I think Johnny Mac hurt himself talking about Iraq, or, at least, if he didn’t, he by God should have!
If Obama wins the election, we lose Iraq to Al Queda. This is weapons-grade horseshit. If ever AlQ was any sort of player in Iraq, that time is long past. By now, Johnny must surely, Shirley know this. AlQ has its roots in a fanatically anti-Shia subset of Islam, they could no more dominate Iraq than the Anti-Papal League could take over Catholic Mexico. It is absurd, and he knows it. He simply must know it if he has a functioning neuron anywhere in his brainpan.
He’s either lying, or too stupid to tie his shoes.
Because socialism sucks. It really does. And you seem to be assuming that the problems with the financial markets are because America isn’t socialist. But it really had nothing at all to do with it. The problem with the credit markets had to do more with government policies - specifically, the fed maintaining very low interest rates to prop up economic growth, Fannie and Freddie buying up risk on the taxpayer’s dime, and a combination of government protection of assets combined with poor oversight of the regulated industries.
If you don’t think this can happen in socialist countries, you’re crazy. In fact, it’s far more likely to happen in socialist countries in one way or another, because governments exert more control over the economy, and governments suck at it. Plenty of socialist economies have collapsed or been severely damaged by bad policy. For all the trouble the U.S. has, it still has lower unemployment than most socialist countries, higher GDP growth than most socialist countries, and a higher standard of living than most socialist countries.
Europe’s economy has been lagging the U.S. for a couple of decades. At one time, per-capita incomes were similar. Now the U.S. is way ahead. Many European countries have higher debt ratios than the U.S. and much higher unemployment. And they’d be even worse off except that they have been moving away from socialism and moving towards more market-driven economies.
And the biggest problems the U.S. economy faces are precisely those that have a large area of government intervention. Medicare is unsound. Medicaid has shortfalls. Social Security is unsound. The Veteran’s Administration hospitals are poorly run. Cities that have rent controls have the worst rental markets. Urban blight caused by decades of well-meaning but disastrous public housing works.
And of course, the financial markets are supposed to have oversight by Congress and are heavily regulated and have government intrusions in the form of FDIC, Fannie and Freddie, the Fed, and a host of other government programs and operations meant to make the markets work well. All of which appear to have failed dramatically.
The enduring faith in government, and skepticism of the market, espoused by socialists never ceases to amaze me. Governments can fail over, and over, and over again, and no one seems to think that the problem is government itself - just the current crop of people in it. Put Obama in, and suddenly government will function as smooth as glass. In the meantime, the markets provide myriad goods and services to you every day at high quality and low prices, yet any time there’s some excess found or a large failure happens, you treat it like a failure of the entire notion of free markets.
I think Obama won the debate. So do those polled by Gallup, 46-34. As of today, Obama’s lead in the Gallup daily is 50-42. The poll does not yet reflect the debate, but it does reflect McCain’s bizarre machinations from last week.
In Strauss and Howe’s theory of generational archetypes, that makes McCain one of the Silent Generation (b. 1925-1942), which is of the Artist generational type. (And, we may be sure, the last Silent who will ever have a shot at the presidency.) Obama, born 1961, is from the very first year of Generation X, a Nomad generation.
And do you know why government has done a lousy job of late? It’s because for the last thirty years, all any politician of any party had to do to be elected was to promise to cut taxes and spending.
Businesses are in the business of making a profit. That’s good, that’s wonderful, more power to them. Long live the market. Governments are in the business of serving the people. They are not seeking to make a profit. They are no more bureaucratic than any large corporation - that’s a myth. Employees on up to the executive level are employees - some people are hard-driving, some are laid-back, and some are outright lazy. You get all kinds, and depending on the individual culture within which the person works, s/he may or may not be fired. It’s not easy to be fired for cause, but it’s pretty easy to be laid off, and many businesses and government use laying off as a technique for ridding themselves of dead wood.
As for higher GDP, what do I care? I also don’t care about per capita income; let’s look at median if we can’t look at entire bell curves. It does the majority of citizens no good that the very wealthiest are able to become even more wealthy; the chances are very high that they won’t invest in something that will create jobs, but in financial instruments such as the ones that have melted down in the past couple of years. You probably don’t care about the majority of citizens, but that’s the viewpoint I’m looking from.
As for unemployment, please provide a cite. Because I’d been under the impression that unemployment was lower in western Europe than in the US, especially when you take into account the fact that our unemployment counts only those collecting Unemployment Insurance (I think).
Obama is not going to come in and wave a magic wand, and no one expects him to but the very young. What he does intend to do is to aim his social programs at the “teach a man to fish” type programs, as opposed to the “give a man a fish” programs of the sixties, which were well-meaning but wrong (actually, I hate fish :D). Yes, of course government can get things wrong. That’s why we have congressional and presidential elections, and why we try new policies. In business, one company goes out of business, and another comes along to take its place. I look at the host of things the market has done poorly, and think ‘how can you want to trust private enterprise to do this?’ The answer, of course, is that there is a balance between them. No one is suggesting that we nationalize everything. And it’s never going to be perfect. We’re human. Almost by definition, we’re poor at predicting the consequences of our own actions, especially over the long term.
I find that hard to believe. I think they were willing to accept that ill will as long as they got to mainain a military foothold there through a government that they controlled. Obama touched on the problem in the debate when he mentioned we didn’t mind having a dictator in Pakistan as long as he was our dictator, and that we’ve alienated those who truly want democracy. Our history in that region shows we really don’t give a shit about the welfare and liberties of the people there.
If the premise is to establish a democracy to aide world peace and our own security {a premise I support} then we have to support an *actual democracy * which means that a free people can determine their own direction and fate. What the neocons want is a government that looked like a democracy but catered to their financial and military interests IOW not a true democracy at all.
If we want to eventually win the trust of more people in the Arab world then we start by trying to actually live up to the principles we’ve given lip service to for 200+ years. Aide is one way but IMO not the most significant way. We must support and respect those who are striving for democracy and human rights, even if they don’t like us and don’t want to cooperate with us. We must support their right to be a sovereign nation and steer their own ship, encouraging them to be our allies, or at least not our mortal enemy, by the nature of that support. At the same time we must let governments know that neither we nor our allies will be attacked with impunity and there will be serious repercussions if they support terrorism even if by inaction on their part.
That also means we cannot support or justify attacks on their civilian populations by someone just because we’ve called them allies.
They financed the Iraqis who fought us and made up 40 percent of the insurgency we fought. For some reason we failed to mention that. We speak of Iran.
And Bill Clinton was born at the start of the Boomer years. The point is that these generational archetypes become like so many astrological signs. If Bill was born just a handful of years earlier would his personality really had been so much different? Was that really more of a factor than say the death of his father in a car crash or his abusive alcoholic step-Dad or his basic biologic temperment? If Obama was born two years earlier would he take on the features of a Boomer? Did those two years play more of a role than so much else of his biography?
Bill Clinton and John McCain were born closer in years together than were many Boomers to each other. Both shared the influence of the Viet Nam War as a major force shaping their young adult lives, albeit in very different ways. It makes as much sense to include them as members of the same generation as to not by virtue of applying an arbitrarily chosen cut off for Generational archetypes.
Your more cynical take on the neo-cons may be correct. I just don’t know.
Wrt allies and civilian populations, there is more than one side to those stories. I don’t think this thread (or frankly, anywhere else) is the place to discuss it.
Of course we do–they didn’t like our puppet, I mean Shah, and took back their country.
I’m trying to remember a time when I was proud of our foreign policy–the Marshall Plan is about the only thing that springs to mind. We’re nice to England. I don’t even understand our enmity with France.
I used to suck at Risk, too.
Oy!–what do you mean, this isn’t the place(or any place else) to discuss such things? Why not? How else to build consensus and actually start to understand different PsOV?
Something occurred to me while reading this. At this point in our countries history I really can’t understand the alarm about socialism. It seems to me that we have other things to deal with and then we can still work to find the proper balance between helpful programs and personal responsibility. Regulation and free markets.
Here’s an analogy as food for thought. The government might decide to build a road to improve society and trade, based on need, connecting two or more cities. They choose the best possible path for that road and if the terrain is rough they try to clear as many obstacles as possible so that more people are inclined to use that road and this improves society. If people are willing and able they can use this road to reach their desired destination, but they have to travel it themselves.
What the government shouldn’t do is try to buy vehicles for everyone ,pay for the gas, and higher a driver.
I see education as something that fits this analogy easily I imagine other things can as well. Job Market? Health Care perhaps?
There are a lot of clunkers in this citeless pile of misinformation and half-truths, but I couldn’t let this one slide. Here’s an article you might want to read. Some money quotes:
This isn’t IMHO, pal. Try at least putting ONE link in your post next time, OK?
And, so this isn’t a total hijack, I’m quite liberal, very much in Obama’s tank, but I thought McCain did slightly better than Barry did. Then again, I didn’t notice the “body language” issues that everyone else did (the lack of eye contact, e.g.), so I guess that explains why I differ from most of America there.
A daunting post, Sam. Reading it, I imagined an old country Baptist preacher railing against sin. They are too many for me, I fold.
But this…
The word “most”.
If socialism is so universally poisonous, how is it that *any such bankrupt nation could surpass America in any *reasonable measure of economic health? If socialism is to be dreaded as invariably fatal, then how is it possible for such nations to cheat certain death for…how many decades now?
How come? Are they in denial, they’re really dead as a doornail, but simply refuse to accept it? Are they like Poe’s M. Valdemar, who was hypnotized into believing he wasn’t dead, and didn’t actually rot until they snapped him out of it?
If sociialism so invariably toxic, how come they aren’t dead? Are they cheating?
I think the anti-socialists are so afraid of socialism that even the government building the road is too much governance for them. Oddly, though, many of them have no problem with the government being very much in your face about social choices or other civil liberties. It’s only when it comes to taxes that they are so anti-government, even though the net difference to them may only be a matter of a few dollars a year.
To me, it’s a matter of comparing mainland China to Western Europe. Mainland China, for all it calls itself communist, is the closest thing we have on the planet to an utterly free market. What isn’t done legally is done illegally. On the other hand, there are no civil liberities whatsoever. Sometimes you can get away with saying anything you want. But don’t count on it.
Western Europe has mildly socialist governments, with broader civil liberties than the US.
Personally, I prefer the western Europe model. There may not be as many people getting really, really rich. But there also aren’t as many apartment buildings and schools collapsing and not as much contaminated milk. People rarely starve to death in western Europe or die due to lack of medical care.
I don’t want to wade into this argument but did want to address your points here.
Both are wrong.
Unemployment is not and has never been calculated by counting people collecting benefits. It’s calculated though an extremely extensive survey approach.
American unemployment is lower than most countries in Western Europe, and has been so for pretty much your whole life. It’s not lower than all, but lower than most. Cite:
