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Obama cannot save the country single handed. He requires the cooperation of Congress. If Congress does not pull its collective thumb out of its bum, the people will not blame Obama. when the gak hits the fan.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Obama cannot save the country single handed. He requires the cooperation of Congress. If Congress does not pull its collective thumb out of its bum, the people will not blame Obama. when the gak hits the fan.

Why not? The democrats blame Bush for everything from wars to global warming/cooling whatever.

Because it's true.

Bush made war on Afghanistan and Iraq, and refused to follow the Tokyo Convention, etc. Those are facts.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Because it's true.

Bush made war on Afghanistan and Iraq, and refused to follow the Tokyo Convention, etc. Those are facts.

You mean the Kyoto Convention, or are you referring to the annual manga convention?

I am pretty sure that Bush repudiated Comiket too!

 Frazzled wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Obama cannot save the country single handed. He requires the cooperation of Congress. If Congress does not pull its collective thumb out of its bum, the people will not blame Obama. when the gak hits the fan.

Why not? The democrats blame Bush for everything from wars to global warming/cooling whatever.

Bush started two incredibly costly wars and jumped military spending up massively.

Funnily enough you guys are a little broke now.

Though you can thank the Republicans wanting to make Obama a "one term president" by actively preventing anything to actually help the country.

 MrScience wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Obama cannot save the country single handed. He requires the cooperation of Congress. If Congress does not pull its collective thumb out of its bum, the people will not blame Obama. when the gak hits the fan.

Why not? The democrats blame Bush for everything from wars to global warming/cooling whatever.

Bush started two incredibly costly wars and jumped military spending up massively.

Funnily enough you guys are a little broke now.

Though you can thank the Republicans wanting to make Obama a "one term president" by actively preventing anything to actually help the country.

Wait, what? Are you saying we're "broke" because we "spent all of our money" on Iraq and Afghanistan? That is... silly. On a whole lot of levels.

Kilkrazy wrote:Because it's true.

Bush made war on Afghanistan and Iraq, and refused to follow the Tokyo Convention, etc. Those are facts.

I think you mean the Kyoto Accord. And that was Clinton.


However, Bush did hold the office of the president during a time when the Republicans controlled both the House and the Senate.
translation: yes, he can be blamed.




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Bromsy wrote:Wait, what? Are you saying we're "broke" because we "spent all of our money" on Iraq and Afghanistan? That is... silly. On a whole lot of levels.

I agree. You're broke because you spent all your money on Iraq and Afghanistan, while simultaneously lowering the tax rates and further deregulating the financial sector.

 azazel the cat wrote:

Bromsy wrote:Wait, what? Are you saying we're "broke" because we "spent all of our money" on Iraq and Afghanistan? That is... silly. On a whole lot of levels.

I agree. You're broke because you spent all your money on Iraq and Afghanistan, while simultaneously lowering the tax rates and further deregulating the financial sector.

That's a little better, at least.

 Bromsy wrote:
That's a little better, at least.

Yet still inaccurate.

http://mediamatters.org/video/2012/11/09/david-frum-gop-has-been-fleeced-exploited-and-l/191294

he gets it.

 Seaward wrote:

 Bromsy wrote:
That's a little better, at least.

Yet still inaccurate.

The role of social security spending should certainly be investigated.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 Seaward wrote:

 Bromsy wrote:
That's a little better, at least.

Yet still inaccurate.

The role of social security spending should certainly be investigated.

I'll be wandering around my back yard with a "PRIVATIZE IT!" sandwich board on. Y'all will know what I'm talking about, at least.

Military spending for the last twelve years of war is a fraction of the money spent through TARP. And unlike TARP there are at least some concrete benefits to the spending-- the equipment density in the Army and the Marine Corps is more than three times higher than it was at the beginning of the conflict.

Not according to Wikipedia.

If you believe the figures they give, TARP has cost $431 billion over four years (2008 to 2012) compared to a military budget of $680 billion for 2010 alone.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Not according to Wikipedia.

If you believe the figures they give, TARP has cost $431 billion over four years (2008 to 2012) compared to a military budget of $680 billion for 2010 alone.

Right, but to get the cost of the wars you would need to subtract the baseline military budget from the overall defense department allocation. For example, very expensive projects like the DDG-1000 or the X-37 space plane obviously have nothing to do with the war. Plus, 431 bill is a pretty light estimate for the total cost of Federal Stimulus under Obummer. Most estimates put the total cost (not including sunken costs or lost opportunities for capital investment) at just north of the 1 trillion mark.

 Silverthorne wrote:
Right, but to get the cost of the wars you would need to subtract the baseline military budget from the overall defense department allocation.

No we don't, because that "baseline" budget includes spending money on having the baseline capability to fight multiple simultaneous foreign wars. If we stop having wars and reduce the size of the military appropriately we cut the additional war spending AND the baseline spending that supported it.

 Easy E wrote:
However, the polling data up until election day was pretty clear, Romney had no real chance based on the Electoral College map. If you believed otherwise, you were participating in self-delusion.

One would think that, but lets look back a few weeks at this thread where I mentioned the 538 blog.
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/120/483776.page#4933262

These are smart guys, too. They just did not want to look at trending numbers. From what I hear, the Romney campaign was the same way.

gorgon wrote:
Those of you predicting Obama landslides are thinking with your hearts instead of your heads.

 whembly wrote:
A lot of these polls anticipate the same turnout in 2008, for the 2012 elections. It simply won't happen that way.

 Seaward wrote:
I continue to believe that the D/R/I splits are optimistic in favor of Democrats this cycle, but we'll see in four days.

 labmouse42 wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
However, the polling data up until election day was pretty clear, Romney had no real chance based on the Electoral College map. If you believed otherwise, you were participating in self-delusion.

One would think that, but lets look back a few weeks at this thread where I mentioned the 538 blog.
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/120/483776.page#4933262

These are smart guys, too. They just did not want to look at trending numbers. From what I hear, the Romney campaign was the same way.

gorgon wrote:
Those of you predicting Obama landslides are thinking with your hearts instead of your heads.

 whembly wrote:
A lot of these polls anticipate the same turnout in 2008, for the 2012 elections. It simply won't happen that way.

 Seaward wrote:
I continue to believe that the D/R/I splits are optimistic in favor of Democrats this cycle, but we'll see in four days.

I'm one of the smart guys?

Thanks bro!

 Seaward wrote:
I'd bet Republicans could have gotten the votes had Romney won the election. The ACA is still pretty unpopular, and a national election that seems to suggest a repudiation of Obama's policies would have made moderate Democrats in potentially vulnerable states sweat.

Nah, every Democratic senator would know that leaving the ACA holds the potential for it's support improving, as it comes in to operation and it isn't as bad as people feared. On the other hand, voting for repeal is basically surrendering the issue to the Republicans - they are forced to concede that the bill they personally passed previously was bad law.

Maybe you might pick up one senator who'd be that stupid. But to claim the 7 or 8 needed (if the Republicans had done extremely well in the senate and got up to 52 or 53 votes)... well that's just not a thing that would happen.


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 Seaward wrote:
It did to a lot of people, actually. I know perfectly non-crazy folks who thought there was no possible way turnout would go the way it did. Hell, I thought the polling models were all damn optimistic for Democrats, and I consider myself an independent.

I'll certainly agree it's dumb not to plan for all possibilities, though. I'm not arguing that - just that Romney would have had a fair shot at getting rid of ACA had he won.

Arguing that turn out wouldn't match predictions wasn't crazy. It would be naive to have considered it likely, but sensible to believe it possible.

But arguing that that would happen, and that Republicans would also make gains in the senate, and that then you'd have 7 or 8 Democrats reverse their previous vote to repeal ACA... that's pretty out there.


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 Frazzled wrote:
Good. Half the federal government needs to be fired. Then followed by a further 25% cut.
Same to same for the state government. Go to the DMV and you'll come out a believer in the Frazzled plan.

I'm increasingly convinced Fraz's entire political philosophy is driven by a long wait he once had at the DMV.


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 Frazzled wrote:
I see the standard strategy of: "If there's heavy lifting to be done with Congress, fly somewhere else" strategy continues.

I remember people criticising Obama for butting his head in last time, when it was supposed to be up to Congress to hash out a deal.

I see the Republican strategy of 'see whatever Obama does, then complain about it' continues.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Silverthorne wrote:
Right, but to get the cost of the wars you would need to subtract the baseline military budget from the overall defense department allocation.

No we don't, because that "baseline" budget includes spending money on having the baseline capability to fight multiple simultaneous foreign wars. If we stop having wars and reduce the size of the military appropriately we cut the additional war spending AND the baseline spending that supported it.

Well, yeah you do, since I was comparing the Middle East Adventure Wars to TARP. If you want to talk about defanging the USA, that's an entirely different conversation.

Also, you'll be happy to know that we actually DID do what you said with Sequestration. Previously the DOD was mandated to be able to simultaneously overcome two near peer nations in full-out DEFCON 2 war. Now it is mandated to defeat one, and delay another. It's actually a major strategic shift for the USA, I'm surprised that you are ignorant about it.

Personally I think it is a step in the right direction. The early American government was never set up to WTF PWN people overseas like we are currently able to do, but to have a deep bench of citizen soldiers that could fight defensively on a moment's notice. I feel like drastically cutting the Army, or more appropriately, moving those funds to the National Guard, is a good idea. When you have entire cadres of thousands of special forces and an offshore airforce in the form of the Navy, it makes it waaaay to easy for idiots like Obama to overthrow multiple governments in the middle east and replace them with fanatical jihadists while hi-fiving himself about how well he handled the arab spring. As we saw in Iraq (not so much Stan), its kind of a pain to use the Natty Guard as a an invasion force. We should make it as politically uncomfortable as possible to invade people as we can. Plus guard units have operating costs less than 1/6th that of regular military units. Also consider that Guardsmen are under the authority of the Governors, not the President directly. It's a great check on executive power, although it's hard to imagine a situation where the gov would deny the prez the use of guard troops. Still, politically they are much more difficult to deploy.

Also, consider the CIA has an entire three-branch military of it's own now. Jesus, SAD has an Armor component! Spies in tanks! The wonders of the military/industrial/surveillance industry never cease.

 whembly wrote:
Then, how would you reconcile all these announcement at this time?

Good question. I don't know entirely. Could be that, among the thousands of companies that a person can pick out job loss announcements for a dozen companies at any given time. Could be a flow on from the market drop. Could be that they opted to delay announcement until after the election for information flow reasons - regulators can sometimes look pretty unkindly on companies that place their accouncements at a time when market attention is on a bigger event.

I mean, I don't know what caused it, but I know 'oh no Obama won we're going to have to fire lots of people' doesn't make a lot of sense.

Not impossible... can be repealed the same way it was passed... via budget reconciliation, which requires only simple majority.

And will take months, and given such a politically toxic move wouldn't be attempted while brokering over the fiscal cliff continued, that means it would only happen after a few more months have occurred. Meaning you'd be looked at something over six months before it would be repealed.

At which point you've failed to repeal before much of the bill has come in to play, defeating the point of the political gesture.


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 Seaward wrote:
Didn't read any websites, just looked at polling data. 2008 was huge Democratic turnout. Everything between 2008 and 2012 was huge Republican turnout. Everything prior to 2008 suggested that 2008 was an anomaly, as did everything since - up until 2012.

That's not analysis. That's so ridiculously superficial all can tell someone is that you have absolutely no idea how much depth their is in polling data.


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 Seaward wrote:
True in retrospect. Saying that it required partisan motivation to believe that 2012 election turnout would not exceed historical trends is incorrect, though.

You're pretending your position is much stronger that it is, by using the term 'historic trend'. What you call a trend is actually a single data point - 2010.


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 Kilkrazy wrote:
Because it's true.

Bush made war on Afghanistan and Iraq, and refused to follow the Tokyo Convention, etc. Those are facts.

Sure, but most of those feth ups were feth ups he made in his first term. And yet it was only during his second term that his reputation turned to gak.

This is in part because it took an embarassing amount of time for people to stop pretending there was anything in Bush worth defending, and in large part because Bush didn't campaign much anymore - he had no third term to win, and if he copped it instead of his allies then they were free to continue the fight once Bush was gone.

If negotiations over the fiscal cliff tank, then Obama will take much of the blame.

 sebster wrote:
If negotiations over the fiscal cliff tank, then Obama will take much of the blame.

Well, that depends in how and why they tank. Deft political manuevering could leave some one else holdign the bag instead of the Democrats/President himself.

 whembly wrote:
I'm one of the smart guys?

Thanks bro!

LOL

Whembly, in our discussions your arguments have been rational and based on logic. (save for drunken posts you have made)
You are the definition of a 'moderate republican'.

Look at our discussion on abortion for example. Instead of ranting and raving, we simply disagreed on when the definition of 'life' began. Most rational discussions about policy can be broken down to core elements like that.

Take the highest tax rate for example. Under Clinton it was 36%. Under Bush it was 33%. Rational people realize that's (relatively to total income) a small amount. If you asked pundits on either side its the battle between "Capitalism and Socialism" or "Rich vs Poor". Its neither of those things, its 3%. The problem is talking about 3% does not make for good TV.

 Seaward wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
But he didn't win the election, and it never looked like a snap for him to do so.

It did to a lot of people, actually. I know perfectly non-crazy folks who thought there was no possible way turnout would go the way it did. Hell, I thought the polling models were all damn optimistic for Democrats, and I consider myself an independent.

If you look at a set of numbers from one poll and question it, sure, you can be skeptical and rational.

If you have dozens of polls from a multitude of polling firms and still remain skeptical then you are probably a little bit crazy! Or, at the very least, in need of a remedial statistics class so you understand how samples are created.

It was wildly apparent to all but the most deluded partisan that Obama had this sewn up for months. I'm still waiting for biccat to make good on our bet about it, in fact (where is that guy?). The only chance Romney had was that the science of polling had some fundamental flaw that was not accounted for, and it was a flaw that benefited Romney exclusively.

The one thing this election has done is give us a great list of people to ignore when issues such as climate change or the economy are discussed: if they refuse to acknowledge simple polling than how can we trust them to think rationally about subjects that are more complex?

 labmouse42 wrote:

 whembly wrote:
I'm one of the smart guys?

Thanks bro!

LOL

Whembly, in our discussions your arguments have been rational and based on logic.

I try... but, honestly sometime there's some fail in my part too... I always try to listen to both sides.

(save for drunken posts you have made)

Hey... I may be on to something! Or... I'm just stirring some gak up...

You are the definition of a 'moderate republican'.

Thanks... I think. I don't like labels... I guess I'm more of a "South Park Republican"... whatever that means .
Socially, I'm pretty liberal... but, governmentally (is that a word?)... I'm more on the right.

Look at our discussion on abortion for example. Instead of ranting and raving, we simply disagreed on when the definition of 'life' began. Most rational discussions about policy can be broken down to core elements like that.

True... and I wish most conservative (republicans) can rationally do this... but, right now, they fail miserably (see Akins).

I'm also bias'ed, so I try to 'plain that up front. makes it easier to have an adult conversation.

Take the highest tax rate for example. Under Clinton it was 36%. Under Bush it was 33%. Rational people realize that's (relatively to total income) a small amount. If you asked pundits on either side its the battle between "Capitalism and Socialism" or "Rich vs Poor". Its neither of those things, its 3%. The problem is talking about 3% does not make for good TV.

Yeah... good point.

Taxes, smaxes... I always say the real issue is spending (on BOTH side of the aisle).

We're not there yet, but I believe we're dangerously close to creating a dependency culture. And, honestly, I'm not so sure that it's inherently bad... it's just different.

Some of it's perception, too. I watched Sarah Palin and Bill O'Reilly talking about a culture of entitlement, and people wanting the government to "give them stuff".

I see a society which believes in taking care of our poor, our sick, and our children in desperate need. Who deserve to have healthcare but who simply can't afford it, especially in our system where private insurance places coverage of care of secondary priority to profit. A country which saw what happened to seniors whose savings were wiped out in the Great Depression and which decided to enact Social Security to protect our elders. A country where we already (including significant legislation under Reagan) have decided that people in need should have care regardless of their ability to pay. So we're better off coming up with a system to pay for that more efficiently, so we don't force those folks to wait until their issues are awful then go get the most expensive possible care in the emergency room. It's much better to provide them with real insurance, so they can get preventive care and treat issues before they become emergencies, which will result in better health outcomes for them and lower costs to the taxpayer.

 Mannahnin wrote:
Some of it's perception, too. I watched Sarah Palin and Bill O'Reilly talking about a culture of entitlement, and people wanting the government to "give them stuff".

That's the true battle... "perception".

At the end of the day, the politicians want to get elected and consequently, they'll say just about anything to ensure your vote. It's our job, as responsible citizens, to navigate that gak and adjust our perception accordingly.

I see a society which believes in taking care of our poor, our sick, and our children in desperate need. Who deserve to have healthcare but who simply can't afford it, especially in our system where private insurance places coverage of care of secondary priority to profit. A country which saw what happened to seniors whose savings were wiped out in the Great Depression and which decided to enact Social Security to protect our elders. A country where we already (including significant legislation under Reagan) have decided that people in need should have care regardless of their ability to pay. So we're better off coming up with a system to pay for that more efficiently, so we don't force those folks to wait until their issues are awful then go get the most expensive possible care in the emergency room. It's much better to provide them with real insurance, so they can get preventive care and treat issues before they become emergencies, which will result in better health outcomes for them and lower costs to the taxpayer.

Our culture and technological achievement is shifting this as well.

All these things are worthy causes...its up to us to determine the best way to achieve these goals.

The issue I'm seeing in my lifetime is "compromise" is an art that's been neglected. There are truly some "win-win" proposition if both sides just "give a little" to the other side. But no, it's been more of a Thunderdome environment in the arena of politics. *shrugs* Maybe I'm being naive...

Now let's all sing Kubiyah! However you spell it!

 labmouse42 wrote:
Look at our discussion on abortion for example. Instead of ranting and raving, we simply disagreed on when the definition of 'life' began. Most rational discussions about policy can be broken down to core elements like that.

Have you considered what it would mean if life began at inception?

I don't believe that it does, but I recognize that someone who feels that way *logically* has a right to be pretty darn upset about the practice. It's very easy for a pro-choice individual to discuss abortion in a detached way, and to say things like "if you don't like abortion, don't have one." The other side just sees murdered children on an epic scale, and thus their strong feelings and (non-violent) actions seem pretty legit to me, even if my personal belief is that they're in error.

Civil conversation is a nice start, but I don't think one can dismiss the emotion from every topic. If our society is to become less polarized, I think real attempts to understand why people feel the way they do are a necessary part of the process. Heck, I make fun of the Tea Partiers just like a lot of people, but maybe our goal should be to understand that all their emotion isn't just manufactured...those citizens are going through something that they feel is impacting them in a very real way.

Note that I'm not trying to jump down your throat on this, it's just that your comment got me thinking about the topic.