The jobs report had mixed news. The good news is that the economy created 244,000 jobs. The bad news is that the unemployment rate went back up to 9.0%. The bad news on the good news is that the 50,000 McDonald's burger flipper jobs are included in the jobs number, and the unexpected rise in new jobless claims reported yesterday are not factored into these April numbers. All things considered, this report seems to indicate the economy is getting better, just very slowly. I'm sure the Barry admin and the FR regular lefty liberals will be out there touting the good news and ignoring or dismissing the bad news. I will continue to shift my 401k and IRA investments away from Old Europe style socialist countries (including the U.S.) with their accompanying slow economic growth, high unemployment and high taxes, to other parts of the global economy with far better growth prospects.

BTW, I never in my entire life thought I would EVER be giving Michael Moron points for telling the actual truth: "What's so wrong w/ just saying the truth? "We executed him."

Happy Friday Everyone!

What a week it’s been!

3 things of importance today!

Job numbers were MUCH better than anticipated… can't wait to see the usual naysayers who only yesterday were continuing to play the Pin the Blame on Obama game - attempt to spin this! lol

Lawrence O’Donnell demonstrated WHY the Bush Administration preferred to only give interviews on the Faux Friendly Network last night when, he attempted to get some straight answers out of Condi Rice!

In case you missed it:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=11&ved=0CG4QFjAK&url=http%3A%2F%2Fvideocafe.crooksandliars.com%2Fheather%2Flawrence-odonnell-asks-condoleeza-rice-abo&ei=0fLDTbe2OqTL0AGPmaGTCA&usg=AFQjCNFQx_tkFB6vscRjQWgOalc_x6jOKQ

Priceless!

And lastly, let’s all take a moment to wish out very own Mark Murray, an early Happy Birthday! ;o)

Don’t tell him, but we’re planning a surprise party for him tonight over at the Dew Drop Inn! Hope to see everyone there!

Feisty Redhead Roselle, IL

Thanks for the bringing it up GF and TGIF

I've always thought it a shame Condi Rice being such a bright, highly inteligent, sophisticated, woman had to reduce herself by licking republican boots.

Happy Mother's Day

The slight increase in unemployment claims reflects some seasonal issues - typically April and May are the WORST times of the year to look for a new job. Just check with any headhunters/outplacement firms - they know these stats intimately.

Further, natural disasters and bad weather hit the economy hard.

The increase in job creation, in that light, is a pleasant surprise. Don't forget this news was preceded last week by reports that U.S. manufacturing output increased again - continuing a long string of progressive increases. That's a CUMULATIVE growth rate that is extremely encouraging, and means many positive things. First, those are better-paying jobs. Second, there's steady and growing demand for those products. Third, the revenues and income generated from manufacturing is productive growth, rather than the switching-from-one-pocket-to-another character of service employment.

Navy, excellent recapitulation of the achievements of a President countering a massive crisis in the economy, two wars, and strings of natural disasters!

Feisty:

How true, the numbers are all good today.

Oil has plunged to under $100.00 per barrel. Lets see how long it takes to get to the pumps. "Speculators", we are watching.

244,000 new jobs, higher than expected. The unemployment number goes to 9.0% which is a very good thing in that people now have more confidence in the job market and hence are coming back in and looking. This number is a very good sign indeed.

The only job sector that lost jobs was in the Government Sector.

Good, not great, jobs news:

+268,000 Private sector jobs, -24,000 Government jobs (1), for a net +244,000 net jobs created. (1) Includes 22,000 State & local government jobs.

Unemployment rises to 9% as more people reenter the job market.

There was a lot of talk yesterday about the weekly “first time” unemployment numbers but the one suggestion I would propose is that the increases is partly due to the disasters in the south over the last couple weeks. I wouldn’t be surprised if were up again next week as more dislocated workers find their way to the unemployment offices.

Seriously???

I can't take the republicans seriously anymore. After last night's Republican debate in South Carolina I have come to the conclusion that nothing is new with them. More tax cuts for the rich, no jobs plans, and more lunacy 'especially Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum’s stance on women.

Yup, nothing new about privatizing Medicare, Medicaid and SS, drugs, lies about abortion, hating public employees

Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, a libertarian-minded Republican and former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson opposition to the war in Afghanistan were the only issues I agreed with, although they would never get my vote.

Herman Cain, African-American Republican, with his root of most evil: government overreach and Cain has himself admitted that he would be a "dark horse" candidate, interestingly won the debate.

http://politicsdownanddirty.blogspot.com/2011/02/ex-godfathers-pizza-ceo-herman-cain.html

What a joke it’s my understanding he ran Godfather's Pizza nearly to the brink of bankruptcy. Correct me if I’m wrong.

What a funny story, a guy this disparaging our current President when he has a checkered background. President Obama would knock him out of the murky waters before he would Herman Cain could hold his breath.

.

They really did salivate over George Bush.

What sanctuary did they find in violating their most hallowed ground? Yes, the republicans crossed the line. We were not supposed to mention his name, at least which has been mentioned in the past, I thought.

But what the Republican- didn’t mention in that complete waste of time is, the Republicans failed in the last 10 years. — FAILED —Big Time.

Judicial Watch, a conservative, non-partisan educational foundation is gonna get egg on its face.

Watchdog group is prepared to sue for photos of bin Laden

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/159503-watchdog-group-prepared-to-sue-for-bin-laden-photos

HEY IT’S A PROVEN FACT BIN LADEN IS DEAD!!!

President Obama's 2008 pledge to kill Osama bin Laden is a Promise Kept

http://www.politifact.com/florida/article/2011/may/02/obamas-2008-pledge-kill-osama-bin-laden-promise-ke/

That is another promise kept out of 500 promises that Barack Obama made during the campaign

http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/

Would some one tell that dumb, unrepentant bigot, Hannity, the reason Bin Laden was buried Muslim because he is Muslim.

Hannity said he is not another FOX Lie

Happy Mother's Day

I echo that!

I watched Ms. Rice last night on Larry O. She just turned out to be another GOP talking head. She complained when Larry O tried to get her back on topic and answer the question but when Larry O finally got to asked another question she cut him off with more BS talking the same lies that got us into Iraq.

I never really had an opinion about her either way other than I felt she was in a position that was way over her head. She proved it last night. I would have loved to see Rachael interview her.

I don't have much use for the Democratic Party these days, but I have an outright hatred for the Republican Party. That's sad. I've known some truly wonderful Republicans over the years; thoughtful, giving, hard-working. What the hell happened?

Well, last night Condoleezza Rice brought my disdain, my contempt, my hatred for the G.O.P. into a clear light. It's the insufferable ignorance and arrogance of the crazies who have taken over the party. It's not by dint of their intellect that puts them in control - not by a long shot. Plainly and simply, it is the ear-splitting noise they make, their constant and shrill repetition of empty and meaningless talking points, and it attracts the media like moths to a flame.

In her interview with Lawrence O'Donnell, Ms. Rice put her ignorance on full display. When confronted with facts, she threatened to take her ball and go home. No facts for Ms. Rice - they get in the way of the party line. That "smoking gun", maybe in the form of a mushroom cloud, was threatening America, President Bush told us. We'd better lay waste to Iraq right now.

There was no smoking gun, no WMD's, no nothing. We're still there. The cost? More than 4,000 dead, 18,000 with visible injuries, and we don't like to talk about the mental damage, the broken homes, and countless other sorrows that go along with constant warring. That's America alone. We had allies who also suffered damage, and the horrors visited on the Iraqis was vastly greater. Oh yes, there's the dollar cost and.......

Republicans tell us the deficit and the debt is killing America. Dick Cheney told us just a few short years ago, "Deficits don't matter." That's changed. The G.O.P. has seen the light. That was one hell of a "Come to Jesus" meeting. With the zeal of a reformed whore, they tell us the answer, "Cut taxes. We don't have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem."

The Commander-in-Chief gives the order to take down American Enemy Number One. A crack SEAL Team 6 puts Osama bin Laden down like the rabid dog that he was. Yet, we cannot even rise up in unanimity and be proud as a NATION. No, we have the accursed right-wing that hates that success because the President is not a Republican.

The screaming faction that controls the once-proud G.O.P., the loyal opposition, the genuine conservative check on wild progressive ideas is far closer in nature to an asylum than a political party. If they are not driven by pure political identity, they are driven by racism. Charge them with it, and they respond, "We don't hate the President because of the color of his skin. He could be green or purple. We just hate him." They can't tell you why. They offer no alternatives. They offer no compromise.

"Either you're with us, or get out, you unpatriotic scum!" This is the big tent we're offered by the mindless crazies who now control the Republican Party. They proudly display their contempt for education, their ignorance worn as a badge of honor.

True Republicans......TAKE YOUR PARTY BACK. There are true Democrats who know there is a middle ground where you may meet to bring America back to greatness.

Happy Mother's Day back at you Feisty! What a week, month, year to be a liberal! Lots to do. So little time. Great jobs report! Glad to see oil still down, down, down. Republicans became obsolete yesterday and the debate highlighted that. The dollar is up. What a great weekend to come. Plan on sitting back and getting pampered and spoiled by my daughters.

@Beverly -- Herman Cain saved Godfather's Pizza from bankruptcy after being successful working for Pillsbury and Burger King.

Herman Cain is everything Barack Obama is not – a seasoned man of faith and patriotic conviction, an experienced business executive, a natural communicator who doesn't need a teleprompter, a guy who doesn't have to hide what he truly believes about America, the Constitution, the rule of law and limited government.

He's clearly another super-qualified candidate if the American people are willing to support a non-politician for the presidency. I am. He's got my support if he can prove himself in the heat of political battle, which I think he can.

One thing's for sure – we need more unconventional candidates like Herman Cain. We don't need any more career politicians. We need people like Ronald Reagan, Americans of conviction and common-sense values and real-life experience who can translate that into an appealing message and stick to their convictions even after elections.

Agree, Dr. Condisleasy Puffed Rice was indeed pathetic last evening. Lawrence was outstanding trying to get her to the truth.

Rice almost took the Sharon Angle position with her "Lawrence, we can end this interview right now, if you don't want me to finish my (lie) point"....in other words, a la Angle....."I want to talk about what I want to talk about not what you ask me".......

Thank you Lawrence O'!

Im doing a complete save restore and back up of this conversation, and marking my advance calender for Nov 2012. There is no sense getting in the middle of this liberal love fest( I dont have enough protection) So I will keep this entire first section of this blog as a reminder of all nasty body fluids being secreted here today. I dont know what hurts my ears more reading this crap or listening to Mark Levin! different sides of the same yak!

Unemployment is up, not because many more people are re- entering the workforce, but because more people have lost their jobs.

Even with the large gains in private sector employment, the Change in Employment Level is negative 190,000. The change in Civilian Labor Force is up by 15,000, so the total Change in Unemployment Level is up 205,000.

While yesterday's spike in new claims for unemployment is not reflected in these numbers, ( it occurred in May, and these numbers reflect changes in April), new claims for unemployment have spiked for three out of the last four weeks- thus, two of those weeks were reflected in these numbers.

The rise in unemployment is driven by those unemployed for less than five weeks. Thus, the euphoria over the increased number of private sector jobs must be tempered by the sobering news that many people are still finding themselves newly unemployed.

While one can almost always expect the Civilian Labor Force to increase in May,(due to college and high school students seeking summer jobs, as well as new graduates seeking permanent employment), the more disturbing trend is that of new claims for unemployment.

All of this suggests a very strange recovery.

Here is the link formthe data.http://www.bls.gov/cps/

@jolly -- good call. If these idiots could not see how rude and crude O'Donnell was to Ms. Rice, then there is no talking to them.

Great posts to end the week liberals. Happy "early" birthday to Mark Murray! Happy Mother's Day to all the Moms and Grandmoms out there!

Rice was nothing more than a GOP talking head spouting the same lies that got us into the war. Each one of her points were debunked years ago and she is stilling trying to sell them.

Only in the GOP/TP can failure and falsehoods be considered a virtue and be rewarded.

Plan on sitting back and getting pampered and spoiled by my daughters.

Enjoy! You deserve it! ;o)

JOS1......what a misnomer.

Anyway, you observations must mean things are looking good for the President and the administration. Thank you for your participation.

I tried to stomach watching some of last night's Republican debate in South Carolina. Good gosh, these people are so out of touch with reality. Santorum is way out there and he thinks that he is the moral police. Paul, is every further out there and his stance would kill the economy.

As far as the rest of them, they are just pandering to the far right conservatives, who are dangerous in their views on the direction they want America to go in.

I know one thing, if any of these characters would get the Republican–Tea Party nomination, then their party has really hit rock bottom.

Seeing these clowns last night just makes me more determined to work in getting President Obama re-elected, along with all and any Democrats.

This is the result of the education system in this country. You get people like Fiesty and Retired thinking that creating 250K jobs in 4 weeks greatly outweighs losing 454K jobs in 1 week. Or thinking that creating 250K jobs in 4 weeks is going to offset over 1 million new unemployment filings in that same 4 week period.

You get people that can't do basic math. They have no ability to understand economics. And let's not even mention science and technology. The left has achieved their main goal though...they have created an idiot electorate that is easily manipulated and lied to.

This week we have seen some numbers slow down. Why? Because we still do not have a Jobs Bill from the GOP/TP who promised during the campaign that was number one on their list or so they told us - lies. This is true with any bill to stimulate the economy or improve education. Instead all we have is the continued "Obstructionism" from GOP/TP controlled House. These bills have to start there; President Obama cannot create the bill,

This is as big a joke as that list of "accomplishments" that circulated in 2008 when candidate Obama was questioned about his lack of experience. So Navy your argument is that he gets the "credit" for all legislation coming out of congress but is not to blame when he cannot get the legislation he wants. Sounds like heads I win tails you loose. It is this type of post that infuriates me because it is so biased it deserves to be on MSNBC evening programing. How is your propaganda 101 class coming along?

What I will say is that these are encouraging employment numbers and BOTH sides should give up on using the unemployment rate for political purposes. It is obviously a meaningless statistic.

As long as we're taking a stroll down memory lane, remember this classic from Bush when he received intel that an attack was imminent?

The book's opening anecdote tells of an unnamed CIA briefer who flew to Bush's Texas ranch during the scary summer of 2001, amid a flurry of reports of a pending al-Qaeda attack, to call the president's attention personally to the now-famous Aug. 6, 2001, memo titled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US." Bush reportedly heard the briefer out and replied:

"All right. You've covered your ass, now."

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=4&ved=0CC4QFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fwp-dyn%2Fcontent%2Farticle%2F2006%2F06%2F19%2FAR2006061901211.html&ei=evzDTcP0EIX20gHqq-mxCA&usg=AFQjCNHPpbGP72djvQJdbfGb-rX2NEuaRA

Unbelievable!

It is this type of post that infuriates me because it is so biased it deserves to be on MSNBC evening programing.

Oh yes, and Fox News never does that type of thing...

(/s for those that don't have a clue)

an attack was imminent...right...the 'intelligence' was that al-qaeda wanted to hijack a plane...no time frame at all...yeah anyone could have come up with that bit of 'intelligence'

Judge Joe:

All things considered, this report seems to indicate the economy is getting better, just very slowly. I'm sure the Barry admin and the FR regular lefty liberals will be out there touting the good news and ignoring or dismissing the bad news. I will continue to shift my 401k and IRA investments away from Old Europe style socialist countries (including the U.S.) with their accompanying slow economic growth, high unemployment and high taxes, to other parts of the global economy with far better growth prospects.

And this from the same guy who not so long ago was trying to give Republicans credit for good economic news merely because they had taken over one house of Congress.

I guess it takes more than an election, doesn't it Joe? So why don't republicans get off their ... (well, you know) and DO something about it? Continuing tax breaks for the wealthy, combined with endless talk about abortion and Planned Parenthood and ending Medicare and Medicaid and taking away people's collective bargaining rights apparently does NOT instill any confidence in American businesses, except of course for McDonald's, which always benefits as people fall out of the middle class.

From the looks of it, even you know that much.

By the way, I hardly think that re-investing your 401(k) funds to "other parts of the global economy with far better growth prospects" does much to stimulate job growth in the US, either. But it will make you a tidy personal profit, won't it?

Ayn Rand would be so proud.

Ben:

@jolly -- good call. If these idiots could not see how rude and crude O'Donnell was to Ms. Rice, then there is no talking to them.

And if you can't see that "Ms. Rice" is clueless, self-aggrandizing, condescending, and out of touch with reality, or that she always fails to take any responsibility for anything, and refuses to answer any question that she doesn't like, then that explains a lot about why the Bush administration remained in power as long as it did.

She never was qualified to be National Security Director or Secretary of State, and I personally challenge both you and Jolly Old to come up with one significant thing that she accomplished in her eight years in the Bush administration, except for encouraging Benazir Bhutto to return to Pakistan where she was summarily executed. One of the reasons that Bush missed the clues in front of him for September 11 is that Rice was an expert on Russia, not the Middle East, and she couldn't imagine that anyone would ever blow themselves up in an airplane. Failure of imagination exactly sums her up.

We need people like Ronald Reagan, Americans of conviction and common-sense values and real-life experience

I hear the GOP may exhume John Wayne and Ronald Reagan, prop them up on a podium just to have credible candidates in the 2012 campaign.

In all seriousness though, the GOP really hasn't come up with anyone that can beat Obama ...or that has any plans about jobs or any new ideas.

US Navy you forgot to add, decided for a public company where to locate a new manufacturing facility. wtf? when did the govt get into the business of telling business where to operate?

anabanana I volunteer to pamper and spoil your daughters

Mark, Happy Birthday, may you live a hundred years! and thank you for helping to get this thread easier to navigate it is much appreciated.

Hi Mark:

Happy Birthday and many more. Enjoy your day and we will toast to ya at the DDI tonight.

Be well.

"And this from the same guy who not so long ago was trying to give Republicans credit for good economic news merely because they had taken over one house of Congress."

_____________________

AM: Again only reading selected parts of my post and trying to spin it your own way. I never said divided govt was the sole reason for improvement in the economy since last November. Only that there was a marked upturn since the first of the year indicating renewed business confidence in investing in expanding their businesses. If you read the first part of my post again you will find that I called it "mixed" news and also noted both the good and bad news. I also noted that the economy is improving, although slowly. I'd call that a realistic evaluation of the report.

"By the way, I hardly think that re-investing your 401(k) funds to "other parts of the global economy with far better growth prospects" does much to stimulate job growth in the US, either. But it will make you a tidy personal profit, won't it?"

_______________________________________

AM: When did it become my responsibility to stimulate job growth in the US with my retirement investments?? My responsibility with my retirement investments is to provide for a comfortable retirement, nothing more, nothing less. And in a global economy, capital and the resulting economic growth and new jobs goes where it is most welcomed. The sooner lefty liberals realize that fact and stop whining about it, and make the US a place where capital is welcomed instead of demonized, the sooner there will be a growing US economy with lots of new jobs.

Besides, I thought it was the responsibility of federal govt jobs bills to create jobs??

Feisty Redhead Roselle, IL, how woefully ignorant you are. Your boy Obama refuses to go on Fox News. Bush went on numerous channels and did interviews. Your ascertain that he only gave interviews to Fox News shows how ignorant and hysterical you lefties really are. Don't make baseless claims unless you can back it up. Obama has been on Fox ONCE. Idiot.

And the cheer leading squad is out in full! Never mind that housing is hitting a double dip, never mind that unemployment rose to the higher level since August 2010, never mind that the dollar is at the lowest point ever. Obama is doing well, the only problem is that the American people are not: examples- high gas prices, risen inflation ( yes,is here and it will increase) and the fact that many of the jobs created are temporary, part-time and pay less than ever before. Let's take a pause I know that killing Osama is supposed to make us feel good , but lets not take the eye of the ball. Oh, by the way GM- the Volt- "the transformational car" they can not even give it away, the worse ratings and the worst sale figures and is all subsidized by us the tax payers for the benefit of the Union.

Anna Molly and Joe in Albany:

Your posts clearly illustrate the one of the biggest - if not the biggest - problems we face in America. (First though, it would be terribly wonderful Joe, if you would can the "lefty liberal" crap. What's the matter with you? Do you think you're dealing with some sort of monolith?)

That said, Joe is doing exactly what a rational investor would do. Capital moves where it promises the greatest return. There is no shortage of labor on the planet and there is a serious competition to provide the lowest cost labor. There is no low-cost labor in the United States. For all the noise about illegal immigration, the FACT is this: Americans will NOT labor for minimum wage. It is an outright lie to say that Americans are going to follow crops and harvest them for minimum wage. All measures of education show that we are a nation in decline, but by golly, we're only going to accept "high-paying jobs".

So Anna Molly, that is why jobs are going overseas. However, all is not lost. Once upon a time, we had an education system that was the envy of the entire world. You know what? It still is, and that's why our universities are packed with foreign students, and they're beating the snot our of their American counterparts. Worse, we don't allow them to stay. We send them back to their countries to compete against us.

The twin monsters - the Self-esteem Beast and the Compulsory School Attendance Behemoth - must be killed. Now! This minute! Immediately! The Joes in Albany must be persuaded to invest in American students. The only hope for a return to leadership is to bring a laser-like focus on education. Today's system is a miserable failure, and even if we act immediately, it will continue to get worse for years to come. Failure has momentum.

So, Anna Molly and Joe, is there some reason to continue sniping at each other, knowing that the result will be MORE sniping?..........OR is there a common ground where the sniping ends and problem-solving begins?

If you can't answer that question, woe to this country, because there is a common ground and that is a shared interest in the success of America.

Demar.. you must have missed the interview of President Obama by Bill O'Reilly on Super Bowl evening.....pity, you would have seen O'Reilly make a jackass out of himself with all those millions watching.

The sooner lefty liberals realize that fact and stop whining about it, and make the US a place where capital is welcomed instead of demonized, the sooner there will be a growing US economy with lots of new jobs.

BTW, IMHO, that's simply not going to happen and that's why my investments are going elsewhere.

Wow! I have not seen such cheer leading, copy & paste talking points, weak excuse making, and sycophant indigo colored propaganda since my college sophomore poly-sci class. Is this for our entertainment or have you guys really swallowed & become this excrement that you are regurgitating?

David Walker:

So, Anna Molly and Joe, is there some reason to continue sniping at each other, knowing that the result will be MORE sniping?..........OR is there a common ground where the sniping ends and problem-solving begins?

Goodness gracious, David. You obviously haven't read much of what I've written here over the past couple of years, and especially over the past few months. I understand completely why investors like Joe invest overseas. I'm just saying that it makes no sense if you're doing that to continue complaining about the American economy because you're part of the problem. In reality, I'm a lefty-liberal former teacher who believes that investing in education IS the #1 priority for this country, or ANY country, just ahead of investing in REAL health care reform, environmental protection, and infrastructure. But I also think that American education, when left alone without interference by people who obviously know nothing about it, could be successful if it had consistent support, both economically and otherwise, and conservatives would stop demonizing teachers in furtherance of their personal agendas, which generally have nothing to do with lifting others -- or this nation -- up.

Why Joe and I snipe at each other is anyone's guess, but it's not what you seem to think it is. And I'll stop it if and when he does.

Well at least 26,000 people will ask you if you want it super size with that meal!

I agree Anna, education is #1 and ask Detroiters if they fell the same way? 47% can't read!! The messed up part of that is that DPS is one of the highest paid teachers in the country! thank GOD for the unions, bless their hearts.

Joe in Albany:

'The bad news on the good news is that the 50,000 McDonald's burger flipper jobs are included in the jobs number '

But, the good news on the bad news on the good news is that many, maybe even most, of those "burger flipping jobs" will go to teens and/or youngsters.

With the summer season on the horizon, this is a traditional rite of passage opportunity that many of our kids have not had for quite some time, as adults have had to fill these jobs (those few available) in order to supplement incomes in this economy or just to survive.

More of our kids working, if just for the summer vacation season, is a GOOD THING.

Anna Molly… when you use economic terms like “Investing” and say things like ‘investing in education IS the #1 priority for this country’ you imply cost benefit analysis, targeted concrete goals, sound financial applications, return on investment, hard time lines, and system wide individual accountability (among many, many other things). With your background what would YOU recommend we do to additionally ‘invest’ in education?

Happy B'Day US Ret. And, "Happy Mothers Day" to all who are. Have a good weekend everyone.

3Wolves:

I agree Anna, education is #1 and ask Detroiters if they fell the same way? 47% can't read!! The messed up part of that is that DPS is one of the highest paid teachers in the country! thank GOD for the unions, bless their hearts.

Call it combat pay, 3Wolves. Surely, you understand that.

My district, which is also highly unionized, and has some of the higher paid teachers in the state, too, has ACT scores averaging over 25, and more National Merit Scholars than just about any place on the planet. How do you explain that? Easy. This is a wealthy, prosperous, and LIBERAL community where people take an interest in general in their kids' education. Milwaukee, on the other hand, a low-income and highly segregated urban area, much like Detroit, has an average ACT score in the 15's, with all kids tested. The only other school in this state where all kids take the ACT score averages 22.4. What's the difference there? Not unions, as both are strongly unionized, and I know this firsthand. But the higher-scoring school system is in a wealthy suburb where people take an interest in their kids' education.

So get off the union kick, because you're on the wrong trail. A Wolfman like you ought to be able to follow the scent better than that.

OBALARO:

With your background what would YOU recommend we do to additionally 'invest' in education?

Read my post above. You will find, if you do any research, that the presence of unions is essentially a neutral factor in whether schools do well. You will also find, if you do any research, that charter schools by and large do not do any better than regular public schools, even though they cherry pick their student population and their focus. You will find that wealthy school districts tend to spend more than poor school districts, which if ROI is your mantra, they seem to believe they achieve by spending more. Otherwise, why would the wealthy, being obviously more savvy than everyone else, spend more? You will find that, by and large, wealthy districts have better-achieving students than poor districts, even when both are unionized. I leave private schools out of this equation because they are able to cherry-pick their school populations, do not have to provide for special needs, and do not have to put up with trouble-makers. Still, no one in my community would dispute that two of the four public high schools, which are strongly unionized, and located in the more affluent areas, turn out students who are better achieving than the local, non-unionized, private high school, which is located in the same general area.

So, properly directed, money seems to be a necessary factor. But not ill-directed money. Following fads that advance private agendas, like "No Child Left Behind," which was just a boondoggle for Bush's brother Neil to sell computer software, do not advance the ball. Demonizing teachers and unions does not advance the ball. But putting money into the right resources and facilities, encouraging teachers, rather than demoralizing them, incenting them for exceptional achievement, instead of trying to take away what little they currently get paid to give it to the wealthy, making teaching a profession that the best and brightest would truly be proud to be part of, supporting teachers by providing them with well-organized and safe environments in which to work, enforcing on students the benefits of a good education, rather than weakening child labor laws so they can all work at McDonalds' more hours each week, educating parents on the need to support their children's educational efforts and the need to respect their teachers, and making school administrators DO THEIR JOBS in supporting their staffs, maintaining discipline and order, evaluating teachers, and weeding out the bad ones would be a good place to start.

How on earth we got to the point where all this stuff needs attention is truly something this country ought to be ashamed of.

Anna Molly:

In fact, I do read your posts. I think you missed the point of mine. Please read Joe in Albany's response. Joe absolutely refuses to budge. It's the "My way or the Highway" mantra. The constant repetition of "lefty liberal" may give him some credibility with the idiots on the right, but it has no value. He has summarily removed himself from any discussion.

Joe will not stop his worthless sniping. He is best ignored. His opinion is not humble, it is worthless. His talking points are merely a recitation of dogma. Why snipe? You will not move him from his ideology. That is what I mean when I write that the center must coalesce, ignoring the extremes of both the left and the right.

I'll offer a quick example and then move on to the rest of your post. The "capital", of which he speaks with such reverence, is no less and no more than the representation of exploited labor. (I do not use the word "exploited" as a pejorative.) However, when genuine labor crosses the border in the person(s) of Mexicans, Joe will scream like a stuck pig, even as he touts a "global economy". Seriously, read his post at 1.38. He is a mass of contradictions. These folks are bereft of critical thinking ability and thus cannot experience cognitive dissonance. That is not a joke. That is reality for the right wing crazies.

Moving on. Obolaro exhibits similarly stunted reasoning ability when he says when investing in education, ".......you imply cost benefit [sic] analysis, targeted concrete goals, sound financial applications.........", etc. Hey, I know a whole lot of meaningless words, too.

He/she clearly demonstrates the mindset of the lockstep right wing. Humans do not lend themselves to "targeted concrete goals". We are individuals, and truly do not learn in lockstep fashion.

I couldn't agree more with your priorities if I had listed them myself. (By the way, conservatives don't demonize teachers. Right-wing idiots do that.)

I didn't mean to offend you. These days, I am desperate to get people to understand that the right-wing is dominating the national debate far out of proportion to either its numbers, and most certainly far out of proportion to its intellectual offerings.

@David Walker, re: post #1.10

Spot on. Yesterday I attempted to articulate my heartbreak at the GOP being swallowed within the abyss of its fringe elements, but you've done so with far greater eloquence than I could manage.

I tip my hat to you, sir.

Why Joe and I snipe at each other is anyone's guess, but it's not what you seem to think it is. And I'll stop it if and when he does.

_______________________________

AM: I disagree with the term "sniping" used by David Walker. That word implies we are taking shots at each other from a hidden position. I freely say what I believe and I'm sure you do too. Nothing is hidden, we just disagree. As long as the discussion between the two of us is civil, who is David Walker to criticize it. That's why I ignored his baiting post.

BTW, the lawyer comments are not malicious. I am a son of a lawyer (and a teacher-LOL!!!).

David Walker: You are waaaaaaaay too impressed with yourself, a legend in your own mind.

You remind me of the planet's biggest pompous A$$, Keith Olbermann.

Carry on.

The fact of the matter is that an ignorant population is easier to control. Attack education and people don't learn how to ask the right questions. The dumber the better.

What I find so hard to swallow is that many of these conservatives consider themselves pious Christians, while at the same time they are pounding their fellow man into the ground. The GOP/TP want to take away ALL kindnesses done by the people for the people.

The Bible says in Matthew 25:31-46

The Sheep and the Goats

³¹ "When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. ³² All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. ³³ He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

³⁴"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. ³⁵ For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, ³⁶ I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'

³⁷"Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? ³⁸ When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? ³⁹ When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'

⁴⁰"The King will reply, 'Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.'

⁴¹"Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. ⁴² For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, ⁴³ I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.'

⁴⁴"They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?'

⁴⁵"He will reply, 'Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.'

⁴⁶ "Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."

I would have to say Lefty liberal = Sheep

Radical conservative Tea Partiers = Goats

In this passage the left-right distinctions of political affiliation seem to have been switched

Jesus was a Lefty Liberal

Anna,

Combat pay, yeah I'll agree with you on that. I still believe teacher unions hurt the students in the long run. That's what I see. Where my kids go to school there's not a teachers union and the county ranks #1 in the state. Honestly the bottom line with education starts with the parents. If the parents don't care the kids see it and they don't care. Detroit is a perfect example, it's sad but true.

David Walker:

I didn't mean to offend you. These days, I am desperate to get people to understand that the right-wing is dominating the national debate far out of proportion to either its numbers, and most certainly far out of proportion to its intellectual offerings.

Please don't apologize. I wasn't offended. That's just the way I talk. If the purpose of your post was to tell me all the ways Joe is wrong in his thinking, I already knew that, although I must say that you've articulated it ever so much better than I ever could. If the purpose was to persuade me to ignore Joe, you're wasting your time, although I would also welcome more opportunities of speaking with you. You seem to be a very reasonable, and certainly articulate, person.

Judge Joe: As long as the discussion between the two of us is civil, who is David Walker to criticize it. That's why I ignored his baiting post.

Indeed. For all of about 8 minutes after you posted this. LoL

I agree that "sniping" is perhaps too strong a word. Don't worry. You're not rid of me yet.

I didn't know that about your mother. Good for her.

3Wolves:

Where my kids go to school there's not a teachers union and the county ranks #1 in the state.

Tell me more about your county and the rest of your state before we draw any conclusions from that. Are there any unions anywhere? How does your children's particular school do relative to the county as a whole? How does your county rank in wealth compared to the others? Urban or sububurban or rural? My county ranks pretty much the same as yours, and certainly this district does, despite all those nasty unions. What are the other factors in play where you are?

Really Batman? Religion and politics? Just those two subjects together is a bad mixture.

Let me ask you a question, you remember the school in Kansas City where the kids learned the Obama chant and military type drill? Kids wearing BDU pants and tee shirts? Kind of scary at the time for kids that's not old enough to vote, but can do such a military type drill during school? Who was controlling those kids?

Anna Molly

This is a wealthy, prosperous, and LIBERAL community where people take an interest in general in their kids' education.

AM... Your 'all-caps' emphasis on the word LIBERAL seems to insinuate that conservatives DON'T take an interest in their kid's education. (by the way... for an educator you should know your apostrophy in in the wrong place in the word "kid's" - it is possessive... remember?)

Is that what you are trying to say?

If so, I can tell you that you couldn't be more wrong. You see, my wife and I are BOTH conservatives and the education of our three sons has been paramount in our family. So much so that in spite of exorbitant property taxes ($8K/yr on a $300k home) used to fund our school district, we scrimp and save to send our children to private school. Every evening is spent working with them on their homework and helping them study for tests. And it shows. My children have all been straight-A students and my two oldest (now gone to college) scored well on the ACT exams (32 and 29).

No... if your statement was one designed to paint conservatives as uninterested parties in the education of their children... you missed the mark sister.

@3wolves you deliberately miss my point. That being supposed Christians will throw ALL of America under the bus for profit. and in response to your reference to the KC school, " I just don't spend much time on it"

Fair enough Batman, but I think any religion will throw whoever disagrees with them under the bus.

Here you go 3wolves maybe without the biblical quote it will make more sense to you.

The fact of the matter is that an ignorant population is easier to control. Attack education and people don't learn how to ask the right questions. The dumber the better.

What I find so hard to swallow is that many of these conservatives consider themselves good people, while at the same time they are pounding their fellow man into the ground. The GOP/TP want to take away ALL kindnesses done by the people for the people.

Anna,

I live within a military community. Not going to say the State, just have to take my word for it.

Sick-I agree 100% with you, 8%? Damn that's high. But education starts with the parents in my opinion.

Batman,

Is that your opinion or can you post that GOP/TP wants to take away ALL kindness? That's a bold statement and pretty sure it's a false statement, your opinion maybe, not a fact.

Indeed. For all of about 8 minutes after you posted this. LoL

I agree that "sniping" is perhaps too strong a word. Don't worry. You're not rid of me yet.

_______________________________________________

At some point you just have to call out a self-impressed pompous A$$ for what it is. I have resisted responding to several of his prior posts (not invoving any posts of mine) in the past, but at some point, it's too much. The one that really tested my strength to avoid engaging this pompous A$$, was when he claimed the US Teasury securities given to the SS "trust" fund so the federal govt could get its hands on the excess cash coming in from SS deductions from peoples paychecks and the employer match weren't really "debt", but, just an "accounting gimmick". He even got a marraige proposal from an FR lefty liberal from Maine for that one. Let me just say that, when the SS "trust" fund starts sending out more than it is taking in, like it is NOW doing, it will be looking to the US Treasury to make good on its "debt" and pay back the cash needed to cover the SS checks being sent out. And the only way the federal govt has to pony up the cash is to sell more debt to the Chinese. If that's not real "debt", then I'm a lefty liberal (God forbid!! LOL!!!).

I wouldn't think of being rid of you, counselor. We have too much to discuss.

Judge Joe:

Let me just say that, when the SS "trust" fund starts sending out more than it is taking in, like it is NOW doing, it will be looking to the US Treasury to make good on its "debt" and pay back the cash needed to cover the SS checks being sent out. And the only way the federal govt has to pony up the cash is to sell more debt to the Chinese. If that's not real "debt", then I'm a lefty liberal (God forbid!! LOL!!!).

Oh, I remember that marriage proposal thing. Don't tell me you're jealous. A lot of people would probably want to marry anyone who could save Social Security. You should give it a try if you think you have an answer and want a proposal, too. David does have a point, up to a point, but I agree with you that it really IS debt. That's clear. Where I get off the boat is when conservatives propose punishing the recipients of Social Security for that debt, which was not created not by the Social Security system itself, but rather by Congress, for which Congress doesn't want to be held accountable, and so Congress tries to tell you that the system is insolvent, when it's really not. That's the part about the accounting trick. But here's the deal, Joe. People paid the money, and they should get the benefit. I disagree that the only way to make that happen is to incur more debt. Other cuts, including cuts in defense, need to be found to make up that difference. Otherwise -- and you of all people should really appreciate this, Joe -- it becomes nothing but a hidden tax increase on people who already paid once and can afford it least. And to then say that it's balancing the budget without raising taxes, like Paul Ryan likes to say, becomes an flat-out lie.

I don't think you ever have to worry about becoming a lefty liberal, your honor. But too much to discuss, and too little time, indeed.

A lot of people would probably want to marry anyone who could save Social Security.

______________________

Yeah, it's just that calling the SS "trust"fund holding Treasury IOUs from the federal govt "not real debt, just an accounting gimmick" doesn't solve anything.

"Where I get off the boat is when conservatives propose punishing the recipients of Social Security for that debt, which was not created not by the Social Security system itself,"

If that's really what the conservatives were proposing I would agree with you. I blame the Republicans (as opposed to small "c" fiscal conservatives like me) of botching the communication of the truth about SS. Regardless of the federal govts budget deficits or surpluses (LOL!!!), SS is slowly going bankrupt as a separate stand alone system.

SS was established under the false premise it was an "insurance" type program. FDR sold us that we would pay into a "trust" fund while working and then collect on our accumulated "trust" fund principle and interest in our retirement years. The reality is that every dollar paid out to beneficiaries comes, not from a "trust" fund, but, from current workers paying in with their payroll deductions and employer match. That works as long as there are a sufficient number of people paying in to cover the money going out. Even without the US Treasury borrowing from the SS "trust" fund and paying back every dime, it will eventually not be taking in enough to meet it's payments going out. That may be 2037, but, I think you would have to agree that if you can't pay your bills with your income, you have got some real problems.

SOTB:

AM... Your 'all-caps' emphasis on the word LIBERAL seems to insinuate that conservatives DON'T take an interest in their kid's education.

It does no such thing. It just emphasizes that liberals DO know something about education, which conservatives never want to credit. You all claim to know so much, and yet the worst achieving states in this country are all red, right-to-work states, like Texas and Mississippi. We'll keep our liberal values and our high-achieving students, if you don't mind. Your values don't seem to work out that well, generally speaking.

(by the way... for an educator you should know your apostrophy in in the wrong place in the word "kid's" - it is possessive... remember?)

Oh, yes, I remember. In fact, it's PLURAL possessive. A person who can't spell "apostrophe" ought not be so quick to criticize its use by someone who can.

As for your children, that's just an anecdote. What would one expect with all that money and attention thrown at them? It would be nice if ALL the underprivileged children in the public schools got that kind of attention, wouldn't it?

That's my whole point, brother. And gee, thanks.

Besides, my daughter can say those things, too, and she went to public schools, and graduated with high honors from a world class university, and is now working successfully in retail management while working in her spare time to become an artist. My nephew can say those things, too, and he went to public schools, and is now working out his lucrative fellowship at UC-Berkeley in the biosciences. My niece can say those things, too, and she went to public schools, and is now working as a clerk for an appellate court judge. Heck, I can say those things, and I went to public school, and I can spell apostrophe.

And all of those schools, all different, were unionized. Your point?

Maybe your point should be that giving your children attention to their learning is more important that the public/private school myth, and that throwing money at education has benefits.

Yeah, that's it. At least, that's what I read.

If you don't believe me, the following is from the 2010 SS Trustees report. The trustees are Barry's sec'ys of Labor, Treasury, HHS and the Commissioner of SS. If you can't "trust" them, who can you "trust"?? Maybe you don't consider paying 75% of you bills bankrupt, but, I'll bet your creditors/SS beneficiaries would.

Social Security expenditures are expected to exceed tax receipts this year for the first time since 1983. The projected deficit of $41 billion this year (excluding interest income) is attributable to the recession and to an expected $25 billion downward adjustment to 2010 income that corrects for excess payroll tax revenue credited to the trust funds in earlier years. This deficit is expected to shrink substantially for 2011 and to return to small surpluses for years 2012-2014 due to the improving economy. After 2014 deficits are expected to grow rapidly as the baby boom generation’s retirement causes the number of beneficiaries to grow substantially more rapidly than the number of covered workers. The annual deficits will be made up by redeeming trust fund assets in amounts less than interest earnings through 2024, and then by redeeming trust fund assets until reserves are exhausted in 2037, at which point tax income would be sufficient to pay about 75 percent of scheduled benefits through 2084.

A person who can't spell "apostrophe" ought not be so quick to criticize its use by someone who can.

OUCH!!!!

Joe:

Regardless of the federal govts budget deficits or surpluses (LOL!!!), SS is slowly going bankrupt as a separate stand alone system.

Emphasis on "slowly." But for pity sake, then SHORE IT UP, rather than reducing benefits, which is what is proposed, or reducing payroll taxes, as was done as part of the budget compromise at the end of 2010. Cutting payroll taxes will not make the system more solvent -- it's destined to exacerbate the problem even further.

That was, and I hope you agree, patently stupid.

The reality is that every dollar paid out to beneficiaries comes, not from a "trust" fund, but, from current workers paying in with their payroll deductions and employer match.

You're disconnecting, Joe. That's only true because of Congress's raid on the trust fund, the surplus of which, as I understand it, would be $2.2 trillion if the raid had not occurred. There would have been money to pay out current benefits if Congress had not stolen it, and the length of time before the current system goes broke would be considerably longer.

But this isn't unique to Social Security. Any insurance system that steals from its reserves and spends that money for other purposes will wind up in the same place. I've seen that firsthand, and it all came crashing down when the stock market tanked the last time before this time.

But don't rob the people who paid in to pay for a phony war that you never told them they were paying for. PUT THE MONEY BACK.

It's the morally decent thing to do.

And if defense has to be cut to pay for it, then so be it, because defense was, to a certain extent, what the stolen money was used for in the first place. Let Halliburton take the hit for the folly they lobbied for, rather than somebody's destitute grandmother.

Joe:

A person who can't spell "apostrophe" ought not be so quick to criticize its use by someone who can.

OUCH!!!!

LoL Let that be a lesson to you, too, your honor. Mind your p's and q's. And your apostrophes.

p.s. I know you're kidding about the lawyer thing. Me, too.

That was, and I hope you agree, patently stupid.

_____________________________

Yes, I agree. However, it did not affect the SS system because the tax deal provided that SS would be given the lost 2% out of the federal budget deficit spending, making SS whole and just running up the Chinese credit card. This was done solely to evade the reduction in paycheck take home pay that would have happened as Barry's Porkulus Making Work Pay credit expired on 12/31/10. Let's see what kind of rabbit Barry can pull out of his hat when this 2% scam expires on 12/31/11 and everyone gets a tax increase of $1,000 on every $50,000 they earn in an election year. LOL!!!

______________________

You're disconnecting, Joe. That's only true because of Congress's raid on the trust fund, the surplus of which, as I understand it, would be $2.2 trillion if the raid had not occurred.

No, the SS Trustees report is based on evey dime borrowed by Congress being paid back in full, plus interest. If their report considered the borrowings to be "stolen", they would not have enough money to pay today's SS checks: "The projected deficit of $41 billion this year (excluding interest income) is attributable to the recession". The US Treasury will have to borrow $41 billion from the Chinese to pay back the borrowing from the SS "trust" fund. The Trustees consider SS a stand-alone system and the US Treasury IOUs to be fully collectible.

Sorry to disappoint you. but, SS from its very start was never a "trust" fund. Every beneficiary since day one has been paid by curent workers contributions and employer match. As the numberof people collecting increases compared to the number of people paying in, it's got to come up short, as barry's trustees report describes.

AM: My grill is asking when I'm gonna put the filet mignon and Alaska sockeye salmon on,and there are a couple of Sam Adams' in my refrigerator begging for my attention. Happy Mothers Day, counselor.

BTW, did I get the apostrophe right??

@3wolves, if the shoe fits...

BTW, did I get the apostrophe right??

On advice of counsel, no comment.

Except thank you for the Mother's Day wishes.

Oh, and enjoy your dinner, your Sam Adamses, and your weekend. ;-)

Much has been bantered about here from some concerning how long it took to get UBL. Absurd remarks about how one president “wouldn’t” or “couldn’t” in seven years get UBL and it only took another president two years and 102 days to do it. You can yack all you want about how it only took two years compared to seven years – if you want to make that uneducated and naïve comparison – but the truth is nothing was in place to handle an attack of this magnitude on our soil when President Bush took office. The entire military, CIA, etc. had been weakened under Clinton. Bob Kerry (D) said in the commission’s report “We weren’t ready.” If it wasn’t for several areas put in place by the Bush administration and security team, none of this would have been possible – from enhanced interrogation, to Gitmo and to the Patriot Act (which was maligned by BHO while campaigning and promised to repeal but kept in place once in office).

Those who say that the Bush administration and operatives had nothing to do with the killing of UBL only show their immaturity, ignorance and total disregard for the safety of our country. Even Lanny Davis said this morning that enhanced interrogation works and so did Leon Panetta this week. You can take your partisanship to extremes and that only makes you petulant.

Al Qaeda hit us after Clinton failed to take out their leader and then purportedly left President Bush a memo that an attack could occur. No details as to where – this is a pretty big country – or how but some idiots on here expect that a new administration with a weakened CIA and military could somehow prevent 9/11 based on that cryptic memo.

“But we didn’t get UBL at Tora Bora” cries the uneducated babies. You are on Al Qaeda’s home field that it riddled with thousands of miles of interconnecting caves which have been around since the beginning of time. The only way to extract those who want to hide like cowards in a maze of caves known only to them and protected by the tribal families in the area would be to level the mountains. President Bush – unlike me – chose not to do that.

So now you face an enemy on their home field of battle. You are much bigger but the opposing team is faster than a hiccup. What do you do???? Fumblerooskie! If you can’t get to the quarterback, you start taking out the first team running interference because the second or third teams will never be as good in protecting the QB. By taking out the following list of Al Qaeda (you have to give credit to President Bush’s administration and operatives on those taken out in 02/08) provided by Reuters, President Bush gained all of the yardage right down to the goal line and let the new QB score the touchdown and do a victory dance in the end zone.

AFGHANISTAN:

Mohammed Atef, one of the top leaders of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, was killed in a U.S. air strike in Afghanistan in November 2001.

Abu Laith al-Libi, one of Osama bin Laden's top lieutenants who commanded militant forces in Afghanistan, was killed in February 2008 in a suspected U.S. missile strike that also killed up to 13 foreign militants.

ALGERIA:

Hareg Zoheir, the deputy chief of al Qaeda's North Africa wing, was killed along with two other rebels in a gun battle with Algerian troops in October 2007.

IRAQ:

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al Qaeda's leader in Iraq, was killed in a U.S. air raid in June 2006.

U.S. forces killed Muhammed Abdullah Abbas al-Issawi, described as a security emir for al Qaeda in Iraq, in April 2007.

The U.S. military killed Muharib Abdul Latif al-Jubouri, an al-Qaeda figure accused of involvement in the kidnapping of American journalist Jill Carroll, in May 2007.

Police killed Mohammed Yahya al-Rahmani, known as Abu Mussab, and three foreign militants near Samarra in Feb 2008.

In April 2008 Iraqi authorities captured Nazal Sabar al-Jughaify, also known as Abu al-Jarrah, a senior lieutenant to al Qaeda's leader in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri.

PAKISTAN:

Saudi-born Palestinian Abu Zubaydah was arrested after a shootout in the central Pakistani city of Faisalabad in March 2002. Zubaydah was operations director for al Qaeda and the first high-ranking member to be arrested.

Ramzi Binalshibh, a Yemeni national and one-time roommate of Mohamed Atta, suspected ringleader of the September 11 hijackers, was captured in Karachi in September 2002.

Security forces arrested Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, al Qaeda's number three and alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks, in a raid in Rawalpindi, near Islamabad, in March 2003.

Musaad Aruchi, a nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed with a $1 million bounty on his head, was arrested in Karachi in June 2004.

Tanzanian Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was arrested in the city of Gujrat in July 2004.

Pakistani intelligence agencies and security forces arrested Abu Faraj Farj al-Liby, mastermind of two failed attempts on President Pervez Musharraf's life, in May 2005.

Abu Hamza Rabia, an al Qaeda commander ranked the third most senior leader in the network, was killed in a tribal region of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan in December 2005.

Muhsin Musa Matwalli Atwah (also known as Abdul Rehman), an Egyptian al Qaeda member wanted for involvement in the 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Kenya, was killed by Pakistani forces close to the Afghan border in April 2006.

SAUDI ARABIA:

Youssef al-Eiery, the leading al Qaeda militant in Saudi Arabia who was believed to be behind the May 2003 suicide bombings in Riyadh which killed at least 35 people, was shot dead by Saudi police shortly after the attacks.

Several of Eiery's successors, including Khaled Ali Haj, Abdulaziz al-Muqrin and Saleh al-Awfi, were killed by Saudi security forces over the next two years.

SOMALIA:

A U.S. air strike on Thursday killed Aden Hashi Ayro, who led al Shabaab militants blamed for attacks on government troops and their Ethiopian allies.

YEMEN:

Yemeni security forces shot dead Yasser al-Homeiqani, an al Qaeda fugitive, in southern Yemen in January 2007.

The bottom line that will go into the History books is that President Obama took out OBL. There will only be a footnote about how Bush bailed out of Afghan and let him escape. President Clinton will have the same footnote.

It is over move on.

Our President got the job done, Bush and Clinton did not. It is that simple.

End of Story:

President Obama in 2012

the bottom line is that obama wouldn't have gotten OBL unless he repudiated everything he stood for in the election, and kept with the bush policies...and he can't even keep his story straight after its over such incompetence.

What a hypocrite -- you make the initial post and then tell others to move on.

Dont bother Joe.....they will either ignore you while they blather or pelt you with names and vile comments. All I do is send my Independent friends this blog and let them read it. So far 140 sent 138 have responded with WTF are those people smoking or drinking! LOL! Still Independent and still leaning right! By the way......Mr Obama deserves credit for saying "its a go" Same way any of the 3 CIC's I served under. (2 Dems 1 Rep)

true, the libs are vile.

RWNJ all got there panties in a bunch. They still do not have any ideas. No plan to create jobs, no plan to stimulate the economy etc etc etc. NO NOTHING. Looks like the GOP/TP may be walking back their position on trashing Medicare now. Oh goody, I wonder how all those GOP/TP people that were forced by Boehner to vote for it feel now that he may go back on that. Sorry guys, the people are going to be reminded how you voted and you will still have to try and defend it come 2012.

President Obama will win reelection in 2012.

The entire military, CIA, etc. had been weakened under Clinton

This is simply not true. It's fascinating to me how Republicans love to forget President Clinton successfuly removed the genocidal dictator Slobodan Milosevic and defeated his army without incurring American casualties or bankrupting the nation. If the Bush administration had listened to Clinton's general, Colin Powell, they wouldn't have cocked up the Iraq invasion. It was Powell who said, don't invade without an exit strategy.

Funny watching the Repulicons whine and complain because Obama did something Bush couldn't do. Obama promised to do it

And if we have Osama bin Laden in our sights and the Pakistani government is unable or unwilling to take them out, then I think that we have to act, and we will take them out. We will kill bin Laden. We will crush al-Qaida. That has to be our biggest national security priority.”

McCain and others cried fowl (from http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/901/we-will-kill-bin-laden/):

Back then, Obama's rivals for the presidency criticized his remarks as naive, saying that direct, public criticism of Musharraf was unwise. In other attacks, his rivals distorted Obama's position to say he wanted to bomb Pakistan, claims we rated Pants on Fire.

Obama did what he promised. Republicons cried foul then and they cry foul now; they are a bunch of whiners.

Ben-636050

@Beverly -- Herman Cain saved Godfather's Pizza from bankruptcy after being successful working for Pillsbury and Burger King.

Herman Cain is everything Barack Obama is not – a seasoned man of faith and patriotic conviction, an experienced business executive, a natural communicator who doesn't need a teleprompter, a guy who doesn't have to hide what he truly believes about America, the Constitution, the rule of law and limited government.

Thank you for the info; Ben. I had HEARD he caused it to go bankrupt.

I totally disagree with you. Herman Cain is another woman hating,T-Bagger carnival barker the republicans may be positioning to run against President.

Republicans love drama. Anyhow, whatever the GOP/T-baggers have in mind for his visibility, I predict, he will be tossed aside; once he completes his mission. He will then be the same as Michael Steele; nothing more than a lawn jockey for the Republican Headquarters aka FOX NEWS and a male, republican,carnival barker, escort for republican voyeurism; when they want to party.

jollyoldsoul1

Either you are suffering from selective memory impairment or you didn't watch the debate in 2007, where Barack Obama specifically said he would enter Pakistan and kill bin Laden as President, if he had actionable information. Republicans have thought of themselves as more macho then Democrats for so long, they have forgotten that Kerry and Gore went to Vietnam in the 1960's while Bush hid out in Alabama and Cheney made babies. It's about time to retire that "Republicans are pro-military" stance, don't you think?

Really Ben? Navy is right, nothing changes the result, and twist it or bandy it about anyway you want, President Obama got the job done.......why? He kept his eye on the prize.

As for your list of whatever, I find it full of lies and nonsense, and also find it interesting not one false step by a GOP President is listed. I can supply that list if you'd like, but I'll just start with this one for you to ponder:

The Bush administration did not take seriously the warnings and evidence supplied to them about Al Queada by the Clinton administration. In their arrogant style, 'we know best' nothing given to them was considered. It continued from that point on into wars which we still are working at. No wonder President Bush, wants to keep a low profile I hope he has th grace to keep doing that, as last night Condi Rice was a perfect example of that arrogance, what they did is nothing to be proud of unless of course, you too are an arrogant fool.

The Bush administration did not take seriously the warnings and evidence supplied to them about Al Queada by the Clinton administration. In their arrogant style, 'we know best' nothing given to them was considered

Gingerbread Mamma's right Ben - see my post #1.24 above for 'W''s direct quote!

Amy......hell no. Most liberal dems I know would pee their pants if they were put in a room with some of the people I zipped and transported. But that could be a damn funny sight. I could maybe cut the ankle tie and boy we would really have a mess! Im sticking with the Republicans in a military situation.

Ben:

If it wasn't for several areas put in place by the Bush administration and security team, none of this would have been possible – from enhanced interrogation, to Gitmo and to the Patriot Act (which was maligned by BHO while campaigning and promised to repeal but kept in place once in office).

Ben: I might remind you here that Bush did not come into office hellbent on hunting down Osama bin Laden or Al Qaeda, so don't bother saying anything about Clinton. In fact, Bush ignored warnings by Clinton and Richard Clarke that Osama bin Laden was the true danger, and chose instead to focus on rekindling the cold war, as evidenced best by his selection of Condolleeza Rice, a Russia expert, to be his National Security Director.

What did Russia have to do with Osama bin Laden? Nothing. Rice has admitted that she didn't understand the Middle Eastern mindset, especially as it related to suicide bombers. She testified that no one could have imagined that anyone might actually blow themselves up in an airplane. Really?!

Thus, since nothing was done BEFORE September 11, all the measures that you claim Bush put into place were merely reactionary, and might have been done by anyone with half a brain in hindsight. To suggest that Bush was some kind of visionary is nothing short of laughable.

In fact, it's worse than laughable. In 2005, Bush deliberately closed down the CIA unit devoted to find bin Laden in order to focus more in Iraq, where Al Qaeda never was until after we invaded, and Osama bin Laden never was.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/04/washington/04intel.html

The Central Intelligence Agency has closed a unit that for a decade had the mission of hunting Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants, intelligence officials confirmed Monday.

From this we note that this unit had been in place "for a decade," meaning that Bill Clinton had, in fact, been devoting energy and resources to finding bin Laden, and that Bush, for whatever reason, decided it was no longer necessary to do so.

What was that reason you ask? Read on.

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/09/14/barnes-osama/

Bush's priorities have always been skewed. Just months after declaring he wanted bin Laden "dead or alive," Bush said, "I truly am not that concerned about him." Turning his attention away from bin Laden, Bush trained his focus on Iraq — a country he now admits had "nothing" to do with 9/11.

Capturing bin Laden, as Rep. Nancy Pelosi recently pointed out, will not necessarily make America safer because it would come five years too late. Yet, capturing or killing the manresponsible for 9/11 should remain a high priority.

After Bush closed down this agency, he did nothing to even maintain the APPEARANCE that he was actively pursuing bin Laden. In fact, Bush claimed in 2006 that bin Laden had been "marginalized" and that he didn't spend much time worrying about him. Remember? If not --

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PGmnz5Ow-o

Bush's claim that bin Laden had been marginalized is just plain wrong. According to the CIA, who watched bin Laden for many months from a rented house in , bin Laden was still actively directing Al Qaeda activities right up to the day he died.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/06/world/asia/06intel.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2

After reviewing computer files and documents seized at the compound where Osama bin Laden was killed, American intelligence analysts have concluded that the chief of Al Qaeda played a direct role for years in plotting terror attacks from his hide-out in Abbottabad, Pakistan, United States officials said Thursday.

Now, the bin Laden safehouse began construction in 2005, i.e., at about the same time we stopped looking for him. American soldiers were in the neighborhood -- literally -- in 2008, but apparently failed to detect his presence.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/may/03/us-bin-laden-hideout

And Pervez Musharraf, Bush's totally useless puppet president in Pakistan, said in his own book that he was aware that an important Al Qaeda figure was living in a safehouse in Abbottabad, but apparently, no one followed up on that clue, either.

http://books.google.com/books?id=7igVvi3aO-8C&pg=PA240&lpg=PA240&dq=musharraf+safe+house&source=bl&ots=8vAl8kCPYn&sig=ysr6HnJ9pHm9wdfRxrfKz5XksDQ&hl=en&ei=Ll_BTdvyDsPt0gG_jMW3Cg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CE0Q6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=the%20second%20miss&f=false

So please don't tell me how it was George Bush who put in place the infrastructure that ultimately led to bin Laden's capture. The actions that Bush REALLY took almost had the exact opposite effect.

Whatever foundation Bush may have laid, it took Leon Panetta's leadership, under direction from Barack Obama, to finally put all the pieces together.

@ginger & Feisty -- Your posts and conjectures do not make anything right. It is not my list. It is Reuters. Show me the lies. It is a list of facts of what Al Qaeda top members were taken out so that the next president could have a clear path to the "prize." It was a story based on what you think should be in there. If that was the case every story would be War & Peace length (pun intended).

@Beverly -- I am surprised and taken aback by your racist comments. Where is the proof he is a woman hater??? He is against Sharia Law and the Muslim treatment of women. The next move for you and others is to call him a "Tom."

At a recent Tea-Party event in Florida, Cain explained that he‘s itching for a chance to prove that there can be a black president that isn’t a “dud.” To prove his firework capability, he delivered a theory as to why the liberal media is ignoring him:

“The liberal mainstream media, notice how they have tried to destroy Sarah Palin, notice how the more popular Michele Bachmann gets, the more they try to destroy her? You want to know why they go after those two ladies more viciously? Because they know that Michele Bachmann or Sarah Palin is going to draw a lot of the women vote away from the Democrat party. They are scared to death of that if they were to run and get the nomination. They are doubly scared that a real black man might run against Barack Obama.”

Ben:

In case you have failed to notice, you lost. I think we shall take a page from the Bush doctrine and loose interest in you.

Bye!!!!!!!!

When Hillary runs as the Vice Presidential candidate on the Obama re-election ticket, you can kiss the Palin and Bachmann wetdream goodbye. Swallow hard, Ben.

Jolly Old:

Most liberal dems I know would pee their pants if they were put in a room with some of the people I zipped and transported.

Don't make me laugh. What do you think George W. Bush would have done? Or Condolleeza Rice? How about Dick Cheney or Mitt Romney or Rand Paul or Michele Bachmann or Donald Trump?

Seriously. Nothing but idle talk from those folks, none of whom, to my knowledge, have ever served in the military, other than Bush's highly suspect National Guard service.

It's easy to talk from the cheap seats. But I suspect, from the level of your analysis and discourse, that you might do the same if you were put alone in a room for five minutes with Bill Clinton or Barack Obama.

They would eat you for lunch and still be hungry.

US NAVY - congrats - AGAIN - for delivering the goods on this issue about how President Bush gets the credit for dismantling Osama Bin Laden's network.

If you look CLOSELY at Ben (numbers) post, you will see that all of the people that he credits President Bush took out under his watch were 'LIEUTENANTS' and 'other leaders' of Al-Quaeda. This is typical of the Bush years as they never concentrated on the HEAD of Al-Quaeda, but were content with pruning the Al-Quaeda bush of it's LOW-LEVEL lieutenants and operatives.

What people like Ben (numbers) are NOT happy about is that President Obama went after the HEAD of the organization and CUT IT OFF. This usually does more damage to an organization than just killing off 'operatives'.

Is Al-Quaeda weakened? You bet it is - mortally. Will there be retallitary rhetoric and attacks? You bet, but from a greatly WEAKENED organization.

In one stroke, President Obama slays the Al-Quaeda organization, instead of 'dithering' around killing off operatives and leiutenants. I am sure with the treasure trove of information that the SEALs recovered in their operation, we can go after the MONEY that SUPPORTS this organization.

This is what we observe as working SMARTER. Now we have the names, addresses and whereabouts of almost ALL of Al-Quaeda's infrastructure. All of that was done with NO American casualties in less that 40 minutes.

Now isn't that better that killing off a few 'operatives' here and there in our 'war'against terror?

Well said Pietro

Anna, Hardly I am a hardened combat vet! I have respect for leadership not fear of it. I am in the presence of powerful people all the time. One thing I have learned is they are all human and we all die very easily! Most people avoid putting them selves in those situations......I run towards them. For God and Country!

@ jollyoldsoul1 -- Please forgive me, but aren't you the same guy who in the recent past claimed to be living in a Michigan suburb -- Hartland, I believe it was (I remember because we have one of those here, too) -- and playing golf with a teacher on a regular basis, about whose salary and benefits you were complaining?

Or is that just your cover?

Nice try.

@ Ben.

You will find that Bev is the Most Racist person that comes to these boards. She is a Hate Filled Sickophant, that hates White people especially those that disagree Politically with with the "Black man in the White House" (her words not mine)

The only thing she hates more then White People is Brown People that call her out on her Racism.. Stand tall . Dont be intimidated by this Racist. dont let her screams of racism silence you. its what the Left does. they think if they scream it loud enough and say it often you and others will be silenced..

I retired from the military 10 years ago after 3 enlistments. Assigned to a naval special weapons group assigned to JSOC. And yes I do work in Detroit, Im the Chief Network engineer for a global manf. corp and I do enjoy golf as a relaxation tool. I have a lot of stresses in my life. I have worked for a few large corporations in the last ten years at&t, Oracle and the company I currently work for. I never complain about what Im paid. Im actually paid really well and am going to be able to retire in 4 years with no need for Social Security. I plan on donating it to conservative causes I support. You will also have read that I have a Blind son and a disabled wife both of whom I pay 100% of their needs, and in the spare time I have Im a certified emergency foster parent. Which means I take in children who are pulled from their homes during the evening by police or child services and show up at my door step with a plastic bag of clothes. I have done and continue to do my fair share. I am not a republican as most of the liberals here are adamant about I voted for both Mr. Carter and Mr. Clinton, and I like MR . Obama! I just cant take Ms Pelosi or Mr. Reid in any shape form or manner.

lieutenants...like KSM??? the guy behind 9/11?? please...if obama had any intelligence he would have captured OBL and had a treasure trove of intelligence.

In case you missed it, Joe (numbers), the President HAS as treasure trove of intelligence - more than he would have gotten out of KSM or other 'lieutenants'.

It is too bad you MISSED that fact.

I see you are crying in your beer this morning because you cannot refute the FACT that President Obama outwitted and outsmarted not only you, but Al-Qaeda in general!!

You need a tissue, Joe?

Steve I concur!

Joe -

uh we did have an exit strategy in iraq...we won...unlike afghanistan where obama is getting more and more of our troops killed.

I can't believe you'd really turn the facts so far upside-down. What an absurd thing to say!

1. We won a BATTLE but bungled the victory in Iraq. Against Gen. Tommy Franks' advice, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and the incompetent Neocon gang at DOD insisted on not only invading Iraq (illegally! and on a total web of lies!), but doing it "on the cheap." As a result, there were inadequate forces in-country after April 9, 2003, and what might have been a relatively brief period of occup[ation and some reconstruction turned into a prolonged battle against factions rising from US-caused chaos. The Bush Regime's utter incompetence even CREATED a terrorist al Quaeda problem in Iraq that wasn't there before!

I wrote about this in some detail on another post eralier this week.

2. We won a BATTLE but bungled the victory in Afghanistan. The U.S. swiftly defeated and displaced al Quaeda and Taliban forces in Afghanistan, and then - as later in Iraq - utterly screwed up. By removing forces and resources in orDer to go after Iraq, Bumbler Bush let the country slide back into disorder, chaos and conflict - and then drag on for 10 years. President Obama properly understood that the primary mission in that part of the world was Afghanistan, and he ran for office on a promise to properly address the issue and then leave. he has kept his word, with the approval of the nation to pursue it.

If tomorrow the President were to state that water is wet, you jerks would immediately claim that dryness is the main characteristic of the substance!

Jollyoldsoul1:

Im actually paid really well and am going to be able to retire in 4 years with no need for Social Security.

I'd be the last person in the world ever to begrudge it to you, but aren't you conveniently failing to mention your military retirement benefit? And/or that your education that allowed you to earn such a good living was provided by the government as a benefit of your military service? You are trying to make it sound as if your entire retirement will be paid for through private sector earnings and investments. Don't be shy about it. You no doubt earned your education and you've earned your military retirement benefits, just like others have earned their social security benefits. Don't begrudge it to them just because they happen to need it.

I sympathize with you and with the "stresses" that you identify. But not everyone has been as lucky as you have and has the resources you have to take care of your loved ones who suffer from disabilities or have other catastrophic medical needs. And yet, conservatives, like you and Paul Ryan, whose own grandmother had Alzheimers and admittedly received the benefit of social services programs, seem to disconnect with the needs of others in that regard. How does Ryan think, for example, that a person with Alzheimers will find care on the vouchers he wants to provide through his budget bill? How do you think that would work out if your wife or your son were left at the mercy of such vouchers?

I suspect you've never really thought about that.

In short, while I appreciate -- and honor -- your service to the country (whether as engineer or as hog-tier of the enemy), and I admire your obvious devotion to your immediate family, I would also hope that this perspective might afford you more compassion for others than you regularly display.

Pietro:

Thank you for the additional info and feedback. Great post as usual and factual. Kudos - Nice job.

John A:

They sure do like to change the facts to try and make their point. They never met a fact that they could not spin and then claim it to be "the" fact.

Anna M.:

Touche'. They never let the facts get in the way. They accept what they call "government handouts" when it suits THEM, but then try to deny the same benefits to others. What is wrong with that picture?

Friends ~ Great posts, all around.

US Navy, a most sincere wish that you have a very happy birthday.

By the way, what's wrong with that picture is that those who have often forget how they got it and that not everyone else has it.

Either that, or they just like it that way.

What's the point of being wealthy, after all, if everyone is wealthy? That's nothing special. I need to be wealthier.

Again, Navy, happy birthday.

John:

Very true, they are digging a bigger hole. I watched a part of the debate last night and there is nothing there. The GOP/TP would be better looking to a high school debate team for a candidate.

GOP Presidential List - The top 10 list no one wants to be on - probably should be called the top 10 UNwanted list.

interesting how those 'extreme views' won the 2010 election for them isn't it?

They are no longer going to work in 2012 since most of the rhetoric like creating jobs, stimulating the economy, serious deficit reduction were all just hot air from the GOP/TP. They have yet to fulfil any of the campaign promises or others.

The GOP/TP cannot run on Birther card anymore as the numbers who think Prisdent Obama is really a US Citizen continue to grow in his favor.

He has proved his leadership on National Security so that is gone.

Ok, so what do you really have to run on in 2012? The uterus attack? Religious Intolerance, Gay Intolerance? Weakening or repealing Civil Rights, etc, etc, etc. Just what do you have, where are the promises you already made. Just like Bush who walked away from Afghan the new GOP/TP is walking away from cresting Jobs, stimulating the economy and improving education. Same failed agenda but on a different front.

Oh, well lets hope that the Democrats sweep these Republican-Tea Party people out of office in 2012. Folks now see that they made a mistake in 2010 and the people put in are dangerous.

if the republicans don't have the guts to cut spending then they deserve to lose...and so far they don't have the guts obviously.

the only intolerance I see is from liberals who hate conservative christians with a passion and want to take their freedom of religion and speech away with the gay agenda.

Obama's agenda has already failed...his economic program is a failure, as is his healthcare plan...which will give us all a pair of pliars instead ofa dentist just like in britain.

obama sure can't run on his record, he'll do what democrats always do..lie in order to get power.

truth is the democrat agenda is to turn the entire country into detroit...a ruin full of uneducated dependent losers who reliably vote democrat.

interesting how those 'extreme views' won the 2010 election for them isn't it?

Off year election where a minority was able to swing the election. Sincerely doubt there will be a repeat in 2012.

Joe,

You sound like one of those bigots that don’t like people that are different than you.

job you sound like a typical democrat condescening racist

time: all that money and effort to buy the WI supreme court seat didn't work did it now?

Joe,

You need help.

job: I've managed to do pretty well on my own...perhaps you should try it...taking care of yourself...its a beautiful thing.

On another positive economic note, it appears to be at least possible that the current speculative bubble in oil prices is deflating. And let's make it clear right in the beginning, the current spike is ALL about speculation. Excess capacity in the market is 6-8 times what it was at the time of the 2008 spike, when analysts agreed that around 1/3 of the price was pure speculation. Inventories are actually INCREASING, not decreasing as you'd expect with a scarce commodity that justifies a rapid price increase.

So it's time for 2 very specific changes in the way we look at oil. First, it's time to stop government subsidies for one of the most profitable industries in the world. Republicans aren't happy about that, but there's no valid reason to subsidize profitable industries. It's also time for Conservatives to stop blocking new regulation in the commodities markets that would help bring this rampant, predatory speculation under control.

When it comes to the oil industry Republican Conservatives are happy to see average Americans robbed from both directions--through the front door with subsidies, through the back by greedy speculators. It's time to lock BOTH those doors.

the oil prices react to world conditions...and the crises obama is helping to create..not some 'speculators' name these speculators...you can't....its just another talking point for you.

name these subsidies that the oil companies have...let me guess they're tax breaks so they can keep more of their OWN money.

your regulations will destroy the market and increase oil prices...just like your regulations created the current economic crisis.

Take note of this essay from the blog "The Thinking Man", it sums up BO's efforts to date quite nicely!

"A Failure of Leadership

“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here.’ Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better. I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America's debt limit.”

-Senator Barack Hussein Obama on March 16, 2006 criticizing the Bush Administration

Today, President Obama wants to raise the debt limit and, until challenged by House Republicans, wanted to increase spending. Perhaps his next book should be titled “A Failure of Leadership, or How I Screwed up America.”

Let’s review:

1. Obama gives his first interview as president to...(drum roll please)…Al Jazeera, not CNN, ABC, CBS, his beloved MSNBC or, dare I say, Fox News. He tours numerous countries in the Mideast, but never sets foot in the only democracy and strongest American ally in the region, Israel.
2. First statement as president: “I’m closing Gitmo.” The reality: Gitmo remains open more than two years into his Administration.
3. He says he will withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan. Truth: Sen. Obama voted against Bush’s successful Iraq troop surge, but used the same strategy in Afghanistan. And it is Bush’s troop surge in Iraq that is allowing Obama to begin our drawdown there.
4. He wanted to “talk” to our enemies (Iran, North Korea). Result: Iran continues to build its nuclear capabilities and completely disregards the demands of the Obama Administration. North Korea continues to be belligerent and act against our interests in every way they can, sinking a South Korean navy vessel, shelling a South Korean island, test firing ballistic missiles across the Sea of Japan, selling arms to terror groups, etc.
5. This environmentalist president takes weeks to respond to the problems of the gulf oil spill and hinders the Louisiana governor from quickly reacting to the spill. Finally, Obama flies down to review the damage and asks Americans to vacation in the Gulf and support the Gulf economy. He vacations with his family in Maine soon after.
6. Obama tramples on 200 years of contract law by destroying the rights of GM and Chrysler bond holders and forcibly assigns those rights to the unions in a “pre-approved” bankruptcy of those companies. Obviously, some working people are more equal than others. If you were a clerk at a plumbing supply store, worked hard your whole life and bought a GM bond for your retirement, your money was transferred to a UAW worker so he could keep most—if not all—of his retirement benefits.
7. Cash for Clunkers, another Obama disaster. This program, designed to last about six months, used up all its funding in two weeks! Checks were sent to inmates and others who defrauded the government. Once the money was gone, sales of cars plummeted again. Duh!
8. Obama turns his back on Poland and eastern European allies by reversing the Bush Administration’s deal to build an anti-missile defense shield in those countries. Obama wanted to appease Russian demands that these missile defenses not be built. What did we get in return from the Russians? Well, they invaded Georgia, didn’t support us in the UN regarding sanctions against Iran and continue to undermine US foreign policy in general. Obama, the great negotiator at it again.
9. The economy. Well, first Obama continues to ungraciously blame Bush for the housing crisis and financial collapse. Let’s forget the fact that the crisis was caused because Democrats, including Obama, insisted that lenders issue mortgages to people with little income, no credit and no money. How did the Democrats do this you ask? Using Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with their implied federal guarantees for those loans and buying up these “sub-prime mortgages” from commercial banks. Both Bush and McCain warned about these institutions years before the meltdown and wanted to regulate these agencies—but the Democratic Congress refused to listen or pass legislation to regulate Fannie and Freddie. In fact, Barney Frank, chair of the Banking Committee, said in June 2008 that Fannie and Freddie were financially sound; they began to collapse only three months later, in September of 2008. Obama recently pushed for and passed financial regulation, but Fannie was exempted. The taxpayer has virtually unlimited liability for these agencies and could be on the hook for hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars. Thanks, Barney and Barack…two financial geniuses.

10. Then we have the stimulus package forced through by the President and the Democratic Congress. This almost $900 billion fiasco was designed to create jobs and stop unemployment from rising above 7%. Result: Unemployment reached nearly 10% and, according to the White House, three million jobs were “saved or created.” That’s about $300,000 per job!! Wouldn’t it have been better to send nine million people a check for $100,000? Or 18 million people $50,000?

11. Obama’s biggest disaster was yet to come…Obamacare. Sold to Americans as a way to reduce escalating healthcare costs and cover millions of Americans who were uninsured (including those who could afford insurance but refused to purchase it, illegal aliens and others who would qualify for care by simply showing up at a hospital), this colossal bill passed without a single Republican vote. In fact there was really no vote at all; it passed using a technicality never used for something this important and of this size. (In comparison, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the income tax all were passed with a bi-partisan vote.) The result: Insurance premiums increased from 10-35% and the White House had to issue a thousand exemptions to unions (most of which supported the bill), businesses (large and small) and entire states (Maine for one). Since when do we pass laws that only apply to SOME people?

12. The border. We now have people crossing the border with Mexico at will, spreading the Mexican crime wave to American cities and states. Phoenix is now the kidnapping capital of the U.S. Some areas of state parks are unsafe for American hikers as much as 80 Miles from the border, and some are even closed to U.S. citizens. What is the Obama Administration’s response to this assault on our borders? Obama orders the Justice department to sue Arizona and allows the Mexican president to come to the U.S. and berate Arizona in a speech before our Congress. How’s that for audacity??

13. Enter Libya: Obama gets us involved in yet another war with no exit strategy, no idea how it will end up, who the people we are supporting are, and without Congressional support or permission. Just what we need, to be in the middle of a civil war and not really be sure we are supporting the good guys (if there is such a thing in the Arab world).

14. Those of you who still for some reason or mental illness support this presidency—consider that wheat, juice, gas, milk, gold, silver, copper, corn have gone up from 20-200% in the last two years. Add that to your increased cost of medical insurance and think long and hard about your next choice for president.

I could go on… but there should be enough here to reflect on. I’ve heard people say Obama is really smart; yes, he’s a smart politician, but an awful President. Of course, he thinks there are 57 states, a gaffe liberals always overlook while constantly referring back to Palin’s “I can see Russia…” remark. But then she was only the governor of the largest state, managing 25,000 employees and the country’s most important energy supply, while Obama had vast experience as a community organizer (whatever that is).

On April 18, 2011, the S&P credit rating agency placed U.S. debt on a negative credit watch. Mr. President, perhaps this job is too much for you. Resign and let my eight year old niece, a successful lemonade entrepreneur, take over. At least she has actual business experience."

IT IS VERY DIFFICULT TO DEBATE THESE POINTS! When the Truth gets in the way of a Liberal's agenda, the best defense is to ignore it and smear Bush. What hypocrites the lefties are!!!!

Interesting reading for anyone who wants to do a real comparison of Reagan versus Obama.

http://blogs.forbes.com/peterferrara/2011/05/05/reaganomics-vs-obamanomics-facts-and-figures/

With the economy sputtering, (GDP growth of 1.8%; unemployment rising because more people are newly unemployed), I do not think "noun, verb, I killed bin Laden" is going to be enough to get Obama re- elected.

Not at all.

joe-3041821

interesting how those 'extreme views' won the 2010 election for them isn't it?

Once again, Joe, only blather and BS from you. The FACTS of the 2010 election:

1. Election Day exit polls (and numerous others almost every month since then) placed concern for the economy, jobs, and a better working atmosphere in D.C. as the most important concerns of the voters.

Guess what, ding-dong? ONLY THE DEMOCRATS HAVE LISTENED TO THOSE WISHES OF THE VOTERS - THE GOP/TP HAS TOTALLY IGNORED THEM.

2. Similarly, polls showed that only 22% of voters said that Tea Party issues motivated their ballot choices - 56% said the TP meant nothing to them.

The 2010 results had NOTHING to do with the ultra-right agenda. NO VICTORY for you, ding-dong.

Of course, now the public at large understands much better what a tiny minority of die-hard idologues on the right really want - and they are pulling the "flush" lever on them.

Looks like it's time to re-post this piece I did quite a long while back. One of the RWNJ's above invited it:

Conservatives attacking the Barack Obama Administration claim that "blaming Bush" for the present economic crisis is evading responsbility - and to some extent, the critics are correct: This problem was the product of Ronald Reagan's Administration.

Conservatives who do blame any other President for the economic collapse of 2008 point to President Bill Clinton's effort to get two major Federal agencies, Fannie Mae and Freddie mac, to major more financing available for lower-income buyers. However, it is incorrect to say that that initiative was the trigger for the present global economic crisis.

The "GLBA," an acronym for Pres. Clinton's initiative, had an effect on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which took over the risky mortgages from the banks - and while this led to a large number of foreclosures and affected relative housing prices, it was not a specific cause of the financial collapse of 2008. THAT began with Lehman Brothers and was related to speculative "derivatives" based partly on the real estate market but also came from other financing improprieties and false reporting of assets and risks. It was a "domino effect" long in the building.

The global economic distress we find ourselves in today is the end game of a process launched by Ronald Reagan's "free market reforms" of the early 1980's. Reagan "deregulated" interstate commerce, transportation, banking, finance, insurance, and energy.

Almost immediately thereafter, in a foreshadowing of the results that would follow in EVERY deregulated industry, one after another, the trucking industry suffered major problems, as did rail transportation. Owner-operators were ruined - those that did survive found themselves no longer in a reasonably-decent income bracket. The "drive to the bottom" had begun (check Steven Brill's "Sweatshops on Wheels" for the grisly details).

Soon thereafter came the savings and loan crisis, caused by precisely the same kind of unethical, dishonest operations that deregulation had made possible in the banking and finance sectors. That was followed by the energy sector - delay of about 10 years in implementation of some of the "reforms," began taking place in the late 1990's. This was the foundation of the Enron scandal, as well as the manipulation of energy resources that just about turned out the lights in California and sent consumer energy prices soaring all over the nation.

Helping drive some of these earlier collapses was another factor of the Reagan "reforms" - changes in tax laws that encouraged investors to engage in day trading and rapid turnover of stock investments for short-term capital gains. Basically, Reagan converted capital investment from a long-term asset marketplace to an arbitrage marketplace.

In so doing, he set up the massive division between workplace and executive suite, with base wages for executives soaring to many hundreds of times the median employee wage, and stimulating executives to focus on short-term quarterly results that justified huge, bloated bonuses (a problem still afflicting business today).

The result was the Great American Sell-Off, as business wwere broken up, employees replaced with long-term "temporary" workers, and massive outsourcing or wholesale movement of American industry overseas. (NAFTA, under Clinton, just made matters worse, but the movement had been long underway.) This new environment of course spurred the kinds of false accounting that undid Enron, Worldcom, and many other companies.

While the dotcom and telecom boom of the 1990's fueled an over-inflated marketplace, Clinton's Administration did very little to exercise retraint on out-of-control practices in banking, finance, and securities. As the "bubble" burst in 2000 and 2001, he was gone, laying that particular problem in George W. Bush's lap. And that was entirely the wrong lap to cradle major issues of the distressed markets, for Bush sought to out-Reagan Reagan.

Deregulation? Already done - but Bush could, and did, choose to entirely suppress what little regulatory authority remained.

In the economic distress following the dotcom collapse and then the 9/11 attacks, Bush in 2002 chose to use the Federal Reserve as a tool for economic stimulus. Then Fed chairman Hank Greenspan was perfectly willing to go along with a series of interest rate cuts intended to use debt as a means of prodding consumer spending. Bush himself went on speaking tours urging Americans to spend, spend, spend.

As a short-term tool, steering money out of savings and capital investment and into sales of housing, luxury goods and stocks was not too bad an idea. But it was unsustainable - and because of the Reagan reforms (compounded by the GLBA), too tempting. By 2004, the Bush tactic needed to be reined in, but was not. By 2006, the collapse had actually begun, with job losses starting to happen again, early defaults on some mortgages, and a steady decline in the consumer spending that had kept the entire squirrel cage turning. By 2008, the economy, burdened by debt and unable to supply any more money to fuel spending, fell in on itself.

Bush's massive deficits, indifference to appropriate market oversight, and frankly general incompetence in office, ultimately caused the problems that today Obama is attempting to resolve. But they were born in the Reagan reforms.

the oil prices react to world conditions...and the crises obama is helping to create..not some 'speculators' name these speculators...you can't....its just another talking point for you

Apparently it's "just a talking point" for Fox News as well;

What if we just stopped the speculation?

No, you can’t do that! That would be interfering with the “free” market.

Hey, the “free” market is starting to get awfully expensive.

Tell me, how is it free when speculators rule the roost? It’s one thing when they do what they do with pieces of paper called stocks, but it’s another when they do it with a vital commodity like oil. We saw the devastation their behavior wrought in the 1990s, and we’re witnessing it again right now.

Moreover, it would be one thing if they were right and buying oil for all the right reasons. But they’re not.

Recently we saw crude oil supplies rise to a six-year high. Gasoline stockpiles were at a three-year high. Distillates have come back from a steep deficit to inventory levels that are now above where they were last year. Natural gas inventories reside well above their five-year average.

Yet prices go up and up and up.

Still not satisfied?

Okay, OPEC is producing at levels not seen since the early 1970s — and that doesn’t even include Iraq, which is struggling to achieve pre-Gulf War production levels, but will soon be there. Furthermore, global production still outpaces consumption, even accounting for China’s unsustainable economic growth rates.

In short, there is nothing in that equation that says oil should cost what it costs today. Nothing! With one exception — speculation.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,166038,00.html

Speculation is being talked about throughout the business community. http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=1834140756

As a reminder of how the Bush Administration simply turned a blind eye to the damaging effects of speculation on real Americans in 2008;

Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley today are the two leading energy trading firms in the United States. Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase are major players and fund numerous hedge funds as well who speculate.

In June 2006, oil traded in futures markets at some $60 a barrel and the Senate investigation estimated that some $25 of that was due to pure financial speculation. One analyst estimated in August 2005 that US oil inventory levels suggested WTI crude prices should be around $25 a barrel, and not $60.

That would mean today that at least $50 to $60 or more of today’s $115 a barrel price is due to pure hedge fund and financial institution speculation. However, given the unchanged equilibrium in global oil supply and demand over recent months amid the explosive rise in oil futures prices traded on Nymex and ICE exchanges in New York and London it is more likely that as much as 60% of the today oil price is pure speculation.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?aid=8878&context=va

Would you like to continue insisting that speculation in the markets is a myth?

John A:

You are on a roll today. Great way to end the week. It appears that the new GOP/TP is taking a page from President Bush and loosing interests in those things that they campaigned on. Like creating Jobs, stimulating the Economy etc. They (GOP/TP) is the party of "rhetoric" and NO Deeds to back it up. In fact if you look at their legislation (passed and proposed) it does just the opposite of what they campaigned on.

Instead of creating jobs they are going to cost this country 700,000 jobs with the Ryan Bill. Same with stimulating the economy, by putting more people on unemployment they will drive revenues down less money will be in the economy, small businesses will therefor have fewer customers to market their products and services to, etc. Net effect is it will stall the economy of put us into a recession. Exactly the opposite of what they campaign on. And while this happens to the middle class the richest 2% get a reward/bonus in huge tax cuts as well.

Nice plan. It is called "Bait and Switch".

Hi Jody, as usual a great reminder of the week that passed, and what a week it was. I so look forward to this as it helps me catch up on whatever I may have missed. Thank you for doing this. These sure are interesting times we live in.

Excellent recap, Jody. OUTSTANDING job.

If I was travelling and wanted to know what happened this week, THIS well written piece is what I would be looking for.

I can't think of too many people who seriously listen to Perry around here. I'm pretty sure the Republicans keep winning elections because they're the only thing stopping Mexico from annexing us back, but that's a story for another day.

If we're suffering disasters 'round these parts, someone hasn't told me. Does he mean the wildfires? The drought? We have a drought EVERY summer. We self-immolate every summer, too! That kind of crap is pretty much par for the course in Texas.

I'd worry less about whether or not Obama is showing up and more about fixing all the goddamned potholes on 45, 59 and 10.

Nice recap. Long accurate list.

I have a tidbit to add on the first comment about Perry. It was interesting to watch the last couple weeks of Ricky 'the whiner" Perry nearly wetting himself trying to get Gob'mint dollars in here to help with the fires that raged out West of the DFW area down here a couple of weeks back.

Funny thing about that first request for help from the broke Gob'mint. The fires had been burning for nearly 10 days our West there, burning everything in it's path. BUT not until the flames reached the area around "Possum Kingdom Lake" NW of Ft. Worth did he deem it necessary to even declare a disaster.

How many middle class homes had to burn before he noticed, we will never know. What we DO know is that this PKL area is full of MacMansions and they showed on TV in Dallas how many had burned to what I am certain were their well-insured foundations. The lots those ashes lay on are worth more than most middle class homes in our great state, home of the double-wide being the pinnicle of home ownership.

Those Possum Kingdom Lake communities are WHO RICK PERRY CARES MOST ABOUT. THE WEALTHY has theirs and he means to do everything in his power to keep them that way. Classic GOP/TP!

Missy TX:

Thank you for your report on the home front. Perry is for himself and those that paid for his election.

Update from Texas

The Texas Senate's budget passed out of committe yesterday needs to be reconciled with the House budget.

The Senate bill will cut 5,300 state jobs across the spectrum of agencies.

Leave schools $4 billion short of current funding (Ensuring thousands of teacher job cuts)

Cut 32,000 TEXAS Grants for higher education

Privatize all in-house custodial staff across the state

Reduces state retirement contribution for ERS for state employees and TRS for teachers. Raise health care premiums for current employees and change health care plans into Health Savings accounts for those hired after 2012. That is if they hire, first the Gov. will have to authorize hiring to be allowed, as state wide there has been a hiring freeze and salary freeze for almost 2 years now.

In addition to the numerous cuts, the provision to use an additional $3 billion of the Economic Stabilization Fund (Rainy Day Fund) was removed from the proposed Senate budget.

As crazy as it sounds of the two state bodies the senate bill is moderate compared to the House budget.

____________

I don't know Missy I will give Perry the benefit of the doubt. Regarding the fires in Possum Kingdom state park, I see no reason why the governor wouldn't ask for federal asssitance despite who is affected and what their income level is.

"Since January, 1.4 million acres in Texas have burned. That's equivalent to the size of Rhode Island." - Includes all pan handle and other areas of Texas

Ron T. Ennis/Star-Telegram/AP Photo
This aerial photograph shows a large home is left in ashes on Possum Kingdom Lake, Texas, April 20, 2011. Federal firefighters and officials from several U.S. agencies joined the fight against a massive wildfire burning 70 miles west of Fort Worth, the same day a Texas firefighter died from injuries suffered while battling a blaze earlier this month.

Texas Wildfires Force Families From Homes Watch Video

Fire, Floods and Funnels Watch Video

"The last six months have been the driest on record since the early 1900s," Lt. Kenny Phillips said.

“Only in America”

As events unfolded this week Indy, you have NO idea how many times that phrase came to mind! ;o)

Thanks!

Hey Red Thanks for reminding me that Mr. Murray has a Birthday coming up. You got the Arteest all lined up yet?

AnnaB:

How true and you got my vote, keep up the good posts.

So....Ana you were in what BUDs class? And I know you cant tell us what SEAL team you were on. Just curious if you carried a modified M4 or a M8? I heard you had to train for months in the dark, Im just happy you accomplished your mission. Thank you for your service! lol!

1st Class Petty Officer Jolly

Naval mobile weapons Det 42

Agreed, AnaBanana. Whether it's Michael Moore or Rush Limbaugh, sometimes it's best to simply say "glad we finally got him". I don't think millions of Americans much care about the details, we just care about the result.

Im pretty sure I saw Mr. Moore in Lansing last week wearing a pink tutu and ballet slippers!

As the old saying goes:

Nobody cares about the storms at sea, they only care that you brought the ship home.

And in a manner of speaking, YES WE DID.

If a cop shot a suspected burglar because the guy didn't put his hands up fast enough or because he made a sudden move that turned out to be reaching for his wallet to get his ID, that would be reason for a police inquiry and probably dismissal from the department. But Bin Laden? I think the rules of engagement are a little different for someone who proudly admitted he ordered the attacks that killed thousands of innocent people.

The SEALs were going after one of the most dangerous criminal in the world. I think they were within their rights to interpret anything from Bin Laden, other than hands up in the air, as a sign of resistance.

Hey Houston would you feel when somebody is shooting at you and then you see someone come out of hiding without a weapon from the same position you were receiving fire from, would you shoot him or let him go?

you want jobs then cut spending and regulations especially cut your evil social programs that enslave people...make them dependent upon the government...all democrats are animals.

All republicans are animals!

And RABID to BOOT! lol

Tell that to my step sister who is in a wheelchair and finds that her physical needs will soon be cut. She is totally incapacitated so I suppose you animals want her to work?

Clwyd, the Republican Pledge to America had four prongs to promote job growth. Two of those have been accomplished, two are still in the works.

http://www.gop.gov/pledge/jobs#body

That, by the way, is how you promote private sector hiring. We do not need more government employees- we have too many already.

joe numbers just proved that many republicans have no heart and little understanding. Republicans used to have hearts and compassion, but that was replaced with Reagan's vision for America, it's all about "me". If a person is completely incapacitated, what work can that person do? Completely incapacitated means they cannot move or function at all by themselves without assistance. Think Christopher Reeves--that's total incapacitation. Christopher Reeves was fortunate, he was wealthy and could hire all the help he needed to survive; most in similar circumstances cannot. What republicans are really saying is, too bad, let them die--so much for Pro-Life.

how many people are totally incapacitated? charles krauthammer is a quadriplagic as is jonni eric sentata...and they both lead meaningful lives...why do you think so little of people? why do you want to warehouse them like used furniture?

look at detroit to prove that democrats have no compassion or heart. its what you want to turn the entire country into....a ruin.

you mean republicans want to give granny a pain pill like obama does to get rid of the 'useless eaters'?

chwyd:

They are following the Bush Mission, basically loosing interest in what they promised to attack something else, like a women's uterus, civil rights, religious rights, social programs etc. Everything BUT creating jobs and improving the economy.

The just outright refuse to do what they promised (sound familiar). They have no intention of creating jobs or helping the economy.

Joe, why must your side be so mean and nasty? Don't you care about anyone but yourself?

Joe...Cut what spending? Cut what regulations? Cut what 'evil social program'? Enslavement? Sorry but that's really bizarre!!

Sorry Joe.....there is no substance to your statements.

Ummmmmm....Ok Chwyd and the rest of you wonderous people. I have a blind from birth son and a wife with a genetic bone disease. Her bones are disintegrating from the inside out. Did I toss them to the government and say "here you take care of them" Nope....... I retired from the military and put my nose to the grind stone and earned my way to be able to support them now and in the future. My son is now a certified MS engineer and my wife.....is still totally disabled. But the insurance and her supplemental pays for all of her treatments. At most we have a few prescriptions that we have to pay for! I came from a very poor single mother family and was not handed anything. As I stated above I live in Detroit and i watch all day as entire families live off of welfare and food stamps.

job, you're the one who is mean and nasty..thinking people are too stupid to take care of themselves...you have a paternalistic condescending attitude.

journey: you don't think we can cut anything in a 3.5 TRILLION dollar budget? laughable.

Joe,

Some people need help in need and that is what Americans does for the citizens that are helpless. FDR got it right.

FDR got what right? prolonging and deepending the depression thanks to his policies? interning the japanese americans in prison camps? or turning over eastern europe to stalin? or creating a ponzi scheme known as social security to buy votes?

I will admit there is wasteful spending in govenment which should be the first priority of Congress.

The question is, 'WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!?"

Conservative, supply-side economics has failed so spectactularly the Right will do just about anything now to destroy the amply-demonstrated success of the New Deal. The data simply destroy the GOPTP lies on this subject;

GDP, only available as annual averages, plunged 25.6 percent from 1929-1932, including by 13.0 percent in 1932. It stabilized in 1933, and then soared by 10.8 percent, 8.9 percent and 12.0 percent, respectively, in 1934, 1935 and 1936. Real GDP surpassed its 1929 peak in 1936 and never again fell below it. After-tax personal income, consumer spending, real private investment and jobs all reached or surpassed their 1929 peaks by late 1936.

In fact, like every decade between 1850 and 1990, the 1930s suffered two distinct downturns. The official U.S. Business Cycle Dating Committee established that the downturn that began in August 1929 ended in March 1933 with the remarkable economic expansion that started within days of FDR’s bold—if trial and error—New Deal programs. By any normal definition, the Great Depression had ended by late 1936, with all major indicators surpassing their previous peaks.

A second cyclical downturn officially began in May 1937 when FDR, always a fiscal conservative, mistakenly thought the economy had become self-sustaining and slashed public spending programs to balance the budget. These harsh and premature spending cuts caused another severe recession that ended after 13 months in June 1938.

Even in this severe downturn, annual GDP did not fall back below its 1929 peak. And although many suffered and most economic measures did fall back below their 1929 levels, not one fell anywhere close to its March 1933 low. For example, although industrial production fell sharply in the 1937-38 recession, at its low point, in April 1938, it remained 49 percent above its level of March 1933.

When the economy again contracted sharply in late 1937 and early 1938, FDR quickly reversed course and rapid growth immediately began again. GDP soared by 10.9 percent in 1939 and industrial production soared by 23 percent.

http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2009020603/fdr-failed-myth

The numbers don't lie. The Laissez-Faire economics of early 20th Century Republicans failed. The rebranded Laissez-Faire economics of Conservatives of the last 30 years failed again. The New Deal did not fail.

Even if you were to go along to the extent that the economy didn't fully recover until WWII ask yourself what happened--the government hired so many people the economy was desperate for workers, bought a whole bunch of stuff, and undertook massive deficit spending on a short term basis to pay for it all.

That's stimulus, folks. It works.

supply side economics...or capitalism has succeeded every time its tried. the 1920s were the roaring 20s because of it...and the great depression was brought about by government intervention in the market place by hoover and FDR.

FDR's policies prolonged Depression by 7 years, UCLA economists calculate

By Meg SullivanAugust 10, 2004Category: Research

Two UCLA economists say they have figured out why the Great Depression dragged on for almost 15 years, and they blame a suspect previously thought to be beyond reproach: President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

After scrutinizing Roosevelt's record for four years, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian conclude in a new study that New Deal policies signed into law 71 years ago thwarted economic recovery for seven long years.

"Why the Great Depression lasted so long has always been a great mystery, and because we never really knew the reason, we have always worried whether we would have another 10- to 15-year economic slump," said Ohanian, vice chair of UCLA's Department of Economics. "We found that a relapse isn't likely unless lawmakers gum up a recovery with ill-conceived stimulus policies."

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/FDR-s-Policies-Prolonged-Depression-5409.aspx

socialism fails every time.

the new deal was a total failure.

Oh oh, Joe. Now you have gone and done it.

You counter the wisdom of a blog with the findings of a major university's Department of Economics! How dare you!

Don't you know that bloggers are experts- they are armed with their opinions- which far outweigh any facts or figures!

After all, how could anyone's opinion be wrong?

LOL

Joe - your reprint of that particular article is entirely misleading. And the new Deal was FAR from a total failure. You are using that tack because you and your kind wish to destroy America. Yes, that's right - you wish to destroy and dissolve this nation and it's social contract. So here's a repost of yet another article I wrote some time back:

PAUL RYAN'S "BUDGET" USES THE POPULIST VENEER OF "DEBT AND DEFICIT REDUCTION" TO COVER OVER A MUCH MORE SIGNIFICANT POLICY OBJECTIVE:

Ryan’s budget is the mechanism for obdurate anti-government factions to eliminate a major portion of American public institutions long despised by the ultra-right, targeted by the old John Birch Society - now reincarnated as the Tea Party - and set in place an entirely new foundation of philosophy of government.

The Tea Party objective is to entirely revise the existing American “social contract” with one based on Jacksonian democracy, giving virtual “laissez faire” scope of individual or collective business behavior unhindered by law or regulation, guided by self-interest alone – and its accompanying caution, “caveat emptor,” or, let the buyer beware, and vesting power in the hands of those who have the will or resources to take and use it.

This new “social contract” has little need or use for government at any level, and absolutely no justification for social programs of any kind provided by public finance or activity.

This battle does not go back to the 2010, 2008, or 2006 elections. It has been ongoing since 1933 - and perhaps, a bit before. Some would say it began with Pope Leo XIII and his 1891 encyclical, Rerum Novarum, which demanded workers be paid “a living wage,” given benefits, and described other rights of workers as well as obligations of employers.

The American “Social Contract” Since 1933

Each major evolution of national government since the nation’s founding has operated on a basic assumption about the powers of government, rights of the people, and an overall concept of why the nation exists as well as what the nation wishes to accomplish – this is what “social contract” means.

The “social contract” still largely in place now, but under attack, developed as the country battled through the Great Depression, World War II and into the Reagan Administration – when the first significant changes in at least policy actions undermined the way the “social contract” was addressed. Many features of this general understanding of national purpose and interest had been coming into being during the reformist periods under Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson. A few contributions took place during the 1920’s, but the trends only coalesced into a coherent basis for government and public expectations during the Roosevelt Administration.

It did not, initially, include large public debt, deficit spending, or many of the issues today under debate. It was more of a social policy driven by desperate need across the country, the visible failure of traditional leadership cadres in business and public office, internal attacks on the basic system of government by fascist and socialist promoters such as Huey Long and Dr. Francis Townsend, and the earlier scattered programs driven mainly by the Progressive Republicans in congress.

Herbert Hoover, after the Crash of '29, actually wanted to run up a very large deficit in his proposals to address the Great Depression, but was blocked by Republicans in Congress. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was indeed a far more conservative President at the outset who distrusted deficit spending. (For details, see Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal: 1932-1940 by William Edward Leuchtenburg , Feb 24, 2009.)

Re-shaped Government Emerges Under Roosevelt
and Successive Administrations

Over his pre-war terms in office, President Roosevelt essentially re-created the Federal establishment and put in place many of the departments as institutions of a new American system of government. That system of government’s philosophy embraced the entire population, and included:

• aid for the helpless,

• food for the starving,

• reward to the elderly for their years of work building the nation and its economy,

• encouragement to the jobless,

• protection for investors small and large from the schemes and frauds of the wily,

• recognition of the arts as a vital and uplifting aspect of national culture,

• assurance that farmers might survive drought, flood, other natural disasters, and despite world fluctuations in demand during a Depression, a minimum fair price for their products,

• fairness for workers engaged in negotiations with employers,

• defense against workplace exploitation of children and a minimum wage across the land,

• support for small business growth and stability,

• work, when none else was to be had, building and maintaining infrastructure of cities, counties, states, and the nation,

• reform of the nation’s currency and financing structure, including an end to a “hard money” gold standard.

As historians relate, from the very beginning, the New Deal achievements were under vicious attack from the Republican right, as well as a Populist segment of the Democratic Party. Some attacks ultimately were successful in the immediate post-war years, but not many.

The most virulent opposition was to Social Security, claimed to be the leading edge of “socialism” and an unearned, undeserved prop for reckless, improvident people. That was (and remains) a claim that ignored the actual character of Social Security, which was not socialism but a public monopoly, a national pension insurance pool funded entirely by workers’ and employers’ contributions and kept completely separate from the national Treasury.

Over succeeding Administrations, other Presidents (from Truman through Eisenhower and Nixon) expanded the services and operations of the new public institutions, and added a few more – the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Cabinet-level U.S. Department of Education. New related programs included Head Start for lower-income children of pre-kindergarten age, and Medicare, established after a hard-fought political battle that ended in 1965. Later, health care for the poor was offered in the Medicaid program, and the extremely effective State Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Ultimately, the civil rights campaigns, followed by efforts to expand full protections of the law to women, the disabled, and immigrants or refugees, also followed. Special attention to compensate for historical, economic, and social disadvantages suffered by a large majority of African-Americans led to preferential treatment for employment, public assistance, contracting with public agencies, college tuition subsidies and admissions, and other activities. Some of these same preferences later were extended to women and disabled persons.

Each and every addition was relentlessly attacked as expansion of government power, intrusion into private business, handouts for undeserving parasites, and in certain cases, political payoffs to gain votes of groups such as unions, the urban poor, individual minority groups, and even “liberal” Hollywood celebrities. The special preferences intended to “equalize” opportunities inherently conflicted with concepts of dispassionate equality and aroused deep resentment among a fraction of the country.

Operating Assumptions of the Post-1933 “Social Contract”

All of these institutions and programs proceeded from the broad philosophy of government that emerged during the Roosevelt Administration.

Overall, the “social contract” embraced the nation as a whole, under a Federalist principle rather than decentralized dispersion of all authority through the states, gave equal importance to all social classes of people, all racial and ethnic groups, and ultimately all persons regardless of gender, age, ability, origin, education, employment or many other distinguishing features.

The overall import of this was that government existed to serve, protect, and enable as broadly as possible the diverse needs and interests of the entire population and the private institutions of that population.

From that philosophy, several working principles had arisen:

• “the economy” did not exist apart from the nation and national interests, but rather was an integrated element of private and public life and thus an appropriate area for government interaction, including support for growth as well as regulation of practices,

• all participants in “the economy” had a stake in it and deserved to partake of its fruits - not merely bankers, investors, entrepreneurs, and stockholders, but also workers at every level, retirees and pensioners, small landholders or bank account depositors, insurance policy purchasers, and their many different dependents,

• everyone in America had a fundamental right to live safely in the society, free from hunger, sheltered, able to access medical care, offered opportunity for education and self-advancement, secure in safe and responsible workplaces, not in the sense of a socialist state, but rather with compassion and minimum support for the helpless and needy, as well as unobstructed pathways for the diligent, ambitious, thrifty, provident, gifted, and fortunate,

• diversity in all its aspects benefits the nation, but more importantly requires special public attention, because established attitudes about race, ethnic origins, native language and other features fly in the very face of “equality,” prevent access to the multiple opportunities and benefits of the greater society, limit the contributions of women, the disabled, and native-born minorities as well as of refugees and immigrants in the country and the community, and potentially create a burden on the greater society if people are targets of discrimination that represses their economic advancement,

• national stewardship vested in all levels of government included not merely protection of natural resources – air, land, water, plants and animals – but restoration as needed and possible of despoiled resources, and restraint on public and private interests where their actions continued or threatened future degradation,

• national investment ultimately repays itself in long-term, cost-effective results, whether by public or private entities, in education, workplace safety and in environmental systems, health and welfare of the disabled, disadvantaged and older people as well as mothers and children, promotion of arts and culture, natural resources restoration and protection, necessary public infrastructure and its maintenance, general public health, advanced science and technology, effective and adequate public safety organs (police, fire, courts and legal services), and as necessary in the public employment of workers, technicians, specialists, and highly-trained professionals to carry out the functions required to implement the investments.

Reality vs Principle: Successes and Failures of Public Institutions

Despite the breadth of the post-1933 “social contract” and the resulting operating assumptions that arose over time to guide public institutions, the reality of actually carrying out actions was far more difficult. Not only ideological opposition to the philosophy at times was fierce, but shifting political alliances at times turned proponents and opponents at one point into opposite positions at another. And, of course, for a long period racism and ethnic discrimination was a bold feature of opposition.

Consider the issue of public education. A great many Americans now believe that public education is a costly failure that did not live up to the assumption that everyone would have access to quality education, or that investment in public education pays dividends in the long run. To test this presumption of failure, the review needs to begin nearly a half-century ago and see what actually took place – and whether educators “failed” or not.

In the mid-1960’s, by and large American public education was successfully fulfilling the terms of the “social contract” and its operating assumptions. With the aid of Federal government initiatives, students were achieving greater heights in physical education, science, mathematics and language arts, graduating high school at higher rates, and attending either college or vocational education programs after completing high school.

The Civil Rights movement’s steady success in eliminating segregated schools and compensating for long-segregated neighborhoods spread access to quality education. Equal opportunity requirements in the workplace as well as affirmative action requirements for public employment, private contractors seeking public business, and admissions standards at most colleges and universities expanded access for African Americans and women.

“White flight” – to church schools

None of this was accomplished without protracted conflict and smoldering resentment. Across the nation, one of the first refuges for offended or resentful people – some motivated by racism or social stereotypes, others by the idea that a special group was promoted ahead of others in apparent violation of a principle of dispassionate equality – was the private church school.

Catholics for many years had agitated for either tax subsidies, tax exemptions or deductions for tuition costs, or other means of compensating for the burden parents took on when choosing to enroll their children in the private religious schools. This same goal soon arose among congregations of other denominations whose members had elected to leave the public education system.

Concurrently, a movement to eliminate public school use of religious rites and forms was steadily succeeding, from displays of crosses or the Biblical Ten Commandments to daily prayers and, ultimately, school-sponsored pre-graduation gatherings at local churches for a religious service. For devoutly religious families, secularizing public schools was more than an affront – it was perceived as an “attack” on their religious beliefs.

Schools as answers to social issues

Nor were various social justice measures and secularization of public education the only challenges confronting schools. As understanding of how poverty and hunger affect children, and of how many children attended school hungry each day, initiatives tried to mitigate those effects. Free school breakfasts and lunches became available for great numbers of students – but not for every student. Special tutoring and counseling programs became available for “disadvantaged” students – but not always for every student.

By the 1980’s, educators understood that a wealth of social ills affecting student performance, mental health, physical well-being, graduations rates, and potential criminal behavior all came to class every day, with each individual child. Special classroom requirements were created to attend to some of these factors, while administrators and other school officials were charged with attempting to ease some problems or intervene in specific ways.

The character of teaching changed with these requirements, while bureaucratic duties imposed by legislators hostile to public education diminished the actual classroom time and preparation time available to teachers.

And, of course, society was changing as well. The spread of drug use, criminal gangs, persistent poverty, continuous waves of immigrants needing to make difficult cultural and language adaptations, major changes in the nation’s economic structure, developments in technology, and more meant the schoolyard was increasingly dangerous and divided. After all, society is reflected in classroom populations.

“We won’t pay” for social programs in schools

In the midst of such challenges, rising resentment toward public schools, staff and students from disgruntled religious or politically-conservative families showed up at the school board elections and meetings, in state legislatures, and in Congress. Many school budgets were cut – or public funds for education were diverted to private schools through “voucher” programs justified because reputedly the public schools were not meeting expectations.

Teachers were pilloried, regardless of their skills or failures. Administrators were targeted as wastrels in a perceived “bloated” public education system – even though, as in Los Angeles, the inner-city schools often had leaky roofs, desks and chairs breaking apart when students sat, too few textbooks per class, and often even those in poor condition, and so few standard school supplies that private donors were asked to help.

In such an atmosphere of distrust and confrontation, opponents of public education decided that it was “failing,” although one certain means to make public education “fail” is to starve it of the funds and support essential to success.

Public education not even a job of government

Ideological enemies of public education now deny that government should even have such a role – and in the sheep’s skin of “helping turn our schools around,” the wolves would eliminate this element of the existing “social contract” through cynical restrictions of funding and unrealistic, unworkable, self-defeating requirements that distort the education process. At present in Florida, the new ultra-conservative Governor Rick Scott essentially proposes “privatizing” public education.

But there have certainly been great success under the post-1933 “social contract,” too. Both Social Security and Medicare stand out, as do Head Start, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Women, Infants and Children food subsidy program, and a myriad more. These exemplify not only fulfillment of some basic principles but also the premise that investment does, in the long run, pays off.

Breakdown: Repudiation of the Post-1933 “Social Contract”

Beginning with election of President Ronald Reagan in 1980, three successive Republican Administrations persistently eliminated important mechanisms in government that had implemented the implicit post-1933 “social contract” and several of its operating principles. Some of these measures had catastrophic consequences, both functionally and in terms of American confidence in its government and social system.

Central among these were measures that ultimately excluded most Americans from a full participation in “the economy,” denied or diminished their participation in the fruits of economic activity, protected stakeholders from predatory abuse, and attacked the basic premise of equality regardless of class, race, ethnic origins, or social status.

Primary among the measures were “de-regulation” of key sectors of the national economy – banking, insurance, capital investment, transportation, energy production and delivery, and telecommunications.

In each instance, on the premise of a so-called “free market” governed purely by economic forces that were presumed more efficient than any industry affected by government intervention, “de-regulation” led to massive scandals, failures, frauds, criminal activities, and ultimately to concentrations of wealth and power in the hands of a few who are motivated by pure self-interest.

Consequences: Failure of Republican Administrations to observe the “social contract”

Participation in “the economy” by millions of employees and one-time stakeholders of all sorts in those industries, as well as other sectors of economic activity, either diminished or vanished. Average incomes and standards of living dropped. Frustration, fear, anger and resentment festered, accentuating social divisions and leaving the society unsure of most people’s place in it – and doubly furious if any persons, especially those served by the so-called social “safety net,” seemed to be benefiting at the expense of others.

When the unwise policies of the George W. Bush Administration ultimately led to a worldwide economic collapse in 2008, the calamity put even more pressure on the terms of the post-1933 “social contract.” Remarkably, then President-elect Barack Obama accepted the practical reins of power ahead of his inauguration and proceeded to restore government commitment to the implied compact as well as its operating principles.

And in keeping faith with the American’s public’s concept of the relationships between people and government, President Obama has managed to lead the nation out of a looming abyss. But the damage wrought by the economic collapse shook most Americans profoundly, while the embittered and fearful citizens who had incessantly opposed all developments since 1933, along with some still resentful of the advances of African-Americans and others, raised their voices in a shrill and uncompromising chorus of opposition.

Ye know not what ye do: The Tea Party victories of 2010

Although a victorious President, supported by a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress, restored the commitments of the “social contract” in the midst of desperate economic conditions, the most committed ideological opponents of that “social contract” bellowed a rallying cry of “we want our country back!” Spurred in part by a small segment of racists deeply offended by a half-Black President, carrying the decades of resentment toward social changes regardless of race or ethnicity, and disappointed in the ultimate failure of Republican policies of 30 years’ effort, the opposition to the post-1933 “social contract” crafted an ad-hoc coalition cleverly named the “Tea Party.”

Sporting a crust of patriotism and alleged devotion to national Constitutional fundamentals – most of which were misunderstood or even completely mistaken – the Tea Party followers succumbed to a populist, oversimplified definition of national issues. Most participants did not know that the central core of their loose organization was dedicated to overthrow of the implicit “social contract” and its accompanying operating principles – but they did “know” that economic dislocation, community disruptions caused by fiscal distress, and simple terror at forces too great to be understood were clearly the fault of a massive government that lay as helpless, apparently, as the individual before the force of events.

Thus the election results of 2010, when frustrated voters sought new representatives to tackle the dogged economic issues, elected a wave of new officeholders intended to bring a more temperate and conciliatory approach to the long-divided partisan coteries in Washington, D.C., and fresh ideas about how to promote more rapid growth of employment. The Tea Party’s extreme ideological posture in opposition to the existing “social contract” only drew 22 per cent of voter endorsement in 2010, while 56 per cent of voters said the Tea Party was irrelevant.

However, Paul Ryan and his Tea Party colleagues in a new House Republican majority interpreted the results to their own interest. And they dug in their heels – no compromise on their principles, no change in their government targets – win the war in the trenches, essentially, or die “fighting the good fight.”

Nothing less than a revolutionary change in the American “social contract,” accompanied by radical changes in government and governance, would be acceptable.

So now the battle for the basic idea of the “American way” is in progress.

The Paul Ryan budget proposal describes a new relationship between the governed and the government. It is one in which pure self-reliance and self-interest are exalted, while communal obligations to neighbors and fellow-citizens are eliminated. It is one in which the state and national organs of government devoted to balancing individual interests in contrast with those of wealth and private power are eliminated. It is one in which the concept of a public stewardship is refuted.

It is one in which the role of the state to provide minimal basic protection and support for the needy, the helpless, and the infirm is eliminated, while the public obligation to referee the behavior of business is minimized. It is one in which the role of culture is stricken from a public engagement, where public health and safety are diminished, and in which the government’s provision of many basic services from safe roads and bridges to public education are challenged.

The Paul Ryan 2011-2012 budget proposal is nothing less than a revolutionary change in the basic philosophy of American government. It is not driven by supposed economic necessity or the stresses of fiscal difficulties, but rather by a raw desire to at last fulfill the long-festering resentments of ultra-right ideologues. It is not a proposal that most Americans would support when seen as a whole piece of public policy and fundamental revision of accepted national ideals.

Great article John, well worth a read. The "Roaring 20s" actually prove the point that Laissez-Faire Economics is a roaring failure. Sure, things looked good for a few years, but it was nothing but an illusory bubble that collapsed in a fashion that left the economy completely helpless for 4 years--until the election of FDR and the New Deal things got WORSE instead of better. Even during the bubble period many people never actually benefitted, but there was rapid concentration of wealth at the top.

any of this sound familiar?

John A & John B:

Two of the best posts I have read in a very long time. I made copies of both for future reading especially the references.

Thank you both for a very well written History lesson. Kudo's to you both.

John A.-400474

Joe - your reprint of that particular article is entirely misleading.

you are a complete and utter liar. nothing about what I posted is misleading...you just can't handle the truth.

yeah those UCLA economists are part of the VAST RIGHT WING CONSPIRACY.

people like you want to destroy the country and turn us into a fascist state so people like you can run our lives because you think you know whats best for everyone else.

you wrote the article...really you know more than those UCLA economists huh? well post your CV..the scholarly papers you have published...don't worry I won't hold my breath. LOL

oh and your social contract is a complete and utter failure that has bankrupted the country. your greed for OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY has bankrupted us all.

FDR was a racist no wonder you libs love him so.

oh and John B: your history lesson is as usual wrong. the roaring 20s were a great decade for the entire country...hoover reacted to a market crash by imposing idiotic socialist policies that FDR emulated...which turned a recession, into the great depression...notice we NEVER had a great depression before in the history of the country....no surprise we did once we had the Federal reserve and the PROGESSIVES tried to 'fix' it with their socialist policies.

Joe, I don't intend to credit you with too much. But here's the short answer - I am a profssional historian, employed in private industry. The foundation for that article are three important volumes: The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, by Paul M. Kennedy; Franklin Deolano Roosevelt and the New Deal, by William Leuchtenberg; The Great Crash of 29, by John K. Galbraith. Numerous other sources contributed in one way or another to the piece.

As for the UCLA critique, it failed to address a number of issues of the New Deal, or its long-term contributions to American institutions and society. There was a second recession that started in 1937 that prolonged the Depression recovery and you will find a comprehensive examination of that - as well as its origins, which were largely NOT related to new Deal policies - in Leuchtenberg's volume.

The Progressives, by the way, originated in the REPUBLICAN Party in the early 1900's. The La Follette family was one of the great contributors to the cause. THEY AREN'T SOCIALISTS, YOU NITWIT.

"Why the Great Depression lasted so long has always been a great mystery,"

It's only a "mystery" to ultraconservatives who don't know or pretend not to know that Roosevelt tightened up on his spending policies prematurely as has been well documented.

I still remember that the same sort of "experts" warned that Clinton's tax increases spelled doom and gloom for the US economy, but instead we got "out of control" budget surpluses. (And boy howdy, Bush sure did fix that problem).

John: if you had any integrity you would apologize about lying about me...but you don't, you're a liberal....

oh so you're a historian huh? who said this?

We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work.”

Henry Morgenthau Jr. — close friend, lunch companion, loyal secretary of the Treasury to President Franklin D. Roosevelt — and key architect of FDR’s New Deal.

the new deal was a faulure.

progressives are socialists you MORON.

Well joe, if I'm wrong then no doubt you'll be willing to refute the numbers shown in 8.16. Otherwise you're talking through your hat and making unsupported statements. If it helps the link also presents the info in graphical form. Good luck.

houston: nice rewrite of history ala 1984....no surprise coming from you...

clinton inherited an expansion from bush, the tax increases slowed the growth...until the republicans took over congress...and restrained the clinton agenda...what really got the economy going was the capital gains tax cut...

the only reason we had a balanced budget was the republican congress..

but don't let the truth get in the way of your ideology...you libs never do...

John: I already did with that article from UCLA economists..I'm sure your article was written by good democrat hacks who don't have Ph.D's in economics though...I can see why you believe them...*smirk*

FDR's socialist policies (along with hoover's socialist policies) gave us the great depression...something we have never had before in the country's history...during all that time of 'deregulation' before the 1900s...and yet you libs learn nothing from history...rather you are determined to repeat the same old failed socialist policies of the past.

Joe, you are an utterly ignorant, malicious propagandist. You post, below, demonstrates that you literally know NOTHING of American history and particularly economic history:

FDR's socialist policies (along with hoover's socialist policies) gave us the great depression...something we have never had before in the country's history...during all that time of 'deregulation' before the 1900s...and yet you libs learn nothing from history...rather you are determined to repeat the same old failed socialist policies of the past.

EVERY bit of that crap is FALSE. YOU go look it up, I earned my bones the hard way, through extensive research and study and analysis for decades. Time for the ignore button in your case. Your trash is simply vile garbage unworthy of anyone's time!

John you're a liar as well as an idiot...FDR's OWN TREASURY SECRETARY ADMITTED THE NEW DEAL WAS A FAILURE.

we never had such depression in the history of the country before then...oh yeah its just a 'coincidence' that the Fed existed and we tried all those failed socialist policies...how many times does socialism have to fail around the world before morons like you get a clue?

you fascist piece of trash.

joe-3041821

John: I already did with that article from UCLA economists..I'm sure your article was written by good democrat hacks who don't have Ph.D's in economics though...I can see why you believe them...*smirk*

Paul Krugman and Joe Stiglitz are not only Ph.D.s in economics but also have Nobel Prizes in that field. And they think the sort of stuff that the UCLA economists are peddling is a load of barnyard fertilizer.

BTW: Franklin Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover were not socialists. Albert Einstein was a socialist, though. (Just threw that factoid in to see how many gaskets ol' Joes will pop.)

Joe is quite the piece of work, isn't he Houston? Not only has he not provided any support for his own statements, he hasn't even bothered to even try to disprove anything anyone else has said. Then he starts with the ad hominem attacks.

Jolly, Fine you have your child with you, but my incapacitated sister is in Arkansas and I'm of little help! I send some money as the state of Arkansas is not known for being generous to those in need. Now with the cuts threatened by the republicans in Washington and in her state she will not be able to get to the store and have transportation any longer. I will not drive 800 miles each week to take her. She already lives in a trailer and refuses to come north where heating costs are so high. She would not be able to get around at all in winter in her wheelchair!. Of course, I mention that her cooling costs are so high in the summer. I'm sorry about your son, but there are different situations and the lousy republicans just lump all people into one group and say, "Get a job!" Animals!

houston; if krugman believes it then its gotta be a lie...he's a wacko...no wonder someone like you would believe his drivel...

just one of MANY examples..

Prof. Krugman Is Wrong, Again

Posted by Steve H. Hanke

Prof. Paul Krugman asserts in his New York Times column of May 31st that “Both textbook economics and experience say that slashing spending when you’re still suffering from high unemployment is a really bad idea — not only does it deepen the slump, but it does little to improve the budget outlook, because much of what governments save by spending less they lose as a weaker economy depresses tax receipts.”

While Prof. Krugman and most other fiscalists believe this to be self-evident, it is not. Indeed, this fiscalist dogma fails to withstand the indignity of empirical verification. Prof. Paul Krugman’s formulation fails to mention the state of confidence. This is an important oversight. As Keynes himself put it: “The state of confidence, as they term it, is a matter to which practical men pay the closest and most anxious attention.”

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/prof-krugman-is-wrong-again/

his nobel prize means about as much as obamas...ie nothing.

hey John, you prove yourself a liar again...I've posted proof of what I said...from real economists...unlike you...but then if you were honest you wouldn't be a democrat.

clyd: can't you come up with a new line you animal? I didn't mention my son...that was another poster...and if your sister doesn't want or need YOUR help, then why do you think she would accept the state's or anyone else's hmmm? who are you to decide what she needs and does not need? she obviously doesn't need your help, and apparently that bothers you...but then you democrats like to be in charge of other people's lives don't you?

oh and Houston: FDR's OWN SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY ADMITTED THE NEW DEAL IS A FAILURE...

since you missed it..

We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work.”

Henry Morgenthau Jr. — close friend, lunch companion, loyal secretary of the Treasury to President Franklin D. Roosevelt — and key architect of FDR’s New Deal.

Joe, Sorry about the confused post! However, I can come up with the fact she has to live in a hovel of a trailer, live hand to mouth because the benefits she does receive are low and even those now are being threatened! Also, some republican animals say, on this post, that she needs to get a job. Filthy!

yeah she does need to get a job, it would be very empowering for her...but you don't want that...you want people to be slaves of the state...waiting for the handouts from their democrat masters. you're an animal.

I see that when you aren't busy insulting people you're trying to spread the Heritage Foundation myth that the New Deal didn't work. Total revisionist history of the worst kind;

Defenders of the New Deal will find much to argue with in Cole and Ohanion's account, but for simplicity's sake, I am going to zero in on just one point -- the impact of the New Deal on unemployment.

Cole and Ohanian:

The goal of the New Deal was to get Americans back to work. But the New Deal didn't restore employment. In fact, there was even less work on average during the New Deal than before FDR took office.

How can one make this claim? Unemployment reached 25 percent in the Great Depression, and fell steadily until World War II (although there were some bumps up along the way). Ah, but the revisionist position is that unemployment did not fall as much as it should have. And this argument is based on an interesting interpretation of the available data. As Amity Shlaes, currently the premier anti-New Deal historical revisionist writing for a popular audience, explained proudly in her own Wall Street Journal opinion piece in November, "The Krugman Recipe for Depression," a necessary step is to not count as employed those people in "temporary jobs in emergency programs."

That means, everyone who got a job during the Great Depression via the Works Progress Administration (WPA) or Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), or any other of Roosevelt's popular New Deal workfare programs, doesn't get counted as employed in the statistics used by Cole, Ohanian and Shlaes.

Let us reflect, for a moment, on what the men and women employed by those programs achieved (aside from earning cash to buy food and pay for shelter, of course). In his paper, "Time for a New, New Deal," Marshall Auerback (pointed to by economist James Galbraith) summarizes:

The government hired about 60 per cent of the unemployed in public works and conservation projects that planted a billion trees, saved the whooping crane, modernized rural America, and built such diverse projects as the Cathedral of Learning in Pittsburgh, the Montana state capitol, much of the Chicago lakefront, New York's Lincoln Tunnel and Triborough Bridge complex, the Tennessee Valley Authority and the aircraft carriers Enterprise and Yorktown.

It also built or renovated 2,500 hospitals, 45,000 schools, 13,000 parks and playgrounds, 7,800 bridges, 700,000 miles of roads, and a thousand airfields. And it employed 50,000 teachers, rebuilt the country's entire rural school system, and hired 3,000 writers, musicians, sculptors and painters, including Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock.

In other words, millions of men and women earned a living wage and self-respect and contributed mightily to the national infrastructure. But, according to the statistics as interpreted on the Wall Street Journal editorial page, they were unemployed.

http://www.salon.com/technology/how_the_world_works/2009/02/02/the_new_deal_worked

As for Morgenthau, he was trained in the Classic Economics, the very discipline that failed to bring about a depression from which we would not have recovered without the New Deal. Let's look at the opinion of someone who's familiar with the history of the Depression and was instrumental to the rise of Conservative economic principles that have ruled for the last 30 years...David Stockman;

"You're kidding yourself if you think cutting taxes is really cutting taxes," says David Stockman, the former budget director for Ronald Reagan, in a recent interview with Reason.Tv.

"We're simply deferring massive taxes unfairly and immorally putting huge debt burdens on future generations and that is just wrong."

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/david-stockman-hank-paulson-reaganomics-tarp-2011-1#ixzz1LmxuR000

http://www.businessinsider.com/david-stockman-hank-paulson-reaganomics-tarp-2011-1

Stockman, A Republican puts the blame squarely on Republican Conservatives, too;

More fundamentally, Mr. McConnell’s stand puts the lie to the Republican pretense that its new monetarist and supply-side doctrines are rooted in its traditional financial philosophy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/01/opinion/01stockman.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all

Stockman is still no Keynesian, but at least he's willing to be honest about the fact that the Monetarists are simply robbing our future to make the rich wealthier now.

the new deal was a failure...utter and complete. but you leftists never let facts get in the way of your ideology.

oh thats nice all those building were built by your savior FDR huh...isn't that nice...but then we didn't need FDR to build the empire state building did we now? all of those things would have been built and much more if we had a growing economy instead of being mired in a great depression...

just like today your 'stimulus' failed to employ people...socialism never works...look around you..

The New Deal was controversial then, and it's still controversial, because it failed to resolve the most important problem of the era: chronic unemployment that averaged 17 percent.

Newsweek columnist Robert Samuelson acknowledged that if World War II hadn't come along, America might have stumbled through many more years of double-digit unemployment. Samuelson, however, is among those who give FDR high marks for handling the political crisis of the 1930s, the worst political crisis this country has faced since the Civil War.

But the political crisis was caused by the double-digit unemployment, and in my new book, FDR's Folly, How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression (Crown Forum, 2003), I report mounting evidence developed by dozens of economists, at Princeton, Brown, Columbia, Stanford, the University of Chicago, University of Virginia, University of California (Berkeley) and other universities, that double-digit unemployment was prolonged by FDR's own New Deal policies.

How can that be? Consider just a few of FDR's policies. The New Deal tripled federal taxes between 1933 and 1940 -- excise taxes, personal income taxes, inheritance taxes, corporate income taxes, dividend taxes, excess profits taxes all went up, and FDR introduced an undistributed profits tax. A number of New Deal laws, including some 700 industrial cartel codes, made it more expensive for employers to hire people, and this discouraged hiring.

Frequent changes in the tax laws plus FDR's anti-business rhetoric ("economic royalists") discouraged people from making investments essential for growth and jobs. New Deal securities laws made it harder for employers to raise capital. FDR issued antitrust lawsuits against some 150 employers and companies, making it harder for them to focus on business. FDR signed a law ordering the break-up of America's strongest banks, with the lowest failure rates. New Deal farm policies destroyed food -- 10 million acres of crops and 6 million farm animals -- thereby wiping out farm jobs and forcing food prices above market levels for 100 million American consumers. FDR's Folly spells out much more in startling, sometimes hilarious detail.

http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3327

oh yeah morgenthau was a CLOSET CONSERVATIVE LOL BWAHAHAHAH yeah thats why he was FDR's secretary of treasury LOL

Henry Morgenthau, Jr. (pronounced /ˈmɔrɡənθɔː/; May 11, 1891 – February 6, 1967) was the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury during the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt. He played a major role in designing and financing the New Deal. After 1937, while still in charge of the Treasury, he played an increasingly major role in foreign policy, especially with respect to policies supporting China, helping Jewish refugees, and (in the "Morgenthau Plan") to prevent Germany from ever again being a military power after the Allied victory in 1945.^[1]

oh and John the rich are getting richer because they are earning it...we're not giving them anything...ITS THEIR OWN MONEY....how hard is this?

a tax break is not a giveaway...because its THEIR MONEY.

No one makes their own money, at least not legally. We are all interdependent. The environment in which you make your riches is artificial and adjustable. A Fiat currency is based upon debt. Without a billion or so debtors your money isn't worth spit.

...and by corollary you're saying the other 98% deserve to be getting poorer because we haven't earned it. They don't owe the society that makes their wealth possible, the rest of us owe them for their benevolent stewardship.

Welcome to the Conservative vision to recreate the aristocracies of Old Europe.

The New Deal tripled federal taxes between 1933 and 1940 -- excise taxes, personal income taxes, inheritance taxes, corporate income taxes, dividend taxes, excess profits taxes all went up, and FDR introduced an undistributed profits tax. A number of New Deal laws, including some 700 industrial cartel codes, made it more expensive for employers to hire people, and this discouraged hiring.

And yet the post-Depression period, an economy based on Keynesian and New Deal philosophies ushered in the greatest expansion in technology and broadly-based wealth in the history of the WORLD. It's an unprecedented explosion that has slowed with the rise of Supply-Side supremacy, finally stalling completely in the Great Recession of 2007.

Your complete and total disregard for facts and for the regular Americans who made this country what it is has allowed me to complete my case that Conservative economics has failed and Conservatives lie when they say the New Deal failed. Thank you for your cooperation.

John, you don't deserve OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY...why are you libs so damned greedy? earn your own money, and stop coveting what others have...ENVY is such an UGLY emotion...wiow

you do know that in 1984 we had a 7%+ GDP growth, which we have not had since the 1950s...not even clinton grew the economy that much...so supply side worked wonderfully...and has given us the prosperity we have known since the 1970s...

you remember the 1970s...high gas prices, high unemployment....high inflation....just like now!!

conservative economics has succeeded brilliantly....and all your lies about history won't change that.

thanks for making a fool out of yourself!

oh and course some of the new deal was repealed...CCC, WPA PWA, NRA, CWA...so how could we have all that prosperity with those *wonderful* new deal programs elminated?? hmmm John????

Real per capita personal consumption didn't improve in the United States until after World War II. just more proof the new deal was a total failure.

His vast increase in the size of government consisted of maintaining and expanding much of what Hoover introduced, as well as many programs like Social Security, which changed the economy of the 1930s very little. In addition, many components of the New Deal did not work or were counterproductive to economic recovery, just as we see today with bailouts, stimulus, deficits, etc.

http://mises.org/daily/4797

Some can't earn and they are in need. So let them starve? Republicans just want bigger bonuses for CEO"s and more tax breaks for the rich, corporations, business, oil and now insurance companies! Republicans are animals. There i said it again!

people have survived for millenia without social programs...and your policies have given us places like detroit, where half the people can't even read. democrats are animals...there I said it again.

LoL......Joe that made me smile! I reside at 8 Mile rd in Detroit. Everytime I see one of these liberals ranting and raving I think of our last democratic Mayor and his entire Admin staff. We are currently supporting him and most of his staff and will soon be supporting his father and uncle and perhaps his wife (it seems she may have murdered a stripper over a lapdance) Supporting as in pensions or welfare....Noooooooooo nothing like that. Lets just say they all have pretty jumpsuits. Each with its own number. Yep, Old Kwame Kilpatrick the little king that was!

Raise taxes and stop the corporate welfare.

Ants are mostly socialists -- tasks are assigned to all, all for the common good of the nest. Hatched ants are raised collectively. So the grasshopper and ant analogy doesn't really apply here.

people have survived for millenia without social programs...

Actually a lot of people died because the lack thereof. Yes, the human race survived, but people died.

and how many people have died because of your beloved social programs like the native american health care and the VA for example? or how many people were denied drugs by the FDA, or didn't get them in time?

look at detroit for an example of your social programs.....but then you don't care about those people dying there...they're mostly people of color...

Joe Numbers,

Perhaps you should move from Detroit, you seem unhappy there....it cant be good for your helath.

I don't live there...its a monument to failed liberal policies...and its not the only place... east st. louis gary, etc...

Actually a lot of people died because the lack thereof. Yes, the human race survived, but people died.

People die every day with or without a social net. But what annoys me about your comment is the mentality behind it; you'd sacrifice our ability to overcome adversity, our ability as a species to become better than what we are - our most noble aspects - for the sole sake of the illusion of safety.

Exodite Dragon:

But what annoys me about your comment is the mentality behind it; you'd sacrifice our ability to overcome adversity, our ability as a species to become better than what we are - our most noble aspects - for the sole sake of the illusion of safety.

Social Darwinism was a popular pseudoscience among the elites back in Darwin's day. Welcome to the 19th Century.

social darwinism....ie eugenics...you democrats still follow that racist ideology today...see planned parenthood...and hillary is in awe of that racist eugenicist margaret sanger.

social darwinism....ie eugenics.

No it's not. It's conservative ideology, as stated by Exodite Dragon in a previous post: Social safety nets only prevent the weak from being weeded out of the population and allows them to breed more weaklings, thereby preventing the evolutionary improvement of the human species. Of course, the social Darwinists are in the same political party as creationists. That's the Republican version of the "big tent."

Kate, I don't know if you realize it, but what you describe in regards to ants is Communism!

houston: I mean really do you like to embarrass yourself? social darwinism IS eugenics. which grew out of DARWINISM..

creationists are social darwinists?? oh thats too funny...you mean they're in there with people like MARGARET SANGER...whom hillary holds 'in awe'

psssstt...creationists don't agree with evolution....get a clue.

you really are beyond clueless.

houston: I mean really do you like to embarrass yourself? social darwinism IS eugenics. which grew out of DARWINISM..

I don't find knowing what I'm talking about embarrassing. You should be ashamed of your willful ignorance, but apparently you're proud of it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Darwinism

Social Darwinism is a term used for various late nineteenth century ideologies predicated on survival of the fittest.^[1] It especially refers to notions of struggle for existence being used to justify social policies which make no distinction between those able to support themselves and those unable to support themselves. The most prominent form of such views stressed competition between individuals in laissez-faire capitalism but it is also connected to the ideas of the progressive era, in which many promoted eugenics or scientific racism or imperialism,^[2]

Eugenics was one of the unfortunate beliefs that stemmed from social Darwinism, but it was abandoned long ago by progressives. Social Darwinism is now the private preserve of the Republican Party and far right ideologues (if there's any difference).

you continue to make a fool out of yourself...no surprise there!! did you read what you posted???

The most prominent form of such views stressed competition between individuals in laissez-faire capitalism but it is also connected to the ideas of the progressive era, in which many promoted eugenics or scientific racism or

the PROGESSIVE ERA.... progressives thats what people like you are.

wikipedia...ignorant talking points written by clueless liberals BWAHAAHAHAHAH

the progressives never believed in laissez-faire capitalism...they were socialists...eugenicists...the liberals of their day.

eugenics was never abandoned by the progessives...planned parenthood still takes donations to kill black babies...get a clue.

I like how Houston automatically assumes that merely because I have a problem with someone running straight for the social safety net as though it guarantees immortality I'm advocating we trample the weak and hurdle the dead.

Great fun though that might make at an Olympic event, that was not the point of my comment.

eugenics was never abandoned by the progessives...planned parenthood still takes donations to kill black babies...get a clue.

Then there's the above lovely comment by Joe. Tell me something, do you people have to PRACTICE to be this gullible, or is it simply natural talent? Am I in the company of giants?

Attn all Grass Hoppers! Our State Atty Tom Miller of Iowa is pushing a law suit to force banks to write down the amount of our Deliquent Mortgages! Please support this measure. I'm not sure what happens to the written off amount but the important thing is we the oppressed insect will not be responsible for paying it back!

UAW, the mechanics behind efforts to increase the incidence of mortgage cramdown are pretty simple, actually.

1) After the economy crashed in 2007 millions of people found themselves unable to pay their mortgages because unfortunately their mortgages began adjusting upward just as their ability to simply stay economically even against the tide was disappearing.

2) Most of the homes being repossessed will sit empty for an extended period, potentially even becoming a blight on the neighborhood as they accumulate problems that no one is home to see or tend to and dragging down the value of surrounding properties.

3) The best the bank can hope to get out of these foreclosed homes is the new, now lower price and interest rate.

4) Most of the people under foreclosure could ACTUALLY PAY THE MORTGAGE at current prices and interest rates.

The banking industry refuses to do this due to what they term "moral hazard." This means that the industry believes it would set a bad precedent to allow people to renegotiate because it would encourage the same behavior in future. Of course for some reason banks don't fear the same "moral hazard" in business bankruptcies (3 in the case of Donald Trump, for example) and walk-aways, and the industry refuses to take responsibility for their part in misleading people to take on more risk than they could reasonably bear.

In other words big business made a bunch of money off the American middle class on the original deals, now it wants to make sure it extracts a pound of flesh from the middle class as this thing runs its course.

John your savior, the government, forced the banks to give bad loans to people they knew couldn't repay them...CRA...then when it crashed they 'saved' us by using taxpayer money to bail out the banks, and basically take control of them...

never let a crisis go to waste, right? especially when you cause it.

Exodite Dragon

I like how Houston automatically assumes that merely because I have a problem with someone running straight for the social safety net as though it guarantees immortality I'm advocating we trample the weak and hurdle the dead.

Funny, I never read anything in this thread that advocated running straight for the safety net as though a guarantee of immortality. It looks like you're harboring some sort of grudge against the "undeserving poor" that you're projecting onto other people.

I did, however, notice that you suggested that the lack of a safety net would somehow improve the species, or in other words, social Darwinism.

Sure, there is nothing morally bankrupt about people walking away from contractual obligations, is there? I mean, when you buy a car, the minute you drive it off the lot it loses value, so why bother paying the balance on the note?

Moreover, if someone lends you money, you really have no obligation to repay that amount, because, after all, they are better off than you are, or they would not have had the money to lend you in the first place, right?

If you are behind on your mortgage payments, it is obviously the fault of the bank, because, after all, they should have foreseen that you would not repay the note, and, besides, the house is probably worth less than you paid for it. That must be the fault of the bank, too. Then, of course, gas is high, food is high, the kids need braces, and why should the bank even expect you to pay them - they have more money than you do!

Nope, none of it is your fault- just the bank's fault.

That kind of thinking got us into this mess, and will keep us here until someone tells the cold, hard truth to people- house prices are not going to hit bottom, then rebound, until ALL of the people not living up to their obligations are dispossessed of the homes to which they are not entitled, no matter what the liberals tell them.

Until that happens, the rest of us, who do take our obligations seriously, will suffer from depressed home prices as the problem lingers on for years.

Here we go with the CRA again. C'mon joe, at least TRY to come up with something challenging. From the socialists at Bloomburg Businessweek;

Fresh off the false and politicized attack on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, today we’re hearing the know-nothings blame the subprime crisis on the Community Reinvestment Act — a 30-year-old law that was actually weakened by the Bush administration just as the worst lending wave began. This is even more ridiculous than blaming Freddie and Fannie.

The Community Reinvestment Act, passed in 1977, requires banks to lend in the low-income neighborhoods where they take deposits. Just the idea that a lending crisis created from 2004 to 2007 was caused by a 1977 law is silly. But it’s even more ridiculous when you consider that most subprime loans were made by firms that aren’t subject to the CRA. University of Michigan law professor Michael Barr testified back in February before the House Committee on Financial Services that 50% of subprime loans were made by mortgage service companies not subject comprehensive federal supervision and another 30% were made by affiliates of banks or thrifts which are not subject to routine supervision or examinations. As former Fed Governor Ned Gramlich said in an August, 2007, speech shortly before he passed away: “In the subprime market where we badly need supervision, a majority of loans are made with very little supervision. It is like a city with a murder law, but no cops on the beat.”

Not surprisingly given the higher degree of supervision, loans made under the CRA program were made in a more responsible way than other subprime loans. CRA loans carried lower rates than other subprime loans and were less likely to end up securitized into the mortgage-backed securities that have caused so many losses, according to a recent study by the law firm Traiger & Hinckley (PDF file here).

Finally, keep in mind that the Bush administration has been weakening CRA enforcement and the law’s reach since the day it took office. The CRA was at its strongest in the 1990s, under the Clinton administration, a period when subprime loans performed quite well. It was only after the Bush administration cut back on CRA enforcement that problems arose, a timing issue which should stop those blaming the law dead in their tracks. The Federal Reserve, too, did nothing but encourage the wild west of lending in recent years. It wasn’t until the middle of 2007 that the Fed decided it was time to crack down on abusive pratices in the subprime lending market. Oops.

Better targets for blame in government circles might be the 2000 law which ensured that credit default swaps would remain unregulated, the SEC’s puzzling 2004 decision to allow the largest brokerage firms to borrow upwards of 30 times their capital and that same agency’s failure to oversee those brokerage firms in subsequent years as many gorged on subprime debt. (Barry Ritholtz had an excellent and more comprehensive survey of how Washington contributed to the crisis in this week’s Barron’s.)

http://www.businessweek.com/investing/insights/blog/archives/2008/09/community_reinvestment_act_had_nothing_to_do_with_subprime_crisis.html

a blog? LOL

Earlier this week I noted that I had changed my mind on the Community Reinvestment Act.

Contrary to my initial conclusion, the evidence is overwhelming that the CRA played a significant role in creating lax lending standards that fueled the housing bubble. Once I realized this, I had to abandon my suspicion that the anti-CRA case was a figment of the rhetoric of Republicans attempting to distract attention from their own role in the mortgage mess.

So I laid out the facts and arguments that had convinced me to switch sides in the CRA debate. It was a long series of posts that generated hundreds of responses and counter-arguments. Felix Salmon’s response is here, Barry Ritholtz’s here, Mike Rorty's here, Ryan Chitum’s here, and Matthew Wurtzel’s here. All of my posts are here. Henry Blodget's earlier post on the CRA, with which I largely agreed until recently, is here. If you carefully run through these posts and the accompanying comments, I think you'll see that every argument raised by the "Defend CRA at all costs" crowd has been refuted.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-cra-debate-a-users-guide-2009-6#ixzz1LbPpfD3W

Hey LIBERALS where are the JOBS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We are waiting on the GOP/TP to make good on their promise for a Jobs Bill that will create jobs in America so our President can sign it. Do you know when we can expect the Jobs Bill???

Didn't think so.

the jobs bill is cutting spending and regulations....bet you think they can pass a law to make everyone happy too.

China............we're trying to bring them back home.

They'll start on jobs as soon as they fully complete the important task of fully regulating the uteruses of American women.

Or is that uteri?

as the democrats just proved aborting babies is their top priority.

sallyboy6

Hey LIBERALS where are the JOBS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There were a couple hundred thousand more of them added last month that you apparently didn't hear about.

hamburger flipper jobs.

Who said anything about a jobs bill? Republicans promised jobs, not a jobs bill. Just because Progressiv­es are locked in the mindset that we need a jobs bill, doesn't mean we need a jobs bill or that the Republican­s ever stated or implied that they would pass one. Please provide links that have more than one or two Republicans saying they would draft a "jobs" bill -- and not your ignorant interpretation of what was said.

Ben,

The only thing that legislators can do to spark job creation is to make new laws or change existing laws that creates a better atmosphere for employers to expand and hire.

Just being in the House or Senate does nothing until you write and submit a bill.

Thank you Dennis. That is correct. There is no such animal as a "jobs" bill. Also, thank you for the email.

Ben,

Any bill that is designed to create an atmosphere for employers to expand or hire is always sub titled a “jobs bill”. Until the House actually brings such a bill to the floor then they have not followed thru on their promise to the voters. Since they said jobs was their #1 priority then I say they have failed.

There is a bill being submitted in the Senate by a Republican that is being called a jobs bill but who knows if will ever get to the floor.

If the Rublicans submit a jogs bill it will be the first

Well now, I wouldn't be lecturing others about their lack of understanding and mental challenges when you clearly are having a hard time understanding what you're reading. New jobs being added is one number. Unemployment is another. See, it's a big country with many different sectors. In general, the unemployment number is going to fluctuate based on things like seasonal layoffs, state to state and district to district changes (read the article and it'll explain these to you) and the number looking for work (if you're not currently looking, you are not counted) .This is why it is useful to look at data over time. See out here in the real America, we try to figure out what stats are instead of waiting endlessly for the sky to fall so that we can sit back on our couches and enjoy our preconceived notions about the sky is falling...

and thanks for the high gas prices and unemployment...heckuva job barry!

Thank President Bush for leaving us on the brink of a Great Depression and for deregulation on controlling speculators that get away with their cheap tricks on gas pricing.

President Obama had to step in and save us.

yeah create a crisis...and then 'save' us...right. the government created the crisis...CRA..fannie...freddie...not 'deregulation' laughable.

name these speculators...you can't...they're just some boogeyman you use cause you don't understand economics.

Joe,

Perhaps you could take some history and civics classes at your local community college. The classes aren’t that expensive and they could help open your eyes to the world around you.

job: I've already got a MS degree...you? (obviously not LOL)

you democrats aren't nearly as smart as you think you are...and you prove it with every post!!

I notice you couldn't back up your assertion about FDR when I countered your talking points....no surprise is it now?? LOL

Joe,

Sure you have a MS degree. Just read your history. That's all you need to do. No need for me to do it for you.

I've read it...socialism fails every time its tried...why do you keep thinking it will work?

Joe,

Quit believing that President Obama wants to install a socialist government. I remember Palin starting that spin and we all she is a little crazy. Granted, some socialist programs do work such as social security. We still are a Capitalist government, and that is where we will stay.

I don't know how to tell you this, but social security is a failure...its a ponzi scheme...that has bankrupted us. future retirees won't get what they put into it...or they'll be repayed with worthless paper.

we are quickly becoming a fascist government, which is a form of socialism (I know you don't understand it enough to believe it)

obviously obama embraces socialism, its why he wants to take over healthcare.

For a person with a MS degree, I find it hard to believe that you follow this far right talking point. This sounds like the crazy stuff Glenn Beck throws out there, and everyone with any common sense knows that he is crazy.

I don't buy any of it and I convinced that the Republicans-Tea Party are the ones harming our country.

With that being sad, I will work in getting President Obama re-elected, along with all and any Democrats.

From the Socialists at "Fortune" magazine;

It was inevitable that once the phrase "Ponzi scheme" returned to the news in the wake of Bernard Madoff's alleged swindle, a chorus of angry voices would rise to condemn Social Security as, in their words, "the biggest Ponzi scheme of them all."

Their argument -- gaining momentum on the web, among some television commentators, and elsewhere (for examples, see "The Ponzi Scheme That is Social 'Security,' " "The Real 'Mother Of All Ponzi Schemes': Social Security" or "Madoff only the No. 2 Ponzi scheme") -- has a certain appeal because there are indeed some superficial similarities.

Essentially, here's their pitch: a Ponzi scheme is a fraud in which money from one group of people is used to pay promised returns to another group of people. The money isn't invested, it's just transferred, and at some point the scheme collapses because there's not enough income to satisfy withdrawals. (Madoff reportedly confessed to one of his sons that his $50 billion investment business fit that description.) Social Security's critics say it's a multitrillion-dollar Ponzi scheme because although individuals have "accounts," in fact the government uses income from current workers to pay benefits. When benefits exceed income, they say, the system will crumble, just like Madoff's.

It's hard to knock down such a persistent and seemingly elegant analogy. But since it creates a false impression of Social Security, and since I for one consider real Ponzi schemes too important and interesting to obfuscate, it's worth rebutting this myth.

First, in the case of Social Security, no one is being misled. Madoff allegedly falsely claimed to have discovered a "black box" method of earning impressive results, and by doing so enticed individuals and organizations to invest with him. Social Security is exactly what it claims to be: A mandatory transfer payment system under which current workers are taxed on their incomes to pay benefits, with no promises of huge returns. (Of course, it's true that if Madoff had the power to require participation, he would have had an easier time keeping his alleged scheme rolling.)

Second, Social Security isn't automatically doomed to fail. Played out to its logical conclusion, a Ponzi scheme is unsustainable because the number of potential investors is eventually exhausted. That's when the last people to participate are out of luck; the music stops and there's nowhere to sit.

It's true that Social Security faces a huge burden -- and a significant, long-term financing problem -- in light of retiring Baby Boomers. (The latest projections anticipate Social Security tax revenues to fall below costs in 2017 and the Social Security Trust Funds to be exhausted in 2041.) But Social Security can be, and has been, tweaked and modified to reflect changes in the size of the taxpaying workforce and the number of beneficiaries. It would take great political will, but the government could change benefit formulas or take other steps, like increasing taxes, to keep the system from failing.

Third, Social Security is morally the polar opposite of a Ponzi scheme and fundamentally different from what Madoff allegedly did. At the height of the Great Depression, our society (see "Social") resolved to create a safety net (see "Security") in the form of a social insurance policy that would pay modest benefits to retirees, the disabled and the survivors of deceased workers. By design, that means a certain amount of wealth transfer, with richer workers subsidizing poorer ones. That might rankle, but it's not fraud.

Charles Ponzi, for whom the scheme is named, was unencumbered by such high-minded ideals. When he came to fame in 1920 -- 15 years before Social Security's creation, by the way -- he was a charming, likeable Bostonian who convinced himself that he had found a way to make himself and his investors rich using foreign exchange rates and international postage coupons. When he realized that his method wouldn't work, he should have come clean, but instead he tried to find a legitimate way to deliver on his promises, only to bring ruin on many of his investors and himself.

If the allegations against Madoff are true, he was even worse, having spent many years knowing that his remarkable returns were bogus. He apparently relied at least to some extent on investments from charitable foundations, nonprofit organizations and endowments, which could be counted on to make withdrawals at a predictable pace, extending the lifespan of his operations but devastating the philanthropic community. That alone suggests that Madoff's alleged actions were the antithesis of Social Security, cutting holes in safety nets created by others.

None of this is to suggest that Social Security is a perfect system or that there aren't sizeable problems facing the incoming administration and Congress. But it's not a Ponzi scheme. And Ponzi himself, who died in a hospital charity ward with only enough money for his burial, would never have recognized it as his own.

http://money.cnn.com/2009/01/06/news/economy/social.security.fortune/index.htm

It isn't too late for those history and civics classes, Joe. Having a Master's degree in something doesn't establish your mastery of this subject...one on which all your knowledge must have come from Beck University.

you call it a 'talking point' yet you can't refute it..know why that is? because its the truth, not a talking point.

ah yes 'everyone knows' its much easier to follow the herd than think for yourself.

john: an article from CNN...of course they're not liberal *smirk*

obviously people are misled about social security...they're told its a retirement plan...their money is 'invested' for them in an account held by the government...what a con job. its nothing more than a transfer program where money is taken from a larger base to pay a smaller top of the pyramid...and as with any pyramid scheme, when the base narrows it goes bankrupt...thats why social security is in trouble.

your own article says 'in the form of a social insurance policy' what a joke...its not an insurance policy, its not your money....its not run like an insurance policy it doesn't require fiduciary responsibility on the part of the government and its not run according to actuarial or accounting standards.

your article is basically saying it looks like a ponzi scheme, but its not...and then is unable to post any convincing proof, other than blatant lies like above.

Joe 304????,

Heck of job you say! Yes, and Exxon had record profits the last quarter.. Seems like profits at all costs for big oil! Yes, the same big oil that contributed big time to the republicans campaigns. The party that is all bought and paid for! Thank you, Big oil, big business, Big Corporations, Big insurance and Big Wall Street. You have the republican party all bagged up and ready to take home and put int he frig!

Clwyd...do you know 'who' contributed the most to Obama's campaign? If you research it carefully you will see it was 'exactly'the people you noted in your post. Big Oil, big business, big corporations, big insurance, and most of all, big wall street! So your point is???

Speaking of campaign contributions, read this and weep!

Last year, in perhaps the “most consequential Supreme Court decision in decades,” the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) invalidated a sixty-three year-old ban on corporate and union money directly funding individual candidates in federal elections. The SCOTUS decision sent shockwaves throughout our democracy, with many fearing that it would lead to an overwhelming amount of corporate money flooding out the voices of ordinary people.

Now, the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics has put out a comprehensive analysis to assess the flood of campaign money in last year’s election. One of the most shocking results of the analysis finds that the decision appeared to have a sharply partisan and ideological result. The group found that spending by Super PACs and all outside spending strongly tilted towards conservatives, and that spending by undisclosed donors actually was eight times higher for conservatives than liberals, with conservatives spending $119.6 million to liberals’ $15.7 million:

Read the entire article at: http://thinkprogress.org/2011/05/06/citizens-united-conservatives-spent/

NJ John I have researched it and you are wrong! there was on big contributor and the rest paled by their amounts. Maybe you can enlighten me with the facts and figures of your research? Based on fact!

I think Feisty Redhead has partially put your statement in the junk heap!

First things first: Happy Mother's Day to all the mom's out there!!! There is no way to put into words what mothers do and sacrifice for their children. So a big thanks to all of you!!!

Thanks Grimey!

Frank,

You have a great weekend my friend. It is always good to see you here.

Frank "Grimey" Grimes

Ever considered public office? You seem to be able to get your point across without any hard feelings and haven't been bought off yet. I watched last night (some not all) and was less than impressed.

The hand raising thing made me think of my grandsons preschool. Perhaps it has been used before in a debate and I wasn't paying attention.

We are trying to talk Frank into running as he will have a base right here to start. He would be a good President.

Run Frank Run.

Really? Because I thought it was forty or fifty years of running this country's economy while holding our collective dicks in our hands that led to the present mess.

A lot of new jobs are opening up in the field of conspiracy theorization, you may want to look into it

You can also open your own small business manufacturing and selling tinfoil hats.

guess you missed this......so yeah your speculative bubble is a myth...sorry.

NEW YORK — Oil prices recovered Friday after the U.S. government said the economy added 244,000 jobs in April.

The hiring spree last month was the biggest in five years. That could mean more people using gas to drive to work.

Oil jumped from around $98 per barrel to near $100 immediately after the report was released. The price retreated a bit from there, but is now almost even for the day.

guess you missed this......so yeah your speculative bubble is a myth...sorry.

Guess you don't know what a bubble is. Or do you think President Obama changed his mind about drilling in the Arctic and oil has suddenly started flowing into refineries near you? The sudden "recovery " when the job numbers change is as much a result of speculation as the rapid price hikes. Idiot.

you need to take econ 101...the price changes according to the market...not some 'speculators' whom you can't even name...talk about an idiot...

joe-3041821

you need to take econ 101...the price changes according to the market...not some 'speculators' whom you can't even name...talk about an idiot...

You need to follow your own advice. Oil didn't experience these wild one-day swings in price because of market forces. It's true that increased demand in China and India are driving prices higher over the long term, but NOT as fast as prices have risen recently, and China certainly didn't stop buying oil suddenly when the price plummeted yesterday.

the prices rise and fall according to one basic thing...supply and demand...its why prices rose today...the market thinks economic activity will pick up...and more oil will be consumed.....

and of course it reacts to things that may interrupt supply like libya...there is no man or group behind the curtain controlling things...

Oil prices have become detached from "supply and demand". Don't take my word for it...take their word for it...

"Crude oil prices have become detached from the dynamics of supply and demand." - Abdalla Salem El-Badri, OPEC Secretary General - 4/21/2008

www.gasandoil.com/goc/features/fex82098.htm

"Again, we are seeing oil prices detached from traditional fundamentals of supply and demand." - Stephanie Milani, AAA Spokesperson - 2/26/2010

nothing in economics is detached from supply and demand.

joe-3041821

nothing in economics is detached from supply and demand.

You are detached from reality.

right...the basic law of economics has just been repealed because a lib says so...LOL

its why your policies are such failures...you can't repeal the tide...get a clue.

joe-3041821

right...the basic law of economics has just been repealed because a lib says so...LOL

Where did you hear that the Secretary General of OPEC was a "lib"? I'll bet he's a con, like you. Only with a lot more brains.

most muslims tend to be fascists like the democrats in this country.

let me know when you repeal the laws of physics too...LOL what a buffoon!

joe-3041821

most muslims tend to be fascists like the democrats in this country.

First we get a lecture in economics from this moron, and now we get a lecture on Social Science for Ignorant Bigots.

in other words, the truth hurts ignorant bigots like you.

By the way:

Da Noid posted this:

"Again, we are seeing oil prices detached from traditional fundamentals of supply and demand." - Stephanie Milani, AAA Spokesperson - 2/26/2010

Joe posted this:

most muslims tend to be fascists like the democrats in this country.

So, tell us, Joe. How do you know that Stephanie Milani of the AAA is a liberal fascist Muslim?

Ah, another "true believer" in the religion of the free market, certain that things right in front of his eyes don't exist. Speculation taken to extremes is the PROCESS of decoupling markets from supply and demand. Let's go to a source that might not be over your head--How Stuff Works;

The next time you drive to the gas station, only to find prices are still sky high compared to just a few years ago, take notice of the rows of foreclosed houses you'll pass along the way. They may seem like two parts of a spell of economic bad luck, but high gas prices and home foreclosures are actually very much interrelated. Before most people were even aware there was an economic crisis, investment managers abandoned failing mortgage-backed securities and looked for other lucrative investments. What they settled on was oil futures.

An oil future is simply a contract between a buyer and seller, where the buyer agrees to purchase a certain amount of a commodity -- in this case oil -- at a fixed price [source: CFTC]. Futures offer a way for a purchaser to bet on whether a commodity will increase in price down the road. Once locked into a contract, a futures buyer would receive a barrel of oil for the price dictated in the future contract, even if the market price was higher when the barrel was actually delivered.

­As in all cases, Wall Street heard the word "bet" and flocked to futures, taking the market to strange new places on the fringe of legality. In the 19th and early 20th centuries it bet on grain. In the 21st century it was oil. Despite U.S. petroleum reserves being at an eight-year high, the price of oil rose dramatically beginning in 2006. While demand rose, supply kept pace. Yet, prices still skyrocketed. This means that the laws of supply and demand no longer applied in the oil markets. Instead, an artificial market developed.

Artificial markets are volatile; they're difficult to predict and can turn on a dime. As a result of the artificial oil market, the average price per barrel of crude oil increased from $31.61 in July 2004 to $137.11 in July 2008 [source: DOE]. The average cost for a gallon of regular unleaded gas in the United States grew from $1.93 to $4.09 over the same period [source: DOE

http://money.howstuffworks.com/oil-speculation-raise-gas-price.htm

Let not be troubled, for soon Sean will be on the radio and he will reassure you that up is down and day is night.

houston: its hard to tell liberals from radical muslims like bin-laden...

Apparently speaking in his second audio broadcast of the month, Bin Laden criticised George W Bush, the former US president, for not signing the Kyoto Protocol on regulating carbon emissions, and spoke out against excessive corporate influence in the United States.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7104143/Osama-bin-Laden-enters-global-warming-debate.html

John: you really need to take econ 101...

futures contracts do not influence the price of oil...they merely bet upon which direction the market will take...those evil 'speculators' ie investors can gain or lose money...no different than when you buy a stock, hoping it will go up.

do you think buying an option on google that it will rise in price in the future will cause the price of the stock to rise??? please.

options (or futures in commodities) are NEVER decoupled from the actual product it is based upon....do you think options on google are dependent upon GE????

oh and as far as the oil prices in 2006...ever hear of KATRINA??? and the damage it did to our refineries?? its not like we have excess refining capacity...know why the prices went down? BUSH opened up more drilling the the gulf.

A once-popular bumper sticker says simply, “When Bush took office, gas was $1.46.” It was meant to be a slam, but as the end of his eight years approaches, President Bush is seeing gas prices that, adjusted for inflation, are lower than when he was inaugurated.

Last week’s $1.59 - the average for a gallon of regular on Dec. 29, according to the Energy Information Administration - works out to $1.33 in 2001 dollars, or 9 percent less than it was the day Mr. Bush took office. The tumble in prices, from a high of more than $4.05 in early July, has meant incredible savings.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jan/06/price-dip-adjusts-bushs-gas-legacy/?page=1

From joe-3041821

Apparently speaking in his second audio broadcast of the month, Bin Laden criticised George W Bush, the former US president, for not signing the Kyoto Protocol on regulating carbon emissions, and spoke out against excessive corporate influence in the United States.

It's a good thing Bin Laden never said it was not good to bang one's head against a brick wall repeatedly. Joe would assume that a true blue American would do the exact opposite of whatever Bin Laden said. Joe would then be more addle brained than he is already. If that's possible.

yeah you true fascist ameriKKKans sound just like bin-laden....no surprise.

I'd say we've done all we can to try to bring joe's knowledge of Economics even as current as the 17th Century, let alone into the world of Credit Default Swaps an unregulated Derivatives.

At the height of this tulip mania, most transactions did not even involve the exchange of goods but became purely speculative. "Everything was worth money and so current that one could get in exchange almost anything one desired," says Gaergoedt. "And all this with promises and vouchers, when the bulbs were in the earth." Even though buyers did not have the cash amount or sellers actually possess the bulb, there still was the expectation that a succeeding sale could be at an ever higher price. But buyers must have begun to wonder if the escalating prices of the previous two months could be sustained (and been suspicious, too, that more tulips would be grown, increasing the supply). In the first week of February 1637, when investors were not willing to go higher, the market collapsed, the bulbs contracted the previous autumn still in the ground.

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/aconite/tulipomania.html

Silly Dutch aristocrats, there's no such thing as speculation.

john: you call investing in the market 'speculation' right. ever buy a stock? then you are a DREADED EVIL SPECULATOR...according to you libs...

yeah markets collapse...people make and lose money....so? thanks for proving markets are SELF REGULATING...they don't need a government to 'watch over them'

no surprise you are unable to answer any of my points...logic, history, economics, truthfulness, etc aren't your strong suit.

all that 'speculation' was based upon a commodity that existed, in this case tulips....the market was not disconnected from the product...thanks for proving my case...

you're really not very bright are you?

Now you're changing your story to fit the corner you've painted yourself into. Your specific statement was;

nothing in economics is detached from supply and demand.

Since then it's been shown to you HOW markets become detached from supply and demand through speculation. Yes, the disconnect is temporary...it goes away when the bubble bursts, collapses, then finds new equilibrium. The point is that ENORMOUS amounts of disruption can be caused DURING the bubble period and the ensuing collapse of the market. The deep-pockets players that are manipulating the markets during those periods are doing immense harm to others within the economy. That's the reason why reasonable regulation moderated the frequent financial "panics" that were a constant until the late 19th Century, and became even more rare and slight as better regulation emerged in the shadow of the Great Depression...until the deregulatory fervor of Reaganomics came to the fore. SOCIETY is better off with that reasonable regulation and it's what allowed us to become the prime economic power in the WORLD during the last century.

Now that I've slapped you with your own "invisible hand" the lesson is done. You've discredited yourself thoroughly. I've done it with logic history, economic, and FACTS. Go back to Beckistan.

John: you've never bought a stock that went down in price huh? oh yeah that NEVER happens does it?

there is no 'disconnect' the market ALWAYS prices a commodity or a stock at the right price, by definition. what you are willing to pay for a stock or an option (future) at the present time may or may not reflect the price of that stock or option in the future....

how hard is this? there IS NO DISCONNECT between the market and that which is offered in the market...get a clue.

there is no disruption to the market,.....only a disruption to the investors that guessed wrong. and that is the nature of life, there are winners, and losers, like you.

your regulations are what distort the market...as we saw with CRA and the market for loans...your regulations cause much more harm than good...but people like you keep doing the same things and expecting different results...get some help.

and if your 'reasonable regulations' would have actually worked we wouldn't have had the crash of 29...or the crash of 87...or the crash of 2000 or the crash of 2007...like I said keep doing the same things and expecting different results...just like all your other failed socialist schemes...see detroit.

how does it feel to be made SUCH a fool out of? oh and its SO EASY!! LOL

oh and in the crash of 1987...you know what Reagan did? NOTHING...and it was just a blip on the screen...hoover/FDR bush/obama tried to 'fix' it...and failed miserably.

OK then, for Conservatives $4 gas isn't a bug, it's a feature. The ability for rich and powerful players in the market to enrich themselves even further by effectively extorting vast sums of money out of average people in order to obtain the basic needs of life is a good thing. Glad we got that straight.

Thanks for pointing out that enriching the wealthy at the expense of everyone else is a Conservative goal.

As far as your lie that Hoover was a Socialist who destroyed the economy with his meddling more facts will quickly dispatch that;

It may seem premature to compare President George W. Bush to Herbert Hoover, the president who helped steer the economy into the Great Depression in 1929, and then presided over steady economic deterioration until the end of his term in 1933. After all, the current economic downturn under President Bush’s watch hasn’t even officially been declared a recession, while under Hoover the United States experienced four straight years of severe economic decline.

Yet close inspection of the economic track records and ideology of these two presidents reveals that they are quite similar. Both presided over a suddenly deteriorating economy yet resisted taking action to prevent further economic losses. Both believed the market would naturally self-correct, and that government intervention would be harmful. And both took limited government action once it became clear that it was needed—to help businesses, rather than working families—to weather the storm.

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/06/two_conservatives.html

More on what happens when you just wait for an economy that's fallen into a "liquidity trap" to self correct;

Hoover watched as the banks crashed in 1929 and 700,000 people became unemployed. He did nothing except telling the people not to worry that things would get better. By 1933 there were 16 million people out of work.

With no jobs and no money people went without food. Starvation became a real issue and it resulted in many social problems. Soup kitchens and bread lines snaked over blocks and blocks of large cities some people waiting days for a thin bowl of soup and a slice of stale bread that did not assuage their hunger. People fought each other for the scrapes that could be found in garbage cans of restaurants and gangs of men would attack delivery trucks delivery to hotels. Those that were lucky would sell apples on the street.

Hoover shook his head and commented he could not understand why men would leave their decent jobs preferring to sell apples on the streets.

People who still had homes had no heat or light and those who rented their homes were evicted because they could not pay their rent. Small girls would play with dolls moving them about from area to area in a new game they called “eviction”

Hoover wondered what was wrong with these people that they did not go home to sleep at night.

Read more: http://socyberty.com/history/the-man-who-did-nothing-hoover-and-the-great-depression/#ixzz1LgmzaApf

Thanks for continuing to give me these opportunities to correct your Conservative lies. It's been great fun.

yeah John, $4 gas is a feature of your failed savior's economic policies...weakening the dollar and refusing to drill in this country...supply and demand it always comes back to that...and all the lies from that commie/socialists group thinkslavery won't change that.

your failed socialist policies are making everyone poor...especially the poorest among use, I'm sure you're very proud.

as far as hoover...uh huh no surprise you'd follow his failed progressive policies..

Hoover didn't cut federal spending, he doubled it. He established the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. He propped up wages and prices. Indeed, he launched the New Deal. And Green is right: In the face of these policies, Mellon's memos to Hoover failed to stop the catastrophe.

The rest of the article, about Ron Paul as "The Tea Party's Brain," is pretty interesting.

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/how-herbert-hoover-didnt-end-the-depression/

oh and thanks for continuing to make yourself look like an complete and utter fool...you libs are good for a few laughs...its too bad your policies are so destructive.

from one of the links I supplied...

Hoover vowed to turn what was one of the lowest-profile departments of the federal government into a more visible one, specifically by increased interaction with businesses and involvement in economic policy. Donald Stabile (1986) has characterized his views as a desire to “transform the structure of the US economy from one of laissez-faire to one of voluntary cooperation” (819). In her book Herbert Hoover: Forgotten Progressive, Joan Hoff Wilson (1975, 68) summarizes Hoover’s economic views this way:

Where the classical economists like Adam Smith had argued for uncontrolled competition between independent economic units guided only by the invisible hand of supply and demand, he talked about voluntary national economic planning arising from cooperation between business interests and the government… Instead of negative government action in times of depression, he advocated the expansion of public works, avoidance of wage cuts, increased rather than decreased production—measures that would expand rather than contract purchasing power.

When paired with his long-standing antipathy to free trade (65-66), this was hardly the program of a “limited government” or “laissez-faire” dogmatist. Other ideas he championed around this time included “increased inheritance taxes, public dams, and, significantly, government regulation of the stock market” (Rothbard 2008 [1963], 188).

hoover was a good progressive

Still looking for ways to rewrite the past, are you? I'm not real sure you even WANT to quote Donald Stabile. From a review of Stabile's book "The Living Wage";

By the end, however, it becomes clear that Stabile is pushing a viewpoint after all: he is invoking Classical Political Economy on the side of labor unions.

http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/gaffney-mason_review-of-donald-stabile-living-wage-2009.html

Do you really mean to advocate for a living wage and for health care to be supplied for those who can't afford it, as Stabile advocates?

As far as claims of Hoover as a Progressive it's based entirely on the Smoot-Hawley Tariff act which I'll grant imposed punitive tariffs at the worst of all possible times. The act certainly didn't CAUSE the Depression, nor would it in and of itself have kept the economy in free fall for such a long time. The Great Depression was, after all, a WORLDWIDE liquidity trap. Once the pattern was locked in Classical Economics had no tools to break the lock.

rewrite the past? its what you libs do all the time ala 1984...orwell wrote about good liberals like you.

I don't know what point you're trying to make with donald stabile..whoever he is. as usual your 'points' are not on point.

I hate to tell ya, I didn't mention smoot hawley in either of my posts....but thanks for supporting my point that hoover was a progressive...ie a socialist...just like bush...and as FDR followed in hoover's footsteps...Obama has followed in bush's. ironic isn't it?

the rest of the world didn't have a great depression...get a clue..just the united states.

and as FDR's own secretary of treasury admitted..the new deal was a FAILURE.

We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work.”

Henry Morgenthau Jr. — close friend, lunch companion, loyal secretary of the Treasury to President Franklin D. Roosevelt — and key architect of FDR’s New Deal.

oh and your savior FDR was racist as hell too..no wonder you love him so!! LOL

Mimi-2893005

Foolish, foolish sheep!

Yep, that pretty much describes most GOP/TP posters on this board.

I think its funny how Obama acts like he pulled the trigger himself on bin Laden and the media act like Obama won WWII. Fact of the matter is the intel needed to find bin Laden was gathered under Bush and OUR MILITARY DID ONE HECK OF A GREAT JOB. Reality is bin Laden was one man of many terrorists, very important yes but its far from the end of the road.