so shallowly transparent.

Unless we're just having a general, non-political where are you now moment? In which case we should start a new thread. It's interesting but maybe offtopic here.

Can I ask you something Ouze...

Let's say you're on a stockholders board of a company. You're previous GM made horrible finacial gambit's and the company was basically gutted. So, you find this new guy that wants to be GM and he says, "If you guys bring me on, i'm going to get this company turned around, and I'm going to get this company turning solid profits again." You hire him and for the next 3 years the company hasn't turned anyvmeaningful profit. You go to him and ask, "Where are these profits you promissed?" He responds, "it's only been 3 years."

Would you fire him?

broodstar wrote:

Ouze wrote:
Why is Obama responsible for the last 18 months of the Bush administration? . It's almost like you're making a completely arbitrary timeline that specifically picks when the recession started to make him look as bad as possible despite the fact he's only actually been President since January 2009. I presume you mispoke, even though you used that number twice (spelling it out once), because I couldn't imagine anyone doing something so mindlessly partisan, so shallowly transparent.

Unless we're just having a general, non-political where are you now moment? In which case we should start a new thread. It's interesting but maybe offtopic here.

Can I ask you something Ouze...

Let's say you're on a stockholders board of a company. You're previous GM made horrible finacial gambit's and the company was basically gutted. So, you find this new guy that wants to be GM and he says, "If you guys bring me on, i'm going to get this company turned around, and I'm going to get this company turning solid profits again." You hire him and for the next 3 years the company hasn't turned anyvmeaningful profit. You go to him and ask, "Where are these profits you promissed?" He responds, "it's only been 3 years."

Would you fire him?

A.) That's not an apples-to-apples analogy of what Jihadin posited. A more apt analogy would have been stockholders hiring a CEO and 3 years later, asking him why things got so screwed up 5 years ago. So, while your example is a wholly reasonable question - did the president accomplish enough in the last 3 years to deserve re-election - its also not what the original question was.

B.) So, to answer your somewhat different analogy, it depends on what the CEO promised when he got hired. If he said he'd make the company profitable again within 3 years, and still hasn't done so, then he has failed.

The reason why this is sort of a bad analogy to the US presidency in and of itself is because it's putting a very specific 1-goal scenario as the only arbiter of success. The president doesn't have one single goal; he has hundreds of goals. A better measure would be to look at the many promises that he made, and see how successful he was at keeping them overall. You may then, depending on your frame of mind, either remove the ones that he was unable to achieve because of unpredictable external forces (or keep them, deciding that if he shouldn't have made promises he couldn't have kept), and weighting the ones that are most specific to you. Perhaps the most important thing to you is diplomacy, or social equality progress, or infrastructure rebuilding or whatever is important to you, and then you weigh how he did in those arenas. Then you decide if the only only job applicant is more likely to be successful if he gets the job.

Ouze wrote:
A.) That's not an apples-to-apples analogy of what Jihadin posited. A more apt analogy would have been stockholders hiring a CEO and 3 years later, asking him why things got so screwed up 5 years ago. So, while your example is a wholly reasonable question - did the president accomplish enough in the last 3 years to deserve re-election - its also not what the original question was.

B.) So, to answer your somewhat different analogy, it depends on what the CEO promised when he got hired. If he said he'd make the company profitable again within 3 years, and still hasn't done so, then he has failed.

The reason why this is sort of a bad analogy to the US presidency in and of itself is because it's putting a very specific 1-goal scenario as the only arbiter of success. The president doesn't have one single goal; he has hundreds of goals. A better measure would be to look at the many promises that he made, and see how successful he was at keeping them overall. You may then, depending on your frame of mind, either remove the ones that he was unable to achieve because of unpredictable external forces (or keep them, deciding that if he shouldn't have made promises he couldn't have kept), and weighting the ones that are most specific to you. Perhaps the most important thing to you is diplomacy, or social equality progress, or infrastructure rebuilding or whatever is important to you, and then you weigh how he did in those arenas. Then you decide if the only only job applicant is more likely to be successful if he gets the job.

To tell you the truth, what I wanted to gauge from that response while you were Jinadin not to be blindly partisan, Was it not a case of the blind telling the blind not to be blind?

It wasn't

I follow politics because I'm fascinated in the game, but I'm not particularly interested in either of the teams playing. I've been mostly critical of Republicans of late because they've been playing so very poorly this season in what should have been a more competitive game.

OK, that's enough sports euphemisms for a while.

LordofHats wrote:What's that Nancy. Politicians cater to the special interests of political blocs to earn their favor and their votes in elections? Why my god, I think you've finally passed basic civics. Congratulations.

In other news from the Obvious is Obvious party: Fire Hot.

Except that isn't really what's happening. The Republican party makes a load of noise about Israel, but it isn't actually winning them Jewish votes - who tend to vote against class and support the Democratic party.

Now, when a political bloc rewards all your sound and fury by voting for the other party, people rarely maintain that policy for the decades that the GOP has maintained its strong commitment to Israel. So clearly something else is going on, and in this case its that the strong Israel policy appeals to other voting blocs - there's the evangelicals who love it for a combination of vaguely thought through prophecy nonsense, and there's the warhawks who just love strong, confrontational national defence rhetoric.

Both groups appear almost completely incapable of seeing what all of this does to the people living in Palestine.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Jihadin wrote:SO how is everyone now compare to fives yrs ago. You as an individual. I can't answer since I spent close to 3 years overseas

So that famous Reagan line has finally been revived?

That took about 3 months longer than I thought it would. The Romney campaign really is playing catch up.


In other news, everyone knows that the president doesn't control the economy. The right wing was making that exact statement, quite rightly, when the left was making noise about the depressed US economy during the Bush admin. And everyone knows even better that the GFC started before Obama even reached power.

And yet this question is dragged up, and everyone pretends it actually reflects on the president.

sebster wrote:Both groups appear almost completely incapable of seeing what all of this does to the people living in Palestine.

Well that, and many of them just don't care, not really seeing Palestinians as people.

dogma wrote:

Frazzled wrote:
Only statistically. 1.5% isn't enough to to even tread water. But we're not going to even stay there.

And statistics are what matters.

Wrong. Jobs are what matters. If there were a decent Republican candidate Obama would be down 20 points now.

After the first debate we'll see. Or alternatively all the defense contractors start sending layoff notices.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

broodstar wrote:

Ouze wrote:
Why is Obama responsible for the last 18 months of the Bush administration? . It's almost like you're making a completely arbitrary timeline that specifically picks when the recession started to make him look as bad as possible despite the fact he's only actually been President since January 2009. I presume you mispoke, even though you used that number twice (spelling it out once), because I couldn't imagine anyone doing something so mindlessly partisan, so shallowly transparent.

Unless we're just having a general, non-political where are you now moment? In which case we should start a new thread. It's interesting but maybe offtopic here.

Can I ask you something Ouze...

Let's say you're on a stockholders board of a company. You're previous GM made horrible finacial gambit's and the company was basically gutted. So, you find this new guy that wants to be GM and he says, "If you guys bring me on, i'm going to get this company turned around, and I'm going to get this company turning solid profits again." You hire him and for the next 3 years the company hasn't turned anyvmeaningful profit. You go to him and ask, "Where are these profits you promissed?" He responds, "it's only been 3 years."

Would you fire him?

he would have been fired after year one. I wants my earnings per share!

Frazzled wrote:
Wrong. Jobs are what matters.

But I have a job, and statistics say that only blue collar folk (and poorly paid white collar folk) won't have jobs, and they don't vote often.

I don't understand why I care, or why I should assume that the gentry will vote.

dogma wrote:

Frazzled wrote:
Wrong. Jobs are what matters.

But I have a job, and statistics say that only blue collar folk (and poorly paid white collar folk) won't have jobs, and they don't vote often.

I don't understand why I care, or why I should assume that the gentry will vote.

You have a job now.
We'll see in the election if it matters won't we.

sebster wrote:In other news, everyone knows that the president doesn't control the economy. The right wing was making that exact statement, quite rightly, when the left was making noise about the depressed US economy during the Bush admin. And everyone knows even better that the GFC started before Obama even reached power.

And everyone knows that the U.S. economy was depressed after the democrats took control of both houses of Congress after the mid-term elections 2006.

And the smoking gun for the financial crisis was the democrat program of selling houses to people that couldn't afford them.

“One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.”
― Milton Friedman

Regards,

Phanatik wrote:
And the smoking gun for the financial crisis was the democrat program of selling houses to people that couldn't afford them.

Disputed. Though it is curious that you run from challenges instead of confronting them. There is a word for that.

It isn't flattering.

Actually, the bad economy was one of the reasons that the Democrats were elected, along with the rush to get away from everything Bush.

Selective memory is bad for your sanity, Phanatik.

Phanatik wrote:

sebster wrote:In other news, everyone knows that the president doesn't control the economy. The right wing was making that exact statement, quite rightly, when the left was making noise about the depressed US economy during the Bush admin. And everyone knows even better that the GFC started before Obama even reached power.

And everyone knows that the U.S. economy was depressed after the democrats took control of both houses of Congress after the mid-term elections 2006.

And the smoking gun for the financial crisis was the democrat program of selling houses to people that couldn't afford them.

“One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.”
― Milton Friedman

Regards,

The Presdient can't "create jobs." However his policies and the entities he manages sure as hell can kill jobs.

Actually, the bad economy was one of the reasons that the Democrats were elected, along with the rush to get away from everything Bush.

Selective memory is bad for your sanity, Phanatik.

Isn't the reverse starting to happen now?

Yes. That doesn't mean it is logical either way.

Frazzled wrote:The Presdient can't "create jobs." However his policies and the entities he manages sure as hell can kill jobs.

So can congress-- in fact, they can directly kill jobs through defunding organizations.

And they have, as have many state governments.

We've lost a LOT of public sector jobs, and while I know you're going to spit out some unthinking drivel like "good for them!", the fact remains that these are people that are now flooding the private sector with job seekers, in an economy that already doesn't have enough jobs to begin with.

Melissia wrote:Actually, the bad economy was one of the reasons that the Democrats were elected, along with the rush to get away from everything Bush.

Selective memory is bad for your sanity, Phanatik.

<Reagan voice> Well, there you go again..."

Actually, the recession started in late 2007.

No one expects you to voluntarily submit yourself for psycho-analysis, as no one expects logical consistency from the left.

The democrats gained control in 2006 due to The Bush Bashing, conservatives getting fed up with Republican runaway spending, and the right getting fed up with Bush in general starting with the nomination of Harriet Miers to the supreme court.

Have a nice day!