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Originally Posted by chrispedersen
Jim, once again someone in here throws out the term of fascism. Once again I will throw out the definition of fascism, and ask you not to not to bandy about such insulting terms.
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I said "borders on", not "equates to". The relationship is not direct, but there are similarities in the methods, and in the speeches of our right-wing politicians, and others who are blatantly fascist.
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Originally Posted by chrispedersen
Why is it Jim that those on the opposite side feel free to bandy about such offenseive terms. How would you feel about it if I said we were closer to a fascist state now that Obama your saviour is in power, since we now have a monolithic congress and presidency- and since we will certainly have more government programs and controls.
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Well it just feels like you intentionally misunderstood my statement, and now are using that misunderstanding to try to upset me. Well it won't work, because first, if you call Obama -my- savior, then it just makes me feel like you aren't paying attention, as I've stated multiple times that I don't think Obama has "the answers". However, I feel that math alone shows that McCain can not be trusted with the Presidency, especially in such a difficult time as Georgie Bush has led us to.
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Originally Posted by chrispedersen
I have no need to demonize carter. He was such a miserable president that the republicans won the biggest landslide ever after him, scoring 525 electoral college votes in 1984.
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I'm pretty sure that Reagan defeated Carter in 1980..... Mondale wasn't cut out to be President, I'm certainly not going to defend him.
Quote:
Originally Posted by chrispedersen
Jim, again I don't see why you can't disagree without being disagreeable. I don't call liberals abominations. Clinton used the IRS to investigate his political opponents - that doesn't make all democrats abominations.
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The neo-con movement tries in a multitude of ways, to subvert the spirit of America, while denouncing anyone who disagrees as "unAmerican". I'll go into more detail if you wish to share that you claim yourself as neo-con, and maybe we can discuss the relative merits of the movement. From what I can see now, it is truly poisonous to the prosperity of America, and it leads to Presidents like Bush, and the idolization of said Presidents.
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Originally Posted by chrispedersen
We all hopefully share a love of country, and desire everyone in our nation to prosper. We all have different ideas on the best path to that. I would be *MORE* than happy to allow a lot of experimentation in government programs *if* they were allowed to fail if they achieved no results. Ie., you want a program to increase literacy? Fine. Lets pilot test it. And if it works, and is more cost effective than other programs -we'll expand the program. But if it doesn't work.. it *dies*. No further funding. Clearly defined goals. Clearly defined targets. Clearly defined success or failure.
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Hey, it's a good point. Unfortunately, our governmental system doesn't support that sort of empirical testing of programs. No President is guaranteed to be in office for more than 4 years, so if they want to accomplish something, that's how long they have. If it takes 1 year to plan out the initiatives, you are looking at a maximum of 3 years to implement the plans, gather data, interpret the data, and then plan and implement the final program. Given a guarantee of 8 years it would be more simple, but no one is going to win a re-election off of "well organized testing". That is to say, if those pilot projects are still in progress, and no final determination has been made, no plans set before Congress, and nothing actually substantial accomplished - the American people will likely want someone new.
I'm a "standing on the shoulders of giants" type of guy, in such things. We have numerous socialized/universal health care programs in active use in different countries, that are for the most part far larger than any test group that we would organize. In this particular case, I agree with (was it ICH?) whoever it was that said we could probably look at these systems, and use that knowledge to build our own system, far faster than if we reinvented it from scratch.
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Originally Posted by chrispedersen
I think liberals believe that the goernment is or should be the shining focus of what america is. America is great because we have laws against wiretaps, america is great because we spend 1 trillion dollars on welfare programs.
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I suppose I can see how you might feel that way - but it makes me wonder how many liberals you know in person? The way that I look at it, is this - the larger any collection of people becomes, the larger their logistical problems become. Say we have 100 people licing on an island, and 1 is a doctor. Well, you have a problem, you walk over and talk to the doctor. He doesn't complain about pay, because he is clothed, and fed, and supported. He does his job for the community, and everyone does what they do, and take care of eachother. Expand that to 1000 with 10 doctors. At this point, you probably want to make an appointment before you visit the doc, maybe call around and see if one isn't busy. At this point, he has to do the same thing as well, he has to go chasing after the things that he needs, to make sure he isn't lost in the shuffle. Now, extrapolate that out to a population of 300mil+. Our world is insanely complex and impersonal. The only way that we can achieve any level of efficiency in a system this large, is to organize it. Granted, there is always going to be a tug-of-war between the efficiency gained from organizing a system, and the efficiency lost in creating larger and larger infrastructure to handle the load.
It is because of that coefficient, that I actually believe states should handle most things. But the Federal Government is very pervasive, and intrudes on my life in many ways, and demands an awful lot of money. It is my feeling that if the government is going to be so voracious, that it needs to learn how to perform tasks worthy of that sort of investment - otherwise, we would be better off in many ways, without such a large nation (that is to say, at our government's current level of efficiency, I very much feel that Oregon's 3 million people would have a higher standard of living as a sovereign nation-state).
Yes, our government is quite corrupt, and irresponsible. I honestly do not think that either of the dominant political parties is on the right track as to how to fix it - possibly because so many of them are corrupt, why would they WANT to fix it?
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Originally Posted by chrispedersen
Exactly when were you calling the middle east stable..
during the arab israeli war of the 60's? The oil embargo of the 70's? The Kuwait/Iraq/Iran wars of the 80s? The Israeli/palestinian intidefada?
See, if you read Kissinger's book diplomacy, it documents instability in the area dating back - oh well long before Reagan.
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Look, I didn't say that the Middle East was stable before Reagan. However, of significant note, we did aid Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war. We will never know if we might have had better luck negotiating with Iran now, had we not made that choice, nor will we ever know how much weaker Iraq might have been, and thus perhaps not looked like someone we needed to spend a trillion dollars to occupy.....
Reagan did almost break the 10% unemployment , here is the link to the Bureau of labor statistics.
http://data.bls.gov/PDQ/servlet/Surv...ds=Annual+Data
Jim you may be too young to remember it - but the term the misery index was coined during the carter years because of how crappy the economy was doing. Unemployment + inflaction of 20.7 percent.
Yes, regan inherited a crappy situation - but at the end of his first term, the misery index was 11.8 - and lower at the end of his second term. When he arrived in office unemployment was 7.2% - when he left it was 5.5%.[/quote]
Carter's highest unemployment was 7.7%, Reagan's was 9.7%. The spike in inflation rate
http://www.miseryindex.us/irbyyear.asp clearly began under Ford. While I will cut Carter little slack for being unable to bring it under control (neither did the voting public), it is obvious that he did not cause the problem, he simply failed to solve it. Oh and a footnote, the Misery Index was devised before Carter, he referenced it during his campaign, to shift public opinion away from Ford.
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Originally Posted by chrispedersen
I'm not going to respond to every fallacy, but .. where do you have the idea that people are not considered unemployed once their benefits end?
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Our measure of unemployment was "refined" such that it only tracks people who are currently receiving unemployment benefits. If somehow you manage to make it to the end of your 6 months, you are no longer counted by the system.
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Originally Posted by chrispedersen
I mean factually, our benefits were always supposed to end. When they were originally passed collecting unemployment was called the 5240 club - you could collect 40dollars for 52 weeks.
Unemployment was supposed to help you get through a tough spot - not be a lifestyle choice.
And generally americans support the idea of helping people through tough spots - were just not keen on the idea of you subsiding on welfare indefinitely.
Lastly, there are thousands of articles written on people that are un or under employed but have given up looking. No one I know considers them employed. No one I know has accurate figures for the number of these people, including you.
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Yes, "helping people through a rough spot". I would consider it a pretty rough spot when we elect Presidents who give tax breaks to companies who outsource labor, and leave us in a situation where we are steadily losing jobs, while creating more workers. Yet, we do not account for this in any way with our "aid".
And yes, we know very well that there is not an adequate way to measure the number of discouraged or underemployed workers in America. As long as it benefits those in power, to keep it that way, it will likely remain that way.
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Originally Posted by chrispedersen
If you read my actual previous quotes I believe that trends certainly last beyond presidents. Its one of the many reasons I am opposed to the statistics you tried to use to establish that democrats were better than republicans.
I certainly do believe that carter inherited some of his problems - but I also think that carters poor handling of the economy, poor handling of the oil embargo, poor handling of the shah of iran - and hundreds of other problems qualify him as a poor president.
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If you noticed, the table of compiled data in that article has a tab labeled "1 year shift", which attributes the first year of a President's numbers, to the preceding President. While this does in fact manage to narrow the gap a little bit, there is still a clear disparity.
Yet again, I don't hold Carter in particularly high regard as an executive officer. Great guy, poor President. A lot of people feel the same way about GW right about now.
Quote:
Originally Posted by chrispedersen
Right now we have 4.7% unemployment, 3.1% inflation. Would you seriously try to argue that things are good? But thats what you tried to do with the statistics before. People may not be able to quote facts and statistics - but they know when a country is doing well.
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Economic indicators will always trail behind noteworthy events, if for no other reason that the time it takes to tabulate them accurately. Obviously those economic indicators will not look so favorable over the next several months, as the fallout of recent events is realized - but you're not going to get accurate current rates of inflation and unemployment when our stock market scare is barely a few weeks old.
Quote:
Originally Posted by chrispedersen
I believe that clinton was an incredibly skillful politician. But I don't see what his lasting contribution will be. What accomplishment will he be remembered for? I think he will be generally remembered for a good economy, refurbishing the democratic image, monica lewinsky and being impeached.
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Well I never said that Clinton accomplished much of anything profound. Oddly, it seems that most other countries measure their leaders on 2 factors first - their ability to build and maintain favorable foreign relations, and their ability to not ruin the country. Beyond that, many people seem to understand that not all leaders are outstanding. I mean, what is Bush Jr going to be remembered for? I can tell you, it's a no-brainer which Wikipedia entry I'd rather have my name on.
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