You are often a very thoughtful and insightful poster here. You have your bias, for sure, but that’s nothing out of the ordinary. At any rate, you are overall a very good contributor to this MB. But that thread you started was just bad. You can make light of the factual errors, but they were still there. And, as I said in that thread, it was basically an appeal to authority. A weak authority, at that, as Zuckerman and Cramer were never “strong” Obama supporters. I doubt if most posters here would be Pitted over a crappy GD thread, but I think people expect more from you.
You got all pissy when you were called on it, and you left, sulking. Bad playground behavior.
That’s because in the USA, the right wing resulted in a crapped up economy, bigger government, higher taxes, and greater debt.
We are more left-wing in Canada, for we have better social services, starting with health care, while still keeping the enconomy in line.
The trick is to have a better economy and better social services, rather than sacrificing one or the other. Canada is doing well at this, whereas the USA is doing poorly with both.
Actually, the ‘real reason’ for this thread appears to be that I “hate America” because I’m Canadian and talk about American politics all the time. So actually, the people giving me grief for being Canadian are right on point.
As for the OP which inspired it, I still don’t get what was so wildly wrong about it. I made a very small error in calling the CEO of intel an ‘Obama Supporter’, when he was just a supporter of an Obama policy. I was correct about the other two.
And it wasn’t exactly a far-fetched idea, and it also wasn’t wrong in any substantive way in any of its conclusions. The way I see it, a bunch of people nit-picked rather irrelevant details and blew a gasket over them, rather than address the core point that the Obama administration’s policies and rhetoric are driving away their former supporters in the business community to the point where they are penning hostile op-eds.
If you think this was a radical partisan interpretation of what’s going on, you might want to tell it to the New York Times this morning, which ran an article almost identical in tone to my OP.
This is close to what I said - with three different examples.
Unless it’s reported on the SDMB by a ‘known partisan’. Then it’s the subject of mockery.
Aside from providing the three links, this is what I said:
The exact same point the NY Times business page just made.
I believe this is also a factual statement. If you want me to list the ways in which the Obama administration has poisoned the business environment, please start a thread in Great Debates and I’ll tell you. I won’t start one because if I start another negative Obama thread it will end up just like the first one.
Finally, I said
Clearly this was somewhat of a generalization. I don’t literally think ‘the whole world’ is recovering nicely. I’m sure you can find examples of countries having a hard time of it. The essence of that sentence is that the U.S. recovery is lagging compared to other first-world countries. tries called my post ‘ridiculous’ and that I didn’t check ‘basic facts’. As proof, he offered this graph, which shows… That the U.S. economy under-performed every economy in the G8 other than Japan and Italy. Since that graph was published, however, estimates for U.S. Q2 growth were downgraded, making it look even worse (and just about even with Italy), making Japan the only worse performer. Funny, Japan is the other country on the list which has been trying to borrow and spend its way out a recession, and which has by far the biggest debt of any country in the G8.
Instead of making me look wrong, that graph proves my point.
The frustrating thing for me is that a post like mine, which is basically just reporting what’s going on in the business community, gets savaged, leads to a pitting, and I get called a ‘joke’. In the meantime, I can point to thread after thread in which left-leaning people on this board will give a pass to wildly inaccurate statements that support their own biases, even when they know the statements are wrong.
For example, there’s this recent thread titled, “Why should I/Anyone care (that/if) 99% of the wealth is held by 1% of the people?”
Now, that number is not just wrong, it’s grossly wrong. It’s not just a slight inaccuracy - the real number is about 35%. The difference between 99% and 35% is the difference between an African dictatorship with a poor peasant population, and a modern western democracy. That thread was full of participants who in the past have called me a liar or dishonest for the kinds of errors I made in the last OP (i.e. trivial, or errors that turned out not to be).
When I called out the OP for being way wrong, here are some responses:
Beware of Doug: Which is an excellent way to distract us from the issue at large: much money concentrated in few hands.
gonzomax: It is called exaggeration for effect.
Wesley Clark: And the OP’s numbers weren’t that off, the top 10% has 70% instead of 90%.
Little Nemo: I didn’t see any point in arguing over the exact figures. The OP’s point was that he didn’t care if 99% of the wealth was owned by 1% of the people. Or if 90% was owned by 9%. So presumedly he wouldn’t care if the actual figures are 35% owned by 1% or 69% owned by 10% or 80% owned by 20%.
See, it doesn’t really matter if the OP is wildly wrong in this case, because, well, the general idea that the rich are too rich is a good one. Besides, when it comes to bashing the rich, who wants to quibble over mere facts?
But when I post on this damned board, I know every single sentence in it is going to get parsed with a magnifying glass, and if any of it can plausibly be called incorrect on any level, I’ll be called a dishonest liar. If I make a rounding error after doing two hours of math to make a point, I’m a liar.
Why did you have to base your premise on those guys being “strong Obama supporters”? First, they weren’t “strong” Obama supporters. And so what if they were? Either the arguments are good, or they aren’t. Besides, there are plenty of people who were “strong” Obama supporters who disagree with what he may doing in one area or another. Better to focus on specific Obama policies, and tell us why they are good or bad.
There is a significant portion of the SDMB who want this to be an echo chamber, where no one calls them on their shit. Some want debate, no doubt about that - the rest just want to shout down anyone who won’t toe the line. And they will seize on anything they can to try to stop debate.
This in my opinion is the nub of the current problem with the US. Debt, debt, debt. Japan and Italy are also burdened with debt. When a country has debt over 90% of GDP, as the US currently does, some think that it can cause a 1% reduction in yearly economic growth This is clearly not a good thing, as Japan’s experience for the past 15 years tells us.
A major difference I have with Sam Stone is that he seems to want to put the primary blame for the US’s current economic malaise purely on Obama. On the other hand, I look at the debt load that Obama inherited, together with the economic bubble popping, together with the expensive wars that he inherited (which are politically very difficult to extricate his country from). He really did inherit a shitty hand, and his options at this point are extremely limited. Again - Obama did not create the debt problem single-handedly in his first year in office.
In this case, it was central to my point. After all, it’s not news if three Obama opponents publish op-eds criticizing him. It IS news if his former supporters are doing it. It’s an indication that their complaints aren’t partisan, but based on real disagreements.
For example, it was a lot more noteworthy when Chris Buckley jumped the Republican ship and supported Obama than was the support for Obama from EJ Dionne. You know what I mean?
And I described them as ‘strong’ supporters because they were. Or rather, I missed the mark with the Intel guy, but the other two were quite vociferous in their support of Obama. I watch the McLaughlin group every week (Lord knows why), and Mort Zuckerman is a regular on there. He has been defending Obama on that show for three years, but his tone started changing markedly several months ago, and now he’s split - he still supports Obama on a few matters, but when it comes to the economy, he is royally pissed.
Maybe I didn’t describe my point well enough, or you misread it. The content of the editorials wasn’t really my point.
Meh. All one-trick ponies are eventually fucking annoying, and your tricks weren’t all that amusing when the circus first came to town. Try starting some threads that don’t distill down to “You guys suck.” and maybe you’ll be worth reading.
I just don’t get this. Where I come from on the left, this is perfectly normal and expected. You’re simply not supposed to be a reflexive apologist for a politician you might have supported before he was actually elected. We eat our own all the time.
Yeah, I’ve linked to that paper here several times. The U.S. debt isn’t quite at 90% now if you just look at the ‘on the book’ debt, but if you factor in the liabilities of the entitlement system, it’s way over. And it gets worse every year out, and starts accelerating after 2020 in a big way. That’s close enough that serious action has to be taken now to stop it, as it will get more and more painful to fix with each passing year, and that pain will grow exponentially after just a few more years.
On the contrary, I know exactly where the debt came from, and how much of it is Obama’s fault. There is no question that he inherited a huge debt and a huge deficit. Had he not signed all the spending bills Congress threw at him, he’d still be presiding over a deficit. The recession cost 4% of GDP in tax revenue, and there’s no way a government is going to run a surplus under those conditions.
But he knew what he was inheriting. He signed up for the job. All presidents inherit shitty situations. Bush was elected right after the dot-com crash, and almost immediately was forced to deal with a terrorist attack that wiped out a trillion dollars in wealth. Reagan inherited a dysfunctional military, a Sovet Union on the move, and double-digit interest rates and inflation. Oh well. Being president is hard.
What matters is how the President responds to the crisis. In Obama’s case, he not only bought into the argument that a huge stimulus was needed, but he washed his hands of it and let Congress write the bill, which turned into a partisan pork-fest. Then he ignored the economy and expended a bunch of his political capital overhauling the health care system, which should not have been a high priority at this time. But what’s worse, the bill he wound up signing actually makes the fiscal situation worse, and it makes the recession worse by injecting more uncertainty into the mix.
Having run a small business, I understand just what a burden that can be. It’s no big deal for big companies, but if you’re a sole proprieter or a small family business, it’s an onerous burden. And that’s just one paragraph in a 2,000 page bill. You can expect more of that as the bill continues to be turned into law by the bureaucrats - a process that will take several years.
Also, he has thrown billions of dollars at special interests at a time when the budget is imploding. 8 billion for high speed rail. 26 billion to bail out teachers (half of which came in cuts for food stamps). 3 billion for ‘community development’. And so it goes. He went on a huge discretionary spending spree.
Then there’s other regulation. He put a moratorium on offshore drilling. 25,000 jobs lost. The CARD act drove up interests rates on credit cards - also anti-stimulative. The lead in toys act wiped out 200 million dollars in used toys for children. The financial reform package is full of job-killing line items.
And there’s the rub. Like the health care bill, the financial bill is over 2,000 pages long. Both bills are filled with little time bombs like this. But no one knows exactly how to comply with them or what they will cost, because now that the bills have passed it takes years for the bureaucracy to work through them and turn them into specific regulations. That has added a whole lot of uncertainty to the business world, on top of all the uncertainty generated by current economic conditions.
If you owned a firm that provided any kind of financial service to the government, would you hire new employees right now? Or would you wait to find out if your company is going to be excluded from future contracts because you don’t meet the requirements for gender and minority equity?
Any one of these regulations isn’t going to have a gigantic impact. But it’s like the death of a thousand cuts. If you’re a business owner, and you’re in an environment where almost every day you read an article in the business press about a new government regulatory move that may or may not cost you a lot of money, it has a real chilling effect on your confidence, on your ability to raise capital, and on your ability to make long-term business plans. Under those circumstance, you just hunker down, book your profits, and hope for better political winds to come along in the future.
That was Cramer’s point in his Op-Ed: Jobs aren’t coming back until the Democrats get punted out of the Congress, because business no longer trusts them to make sane rules.
The Democrats also bailed out of Congress without passing a budget, because they didn’t want to have the debate before the election. So no one knows what is going to be funded, no one knows if the Bush tax cuts will be extended, etc. For purely partisan reasons, the Democrats left the American business community hanging at a time when uncertainty is already a well-known factor in the recession.
Furthermore, because Obama has stacked his regulatory agencies with ideologues, they keep making crazy proposals for rulemakings which scare the crap out of everyone. The EPA now claims the right to regulate CO2 as a pollutant. There was a proposed rulemaking to ban lead bullets. The coastal service keeps making noises about cutting off recreational fishing in many areas where it’s allowed. There’s still talk about pushing through Card Check and Cap and Trade in a lame duck session of Congress.
Then there’s the thing he hasn’t done - Canada’s government understands that trade is key, and has been working feverishly to sign trade agreements with countries throughout the world. In the U.S., trade has fallen off the radar. Many of the agreements that were moving forward under Bush have stalled out. Obama has implemented protectionist policies in the stimulus package that have caused blowback. His rhetoric has angered trading partners.
The original problem was not of Obama’s making. But almost every major action he’s taken as president has made the problem worse. That’s why he’s lost confidence in the business community, including many of his previous supporters.
But on this board it matters. Because if I post any quotes from anyone who wasn’t an Obama supporter, it just gets shouted down because it’s ‘partisan’. So if you want to make a point, you have to find someone who actually supported Obama so you can show that it’s a real belief and not just partisanship.
One thing that few Americans realize is the level to which US media dominates Canadian airwaves. We only have 3 tv stations (an one en francais). Think of it like being at a restaurant and sitting next to an extremely noisy table. It’s hard not to eventually get involved–particularly when things they talk about concern you, and what they’re saying is a lie or distortion.
I find that Canada (as well as France and Europe) gets dragged into US politics pretty frequently. Because one side will use it as a positive example, the other side has to shit on it. I got blasted for criticizing US health care, but the reason I got involved in the first place was that conservatives were lying about Canada’s health care. Hannity/Limbaugh have no problem bitching about Canadian health care, so eventually a Canadian is going to reply.
The other thing to consider is that life in Canada is very slow and very boring. Our economy is fine, health care is adequate, taxes reasonable. So when it’s not hockey season we need something to talk about. Even our news agencies run out of stories and fill space with a story about Obama.
In the end, we just want to be included, is that so bad?
Sam: But by making it central to your point, you change the argument from the “point” to the people. Like I said, it’s an appeal to authority. Then one wonders what % of “strong Obama supporters” agree, and how the hell could we even know that? There is certainly a case to be made that the business climate has more uncertainty in it now than 2 years ago, but there are lots of reasons for that, some of which have nothing to do with Obama. But we could focus on the ones that do, and get into the nitty-gritty of it. Leave the personalities out.
Maeglin: I think you’re missing the point. Sam is simply saying that their arguments carry more weight than, say, George Will’s. It’s not an indictment of liberals.
You know, I have over 22,000 posts on this board. In the last couple of weeks, I’ve posted long messages on art appreciation, SETI, office design, paying for college, the ground zero mosque (my position is against the Republicans, you might note), guitar playing, the Ford Escape, Futurama, Dell, Poker, OMNI magazine, web site design, “Mad Men”, WWII, and other topics. So you can screw off - you and the one trick pony you rode in on.
Now, if you’d accused me of not having a life, you’d have a point.
If the point you’re making is that the business community is worried about Obama’s policies, and that businessmen believe that Obama’s policies are hurting rather than helping, you have to quote those people. And if you want to quote anyone around here, it sure helps if they were once an Obama supporter. Because if they weren’t, anything they have to say will be dismissed.
(Preferably in January.)