The end of the Cold War was much more Gorbachev's doing than Reagan's. Reagan did do a good job of piling on debt to spend the USSR into submission, though.
Tax reform is a mixed bag. The first round of tax cuts and loophole closures worked as advertised but the idiots Reagan surrounded himself with decided that political expediency was more important than sound policy and began to shout "Cut taxes" as the answer to every economic problem. This resulted in a structural deficit that took 2 decades for us to begin to address. Then we got W. Bush, Reagan with a hard on, and the real trouble began.
The stagflation of the 70s and early 80s was due to the completely inept job done by Arthur Burns (appointed by Nixon) at the Fed and the oil embargo. Reagan did absolutely nothing to address those issues except follow a Keynesian plan of stimulating the economy with deficit spending. The person most responsible for dealing with stagflation was Paul Volker at the Fed (appointed by Jimmy Carter).
The best thing Reagan did, although he just made shit up when he talked about it, was get people to focus on the failure of our social welfare system in serving the needs of the poor.
I thought you were a fiscal conservative? How do you find a way to support the president who abdicated the budget making process to congress and decided that deficits don't matter?
I am seriously considering not voting in the next election. I have a serious personal dislike of my home state senator ( Harry Reid ), due to the fact that he comes across as a senile creep & also he's been in the Senate FAR too long. His likely GOP opponent is no better: Sue Lowden, a typical right wing corporate shill. ( tho a VERY hot MILF------
) The choices for the congressional seat in my district are similarly
inane.
For me, situation is analogous to the '84 POTUS race; 2 of the worst choices EVER: Ronald ( Alzheimer ) Reagan & Walter ( pussy )Mondale. In my lifetime, Mondale was the worst Dem canbdidate ever. I couldn't bring myself to vote for either candidate. But, at least then, I could vote for the congressional candidates.
I was thinking this time of possibly voting for 3rd party candidates, but, wouldn't that be equivalent of throwing my vote away ?
Thoughts ?
...by not voting.
As I often said when I voted for Nader, I'd rather vote for something I want and not get it, than vote for something I don't want and get it.
Just know that if you vote for a 3rd party candidate your guy won't win.
I think in your case, I would vote for a Green Party candidate. At least that would send the local Democratic party a message that their candidate should be less of a pussy. It helps to send them a letter (do NOT send an email), or to call their office, and tell them why you're voting the way you are.
I fully expect to be in a similar position come 2012. I will not vote for Obama under any imaginable circumstances, yet I fear that the GOP will nominate someone like Palin, not her specifically, but someone like her, in which case I will probably stay home on election day.
Unlike Willy, whose answer to a ultra left winger is to go even further into the lunatic fringe, mainstream voters like myself have no third party candidates to vote for.
...a Libertarian candidate? It would seem to me, that those guys would be ideal for you.
And with the Libertarian Party, there's even a chance that it could replace the GOP as one of the major political parties. By voting for them, you could help make that happen.
than the two major parties they are trying to supplant. Not to mention the "wacko factor" lol
If the Libertarians can ever get their act together, I may become one of their biggest supporters. In the meantime, it's still race after race between a giant douche and a turd sandwich. Sometimes both candidates are so loathesome, it's impossible to pull the lever for either one of them. This is what I fear in 2012.
I'm disappointed.
-- Modified on 4/9/2010 6:07:42 PM
"Bonzo" was the most ludicrously overrated POTUS of the 20th century.
best President of recent memory.
The man led with an iron hand and protected this country better than any President in the 20th century.
You have your opinion and I have mine. But if you're going to make disrespectful remarks about President Reagan, then I am going to post my own feelings.
by any President that turned the world's leading creditor nation in the world into the world's leading debtor nation while dismantling our industrial infrastructure in the process, and giving us double digit unemployment rates for the first time since The Great Depression I consider to be an utterly failed President.
beyond the usual "You're stupid!" from those on the right.
It is an irrefutable fact that in 1980 the USA was the #1 creditor nation in the world. It is an irrefutable fact that today we are the #1 debtor nation in the world. It is an irrefutable fact that 84% of the massive debt we have incurred was the result of 3 Republicans who presided over $9.67 trillion in new debt. Ronald Reagan was an addled buffoon who looked good and knew how to deliver lines - and he began the destruction this once great nation.
Because all these facts are irrefutable the Choir here will now chime in with personal attacks and attempts at misdirection - anything but addressing these facts, acknowledging them and taking responsibility for correcting them.
They just aren't wired that way.
as opposed to the utter hogwash illustrated in the photo of your earlier post.
It’s very interesting (as well as disingenuous) as to how you and your source go about the analysis though. You somewhat accurately relate actual debt figures for the three Republican Presidents, yet switch gears to budget numbers in order to ignore the roughly 1.53 Trillion in debt that Clinton (and the Republican Congress) contributed. During Clinton, due in large part to tremendous pressure from the Republicans (back when they had some cojones) the deficit trajectory was indeed bent. For the record I abhorred the spending of GWB and the 2nd generation Republican Congress then and and still do now.
Another interesting fact is how Presidents are examined in a vacuum when it suits the partisan purpose yet reality requires a greater continuum by examining the short and long term conditions leading up to a Presidential term. This is something Obama has been very vocal reminding us about. Of course if you like ignoring preceding aspects and also sticking with budgets, how about you give us a detailed report on how Obama and the Democrats have a projected debt that will more than double again over the next 10 years. What are the odds that when that time comes, years from now, you and the Dems will still be blaming Bush?
I'm glad you agree that it can't be examined in a vaccum - here's the skinny on that:
"Office of Management and Budget director Peter Orszag started off a briefing for reporters by saying Obama's White House had inherited two different $1 trillion deficits from Bush. The first one, caused by the crumbling economy, represented the difference between what the country's economic output should be and what it will be this year; the second was the actual federal budget deficit left by the previous administration. If the government simply stuck to Bush's policies for the next 10 years, Orszag said, the deficit would eventually reach $9 trillion."
The short answer is that bringing up the 1.53 trillion from Clinton's years (while completely ignoring the surplus at the end - the first balanced budget in living memory) is disingenuous at best. From the previously cited link:
"Obviously, it should be noted that there were surplus budgets in Clinton's last years - in conjunction with a Republican Congress - and by the time Clinton left office, the Congressional Budget Office projected a $4.6 trillion surplus for the years 2000-2010. There was a real possibility that the debt could be entirely paid off and the looming crises in Social Security and Medicare could be addressed as the debate leading up to the 2000 election involved how to spend the surplus."
Three Republican presidents fucked this nation into a cocked hat - and this party offers only more of the same while striving manfully to tear down this President in any way they can.
-- Modified on 4/10/2010 2:13:21 PM
You are still confusing budgets with real money. Clinton never realized a true surplus. What you speak of were only projections. During his last year the deficit was small by comparison (18 Billion) but it was always in the hole. The last truly balanced budget covering all national budget items was the fiscal year ending in 1957.
As far as your new points, It should be noted that roughly half of Bush’s extra spending in 2008 due to TARP has mostly been repaid, but what has Obama done with the money? Spent it again, making claims akin to the idea that it was free money.
Just like OMB’s projection in 2000 were inane, so too were the 2008 ones based on Bush policies. So while Bush was giving us $500 billion deficits as far as the eye could see, we now have Obama deficits projected (by the Congressional Budget Office) to reduce to MAYBE $600 billion in 2012 only to then begin skyrocketing back to $1.2 trillion in 2019.
Wouldn’t we as a whole be far better off debating what’s likely or not to happen under Obama than to keep playing what ifs about Bush?
If you never admit to taking a wrong turn you can never find your way. Those are not what ifs - recognizing Bush's colossal criminality and incompetence is necessary to discredit the remaining criminals - on both sides of the aisle - who would rape and pillage what little is left.
"Just two policies dating from the Bush Administration — tax cuts and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — accounted for over $500 billion of the deficit in 2009 and will account for almost $7 trillion in deficits in 2009 through 2019, including the associated debt-service costs. (The prescription drug benefit enacted in 2003 accounts for further substantial increases in deficits and debt, which we are unable to quantify due to data limitations.) These impacts easily dwarf the stimulus and financial rescues. Furthermore, unlike those temporary costs, these inherited policies (especially the tax cuts and the drug benefit) do not fade away as the economy recovers."
Obama is not working in a vacuum. He has a lot of shit to clean up.
-- Modified on 4/10/2010 3:49:23 PM
The intellectual lazy "what if" was proclaiming the deficit would otherwise reach $9 trillion. Your confusion was your still unacknowledged or at best unexplained mixing of budget projections with actual deficit and debt. Now you want to talk about what the monies were spent on, fine if you like.
You clearly believe that racking up another $10 trillion in debt to "clean up" $12 trillion of debt is an appropriate venture. Now we know.
The original premise here - Ronald Reagan was a lousy president - the first of 3 who were between them responsible for 84% of the National Debt. He took a nation that was the largest creditor and set it on the road to becoming the largest debtor - a job slowed by Clinton but finished by the Bush's.
You try to sidestep that - but you cannot refute it. Your other points are for another discussion. Start a new thread and I'll play.
Reagan was a hack who was used by men far smarter than he was. He was a failure at everything but making people feel good.
I didn’t post any remarks to the original premise here. I posted in response to your hogwash picture and to the numerical mistakes made. I don’t disparage your civil opinion of Reagan, Bush I and Bush II. I even agree a bit about GWB (and already stated so above.)
You’ve come a long way this weekend from that silly little picture you posted claiming, among other inane things, that Reagan that was “horrible excuse for a human being” while nearly simultaneously claiming it would be the right to retort with simple name calling.
-- Modified on 4/10/2010 6:20:57 PM
as said earlier, both FDR & Reagan were highly rated POTUS's according to 3 recent surveys conducted by The Wall St Journal, The Times of London & C-span. FDR came in at #3, while RR averaged between #6-10.
Despite this, FDR has been reviled by the right &
RR by the left.
As I said earlier, opinions on POTUS's vary according to ideology.
Idealogy steers our opinions.
And I think it is a waste of time to argue over the merits of a past President by budget numbers, deficit numbers and anything else that can be manipulated to make any side look correct.
If we are going to discuss past Presidents, I feel we should discuss their character, their leadership, their presence, their styles, etc.
Budget numbers and deficit numbers from 30 years ago, let alone from FDR's time in the 30's and 40's, are of no consequence now.
Both FDR and Reagan were popular, outstanding leaders that brought America together. they dominated their time in the White House and beat their opponents soundly in their elections, which truly is a good gauge of their popularity and the respect that Americans -- from both parties -- had for them.
This constant name-calling and arguing over the merits of leaders no longer with us does not accomplish anything.
My view point is this. If the two of them were so bad (as some on each side of the fence may say), then they surely fooled the American public who elected them by huge margins.
Simply put, regardless of party affiliation, both were great Presidents and both served America well.
I only stepped in here to counter the revulsion I had for the Reagan picture. When things finally came back to some fact based discussion, I merely pointed out irregularities and bias in the numbers. I don’t believe I even defended Reagan or GHWB. Quite the contrary, I agreed about GWB more so than any defense I made of Reagan.
A blatantly idiotic rambling of statements including:
"Horribe excuse for a human being"
"Dumb as a stump"
"Believed in astrology and used it to run government"
"Confused movies with reality"
"Outlawed Russia forever, started bombing in five minutes"
That was Xfean or TJ worthy. Why are you encouraging this crap?
That statement is more complete and more intellectually honest and more meaningful than anything in the picture.
much justification to bitch and moan about those I voted for, and against.
in California I've got Boxer vs Fiorina. The quality of existing politicians and candidates is piss poor. I doubt it will change anytime soon. I look at Boxer with the same disdain as I do for Pelois. But then I look at Fiorina and her gaffes when campaigning for McCain, plus her inept leadership at HP, and my choice sucks. So I bite my tongue, and I will vote for the issues that are important to me, even if I'm relying on an inept asshole to vote a certain way.
So, if things like card check, cap & trade, higher taxes for the rich, Stevens replacement, etc are important to you, you may have to suck it up and vote for Reid. I on the other hand am against the above, and will unfortunately vote for one of the worst CEO's I've ever seen, except for some of the guys at Enron, Worldcom, Adelphia, etc.
Vote for your self-interest
I don't agree about Harry Reid or Mondale but I'll not comment further about that.
I have not seen an election in the US that only had one office on the ballot. Besides the federal offices (House of Reps, Senate, and when up President), I have a number of state, county, city, and judges to select in elections in my state. Often their is also an amendment to the state Constitution that must be voted on. I understand you may not like the candidates for Senate, but how about the other offices that are up?
Don't skip the election, maybe skip voting for that one office but not the entire election.
for exactly that reason.
at this time, i have become so discouraged and cynical wrt the election process, i no longer see the point.
regardless of who we vote for, the same backroom powerbrokers are the ones pulling the strings.
i used to vote my conscience, and havent voted for a mainstream candidate since 2000 when my vote was invalidated by the Supreme Court's annointing of King George III, er pardon me, George W. Bush as Poppy's Puppet, er, i mean President of the United States.
My vote means nothing. so i eill no longer vote unless a really superb candidate comes along i can believe in.
But the sad truth is, the last candidates I REALLY believed in, were Hubert Humphrey in 1972, and Governor Jerry Brown in 1976.
The only thing that hasn't been decided already in the next election, is which puppet to install in office. The brainless bimbo or the corporate clown.
In some countries, voting is the law and you can be fined, etc. for not voting. Thankfully, that is not the case in US, and never should be.
Your one vote in the election has even less weight than your posts on the board here. ('your posts' being generically applied to anyone here, not just you personally.) When you post here, maybe you convince a few others in one direction (most likely not). When you vote, its a pebble of sand on the beach. Totally unnoticed if that one pebble is there or removed.
Sure voting for a 3rd party candidate is throwing away your vote, but so is voting for one of the major party candidates. You don't really expect your vote to secure Reid's re-election, or cost him his seat, do you?
Voting is a "responsibility"!
... you can choose to exercise it. Or Not.
If you exercise it, then you have every right to bitch and moan about the state of affaires.
If you don't, then you should just shut the fuck up.
But not everyone has the priviledge to vote.
Ask women in the 19th century, or blacks in the 20th century, or convicted felons etc.
The fact our voting system is an anachronism that is too broken and corrupted to be even remotely trustworthy (Diebold my ass) merely frustrates those of us who care and can see past the rhetoric and the partisan spin.
and leaves us with scenarios like the Supreme Court invalidating every single vote in the country, leaving it in the hands of 9 people, several of whom had been put there by the father of one of the candidates.
And that is precisely why I will not be voting in the next Federal election. And why as of that date, i will no longer be posting in this forum unless my name appears in Red.
While I was totally opposed to him when he first ran and believed he was an intellectual lightweight, you can't deny that he had a fairly successful 8 years as president.
It may well be that for that position, it is better to have a core philosophy that you always adhere to and let all policy decisions derive from that, rather than try to be policy specific a la Carter and Obama.
NO President should govern based upon a core philosophy. Rather, they should do what they're supposed to do. Act of the SERVANT of the People. Give the People what they want and what they need, while protecting and defending the US Constitution. That is the primary directive. The office shouldn't be used as a springboard for anyone's personal agenda, and that's precisely what Reagan did. I consider that to be bordering on criminal.
during the campaign.
The voters presume that decisions made in office will derive from this core philosophy -lower taxes, decrease social programs, increase defense spending - so when a president sticks to his philosophy in making specific decisions, he is doing what the voters elected him to do.
I agree that a personal agenda should not be employed, except to the extent it is consistent with what the president promised to do. We knew Mr. Obama was committed to health care reform, although we do not really need it now, and that he erroneously had decided we must win in Afghanistan, so we can't complain that he is carrying out his personal though misguided agenda.
for political/history junkies, their opinion re a POTUS is quite subjective according to ideology
( exceptions can be made for 4 Great POTUS's found on Mt Rushmore, but even they have their detractors ).
Case in point for 2 highly regarded POTUS's :FDR is reviled by conservatives,while RR is depised by liberals.
As for "Bonzo's fairly successful 8 years", I would dispute that with massive federal deficits he ran up, the Beirut Barracks bombing, where 300 Marines were killed & RR "turned tail " & Iran-Contra.
The end of the Cold War, which didn't just happen under his watch, it was ended by his actions. The tax reform act of 1984, which contrary to Willy's warped way of thinking, closed more loopholes and put more fairness into our tax code than ever before. The end of double digit inflation/interest/unemployment, and the ushering in of 20 years of prosperity. The list goes on and on, but I am sure you and the rest of the libs won't give him credit for any of the good he did.
The end of the Cold War was much more Gorbachev's doing than Reagan's. Reagan did do a good job of piling on debt to spend the USSR into submission, though.
Tax reform is a mixed bag. The first round of tax cuts and loophole closures worked as advertised but the idiots Reagan surrounded himself with decided that political expediency was more important than sound policy and began to shout "Cut taxes" as the answer to every economic problem. This resulted in a structural deficit that took 2 decades for us to begin to address. Then we got W. Bush, Reagan with a hard on, and the real trouble began.
The stagflation of the 70s and early 80s was due to the completely inept job done by Arthur Burns (appointed by Nixon) at the Fed and the oil embargo. Reagan did absolutely nothing to address those issues except follow a Keynesian plan of stimulating the economy with deficit spending. The person most responsible for dealing with stagflation was Paul Volker at the Fed (appointed by Jimmy Carter).
The best thing Reagan did, although he just made shit up when he talked about it, was get people to focus on the failure of our social welfare system in serving the needs of the poor.
I thought you were a fiscal conservative? How do you find a way to support the president who abdicated the budget making process to congress and decided that deficits don't matter?
chocolate cake. You can't just say -Umm I like it - and justify your opinion that way. You have to go deeper than the icing and see what really lies underneath.
The Beirut bombing was a tragedy but not one you can trace to a Reagan policy decision, Iran Contract was de minimus, and I would trade the deficits any day for the acceleration of the fall of the Soviet Union.
As much as I always oppose spending more money on bombs and WMD, I was wrong this one time bc his decisions really did play a role.
Now come on, admit it, RR had at least a :"fairly successful" 8 years in office.
And btw, from what I hear, you need to cut down on the chocolate cake as well.
I've never gone to a M&G, so you have no idea what I look like. Only person you could get that info from is my ATF------& she's not talking---
besides, she's outta yer league-----LMAO !
& what---during 2 hour session, you're a "6" pop man ?---no time for talk ?!-----gimme a break !----------LOL !
Mary, despite you being vague about your "background" & "snowing" DocG, I have you "figured out"-------------
definitely getting a clear picture of you:
"Oh Baby Oh,Oh....what's your view on interest rates? Oh!!!!!!!!!!!!"
First, do I WANT to vote for one of the candidates?
If not, then do I just want to vote against one to keep them out of office (do no harm).
If there isn't something reasonably clear on either side, it may be an option. I do not see randomly picking one over the other, just because, as good citizenship. For me, unfortunately, I am usually picking the lessor of two evils.
The other thing to consider, is if they are elected, how much can they actually do. Much of the harm gets done when there is a common majority of one party in the Executive & Legislative branches (think early Bush-II years).
Then they have carte blanche.