Bloodless Coup

Wow, risky move, talk about alienating his base, right? How can I believe he's concerned about minority rights when our changeling leader hasn't said a thing about Pelosi altering the House rules that prevent single party domination, or about her bulldozing term limits on committee chairmanships to keep the elite from running the show all the time, and nothing either have I heard from the changeling about striking down pay as you go rules and replacing them with rules requiring a tax increase to match every every tax cut. I think he owes me some change.

Posted by: Morris at January 13, 2009 12:12 AM | PERMALINK

What the fuck did you just say?

1) Someone who has defended the Republicans this millienium DARES to call for PAYGO? And don't give me any shit about you not being a Bush Republican b/c I sure don't remember you harping on Bush & Co for abandoning them (and wrecking the budget for years in the process).
1a) I am a budget hawk. I joined the Concord Coalition when I was an undergrad. And even I think following PAYGO under the current economic situation would be nothing short of lunacy. It might be a convenient cudgel for the hacks at MSNBC or Fox who'd happily criticize Obama if they didn't like his socks or what what he ordered for lunch, but what kind of idiot would be calling for a balanced budget at this moment in time?

2) You don't think some Obama voters won't approve of having an openly gay religious figure give an invocation at a political event? You are very much mistaken.

3) And did you seriously, I mean fucking seriously (yes, saying what you said merits 2 fucks) just call the incoming president of the United States a "changeling"?

Posted by: Armand at January 13, 2009 09:02 AM | PERMALINK

Well, no better way to pull yourself out of a deficit-spending-exacerbated recession than by deficit spending, no? Reagan's excuse, wasn't it? So would you have him accomplish everything he planned for the next four years before he's even inaugurated? Who was the last Republican who was this ready to go before he was sworn in?

Posted by: moon at January 13, 2009 09:06 AM | PERMALINK

"And even I think following PAYGO under the current economic situation would be nothing short of lunacy."

Is that, say, worse than following PAYGO after 9/11 would have been?

"You don't think some Obama voters won't approve of having an openly gay religious figure give an invocation at a political event? You are very much mistaken."

What I'm saying is that when Obama supports gays, it is just as much supporting minority rights as when Bush supported evangelicals. Supporting your constituents doesn't count as supporting minorities, it only counts as minorities when a President supports people who disagree with him.

"And did you seriously, I mean fucking seriously (yes, saying what you said merits 2 fucks) just call the incoming president of the United States a 'changeling'?"

1. Yes, yes I did.
2. How can anyone who claimed to be about changing Washington bring in a bunch of holdovers from the Clinton administration and longtime Senators who lost their elections without being a changeling who changed his positions, then not say peep when the House changes its rules to allow corrupt old Washington types to hold onto power longer. That's the change you can believe in, and he hasn't even been sworn in yet.

From Barack the Reformer's election website:
"Reinstate PAYGO Rules: Obama and Biden believe that a critical step in restoring fiscal discipline is enforcing pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) budgeting rules which require new spending commitments or tax changes to be paid for by cuts to other programs or new revenue."

So why is it that now that he's elected he's telling us that he's going to run up trillion dollar deficits for several years? I thought he wasn't the same old Democratic politician who says one thing then says something else once he gets to Washington. I know what he's really saying now: "Suckers!"

Moon,
How very predictable that you say "Reagan did it!" to follow up Armand's "Bush did it!" How many dozens of times in the last eight years have you started off you're rants with, "Bill Clinton's not President anymore! He doesn't speak for modern Democrats!" Well, if this isn't the Clinton cabinet I don't know what is.

I get spending money on defense when America is threatened as it was by the Soviet nuclear arsenal in the 80's, though Democrats opposed it. I get spending money on Homeland Security when America is attacked by terrorists, as Bush did. I don't get how the solution to the banking-housing problem means Congress needs to keep minority voices from being heard, or how finding ways to spend half a trillion dollars on pet projects in the middle of a recession is anything besides financially irresponsible.

Posted by: Morris at January 13, 2009 04:30 PM | PERMALINK

I usually objected to you responding to "X is a problem" with Clinton did Y, both on the basis that it was non-responsive to the X proposition and also because you didn't bother to assess whether I supported Y in the first place, which, on many occasions, I did not. Contrarily, when you mock deficit spending as an evil under circumstances that, as Armand noted, cry out for it in the almost unanimous opinion of people with the sort of perspicacity that made Bush pee his pants and look for a Yes man who wouldn't bother him with lengthy memos and detailed analysis, and wouldn't have careers in the discipline in question to cloud their judgment of what to do in running the world's most complex economy, you are directly contradicting your own express approval of Reaganomics. That is, I'm staying on point, observing that Obama is doing something Reaganesque, or at least something that aligns with something Reagan did, and that you can't simultaneously applaud Reagan for doing it, deride Obama for doing it, and maintain whatever shred of intellectual credibility you hope to maintain here (and by here I mean in my perception; I won't speak for anyone else).

Deficit spending is necessary now. It's just necessary. I don't consider jumpstarting an economy too structurally preoccupied and blinded by short term considerations to, you know, actually make itself a major player in the economy more visionary types can see is going to be huge to be a "pet project," either, and you're going to have to defend that otherwise (and not by reference to some lone line item somewhere that hasn't even been approved yet).

And for god's sake, what sort of leadership model do you have in your head, you and everyone else bemoaning the selection of former Clinton staffers, that you think Obama can't be the sort of boss who says "Here's my program -- be someone who can advance this ball or I'll replace you." When Hillary acts like a free agent, let me know. When dissension appears in the ranks, let me know. Until then, I'm going to assume that, as charismatic as Obama is, he will be able to keep everybody's eye on the prize, defined as, his agenda.

It's not my fault your president selected drinking buddies rather than capable, outstanding individuals with long records of effectiveness in the administrative and substantive capacity in question to do a given job. I'm pretty sure, new blood in itself proved itself a failed enterprise under Bush. Doesn't mean it can't work, and there are some unexpectedly progressive picks in the mix you fail to acknowledge, or find some other trivia to dismiss them with. The Clintonites are in key administrative positions, where knowing how to herd Washington cats is a prerequisite to effectiveness.

You can mock the President Obama can't be until he takes the oath of office, but I'm going to focus on the Elect he is and the President he becomes, based upon what he does. And if you think I won't criticize his failings, you haven't been paying attention. I clearly have a much lower tolerance for the personal embarrassment of blatantly tying myself in knots to slavishly defend someone at the expense of basic intellectual coherence than you do.

Posted by: moon at January 13, 2009 08:53 PM | PERMALINK

1) You show gross ignorance of what the word "changeling" actually means. You are using a (literally) fantastic insult.

2) Supporting PAYGO in January 2008 and supporting it in January 2009 are very different things. Proper depends upon the problems of the day. Who knew!

3) He's willing to adjust his policies to fit the needs the day ... and you think that's a bad thing?

4) Any president who didn't want to spend us into a massive deficit for next year would be so grossly incompetent they'd probably merit impeachment. Sorry that good public policy gets in the way of the sloganeering of the clueless.

5) You ask if the economy is worse now than after 9/11. Well, D-U-H.

6) I don't know where the hell you are wanting to drag us re: minorities. Obama isn't framing this that way, I'm not - don't know what you are talking about, and it's not on topic.

7) You'd rather he hired inexperienced people who didn't know anything about the government? Just b/c people worked under the same president doesn't mean you are going to get the same policies. Lots of GW's cabinet worked for Ford and his father - yet GW's presidency was kind of different than those administrations.

Posted by: Armand at January 13, 2009 11:18 PM | PERMALINK

Moon. Here's you: Blah blah blah...Bush is an idiot. Blah blah blah...Cheney is the devil. Guess what? In another week, they're yesterday's news. Democrats did so amazing a job of doing absolutely nothing but blaming Bush since 2006 that most Obama voters didn't even realize you guys had taken back Congress and the Senate. But you've got all three now, so when I (and soon others) hear you decry the first American President to win a war since Harry Truman, all I hear is the rain, and it's washing away all your excuses.

I don't know why it is the Left of which you'll claim to be a recent member, surely one more in a seemingly endless parade of misunderstood Reagan Republicans who turned against Bush because he wasn't fiscally conservative enough, is now suddenly back on track by saying that Reagan wasn't fiscally conservative after all, makes you wonder about all those seminar callers and bloggers, right? I mean, for the last five years I've been hearing about all you people who claim to have Reagan roots could have stood Bush if only he wasn't running up the national debt, and now you've been given other marching orders. So be it, you got your way.

You'll forgive me if I don't take instruction from your dubious ethical authority as to what's necessary; that we should trust Obama with our money, he's not from the Washington elite, he just appoints them to cabinet posts and doesn't oppose their environmental theocracy because he's Machiavellian, right? And what's your argument here? Half a million dollars is a pet project and half a trillion dollars is too huge to just be a pet project? How many bridges to nowhere does it take to make it more than that?

"When Hillary acts like a free agent, let me know. When dissension appears in the ranks, let me know. Until then, I'm going to assume that, as charismatic as Obama is, he will be able to keep everybody's eye on the prize, defined as, his agenda."

Wow, so he hasn't even gotten elected yet, and you're already saying that loyalty to Obama is more important than having individual opinions? Where's the concern about groupthink so often heard when the Left bemoans Bush's cabinet? I thought Obama prioritized talent over loyalty, and if that's true, can he not find better talent than Washington hacks from eight years ago? If they were so effective, why didn't we just elect Hillary and get the same people rather than empty promises of change?

"You can mock the President Obama can't be until he takes the oath of office, but I'm going to focus on the Elect he is and the President he becomes, based upon what he does."

So he hasn't picked his cabinet? Or are you saying his cabinet picks aren't significant because they're just going to follow his orders, and nobody gets hurt?

Armand writes: "Supporting PAYGO in January 2008 and supporting it in January 2009 are very different things. Proper depends upon the problems of the day. Who knew!"

Is that like how the Clinton national security team with few exceptions having ignored terrorism and intelligence was different on September 11th 2000 than it was on September 11th 2001? The Keynesian solution to economic problems of spending money on make work doesn't grow an economy because it only takes money on a loan and spends it on a project. It's like if I took out a loan to pay myself for working on a home project; I'm paying interest in the future on an investment that is not expected to accrue in value beyond my investment.

It's the Civilian Conservation Corps all over again. If they actually did accomplish something important (doubtful), that would take away the demand for American businesses to accomplish it and grow economically. The CCC was an example of how people can turn to government rather than to their families and communities in times of need, an attitude that in the Great Society programs decimated the black family.

Instead of creating jobs that can be handed down as political favors, if Obama really wants to give people more jobs, why not give our troops and guardsmen a pay raise to get more people to join up so that our soldiers can get more relief? You guys are always lamenting how we're not meeting recruitment quotas, so how about doing something about paying a fair salary to people risking their lives for us?

"Sorry that good public policy gets in the way of the sloganeering of the clueless."

No, it doesn't; that's why people who don't know who runs Congress but who do know Sarah Palin might have been covering for her daughter's baby voted for Bam. I thought that during Katrina Bush was supposed to part the waters, so I was expecting Barack might at least keep his promises before he takes office.

"You ask if the economy is worse now than after 9/11. Well, D-U-H."

But how did it get that way? It obviously wasn't a lack of government spending, because you guys have been screeching about Bush budget deficits for years. So if the government's been spending money like crazy, and if government spending is supposed to help the economy, how have we managed to get in a recesssion? Maybe, just maybe, it's government intervention in the housing market through CRA and Fannie Mae, because that's where all this bad news started. So maybe not lending money to people who can't afford to pay it back is a better solution than, say, spending more money that we don't have.

"You'd rather he hired inexperienced people who didn't know anything about the government?"

If your argument is that he's hiring experienced people, why not hire someone experienced in intelligence to head the CIA? Why hire a party hack, unless it is as Moon says that Bam wants someone who will do his bidding and not argue with Obama's agenda, whatever the hell that is?

Posted by: Morris at January 14, 2009 12:16 AM | PERMALINK

1) Yes the Democrats won in 2006. But they didn't win the executive in 2006. What exactly is it that you think they could have done since them? They didn't have the power to implement policy.

2a) What war did Harry Truman win (if you are going to say Truman won WWII, I find that inaccurate - he was there when WWII was won), what war has George Bush won, and you don't count any of our military victories in the 2nd half of the 20th century as a war? 2b) How is this relevant?

3) Bush was running up the deficit and the debt at a time when the economy didn't demand it. Right now we desperately need mountains of money in the economy. The fact that you don't seem to understand that different conditions may call for different policies is troubling. What, you think a hammer solves all problems? Some need a screwdriver. Some need a drill. And sometimes you need to remove a nail. Things change. The fact that you assume one policy is always the right policy regardless of changes the world is ... troubling.

4) Appointing both Clinton people and Obama people would seem a way to prevent groupthink. Groupthink is more likely to occur when you hire all your fraternity buddies, or when you restock your cabinet after reelection by promoting everyone in your eyeline.

5) What the heck are you talking about re: loyalty to Obama overriding all. That's certainly not the way Obama views it, as you've noted in his hiring. He's happy to hire those who disagree and have worked against him.

6) Who are thes hacks you speak of? Chu? Larry Lindsay? Shinseki? James Jones? I haven't done a comparison, but thinking about it off the top of my head this would seem to be the most impressive set of top appointments an incoming president has named in the last couple decades.

7) That's what you think comprises Keynesianism? I suggest you read a book. And as to your FDR era
critique there are major economists who believe the problem is he didn't spend enough.

8) I can't wait to hear you tell us all how relying on our "families and communities" will be sufficient to solving the current global financial crisis.

9) If you think spending at this scale will simply be patronage you don't grasp the numbers involved.

10) Who says he's not going to give soldiers a pay raise?

11) You call Obama voters stupid. Well, naturally I disagree.

12) "But how did it get that way? It obviously wasn't a lack of government spending, because you guys have been screeching about Bush budget deficits for years. So if the government's been spending money like crazy, and if government spending is supposed to help the economy, how have we managed to get in a recesssion?"

You aren't this dumb.

13) "Maybe, just maybe, it's government intervention in the housing market through CRA and Fannie Mae, because that's where all this bad news started. So maybe not lending money to people who can't afford to pay it back is a better solution than, say, spending more money that we don't have."

You just can't be this dumb.

14) "If your argument is that he's hiring experienced people, why not hire someone experienced in intelligence to head the CIA? Why hire a party hack, unless it is as Moon says that Bam wants someone who will do his bidding and not argue with Obama's agenda, whatever the hell that is?"

Yes, a former presidential chief of staff is obviously a) a "hack" and b) completely out of the loop about the intelligence community, and the intelligence needs of the White House. Suuuure he is.

Posted by: Armand at January 14, 2009 12:45 AM | PERMALINK

Okay, this is getting diffuse, so let's hit the main issue, right? Spending half a trillion dollars doesn't stimulate the economy because it will have the exact same effect on the maintenance/construction business that government incentives had on the housing sector.

If Bill, Jake, Dan, and Kevin are all the contractors in town, and suddenly Bill and Jake are hired by the government to do build statues of famous Democrats as part of a government stimulus, then Obama's artificially decreased the supply of contractors, the supply of the available workforce. Price goes up in response to this decreased supply of labor, as Dan and Kevin start charging more money because there's less supply of workers to do the same amount of work in town, now that Bill and Jake work for Obama.

Price has artificially risen and there is now a bubble because the value of the work they do hasn't changed, only the price they can charge has changed. The market will adjust as people in other professions are attracted by higher pay (market incentives) to go into construction/maintenance, and these new workers will become skilled in this area. As more people contribute to the construction/maintenance labor supply, prices will fall.

But since government can't afford to do these bailouts forever without running up untenable deficits (the original CCC lasted less than a decade), the workers paid by the government will soon rejoin the already altered private construction/maintenance labor force, and there will be a glut of labor supply. Prices will collapse as the bubble bursts, because people know that the new workers like Ronnie and George are looking for work and will take a cut a pay to land a job. Construction/maintenance workers will end up making little more than minimum wage.

However, these workers will have bought homes and cars assuming the Obama bailout influenced wage prices represented the actual market value of their wages, and now they won't be able to make payments on these homes and cars when the wage price bubble collapses. In short, we'll need another bailout for the bailout.

The only way for the market to work itself out is for people in 150K homes they can't afford to move into 125K homes they can afford, and for people in 125K homes they can't afford to move into 100K homes they can afford, etc. It's not government's job to bail people out economically, that's the purpose of families, churches and communities. It's government's job to stand back and allow people to succeed without setting them up for the next failure, the next opportunity out of a crisis that allows politicians to teach them to rely on government rather than American ingenuity. The more people rely on government, the more they isolate from each other, and the more miserable they are.

Posted by: Morris at January 14, 2009 11:28 PM | PERMALINK

Regarding CIA, {cough}H.W. Bush{cough}. He was a horrible director, right, which is of course why his political career ended right there.

Regarding government spending and its effect on business, has Obama proposed a significant increase in the government payroll, because I hadn't noticed. This stimulus, except for the pandering demonstrably ineffective tax cuts for folks who make too much to have to spend them he's included (and, notably, those tax cuts are necessary to get the GOP on board), are basically all going to go to private businesses, which will do the infrastructure work, and which will furnish the facilities for the growth industry in various renewable energe & c. solutions he seeks to encourage. So tell me how awarding a huge government contractor to a paving firm, or to a start-up with great ideas but insufficient credit and/or investment to make them big picture, is depriving the private sector of anything.

And as for the only other thing I care to engage, having dissenting voices in a metting is just smart. Being a firm executive with the will and charisma to say, "Thank you for your ideas, here is what I want you to do, and if you don't like it you're fired," isn't demanding loyalty, he's being a competent executive with the wherewithal to make a decision. Any successful president has an agenda, and my point was, Obama has an agenda. It may succeed or fail, but it's an agenda, and as an administrator it will be Obama's job to keep everyone focused on their role in promoting and effectuating it. That's very very very different from having the answer before consultation, eschewing consultation, staffing oneself so feebly that you all but ensure that no one in the room is going to have an idea, or an idea that deviates from your own, and then using the inevitable chorus of agreement as support for whatever it is you already intended to do anyway. But then the GOP has been the part of bootstrapping for a long time, and Bush certainly staffed as though he favored bootstrapping over rigor in the decisionmaking process.

Oh, sorry, did I just say something negative about Bush? I guess that discredits me. But I can't leave out Cheney, so: How many children has Cheney eaten today, Morris?

Okay, all's right with the universe.

Posted by: moon at January 15, 2009 02:08 PM | PERMALINK

"Spending half a trillion dollars doesn't stimulate the economy" - really Morris? Really? And the entire remainder of your comment after that bizarre comment is built on assumptions that I disagree with.

And your final paragraph is just self-serving/deluded nonsense.

Posted by: Armand at January 15, 2009 04:18 PM | PERMALINK

Or if you want a less shrill response - that's your opinion of what government should do. Billions would disagree. And not everyone has parents to pay their room, board and car insurance, and not every "community" is flush with capital. Last I checked Denmark wasn't so miserable collapsed society. And your responsse is ... some sort of massive relocation of people (ripping them out of their communities! away from their families)! That's supposed to be good for the economy?

Posted by: Armand at January 15, 2009 05:17 PM | PERMALINK

Moon writes:
"So tell me how awarding a huge government contractor to a paving firm, or to a start-up with great ideas but insufficient credit and/or investment to make them big picture, is depriving the private sector of anything."

I can tell when you don't read my posts. It's not denying the private sector something, it's creating a bubble as I said. Paying an independent contractor works the same as paying a private firm, it reduces the supply of available workers. You act like somehow private contracting businesses and independent contractors interact differently in the marketplace when it comes to supply, demand, and price.

Maybe you never went to BarackObamaTest.com, but it's a great illustration of how his agenda is out of touch with most Americans. Luckily for him, most of his voters didn't know about his agenda, but it's hardly a mandate for widespread adoption of his policies, more likely a call for a more direct democracy.

"But then the GOP has been the part of bootstrapping for a long time, and Bush certainly staffed as though he favored bootstrapping over rigor in the decisionmaking process."

Right. When people quit his administration it's because Bush doesn't tolerate other opinions, but when it comes to Obama as long as he opens his big ears long enough to act like he's listening, it's completely different when he ignores his advisors. Right.

"How many children has Cheney eaten today, Morris?"

Cheney eats Democratic Senators for breakfast, not children.

Armand writes:
"And not everyone has parents to pay their room, board and car insurance, and not every 'community' is flush with capital."

First, charitable giving in 2006 was almost 300 billion dollars just in the United States. So until unemployment exceeds 10%, that would be enough to give every unemployed American $10,000 a year, not counting unemployment insurance, WIC, etc. Second, if as I recall Biden said that the way to be patriotic is to sacrifice and pay taxes, why aren't we asking people to move in with their parents and have sandwiches and eggs instead of pop tarts and hot pockets?

"Last I checked Denmark wasn't so miserable collapsed society."

Wow. Denmark. Dare we to dream? This is socialism's city on a hill. Denmark.

"Spending half a trillion dollars doesn't stimulate the economy" - really Morris? Really?

If you read my post you'd have read how it will stimulate the economy TEMPORARILY and set it up for another bubble market that leads to recession. It's supply, demand, and price operating here, and they will be operating long after any government program, as they've outlasted all governments throughout history. What Barack proposes has been done before, and the consequences have been experienced before, and he's smart enough to know that. So you tell me, what's he up to?

I know you disagree with the assumption that a person who buys an overpriced 150K house should have to move into a slightly less nice house in a slightly less nice neighborhood where that house has an actual market value they can actually afford without government assistance, but that is the only solution based on the assumptions of supply, demand, and price. Don't worry, we're having it your way in Washington, and as usual it is a whopper.

Posted by: Morris at January 15, 2009 11:20 PM | PERMALINK

"Cheney eats Democratic Senators for breakfast, not children."

Ah, I guess that explains why there are so few Democratic senators these days.

Posted by: moon at January 16, 2009 10:43 AM | PERMALINK

No, it explains why since February 2007 when two thirds of the country wanted us to get out of Iraq, your Democratic Senators couldn't muster enough votes to overcome a Presidential veto and bring about the defeat they had declared.

Posted by: Morris at January 16, 2009 01:17 PM | PERMALINK

No, it doesn't. What does explain that is lockstep Republican senators ignoring their constituents' express desires in favor of slavish party loyalty not just to each other, but to the White House it used to be the senate's job to check.

Posted by: moon at January 16, 2009 02:01 PM | PERMALINK

"What does explain that is lockstep Republican senators ignoring their constituents' express desires in favor of slavish party loyalty not just to each other, but to the White House it used to be the senate's job to check."

So, they should have walked lockstep with Democrats? The Left crucified Lieberman on this issue, and he got elected again. In Connecticut. The Iraq war was unpopular, but our military never was. The Left tends to forget that, and Lieberman criticized how we were fighting the war but never made light of what our troops were doing. It's called finishing the mission so we don't have to go back again. Anybody hear those requests for us to go back into Somalia, to finish the job?

Posted by: Morris at January 16, 2009 04:12 PM | PERMALINK

What's wrong Denmark? Your position is that government involvement in the economy is somehow horrible, destroys society and makes people miserable. The Scandinavian countries have a much bigger role of government in society, and yet they regularly top a host of global quality-of-life measures. That would seem to refute your simple-minded position that government is evil - EVIL!

And how on Earth are things like building roads and power plants and bridges and schools NOT stimulus with long-term effects? If we spend the money on infrastructure, the benefits aren't temporary.

Posted by: Armand at January 16, 2009 11:34 PM | PERMALINK

Oh goodness, are we rolling out the Left Hates the Troops meme again. Let me say this very clearly: Fuck you, Morris. Saying or implying that the left supports our troops less than anyone else in this country based on policy disputes is the cheapest, most revealing tactic the right has deployed, tantamount to Godwin's law. It's proof positive that you have nothing interesting to say about how the troops are supported, how policy for Iraq is developed, and so on.

Sorry for the language, but I won't stand by while, in lieu of substantive argument, you insult my patriotism or my love for the people willing to make the ultimate sacrifice. I love them all the more for doing their duty, as they must, even when it is patently clear that the people calling the shots have their heads entirely up their asses. Leaders have been deposed for less.

Posted by: moon at January 19, 2009 09:03 AM | PERMALINK

I'd just like to point out that, as this thread moves in that general direction, Morris still doesn't have a damned thing to say about the early post regarding the Heritage Foundation's economic freedom index, or whatever it was called.

Posted by: moon at January 19, 2009 09:05 AM | PERMALINK

"And how on Earth are things like building roads and power plants and bridges and schools NOT stimulus with long-term effects? If we spend the money on infrastructure, the benefits aren't temporary."

It's all in how you do it. If these are important jobs that need to be done, we would be doing them anyway. What makes this jobs program a stimulus program is that it's in addition to the jobs and programs we would ordinarily do. I find it terribly hypocritical that the Left has attacked Bush incessantly for spending less than a trillion dollars over the past eight years on the liberation of Iraq and Afghanistan, liberating tens of millions of people, but now they want to spend more than that on a stimulus, half of which gives tax rebates to people who didn't work enough to pay taxes, and the other half of which gives jobs to three million people.

So, for ten times the price, we're getting, not liberation, but a temporary job, when for half a trillion dollars we could give every unemployed person in this country almost $50,000 (assuming the current figure of 11 million). But Obama wants to give temporary jobs to much less than a third of that number.

BTW, Robert Reich agrees with my assessment of what this will do, increasing salaries of construction workers: "[I]f there aren't enough skilled professionals to do the jobs involving new technologies, the stimulus will just increase the wages of the professionals who already have the right skills rather than generate many new jobs in these fields." But he doesn't think that women and blacks are smart enough to see this happening and seek out training for these jobs, and he insists that we should pay women and blacks while they're getting their training.

So the mentality has gone from the government making available loans for students who want training and education, to now paying people to get trained (because these are jobs blacks and women don't want to do, just like Americans as a whole don't want to pick crops or bus tables, and would rather leave that to the dirty Mexicans so we'd better have an open door immigration policy or you'll be mowing your own grass). Your party is a bunch of f-ing racists!

When a person is unemployed (and I speak from vast experience), they look at the classified ads and when they can't find a job in what they used to do, they look at everything, especially the higher salaries, thinking about how they could get that kind of job. But if that unemployed person has a tax rebate check coming from the government, and is living in a home out of which the government won't kick them if they don't pay their bills, and is receiving a food stamp card so they don't have to be scared about what happens when they don't pay their bills, they can just watch TV or play video games, because they don't need a job. Birds that stay in the nest never learn how to fly.

"Sorry for the language, but I won't stand by while, in lieu of substantive argument, you insult my patriotism or my love for the people willing to make the ultimate sacrifice. I love them all the more for doing their duty, as they must, even when it is patently clear that the people calling the shots have their heads entirely up their asses."

So you love people who serve their country more when they disagree with the policies of the people in power and do what they're told anyway? I think you confuse patriotism with nationalism. I'm confused as to how if someone came to me and said, "Your efforts to help me recover from addiction were fruitless, but I respect that you chose a career helping people" could ever be better than "I think counselors are a bunch of quacks, but I'm not drinking anymore." It's the significance of what people accomplish that motivates them.

If I knew a professor who taught politics, I would imagine they would prefer their students to learn a lot in their class even if they disagreed with the professor's conclusions than agreed with their conclusions without substantive knowledge to back it up.

"Leaders have been deposed for less."

I know of no other leader who ever tolerated treasonous disagreement and threats to his person (and advisors) in time of war so well as President George W. Bush. I doubt Obama will be as gracious.

Posted by: Morris at January 24, 2009 12:19 PM | PERMALINK

"If these are important jobs that need to be done, we would be doing them anyway." Actually, you're wrong. We haven't been doing these jobs, and it shows.

As for the tax rebates, they don't go to people who pay nothing -- they go to people who pay social security and medicare taxes, they just don't make enough to pay income taxes. And would you prefer -- as you did when Bush insisted on it -- that the money go to the non-hand-in-mouth who will tuck it into their bank accounts where it will do the economy virtually no good whatsoever? Listen, a good stimulus, under present circumstances, probably doesn't need tax cuts as all. Lord knows they failed to do much of anything stimulative under Bush. Yet, it's your folks, not ours, insisting on it -- we're merely saying that, if we must do it against all reason to let the GOP trumpet rampant falsehoods to their constituents about the effectiveness of tax cuts, can we at least direct some of it to people who will spend it, and thus stimulate the economy somewhat, albeit less efficiently than other measures might?

"if that unemployed person has a tax rebate check coming from the government, and is living in a home out of which the government won't kick them if they don't pay their bills, and is receiving a food stamp card so they don't have to be scared about what happens when they don't pay their bills, they can just watch TV or play video games, because they don't need a job"

Man, the whole welfare slacker meme has been so thoroughly discredited so many times it's not even funny. You might as well quote the Jabberwocky for all the sense this makes in light of real-world data. And Morris, take heed, finding one article somewhere about one or three or ten slackers doesn't change the overarching point that that doesn't prove the claim of widespread abuse. I can point to one or three or ten executives staining the carpets of some Fortune 500 office making high six figures to do essentially nothing, and I'm sure you wouldn't accept that as an argument about the hopeless ineffectiveness of private industry.

"I know of no other leader who ever tolerated treasonous disagreement and threats to his person (and advisors) in time of war so well as President George W. Bush."

And doesn't that tell the tale. We're all just grunts who, should we choose not to obey orders, are traitors who hate our country. Apparently I have to say it again, Morris: Fuck you. Bush? Try Lincoln. He had infinitely more class, and was unafraid of disagreement, at a time of such great hardship and danger to this country that it would have melted Bush into a puddle around his shoes.

I wouldn't have sent troops off without proper equipment, when even the lies the intel folks had been forced to tell by an executive who wouldn't take you're-wrong for an answer didn't portray a climate urgent enough to warrant doing so. I wouldn't sell them out when they got home. But then my folks didn't do either of these things: yours did.

Posted by: moon at January 24, 2009 03:17 PM | PERMALINK

Oh, and re infrastructure, here's just one of about a bazillion articles discussing the myriad proofs that we are not repairing, and would not in any timely or adequate way repair, our infrastructure without the stimulus. I could go on a great deal more, having participated in a government working group on transportation issues, but I'm sure you can Google "deteriorating infrastructure," and see for yourself.

And lest you're stuck on CNN-level coverage, it's not just about highways and overpasses. It's about the electric grid, and sewage, and water, and inland waterways, and on and on and on. It's not just I-35; it's the levees in New Orleans. All of it was created in more flush times, and it's all been neglected in the last twenty-plus years as politicians have learned that it's better job security not to ask people to sacrifice for their long-term interests but rather to promise them short-term gains, however illusory. It's all falling apart at roughly the same time, and indeed the silver lining in the fiscal crisis might be that it will generate the same interest as the Cold War did in making sure our infrastructure is as good as it can be, albeit for different reasons.

Posted by: moon at January 24, 2009 03:26 PM | PERMALINK

Moon,
I think you're absolutely right, we do need to repair our infrastructure. However, when Reich talked about what the infrastructure stimulus would be, he talked about "green" projects. We don't need infrastructure built for unproven, inefficient energy technologies like wind farms; if we want more domestic energy, how about sending some workers up to the Green River Shale deposits that are three times as big as Saudi Arabia's oil reserves. Oh, wait, we don't have taxpayers pay people to do that; Exxon will do it for us if we just let them.

The original Civilian Conservation Corps which is the model for this project, in line with Reich's statements, said no skilled workers allowed (it would compete with unions), and Reich has said that at least one fifth of workers hired should be unskilled. They will be trained in how to build and repair wind farms or the like, given skill sets that are not viable in the free market. I'm certainly for repairing actual infrastructure like the bridges that collapsed.

But coming from a state that spent billions of dollars over several decades on political levee boards that paid each other for time spent at meetings but never built effective levees, I'm skeptical about giving a trillion dollars to our Congress without having benchmarks. What does a trillion dollars buy? Or am I not supposed to ask questions like that, because it means I'm greedy, because I don't want our nation in a position where its currency becomes so devalued due to running up deficits and printing money that it has to take goods from other nations' peoples in order to survive.

Our infrastructure has survived because it was built by skilled workers, built to last. Major bridges in Louisiana (Natchez-Vidalia, old Vicksburg) remain in use for about 70 or years, using technology from 70 years ago. So when Reich starts talking about refurbishing bridges (dare to dream), without skilled white construction workers, I ask if the emphasis is on skilled construction workers, or white construction workers, or both? I understand when a project calls for a certain percentage of skilled workers, to do the job right. I don't understand when a project calls for a certain percentage of unskilled workers, because what's the objective? It's not the job being done right, because then we'd want all the skilled workers we could get, white or otherwise.

How do we restore science to its proper place and at the same time exclude those who've studied the science of construction when we're trying to repair a bridge? Obama's punishing success and intelligence, and I'm going to have chills driving across any bridge with a sign saying it was repaired by the Obama stimulus package.

Posted by: Morris at January 24, 2009 11:10 PM | PERMALINK

What? I assume you realize that the single authority you cited for a whole bunch of risible, bizarre, or manifestly wrong claims about this administration is to an article that reveals the no-homework, making-shit-up-as-fast-as-they-can-to-belittle-a-heretofore-remarkably-efficient-transition hysteria of the right wing pundits. This is from the article you cite in support of the laughable claim that Reich suggested repairing our infrastructure without white skilled labor:

In fact, while addressing concerns from women's advocacy groups and others about the composition of the proposed stimulus, Reich said then and has repeatedly stated that he favors a stimulus plan that "includ[es] women and minorities, and the long-term unemployed" in addition to skilled professionals and white male construction workers, not one that is limited to women and minorities.

And as far as any further response goes, I'm not going to waste the typing. Read your own authority and figure it out. If you want to parrot the showbiz hokum of the likes of Malkin, Hannity, and Limbaugh, have fun. But do it somewhere the IQs are lower, because around here we don't rely on left-wing windbags to make our points, and you shouldn't rely on their counterparts.

Then there's this: "They will be trained in how to build and repair wind farms or the like, given skill sets that are not viable in the free market. " (where the loaded "they" apparently means the non-white barbarians, who magically will be summoned from the couches where they've been enjoying gratis government largess for decades, right Morris?). Here again we embed the notion that between what the currently-self-destructively-short-sighted "free" market and full-blown nationalization is quite literally nothing. Government funding can't possibly spur private industry, like, oh, say, the billions NIH has invested, without expectation of anything in return (a stark refutation of free-market principles, btw, giving without receiving), in pharmaceutical research that benefits private industry (which turns around and charges confiscatory prices for things that probably wouldn't exist but for government funding) as much as any group of patients.

I could probably line up dozens, if not hundreds of "private" businesses that took government money through the New Deal and profited spectacularly, all while making better things in better ways that they couldn't possibly have done without an infusion of government money. You continue to rely on the zero sum canard, that anything the government creates or supports can only necessarily detract from the private sector in equal measure. Tell that to the defense contractors, to every automaker, every airline, every company that depends on a reasonably standardized internet infrastructure for their current success, and all of their employees, because all of them either would have failed or would exist in very different form if it weren't for government support at key moments in their histories or just before their inception.

You're right that the free market can't really justify windfarms. But then evidently it can't really justify new oil drilling, either, since odds are Exxon isn't going to pay market rates for access to the Green River Shale any more than they've ever paid market rates for any of the many billions of dollars of oil they've extracted from government-owned land. Wait? What's that? The government giving money to an ineffective energy industry? Shit, Morris, that sounds almost like you talking about windfarms. When these brilliant private industries you keep imagining pay their fair share for anything (mineral rights; timber rights; spectrum and bandwidth), we can talk about the wonders of the free market and why windfarms will just have to wait until, by magic (rather than by well-placed funding to spur research and economies of scale), they're suddenly affordable.

For a national security hawk, you sure are willing to leave us vulnerable to the market manipulations that continuing reliance on oil as a primary source of energy entails, regardless of how much of it we pull out of our own soil.

Posted by: moon at January 25, 2009 05:37 PM | PERMALINK

"And as far as any further response goes, I'm not going to waste the typing."

This is f-ing BS, and you know it. Every time I cite a media source that is in the least neutral, you blast it as a right wing conservative nut job. So I cite left wing liberal nut jobs, and you blast it because they refer to the comments to people who actually report news, not just what color lunchboxes the Obama girls will carry to school. Obama gets do overs, but Sarah Palin doesn't. It's racist, it's sexist, and that's that.

Of course you can't respond to this post, because I'm right. Mr. Restore Science to its rightful place says he will kick out workers who've studied the science of construction if they're white, or if they're skilled. I want my bridges built based upon merit, not based upon who can't hold down a job, and who has minority status privileges. When are you people, waiting for white to do what's right, going to acknowledges things like, maybe, ending slavery, or the civil rights act, or the Great Society programs.

To acknowledge your Great Society affirmative action programs is to admit failure, to admit that in trying to help out minorities, your considering them to be helpless backfired, and that's why black men turn to crime today, because they don't have a job to do. Between affirmative action and feminism, you've taken the pride from the black man, and you've created a bunch of whiners who go to Washington and a bunch of gangsters who die before their time, because you've told them they don't have to be responsible.

"Government funding can't possibly spur private industry"

No, what I say is we don't need to invest in infrastructure for unproven technologies when we have proven technologies like oil. Why don't we let the scientists figure out first in a lab how to make wind technology as marketable as oil before we turn vast farmlands into wind farms, just as we turned cornfields into methanol, leading people to starve because they can't afford their food anymore.

I'd rather bet my national defense energy futures on Exxon executives wanting to make money than on whether it's going to be windy enough to power our missile defense the day China attacks.

"You continue to rely on the zero sum canard, that anything the government creates or supports can only necessarily detract from the private sector in equal measure."

You continue to talk out of your ass, holding your hands over your ears, screaming "Not listening! Not listening!" What I said assuming you might read it this time is that we need to let competition and worth determine the way we support infrastructure projects, not anti-intellectual union/race baiting agendas which appeal to sympathy but little else. This is why Katrina happened, and if you would listen you may learn from it.

Levee Boards in Louisiana have existed since 1890 but they kept spending money on things that had nothing to do with levees, like gambling boats, repairing a fountain, building a marina, investigating a talk show host. There was no oversight, no benchmarks, just the people's trust they would do the right thing because it mattered. But they had no competitive incentive to do the right thing. Members of the levee board were appointed out of good intentions and politics, not anything to do with knowing how to build a levee. And Reich, one more Clinton team member towing Obama around just like Greg Craig who isn't so busy defending the Bolivian President from involvement in the massacre of dozens of protesters that he can't write executive orders protecting human rights at Gitmo, you want me to trust?

Posted by: Morris at January 26, 2009 10:30 AM | PERMALINK

What I said is you haven't cited a single article that supports your claim that white, skilled labor will not be involved in the projects spawned by the stimulus. I didn't insult or discredit the source you cited: I observed that it didn't say what you claimed it said.

If your point was that Limbaugh, Malkin, and Hannity said it, and that Media Matters reported their saying it, fine. But I read what the man actually said, and L, M, and H prove nothing so much as their own illiteracy in turning that into their claim that it'll be nothing but incompetents of color working on our highways.

As for making wind work good enough for you in the lab before we unleash it on the world, did the first cars get 40mpg? Go 100 mph? Protect their passengers in the event of a crash? Well what ridiculous liberal bullshit was it that justified them going to market before those benchmarks had been achieved.

You're ridulous. And you're hectoring. And this is boring.

Posted by: moon at January 26, 2009 01:23 PM | PERMALINK

Here's the video.

You haven't answered my question. Why shouldn't we have as many people with as much skill as possible working on any stimulus infrastructure, unless Obama thinks science should take a back seat to ideology? I realize this isn't Obama, just one of his advisors, but since Obama obviously trusted his legal advisor to write executive orders for him, to the extent that Obama didn't even know how many executive orders he was authorizing, why shouldn't I assume Obama will let Reich handle this?

I know there will be issues that Barack handles, just like Bush was interested in fighting terrorism, and that there will be others that he hands to subordinates, like Bush did with the economy, handing TARP to Paulson; but we have no way of knowing which issues Obama will handle at this point, so I have no reason to think he won't hand this one to his advisor, Reich, another Clinton rehash.

So you want benchmarks in a war but not in spending a trillion dollars on unproven green technologies? You think a war is more predictable in a country with a history of ethnic strife than wind is in a laboratory? I thought laboratories could control variables, and in war you can't, so it would seem like a billion times easier to demand benchmarks of something you can control and predict than of something you can't, unless you want that money spent without questions for other reasons.

The internal combustion engine was built by inventors, and it was improved upon because people would pay more money for a faster car, if that's what they liked, or a safer car, or a more reliable car, or one with a smoother ride, etc. The government didn't throw billions of dollars at Benz and Daimler until their vehicles gave them a competitive advantage in war.

The left has consistently opposed missile defense spending, voting down recent funding to allow it to advance at its capability, despite the fact that it does what it does better than any other nation's military technology on the planet. But the left wants to invest billions upon billions of dollars in something that's never had a competitive advantage in efficiency for the past hundred years, when we have more than a hundred years of oil is more than curious.

I can think of plenty at which to throw money: cyber warfare, ACTUAL infrastructure repair, opening up army munitions plants closed by the Clintons, etc. But this idea is like buying a thousand beta vcrs because they really are better, and everybody should have the best, so it doesn't matter that they're more expensive and inaccessible. There is a reason VHS won that contest: competitive market advantage. It cost less, and you could get what you wanted from it, and because of that everything was built to fit it, just like oil, instead of having to refit everything to it, like you would with wind.

"You're ridulous. And you're hectoring. And this is boring."

Pick the target. Freeze it. Personalize it. Polarize it. You did it to Bush for eight years, now welcome to the revolution. We're just getting started.

Posted by: Morris at January 27, 2009 01:37 AM | PERMALINK

Heh, that video is almost like the MediaMatters transcript, or an even lengthier transcript, except without all that distracting material that provides context. Not one major government at this point, state or federal, doesn't in some way provide incentives to minority and small business holders, to ensure that it's not all the same small crowd of connected, well-to-do businesses, which also tend to be predominately white, that eat up all the business to the exclusion of, you know, the smaller, the less able to make political donations, and, you know, alternative sources of competent work. It's like Reich suggested, I don't know, providing a statutory remedy for employment discrimination, or something equally commonplace.

And anyway, have you ever actually witnessed the operations of a construction concern? Or of any business for that matter? For every guy pouring concrete out in central PA, there's someone answering a phone somewhere, Morris, and you betray either a reductiveness that's too insulting to engage or an ignorance too far-reaching to believe when you pretend that the only jobs associated with construction are not only labor, but skilled labor specifically. There are professional jobs, Morris; there are skilled labor jobs; there are unskilled labor jobs; and then there are many other jobs in support capacities, for the construction concerns themselves and the suppliers, that are equally critical to the job being done right. It's not like you're going to go get your own coffee, Mister VP of a national construction concern.

What's fantastically ironic about this is that, combined with the general tenor of your past comments about poverty, you appear to be saying, Hey, welfare mothers, get your asses off the couch and get a job, and by the way, no one's going to lift a finger to make a job with dignity available, train you to be ready for it, or otherwise indicate that they, at any level, give a damn about whether you actually get a job except around election time, when it's time to roll out the same old time-worn and demonstrably false cliches to squeeze votes from people who are susceptible to bullshit.

Thanks for sending me to the tinfoil hat excerpts, but I'll take the full comments before I measure the man. Either you didn't read them or you are willfully misrepresenting them, and in either case you manifest your indifference to discussing the issue like your opposite has the IQ of a tree trunk. Since I do, I'm done with Reich. Reproduce for me the whole transcript, and explain how in context you can fairly characterize as some YouTube hack with a Mac does, or else go argue with someone you can hoodwink into believing you're talking about something that happened in the real world.

"another Clinton rehash"

Ah, you mean like another one of those guys who presided over balanced budgets and explosive growth, one of those guys who didn't laugh off the threat posed by al Qaeda? Or do you mean some other Clinton "rehashes?"

"So you want benchmarks in a war but not in spending a trillion dollars on unproven green technologies?"

I didn't say I don't want benchmarks. Stop making shit up.

As for the automobile, it only exists in its current ubiquity and in its current form, because the government spent many hundreds of billions, probably trillions in taxpayer Money building highways, just as they built rails before. You suppose Detroit would have been what it was if it, or its drivers, had to build its own roads? Or that people would have preferred the least economically efficient form of transportion (as against rail) and development (sprawl) if they'd had to pay directly in the form of what tolls would cost if they had to directly finance their own highways out of pocket in a way far more obvious than the income tax? And there's another example: imagine what it would cost to pay up front for a highway! Isn't that what you're asking windpower to do? The auto-industry: yet another beneficiary of significant nationalization held up by fools as evidence of a free market.

Cars got better because they were out on the road learning. Whether government gives wind the kick in the tail it needs to get out in the world where we can learn or industry does it, the result will be the same: it will progress at an exponentially greater rate, with attendant benefits for all parties involved (mostly government, but also asthmatic kids in cities, who won't benefit from more drilling, more dependency on coal and foreign oil, and more government that doesn't believe in supporting anything that won't yield a profit in the next quarter). Thank God the Founders could see further down the road than the Republicans can, and set certain values above the profit motive.

As for non-responsiveness, despite my proposition that you haven't actually named one major industrial sector that has demonstrated that it can survive in a truly free market (and surely none of those under discussion has done so), you just keep arguing as though any of them ever has.

God, this is like arguing with a sixth-grade math textbook given out in some polygamist compound's school.

Obama is right: this big government little government, free market regulated market hocum is a waste of time, because it's all false comparisons. There has never in modern American history been any of those things, in any objective sense, and there never will be. There are only successful and failed policies. How about you give our guy a couple of months in office before you decide whether you like how well he's cleaning up one of the most catastrophic messes any American president has ever left another, okay?

Posted by: moon at January 27, 2009 01:29 PM | PERMALINK

More, re infrastructure and privatization. In case you actually

Posted by: moon at January 28, 2009 01:35 PM | PERMALINK

"Not one major government at this point, state or federal, doesn't in some way provide incentives to minority and small business holders, to ensure that it's not all the same small crowd of connected, well-to-do businesses, which also tend to be predominately white, that eat up all the business to the exclusion of, you know, the smaller, the less able to make political donations, and, you know, alternative sources of competent work."

I'm not arguing this point, but since when is the cure for tribalism reverse tribalism? This is the Left all over: the cure for how people feel incompetent isn't individuals doing something to feel competent, it's giving them a prize anyway, huh? Incompetence is met with pity, at best, and contempt, at worst, and how long will do you think it will take in tough economic times for pity to turn into contempt when Obama takes from the majority and gives to the minority, what is it, 35 years after the Civil Rights Act?

What a failure that must have been! It's almost as though well intentioned government programs don't work when they reward incompetence and punish success. As you say, we still have these programs in every state, so obviously they haven't worked anywhere, because if they had worked anywhere, there would be no more need for them, unless they serve some purpose other than establishing equality of opportunity. So much for returning science to its rightful place when he ignores the results of all experiments in social justice extorion.

By the way, speaking of those able to make campaign donations, Obama received millions of dollars from banks like Chase, Morgan Stanley, as well as the dreaded Goldman Sachs. Why should we assume that the second half of TARP isn't political payback for those able to make campaign donations, like paying back the law firms that gave him millions by allowing indefinite lawsuits against employers over unequal compensation, placing an additional burden on any business in these tough economic times, the reverse of economic incentives you would expect.

Of course I don't expect economic incentives, considering he's appointed a climate change czar who will no doubt recommend spending billions of dollars to research how to fight global warming as a pay back to the universities which donated him millions of dollars, which they can afford only because university tuition inflation makes health care inflation look slow and steady.

It's great, but off target, of you to point out that not all these jobs will require construction skills, after all that as you well know isn't my qualm. My qualm is with hiring anyone specifically because they're lacking in education which is what Reich recommends. How does that fit with a scientific meritocracy? You know it doesn't, it's about political payback and hiring people's cousins.

"Hey, welfare mothers, get your asses off the couch and get a job, and by the way, no one's going to lift a finger to make a job with dignity available, train you to be ready for it, or otherwise indicate that they, at any level, give a damn about whether you actually get a job except around election time, when it's time to roll out the same old time-worn and demonstrably false cliches to squeeze votes from people who are susceptible to bullshit."

Didn't take you long to role out the class warfare card, did it, as though you hadn't done it a couple times before your third paragraph? The assumption of this is so offensive and elitist, that dignity doesn't come from a job well done, but from a specific kind of jobs well. I guess shoveling coffee grinds across the counter at Starbucks is more dignifying than working on a farm, eh? Working in an office is more dignifying than working construction?

Work is dignifying when it serves what a person values, things like caring for other people. If you had any understanding of the free market, I wouldn't have to explain how price is set on goods (and labor as a good) because people demand it, because it's worth something to somebody; but the left in its evil focus on types and classes wants to establish that social work is more dignified than farm work, that teaching is more dignified than digging ditches.

People get paid to do all kinds of work because they're worth it, and one of the few exceptions to that is when government pays them for doing nothing, that strips the dignity and pride from anyone because it's no longer about things over which they have power like what they produce, it's about things over which they have no control like the color of their skin. When it's about work they choose to do, it's dignifying because it's about the choice to work which reflects their belief in their own competence.

"Thanks for sending me to the tinfoil hat excerpts, but I'll take the full comments before I measure the man."

So you're trying to say that the Lefty's Lefty website Media Matters that exists for the sole purpose of attacking and responding to conservative media would hold back appropriate context because, maybe, they want to put Lefties on the hot seat? I'm not treating you like you have the IQ of a tree trunk, but I can't stop you if you want to act like one.

"Ah, you mean like another one of those guys who presided over balanced budgets and explosive growth, one of those guys who didn't laugh off the threat posed by al Qaeda?"

What was in Sandy Burglar's pants? Why did he make an "honest mistake" of stuffing Clinton administration documents into his clothes and leaving the National Archives, for which he was wrist slapped? What exactly did Clinton do about Al Queda? I know his policy toward Iraq was regime change, but he never did it, we had to wait on a President with guts, concerned less about cigars and interns.

The Clinton Administration and Miss Gorelick (before her time at Fannie Mae) built the wall that resulted in 9/11 because our law enforcement and intelligence agencies couldn't talk to each other, they cut funding from human intelligence so we didn't have operatives in the field to find out about 9/11 before it happened, they treated terrorism as a law enforcement concern even after bombings of our embassies in Africa, the WTC bombing in 1993, and the USS Cole. Wake up!

Of course after slashing the money spent on national defense and leaving our troops without even body armor or bullets made by US soldiers Clinton had money left over, but I wouldn't brag about it. And I wouldn't be talking about budget surpluses when you're man BO is about to unleash several years of trillion dollar deficits, or else Baltar might jump on here and talk about how bad a deal that is, just as he did with Bush.

"I didn't say I don't want benchmarks. Stop making shit up."

My apologies, you didn't, that was your hypocritical lefty friends who don't care about benchmarks now that Democrats are back in office.

I'll get to the rest of this later.

Posted by: Morris at February 1, 2009 12:58 PM | PERMALINK

"The auto-industry: yet another beneficiary of significant nationalization held up by fools as evidence of a free market."

When was the government investment? If you're such a genius, you must be able to tell me. Did we sponsor Daimler's research in the 1800's? Did American taxpayers give him a research grant? This is the Left's problem, you can't even fathom how an individual could do something on their own without that individual being a greedy SOB for wanting to get credit in the form of money for their investment. You can't even imagine how it's possible!

The prototypical Lefty is someone who walks through life waiting for someone to run into them so they can whine about it and sue for damages. They do stupid things (drinking coffee at McDonald's when it's way too hot), then they sue for millions of dollars. And Barack and his cronies make bundles of money, all the time telling idiots they're watching out for the little guy.

Think about what you're saying. By your logic, anything has potential as long as government spends money on infrastructure. Why don't we use dirt power? Why harness the wind when we have so much dirt, that if only Schumer and Frank and Dodd and our BO get together, we could power the universe! Get real.

"As for non-responsiveness, despite my proposition that you haven't actually named one major industrial sector that has demonstrated that it can survive in a truly free market (and surely none of those under discussion has done so), you just keep arguing as though any of them ever has."

So I have an idea: How about government stop spending money on industry, and we'll see how long it lasts. It is the nature of government to be influenced by industry, just look at how beholden BO is to the university industrial complex. It's government that is the abstract item which would not survive without compulsory donations. I don't want government to bail out the auto industry, the airline industry, or pretty much anything else. If it isn't a primary concern of government like national defense, we shouldn't be forced to spend money on it just because some evil scientist perpetrates a lie about global warming.

"God, this is like arguing with a sixth-grade math textbook given out in some polygamist compound's school."

So that would be a math book that includes the idea of infinity which soon will be stripped from public school textbooks as being too religious? We can't offend those atheist kids, their dads might sue!

"There has never in modern American history been any of those things, in any objective sense, and there never will be."

I love how Leftys think Iraq was about oil but accept it when people tell them that the Civil War was about slavery; it was as much about state's rights. And ever since the civil war the federal government gave up any pretense of allowing limited government. The Southerners were wrong on slavery, but so were those who took political advantage of their wrong to eliminate limited federal government to the detriment of the people and their individual liberties.

"There are only successful and failed policies. How about you give our guy a couple of months in office before you decide whether you like how well he's cleaning up one of the most catastrophic messes any American president has ever left another, okay?"

What's that, like cleaning up radical Islamism allowed to run rampant for a decade? If I and everybody else give your guy a couple months in office, every American pays out $3,000. That's how much the stimulus costs. If your guy would stop talking like it's the end of the world, consumer confidence would go back up, people would start buying again like they did after 9/11, and we wouldn't be in this mess. The only problem was with the banks, the toxic government mandated politician rewarding loans to people with no income, no job, and no assets. Let's fix that problem with actual benchmarks, and this would work itself out, but I know you don't want that because then you couldn't spend $3,000 of people's money for the next four years.

Posted by: Morris at February 2, 2009 10:30 AM | PERMALINK

"My qualm is with hiring anyone specifically because they're lacking in education which is what Reich recommends."

You keep insisting that MediaMatters, excerpted or otherwise, provides a shred of support for your increasingly risible assertions regarding the content of Reich's statement, while continuing to refuse to parse out exactly where he says anything resembling the things you say he says by actually quoting his language, and explaining why the ordinary rules of grammar don't apply, and your version, ungrammatical and inferred as it would necessarily have to be, is more like to be correct than the obvious one derived from the ordinary rules of grammar and usage. Until you do, there's really nothing to be said here, Morris. You're not answering the simple question: Where do _Reich's_ comments support a damned thing you're saying. That we can debate.

As for Clinton, interns and cigars is a nice response that says, "I have nothing to say on the merits."

As for government bailouts of major industries, they're passim, and either you know that or you don't, in which case read the papers for the next few years and get back to me. But beyond that, in a point I made very clear, is the fact that the auto industry would look nothing like it does without the interstate system which was financed by the federal government; the suburbs, which has provided a great market for the auto industry, would look nothing like it does without the interstates. How much do you suppose it would cost to fly if only flyers and were paying for the airports, eh, Morris? And if airlines were forced to actually run functioning businesses instead of falling back on bankruptcy and federal assistance every few years? And how many things were financed by S&L malfeasance, before we all picked up the tab on that.

WWII, which in many ways created the industrial infrastructure we know miss so sorely, was hardly a free market enterprise, so every business that went from small to big during that era did so without proving that the private market would lead to that outcome.

I'm not an economist, Morris, and I think that's as obvious about me as it is about you, but how many bailouts are you ignoring in defending our market as free? Corporate welfare is far more rampant in this country than the excesses of poverty-directed welfare you love to bemoan.

As for the rest, the only reason you're not so insulting that I stop playing, in the way that I would with an impetuous three-year-old who refuses to observe the most basic niceties, is that you're hilariously incoherent. You just spray, like so much angry spittle, derision in lieu of argument. I make a substantive point about, say, the fact that you probably can't even name the last Republican president to leave office with a balanced budget, but that Clinton is ours, who also happens to be our most recent, and you've got him in the closet with the intern. Um, okay, George didn't fuck an intern, he just fucked us. I'd prefer my presidents go for the interns in the future.

As for McDonald's coffee and the "academic industrial complex" (are we coining this, or did you just find it on newworldorder.com), boring. We had these fights ten years ago. I'm bored bored bored. Can you tell me where the McDonald's judgment ended up after appeal? Or what the specific theory of negligence was? No? Then go read a real article about the case, and get back to me when you've done your homework, because spouting Drudge headlines when you don't know what you're talking about is a waste of everyone's time.

As for the rest, good job. Whomever you're arguing with, you're clearly wiping the floor with him. And I can wait.

Posted by: moon at February 2, 2009 01:25 PM | PERMALINK

Okay, let's look at the bill:
"For an additional amount for ‘‘Buildings and Facilities’’, $209,000,000, for work on deferred maintenance at Agricultural Research Service facilities: Provided, That priority in the use of such funds shall be given to critical deferred maintenance, to projects that can be completed, and to activities that can commence promptly following enactment of this Act."

So that's 209 billion dollars for agricultural research. What does that even mean? If I worked for the government, and I wanted to spend a whole lot of money on something that I didn't want anybody to know about, I would spend it on "agricultural research." Assuming that's not the case, this is the money we're talking about, right? Green technology. Infrastructure. You point to one example, over and over again: federal roads/interstates. Those allowed current technology (cars) to move along.

But what are we talking about? Wind, right? And right now, at least where I live, wind is not stable. Sometimes it's windy. Sometimes it's not. So to your example, it would be like building an interstate system for cars that only worked when it was windy. It would be great when it was windy. But it's not windy, not windy all the time. Wind turbines in Europe vary, producing between 15 and 25 percent of their capacity. They get their production cut between a quarter and a half because dead bugs and birds (extiction of species, anyone?) or even salt builds up. And I guess you could send someone up to clean them off every once in a while, as long as it isn't windy.

And I hate to bring up the hydroelectric example here, because Hoover Dam is another great example what government can do. But building dams changes the geographical environment, so why are we to presume that providing resistance to wind by putting up a few thousand turbines will not alter weather patterns and change climates?

I'm not averse to the national security advantages of having our own energy supply. But it only keeps us secure if it's a reliable energy supply. So if we're talking natural gas infrastructure, that's one thing, we can rely on that. Nuclear energy is reliable. But I object to turning acres and acres of cropland into wind farms or switchgrass and raising food prices in the middle of a recession. The trouble is, the stimulus gives Obama complete discretion over how to spend this money; you trust him, I do not, so I want accountability.

As to your next point, I feel like you're debating with the wind just to make your points. I'm not making the case that America today is a free market, I think you're absolutely right that industry is in bed with government. I'm not comfortable with it, and the recent ethical troubles of so many Democratic politicians who think they're above the law just add to my cynicism. So why don't we change that? Oh yeah, McCain tried by running on public money, but Obama didn't want to give up his hundreds of millions, including from technology PACs like Microsoft, and, what do you know? There's $245 million in the stimulus to modernize information technology. Curious coincidence, eh?

It makes as much sense as putting $22 billion dollars in there to pay down on people's housing principal for section 502 loans. Section 502 loans are for people who can't pay their bills. So I just shelled out $75 bucks, like every other American, so that someone without a job doesn't have to pay for the value of the home in which they're living. Nice, but you'd think Obama would at least kiss me first. Now look who's riding dirty on the back of the American taxpayer!

And I'm sorry if the plight of the American taxpayer doesn't interest you any more than the plight of someone who wants to pay their own way through school. I guess they should have thought about how they could pay for tuition before they had dreams, eh? It is clear that your appetite form minutia has not brought you to read the 374 page stimulus bill, because had you read it, you would know it's not a stimulus bill. Very little of the money goes to the infrastructure program we've been debating as compared to the whole mass of it. Half a billion here, half a billion there, and it's all gone, to the NEA, universities, and any and everyone else with their hand out. I wonder what we'll have to show for it, especially in a few decades when we're waiting for our social security checks; we might need that trillion dollars then.

Posted by: Morris at February 3, 2009 01:29 AM | PERMALINK

You should read something about wind that comes from a non-ideological source. That it doesn't run at capacity hardly is conclusive of whether it's a useful source of energy; our nuclear reactors seldom run at 100%, either. No one has suggested that wind will be our only, or even our primary source of power, but for every megawatt it creates, that's one less we have to burn carbon for, and that's desirable. It also prolongs the existing supply of fossil fuels for applications that really can't be avoided. And it will be more effective when we improve the grid, which is woefully inadequate to modern needs, bleeds off more than half the energy we produce in transit, and shackles us to a fifty-year-old power generation paradigm. And don't worry, the grid will generate at least a few jobs for skilled white folks, albeit probably not the skilled white folks who electrocuted a couple hundred American soldiers.

By the way, that's $209 million, not billion (even assuming you've quoted it correctly, and given how you've dealt with the Reich matter (which, notably, you finally dropped), I assume no such thing), and that's less than they allocated to the bridge to nowhere for little Annie Oakley up there in the Socialist Republic of Alaska to serve 32 god-fearing Republicans.

I'm pretty sure that's not a deal breaker for me, and anyway isn't it the GOP that gets all hot and bothered about farmers anyway, even as they let ADM keep its hands in their pockets. Really, $209M is a lot less than American farmers need at this point.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure you don't want to start scouring pork line by line, unless you're prepared to abandon pretty much you're whole party, because all your favorite folks on the right have their hands in the same cookie jar. Citing one line you think serves your side is sort of like castigating ethics violations by Democrats; the GOP has had its share, Morris, when it's not in airport restrooms sinning.

Unless you're willing to repudiate Bush and all his little dwarfs in Congress, and just about everything they've done in the last eight years, you really don't get to bitch about pork, ethics, transparency, deficit spending, or constitutional violations. Obama has a long way to go before he equals Bush in any of those regards.

Posted by: moon at February 3, 2009 11:08 AM | PERMALINK

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