"Winston_Smith" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 24 Oct 2009 15:33:20 -0400, "Ed Huntress" wrote:
"Winston_Smith" wrote
"Ed Huntress" wrote:
"Winston_Smith" wrote
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

Fox News' poll and Rasmussen) and two points higher than Reagan's
average
for both of his terms. The "drop" reported for Obama is from an
impossible
high he started out with.

The trouble is that his "impossible high" has given him the temporary
clout to pass some awful legislation and make some awful policy
decisions.

Like what?

More and better bailouts causing more and better (fatal) deficits.

How do you know they're fatal? Some of the top economists in the world
think
they're a worthy gamble. Are you smarter than they are? Do you know which
economists to listen to?

No more than the next guy. But I do find history a pretty good place
to see the future.

There is no history to go on. We never had a financial industry that
produced 40% of the nation's corporate profit. There was never anything like
the cross-national financial dependencies we face now. Nothing.


And if you believe you know the answer to that, I have a really easy one
for
you: What are the chances that the CERN accelerator is going to find the
Higgs boson?

Nationalization of everything in site - ObamaMotors, ObamaBank,
ObamaStock, ObamaCare Dismantling a semi-working health care system
with nothing but hopes and "to be worked out later" to replace it.

So many slogans, so little reality to back them up...

Are you saying it's only a slogan that he owns two of the three
automakers.

It isn't even a slogan. It's nutz.


Are you saying it's only a slogan that he owns the biggest banks.

Same.


Are you saying it's only a slogan that he owns the biggest investment
houses.

Same.


Are you saying it's only a slogan that he is trying to nationalize
health care.

That's the nuttiest one of all. "Nationalize" what? Have you read anything
about the actual provisions? Or have you been smokin' along with Glenn Beck?

What the plan does is to tell the health care insurance industry how they're
going to operate. The "nationalizing" happened decades ago, with Medicare
and Medicaid. The new plan doesn't even do what they did, which is
essentially to take over the payment system for seniors and the poor. Would
you like to put an end to them? Do you know what those seniors will do to
you if they catch you? d8-)


And one I forgot, ObamaMortage. Obama bought most of Freddie and
Fannie and something like 95% of all mortgages being written are
guaranteed by the beloved government. Many of their current mortgages
are even riskier than the evil sub-prime fiasco.


"Obama" didn't buy Freddie or Fannie. And cites, please. The mortgage
industry says it's 70% -- hardly more than it's been for years.


Now, give us some facts instead of dismissing the criticism with a
cute, but copied, slogan.

Sure. Obama hasn't "bought" the car industry. Your numbers are cockeyed.
Your characterization of the health care reforms as "nationalization" is
either uninformed or willful mistatement of the truth. You've missed the
mark on virtually every point. Those are the facts.


Bush made the mistake of leaving Afghanistan before it was finished to
go into Iraq.

More theory. Who knows? What would it meant to have "finished" it? Do you
think the Taliban wouldn't have been reborn in Pakistan, like it appears
to
have done?

I don't know the answers to these things. I don't think anyone does.

Yet it was awful when Bush started the fiasco, but it's just fine when
Obama escalates it? Let's wait and "hope". You, sir are a party
loyalist.

Which "fiasco"? Bush probably made the right move with TARP. Most economists
seem to think so. I know of no reason to disagree with them.

The fiasco was letting the financial industry run largely unregulated. That
really *is* a fiasco. It's led to the financial collapse, and we'll be
paying for it for decades.


Obama is leaving Iraq before it's settled to go into
Afghanistan. He has no new plans, just the same old failed ones but
on a much bigger scale.

How do you know that they're "failed"? How do you know what the strategy
is
going to be in a couple of weeks, after the runoff elections in
Afghanistan?

Short grammar lesson here. "FailED" is past tense. Bush's strategy
is failed. Obama is following the same path but with more
escalations.

First, they aren't the "same old plans." Obama didn't turn over the capture
of bin Laden to the Afghan warlords. He didn't strip the forces in
Afghanistan to fight in Iraq. He isn't trying to prop up a corrupt leader --
he's letting the Afghan people decide who will lead them.

So your premise is wrong. They aren't the same old "failed" plans. That's
grammatically accurate. g

Nixon's strategy was failed. But Obama is on the same
path, this time without the jungle. But we have a lot of neat jungle
gear to outfit troops in where frost bite is a big danger.

Vietnam provides some military clues, but, since you're a history buff, tell
us what you do in this situation: You were just elected president. You
inherited two wars, one of which is not going well at all. You have tens of
thousands of troops there. They were there for a reason, which had to do
with an organization that killed thousands of your own people in your own
country.

Now, what do you do about it? The reasons for being there and the political
situation are entirely different from those of Vietnam. You hope you can
apply the lessons of Vietnam to this situation, and there are some military
lessons, but no political ones. And you're there for specific and concrete
political reasons, not because the Afghan army attacked the United States,
or because Afghanistan is a domino in the Communist plan for world
domination.

Tell us. The whole country would like to know what makes sense in this
situation.


You are saying forget history and logical deduction, hey, hey, we
might get lucky. Who knows? That must be what Obama means by "hope".

Are you a bookie, or something? g

??? Do try to stay on topic.

It sounds like you're willing to bet the country's future on some ideas that
have little substance. You're shooting craps.


Then let's cripple what industry we have left
chasing the phantom of global warming.

What makes you think it's a "phantom"? Are you a climatologist?

Ah, we are seeing a pattern here. You don't answer statement with
your own statement. All you do is ask rhetorical questions to get the
discussion off the topic and firmly into the arena of "hope".

No. I'm pointing out that you have no idea what you're talking about. Fox
News, or whoever is supplying you with these ideas, has no clue. The
right-wing press has no clue. Republicans in Congress have no clue.

They have no evidence, no history, and little understanding of these big
issues. Neither do you. Neither do I. Suggesting that you know what's wrong
with what's being done, and that you know what to do about it, is ludicrous
in the extreme. It is deeply comical. Collectively, the naysayers who think
they know what to do are deeply tragic.

That's what I'm saying. You don't know what to do, but you're ready to tell
us that it's being done all wrong, and that there evidently is some
alternative that would be "correct." I'm calling bull****.


And let's leave Bush's borders
open, open them some more, and add some amnesty to make sure the last
Americans in our crippled industry get undercut on wages.

What makes you think that illegal aliens are hurting our economy?
Everybody
has a theory about this. Nobody knows.

Ah, we are seeing a pattern here. You don't answer statement with
your own statement. All you do is ask rhetorical questions to get the
discussion off the topic and firmly into the arena of "hope".

I'm calling bull****.


Then we can
tax all those $1/hour jobs that float between countries to pay off his
trillions of dollars of debt. Sounds like a plan to me. A very, very
bad plan.

Do you know how much debt we pay off per year if we increase our GDP by
two
percent? Are you sure we won't? Do you have a plan for doing that, which
depends on doing something about illegal immigration?

No? Then how can you say you have an "opinion" about it?

Ah, we are seeing a pattern here. You don't answer statement with
your own statement. All you do is ask rhetorical questions to get the
discussion off the topic and firmly into the arena of "hope".

Opinions are what people have then they've exhausted the facts. If you don't
know the effect on the national debt of a 2% increase in GDP, or any other
increase, then you haven't even looked at the facts, let alone exhausted
them.


Face it, to say Obama is spending like a drunken sailor is to malign
all the careful financial planning a typical drunken sailor puts into
his shore leave.

Pffhhhtt. You can do better metaphors than that. I've seen you do it. d8-)

I notice you attack my writing and not Obama's hand over fist
spending. Don't like to talk about that, huh? I can understand why.

Your writing is a lot of huffing and puffing. It's funny. g You haven't
supplied a single solution to any of this, or any evidence that you have
reason to believe anything that would be better.

Why don't you try that angle? Bitching isn't very useful unless you're
equipped with some alternatives -- and evidence that they're workable.


Basically Obama has taken everyone of Bush's awful policies and
cranked up the magnetude by a factor of ten. "Change" means ten
trillion down the rat hole instead of one trillion. "Transparency"?
What's that? "Hope". Yeah, I hope we will survive him and his
transition to open socialism.

It's a given the people will see his bulling through
things they don't approve of, not like it, and he will continue to
crash - rather more spectacularly than most politicians do as they
accrue time in office.

His overall rating has improved by about 2% over the past month or so:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/113980/ga...-approval.aspx

Let's face an important fact: "The people" are not the old cranks who
make
up this newsgroup, nor our friends. Collectively, we're part of a
delusional, conservative echo chamber.

Is that anything like the delusional, liberal echo chamber that was
bitching about Bush. I was part of that one too. You liked me then.

Hey, I like you now, too. We don't have to agree. I don't expect you to
have
any answers to these questions...because NOBODY has answers to these
questions. Everybody is guessing. Sometimes it's comical, sometimes it's
tragic. But it's always nonsense, because they're some of the toughest
questions in our country today, and everyone is going off half-cocked
about
them.

Avoid entangling foreign alliances. That would have avoided so much
of our problems. But then again, what the hell did the founding
fathers know about running a country?

Not a damned thing about running it in the 21st Century. You CAN'T avoid
entangling alliances today -- unless you want the US to become some
hopeless, and helpless, economic and political backwater that's vulnerable
on all sides.

As for the founding fathers, Jefferson had the right idea:

"But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the
progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more
enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners
and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must
advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man
to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to
remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."


That's democracy for you. We all bitch and yell, and then something
happens
that looks like a compromise. And then the world and events take over,
make
a mockery of our "analyses" and plans, and we get on with living. Dontcha'
love it? I do.

Avoid entangling foreign alliances. And of course, "hope".

snip faint praise of Obama.

Perhaps there is a chance to balance Congress a bit in 2010. One
party control, either, is usually a disaster.

Nope. That's a myth, especially when there are tough issues to deal
with.
A
divided Congress is a good thing when nothing is going on, and their
idle
hands are likely to create mischief. d8-)

Bingo. We are vastly better off when Congress doesn't do much.
Gridlock is a good thing.

That's true when there's nothing much to do. Right now the gridlock
machine
looks like two guys fighting on top of a freight car while the train
hurtles
down the mountain, with no brakes. If we keep hurtling the way we are with
health care, freewheeling finance, and a neo-colonialist approach to
foreign
affairs, we're going to fall right off the tracks. Something has to move.
Something has to happen. Something has to change.

What needs to be done? ObamaCare, nope.

Health care reform, yup. Or we're all going broke if we don't.

ObamaWarming, nope.

When you convince us that you know enough about climatology to have an
opinion worth the powder to blow it to hell, I'll be interested in your
opinions. Until then, I'm as interested as I am in your opinions about the
nature of dark energy in the universe. d8-)


ObamaMotors, nope? ObamaEquity, nope. ObamaBank, nope.
ObamaMortgage, nope. That brings us down to passing some resolutions
to honor various citizens for particular local acts. And maybe
clearing some space in the Smithsonian for the Peace Prize statue.

Empty slogans, substitutes for fact. No facts. No alternatives. Nothing.
Nada.


By the way -- where does the prize money go?

Wherever it wants to.


Let them attend to dividing up a normal
amount of graft and stop mucking up the system and then adding taxes
to pay for their mistakes. You know - the great plans that were going
to pay for themselves out of savings. The savings that never happened
so now the plan needs to be subsidized to avoid the embarrassment of
admitting it was a disaster.

If we keep barking whenever the administration tries to adjust and change,
trying something new when one thing doesn't work, and we continue to feed
the politics machine by letting the opposition make hay every time we try
to
adjust to new information, new experience, or a new idea, we'll just keep
hurtling down those tracks.

New is usually a tip off to some special interest trying to get their
hands on some of our money.

Spoken like a true reactionary. Now, would you please get out of the way, so
we can get our elected officials to do something about these messes? They
really do need attention.

The wants and needs of real people have
not changed in millenniums.

We'll have your horse and carriage ready for you in the morning, so you can
take your children to the bloodletter. Meantime, please stay to the right of
the road -- but watch out for the ditch.

--
Ed Huntress