The failure which was Reagan...in chart form!!

[CaptainHaplo]

As compared to one of the Worst "worst" Presidents we have seen. I mean - for god sake - the man started refering to Jimmy Carter the other night - which if you lefties were alive back then, you might remember as the peanut farmer that was chased by the "swimming communist assassin rabbit"!

Lets compare O to some great presidents - shall we?

Abraham Lincoln - "freed" the slaves (or so claims history).
Barack Obama - Freeing americans from jobs everywhere.

Franklin D. Roosevelt - Acted to reverse the Great Depression (though many scholars feel the New Deal actually exacerbated the matter)
Barack Obama - Acting to insure that America goes through another Depression

Oh - want to bring in Ronald Reagan? Ok....

Ronald Reagan wrote many of his own speeches
Barack Obama can't even memorize what is written for him - as the failing teleprompter has shown us all....

So far the left has done nothing to help this country in any meaningful ways.

The borders are still not secure.
We are another 12 Trillion in debt.
The wars that the Chosen One was going to end - haven't.
Gitmo is still open.
How many days has oil been going into the gulf and Obama has done nothing but castigate big business and ask "whose ass should I kick".....
Oh - and use this as a way to push for cap and trade energy taxes.....
Unemployment is running at or near double digits (which it will be well over once they adjust for seasonal).

Sorry - you've had 2 years - and you have accomplished nothing of note. Your time is drawing to a close. Its June - you have less than 5 months before your thrown out of office.

[nikimcbee]

[UnderseaLcpl]

I like that analysis. It's a pretty good example of how you can make statistics say anything you want. I haven't been a fan of the Reagan administration since I divorced myself from the Republican party some years ago, but even I know that some of the conclusions demonstrated there are false. The problem stems from putting unrelated data together or assuming that two things are related when there may be other factors involved.

For instance, I find it hard to believe that the decrease in US personal savings of 6.2% can be attributed solely to a 5.5% increase of concentration of wealth at the top betwen 1982 and 1992 when US median income rose by only .94% while inflation devalued money at an average rate of 5% per year in the same time period. Seems to me like maybe the fact that rich people can edure inflation more handily than average households, but again we are missing too much data. We'd need to know a lot of other things, including how much the GDP varied (it was positive) and what percentage of that was due to government spending and a million other things before we could find the real correalations, and even people who spend their lives doing that still disagree.

I try to put my faith in simpler equations, without politics, where less can go wrong, such as in the corelation between inflation, government spending, and economic growth. That decision is what made me leave the Reps. They're just as bad as the Dems when it comes to that kind of stuff, and worse during recent wars.

Economics and blame games aside, this was my favorite part of the submission, though the "needed changes" part gives me the willies. You'll tell me what I need? I think not.

But entrenched interests use their wealth and power to keep us from making needed changes

Sure they do, but who gave them that power? I didn't give it to them when I chose not to buy Shell gasoline because the Exxon across the street was cheaper. Exxon didn't entrench itself or abuse its wealth all on its own. Big companies have the power to entrench themselves because the state gave it to them through its own misguided intentions. I'll spare everyone the details of how that works, since I never shutup about the subject.

Speaking of subjects, as in same, what entity is more entrenched, powerful, and wealthy than the state? People have been complaining about government doing everything wrong on both sides of the aisle since time immemorial, and yet we are farther from changing it now than we have ever been. Too bad we can't make a quantified overlay graph about that. We might quit alternating blame between the horse's mouth and the horse's butt.

[krashkart]

Originally Posted by UnderseaLcpl

Speaking of subjects, as in same, what entity is more entrenched, powerful, and wealthy than the state? People have been complaining about government doing everything wrong on both sides of the aisle since time immemorial, and yet we are farther from changing it now than we have ever been. Too bad we can't make a quantified overlay graph about that. We might quit alternating blame between the horse's mouth and the horse's butt.

Touche.

Jesus! Now they're blaming Reagan?!

What happened? Did you realize that you were playing the, "It's Bush's fault" card too much?

[Skybird]

The author argues by setting up a correlation, so to speak, between "who held the presidency" and several trends in fiscal, economic, social developements. But a causal link can only be established if one also examines what political body (president/government, congre´ss) made what decisions at that time.

He must not be wrong (in fact I think by direction he isn pointing at he is not), but his argument is vulnerable if he leaves it to just looking at who was president and ignores what happened in congress - what party dominated it, and what they did agree to and what did they reject.

As I see it, congress and president were (and are) sometimes partners in crime, sometimes went on on different ways which both were hurtful to the nation and thus hacked away at it from two independent positions at the same time, in a case of coincidence.

A general, underlying typical cultural climate (in case of America for example excessive spending, no private saving of households, taking low price oil for granted, not to mention weapons possession), are long-term factors that are robustly anchored in a people's mentality and hardly are to be affected by just one or two presidential terms or congress periodes. such things do not change from one day to the next, but need decades if not generations to change. As long as they have not changed, new laws and legislation enforcing changes of such "paradigms" of ways of living will be challenged by many people, mostly over "guts' feeling" and irratitional motives and a basic human resistence to changes of known living conditions one has become familiar with, but sometimes over correctly pointing out flaws in the new laws' design and their implication. Man is a creature of habit.

Change is hard to be brought to people. Obama currently learns that lesson. Let people feel pain from deciding wrong. when it becomes more than they can bear, they change all by themselves, and quickly.

It's just that then so very often it already is too late.

We are too many damn people on this planet.

[gimpy117]

Originally Posted by CaptainHaplo

Oh - want to bring in Ronald Reagan? Ok....

Ronald Reagan wrote many of his own speeches
Barack Obama can't even memorize what is written for him - as the failing teleprompter has shown us all....

So far the left has done nothing to help this country in any meaningful ways.


Sorry - you've had 2 years - and you have accomplished nothing of note. Your time is drawing to a close. Its June - you have less than 5 months before your thrown out of office.

Oh im glad Regan could write his own speeches while he screwed over our country and sold out the working class.

And what has the GOP done that is worthwhile for America? NOTHING!
they sat idly by while our economy melted down, Got us into 2 wars, destroyed our public image, ran the deficit up, Let our schools go all to hell, Passed laws limiting our civil liberties. and so on.

Sorry if it's taking to long to fix all the GOP mistakes. It would be easier with some cooperation from the people who did all this.

[CaptainHaplo]

Originally Posted by gimpy117

Oh im glad Regan could write his own speeches while he screwed over our country and sold out the working class.

And what has the GOP done that is worthwhile for America? NOTHING!
they sat idly by while our economy melted down, Got us into 2 wars, destroyed our public image, ran the deficit up, Let our schools go all to hell, Passed laws limiting our civil liberties. and so on.

Sorry if it's taking to long to fix all the GOP mistakes. It would be easier with some cooperation from the people who did all this.

Nice - throw mud at the other guy, while ignoring the reality that the Dems have failed by the following:
The borders are still not secure.
We are another 12 Trillion in debt.
The wars that the Chosen One was going to end - haven't.
Gitmo is still open.
How many days has oil been going into the gulf and Obama has done nothing but castigate big business and ask "whose ass should I kick".....
Oh - and use this as a way to push for cap and trade energy taxes.....
Unemployment is running at or near double digits (which it will be well over once they adjust for seasonal).

Remember that second "bailout" - it was going to keep unemployment under 8% - total failure.....
Though I do need to correct it - its not 12 Trillion in new debt. Its more like 2.5 Trillion.
Gitmo - still open.
Wars - still going.
Oil - still spilling.
Borders - still not secure.
Unemployment - still too high.

So ok - lets rephrase the question....

In the nearly 2 years the Dems have had power in BOTH Congress and the presidency - what have you actually accomplished?

A health care bill the majority of Americans don't support (note that O is STILL pitching it in speeches) and is likely to get heavily modified if not overturned next Congress.

That's it. That's your "one big accomplishment" - something most people didn't want to start with.

Well, unless of course you want to say blaming Bush is an accomplishment.....

So I will ask again :

In the nearly 2 years the Dems have had power in BOTH Congress and the presidency - what have you actually accomplished that demonstrates to the American people they should re-elect you and keep you in power?

[August]

Originally Posted by CaptainHaplo

Nice - throw mud at the other guy, while ignoring the reality that the Dems have failed by the following:
The borders are still not secure.
We are another 12 Trillion in debt.
The wars that the Chosen One was going to end - haven't.
Gitmo is still open.
How many days has oil been going into the gulf and Obama has done nothing but castigate big business and ask "whose ass should I kick".....
Oh - and use this as a way to push for cap and trade energy taxes.....
Unemployment is running at or near double digits (which it will be well over once they adjust for seasonal).

Remember that second "bailout" - it was going to keep unemployment under 8% - total failure.....
Though I do need to correct it - its not 12 Trillion in new debt. Its more like 2.5 Trillion.
Gitmo - still open.
Wars - still going.
Oil - still spilling.
Borders - still not secure.
Unemployment - still too high.

So ok - lets rephrase the question....

In the nearly 2 years the Dems have had power in BOTH Congress and the presidency - what have you actually accomplished?

A health care bill the majority of Americans don't support (note that O is STILL pitching it in speeches) and is likely to get heavily modified if not overturned next Congress.

That's it. That's your "one big accomplishment" - something most people didn't want to start with.

Well, unless of course you want to say blaming Bush is an accomplishment.....

So I will ask again :

In the nearly 2 years the Dems have had power in BOTH Congress and the presidency - what have you actually accomplished that demonstrates to the American people they should re-elect you and keep you in power?

Apparently they don't have much of an answer to your post Hap.

Originally Posted by CaptainHaplo

As compared to one of the Worst "worst" Presidents we have seen. I mean - for god sake - the man started refering to Jimmy Carter the other night - which if you lefties were alive back then, you might remember as the peanut farmer that was chased by the "swimming communist assassin rabbit"!

Jimmy Carter rabbit incident

Never heard of that, funny stuff. Btw, it wasn't a harmless little bunny, it was a mean swamp rabbit making an amphibious assault.