Tim Daneliuk wrote:
Morris Dovey wrote:
Mark & Juanita wrote:
That is one of the most asinine statements that the left mutters.
What exactly made things so bad from 2000 to 2008?
Hmm, I was in San Jose debugging silicon for a cable modem and working
with a bunch of H1B types from south Asia when Chairman Greenspan
announced his intention to "cool the tech sector". Over the next month I
watched more than 2500 newly incomeless families move out of my
apartment complex before I joined them.
It was a bit wrenching for the H1B folks too, they had to take their
jobs back to New Delhi and Mumbai where they worked harder and for less,
but /they/ had the jobs and we did not.
Suggested research: who voted for the legislation that allowed US
companies to replace currently employed Americans with less qualified
(but much cheaper) Asians?
Since when is any of this the business of government?
An excellent question - worth looking into and worthy of thoughtful
consideration.
The fact you got to keep more of your money instead of paying it in
taxes? EVERYBODY got a tax cut, not just the wealthy few despite the
continued mouthings of the left to the contrary.
You may not have noticed, but those tax cuts didn't do much for the
folks whose jobs went swimming across the Pacific. Of course, neither
did we pay taxes on no income.
Then why did the real average income of the US worker grow during these
years (as they did on Clinton, Bush 41, and Reagan before)?
Peering through a microscope tends to obscure the larger picture here.
You may have seen that in Illinois - but I didn't see it next door here
in Iowa.
At this point I have to wonder if a mortgage broker is a "worker"...
It seems likely that this trend of rising real income will stop with
our current President.
I'll stick my neck out and opine that a great many trends were impacted
by a financial system based on false premise and empty promise.
I'll resist the impulse to quibble over "real".
The fact that the US actually took the fight to terrorists and
terrorist supporting countries after 40 years of letting crap happen
and then issuing strongly worded condemnations?
A masterful stroke that. An invasion plan without a success contingency.
Ever see a war that went according to plan? (Read Von Clausewitz.)
Would you care to project what /any/ of the great strategists would say
about any plan that made no provision for victory?
We succeeded in cutting the European petroleum supply by something like
20%, which trashed European economies and resulted in making the
The European economies were well on their way to being trashed
courtesy of they addiction to socialism ... much like the current
idiot in office here.
A non-sequitur. They may have been, but that removes neither the
causality nor the effect of US actions.
Europeans dependent on Gazprom (but it did produce a windfall in wealth
and clout for the Russian Federation) which persists to this day.
Are you arguing this was intentional?
I wasn't but, since you make intention a part of the picture, I'm now
inclined to wonder just how palsy-walsy George and Vlad really were...
On the grounds that it was a US theater of action, we closed the door to
European (and other) countries who wanted to help with the much-needed
reconstruction, and handed out non-competitive construction contracts to
US firms with close ties to top administration officials.
Here we agree. Then again, this has almost always been the case
in post-war reconstruction, it's merely a matter of degree.
Hardly uniquely a W problem. But just wait till you see what
the current swine in congress have in store. They're setting up
to do much the same thing with their phony environmental and energy
programs which will made fools like Gore very wealthy. It's the
same old cronyism, just from the other party.
I may agree with you - but not until I've seen the results and
considered the full context (which hasn't yet played out).
It may, indeed, be the same old cronyism - but I'll encourage you to
remember that /you/ bear the cost, regardless of who practices it.
AIUI, Baghdad /still/ doesn't have electricity and a working water
supply 24/7, and the US has managed to kill many times more innocents
than Al Qaida. Which reminds me to ask: "Where /is/ Osama Bin Laden
days? Will he be vacationing in the Swat Valley area?"
So the only justification for going to war would have been to kill
Bin Laden? We fail or succeed on the basis of single person being
taken out? Breathtaking.
That's what I thought. It makes about as much sense as going to war to
kill Saddam Hussein. Actually, I think it may make /more/ sense.
I wish you could tell me (and I could believe) that what we did has put
an end to "letting crap happen". AFAICT, we just stirred it around and,
in the process, got a lot on ourselves.
No, we did something that the Islamists had never seen befo We took
the fight to them, on their turf, on our terms. It scared a good
many of them into acting better. Witness the phone call from
Quadaffi to Berluscone shortly after the Iraq invasion and Libya's
subsequent rehabilitation. I'd say you have a very simple understanding
of the region, dynamics, and consequences of this war. Then again,
so do most Americans given the journalistic malpractice that has
been performed for eight years.
My very simple understanding is probably a consequence of having lived
in the mideast for only ten years. Perhaps if I'd been there longer I
might have developed different understandings more like yours - but I
seriously doubt it.
The fact that the US had the lowest unemployment rates in history
during that time, dipping below the 5% that was considered to be full
employment?
Super-size that, sir?
A stupid public gets stupid results. At no time during W's time
in office did I, or anyone I know (from teenage to retirement
age) work in a job like this ... and I travel a bunch and meet
plenty of people. But you're going to see *lots* of this in
the upcoming years as the ObamaMessiah and his drooling acolytes
systematically destroy the capitalist engine that creates real
wealth.
I have seen what you say you have not. I'm inclined to believe that you
either weren't paying adequate attention or exercised selective vision.
The fact that the US economy recovered spectacularly following 9/11
despite the shock upon our financial system?
Did you notice how many Yuan that took? Spectacular, indeed!
I think you vastly misunderstand global economies.
That's certainly a possibility - but I do make a point of informing
myself as best I can and drawing my conclusions from that information.
When the available information is BS, I adjust the conclusions.
The BS factor has been excessively high for too many years, and whether
the Obama administration has a good recovery strategy or not, we'll all
be experiencing the consequences of that failure of integrity for quite
a while.
--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto/