posted
Man, Bush appreciation threads have a really short shelf-life anymore.
For me, that's probably because I have a cousin on a plane to Iraq for no good reason, and the FBI's probably checking into my banking records as I type to see if I've been funding terrorists.
They're probably reading this post, too.
That Uranium was for a science project, I tell you!
Posts: 5264 | Registered: Jul 2002
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quote: If you're not fabulously rich, and you're not rabidly homophobic.... What exactly has GWB done for you?
You know, this is sad. This is SO indicative of our current society... "What's in it for me? Why should I care? What can I get out of it"
It has become a very selfish, self-centered society. Forget the big picture. Forget loyalty. Forget that you are a very small part of a much larger nation. We are going to judge each president based on "what's in it for me" personally???
posted
Fair enough. What has his administration done for our country? How have they made the U.S. a better neighbor, a better role model, a better place to live?
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
I think the point was that GWB was only doing things to help a small section of the country, rather than doing what's best for the country.
He's definitely got a point; its hard to find a major conservative thinker out there who thinks W's budget/tax cut plans are a good idea, much less a major liberal thinker.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
Excuse me? I don't think it's selfish to ensure that our elected representatives are acting in our best interests! That's what they're there for!
If we have a president who is throwing away our money, our freedom, and our national security, helping only giant corporations and religious extremists.... we have a responsibility to stop it.
Selfish, my arse. Selfish is allowing Iraqis to continue to die in the mess that WE CREATED!
posted
Hey, guys, leave the people who feel warm and fuzzy about Bush at least ONE thread where they can persist in their delusions, 'k? Would you kick a puppy? Or tell someone that Santa didn't exist? Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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I don't like Bush, but I'm not looking for the man to be burned at the stake either. I think he's doing what he really feels is right, which is really all anyone can do when they become president.
Posts: 3852 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
I think "doing what you think is right" is a remarkably poor criteria. I would say that most people -- almost ALL people -- do what they think is right, even if they have to justify the rightness of their actions to themselves. I think few people ever stop to think that what they're doing is wrong, and yet do it anyway.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Part of me almost wishes you guys DO win and we DO get a Democrat (of your choice) into this office.
Then you will see that all this talk you're blowing here is full of holes.
I am betting MONEY that if a Democrat was the next person to take office (yeah, this election) 1) they will NOT repeal the Patriot Act. None of the so-called invasions of privacy that are now in place will suddenly go away. 2) You will see no difference in your personal freedoms, or in the overall picture of the economy or federal deficit. 3) our troops will remain in Iraq.
quote: our money, our freedom, and our national security, helping only giant corporations and religious extremists.
Basically none of this will cahnge, except for your allegation of "religious extremists" which I don't feel even exists at this point. If religious extremists were winning, abortion would have been abolished by Executive Order. But it isn't. No extremists are running things at present.
In other words, everthing that has been done by this administration will not be undone.
posted
Lets make it a bet . Lets see . . . if a Democrat gets elected and they at least try to take action on repealing the currently provisions most objected to in the PATRIOT act and not extending the tax cuts (eliminating already existing tax cuts counts too) (the troops in Iraq thing is just too indefinite and dependent on other nations), even if they're stopped by Congress (we can appoint a referee who can judge what a reasonable effort is), then you, oh, donate $5 to a political campaign or PAC of my choice.
If a Democrat is elected president and does neither of those things, then I'll make a $5 donation to a political campaign or PAC of your choice .
Of course, if W is re-elected, then the bet is null and void. I suggest for referee we have David Bowles, if he'll agree.
quote:It was the happiness of looking up to a leader that loves the American people.
Unless by "loves the American peole" you mean "thinks America should dominate everyone else", I'm pretty sure every American President loves the American people just as much. Isn't that a prerequisite for being president?
Besides, loving someone is all fine and well, but it's still not responsible to make that person president if he's gonna devastate our personal fredoms, national integrity, national security, reputation abroad, and budget. If it were we could find a lot more loveable people than Dubya to be president - a cute kitten perhaps, or maybe the next American Idol...
quote: if a Democrat gets elected and they at least try to take action on repealing the currently provisions most objected to in the PATRIOT act and not extending the tax cuts (eliminating already existing tax cuts counts too)
The dems have a bad record on privacy and individual rights. Freedom to own a gun? Freedom to hire a qualified employee regardless of his or her race? How about freedom to own and operate a business without being subjected to a labor monopoly by the government backed unions?
Okay, so you are painting the dems as the party of fiscal responsibility? I would say that neither party has done a good job as steward of the nation's finances. You talk about repealing the tax cuts, all well and good, but would you also slash spending and start paying down our $7 trillion debt? If not, what's the point? The congress just keeps spending the money it collects from us, and devaluing the money they leave behind in our pockets by printing more and more money to pay their bills.
posted
I was saying either try to repeal then switched it to take action, I think, and a bit of both got left in. Basically, actively expend political capital trying to get it done.
Sections I consider particularly objectionable: 215, 213, 206, 505, 802. I propose that if three out of five of these have been repealed, allowed to sunset, or otherwise gutted (all funding authorization removed, for instance, which effectively removes the section), or if the president had actively expended political capital in an attempt to get at least 4 of the provisions removed, or the remainder of the three if at least one is actually removed (so if one was removed, and the president had actively campaigned for 2 more to be removed, that would work) the president be considered to have taken reasonable action to severely reduce the scope of the PATRIOT act.
Also, I propose that the bet extend until either one year of the presidency has past or the provisions have been positively met (as in the president has taken action on them), whichever comes first.
As for money, I am reasonably confident that in nearly two years from today my possession of $5 will be irrespective of my current situation .
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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quote: As for money, I am reasonably confident that in nearly two years from today my possession of $5 will be irrespective of my current situation
I'm not sure what this means, but in 2 years your $5 will buy less than it does now because the congress and the federal reserve continue dumping cash into the economy.
Posts: 859 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
Hmmmm, I'm starting to get a little more worried about that Bush +anti +christ search I did on Google that one time. Posts: 6367 | Registered: Aug 2003
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posted
Fugu, when the government controls wages and prices of so many goods, how can you even imply that inflation will have no effect, or has had no effect? Look at inflation over the last 50 years and tell me that it has had no effect on our economy.
Posts: 859 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
It's interesting how so many people seem so convinced that they know exactly why Bush has made the choices he made. I can understand criticizing a man for his actions if you think they were wrong or imprudent, but making up a personality and a set of motives for a person you've never met is a little presumptuous.
Posts: 1907 | Registered: Feb 2000
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quote: For me, that's probably because I have a cousin on a plane to Iraq for no good reason
I'm sorry if your cousin didn't go voluntarily for some reason, but I wasn't aware that the Selective Service had been activated. Does he (I assume it's a guy) know that you think his service is pointless?
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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quote: oh, except for those who insist on holding onto large sums of cash
(sarcasm) You're right. People should be denied the right to save money. GREEDY JERKS! We should steal that money from them and spend it on bailing out politically connected corporations. (/sarcasm)
Posts: 859 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
You should pick up some economics texts, Robespierre, you might have not completely misread what I was saying.
Anticipated inflation refers to inflation that is, well, anticipated. It has zero economic effect because it is essentially a conversion from one unit of currency to another, similarly to how the difference in buying power per unit of currency in a city directly across a national border from another city is almost exactly in line with the exchange rate. This "exchange" of currency is carried out through the anticipation of inflation rates by lending institutions, who factor it into their projections.
And I said cash, and I meant cash. As in, cold, hard, physical, and not in any institution. The sort that almost no one in the US has a lot of, simply because there isn't actually all that much out there compared to the net worth of the citizenry, and because its not very convenient. Not money, cash.
Also, I wonder if you have some weird idea that monetary fluctuations would go away were their no monetary activity on the part of the federal government. You seem to think that way. My personal opinion is that monetary fluctuations would greatly increase -- notice, for instance, how the price of gold, once freed from national stabilization, began to fluctuate rapidly. Large monetary fluctuations, particularly hard to predict large monetary fluctuations, are what hurt the economy, regardless of who causes them.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
I love George W. Bush, at first I thought this was a thread about Dubbing movies, but then I read it, foolish me. Anyway, Bush is the best thing t happen to this contry since Ronaldus Magnus.
quote: Also, I wonder if you have some weird idea that monetary fluctuations would go away were their no monetary activity on the part of the federal government.
You have a fundamental misunderstanding of how money works. Our current system allows the government to create money (cash or not) out of thin air to pay it's debts to the private sector. There is no debate about this fact. When this is done, everyone's money is worth less than it was before.
You dodged the issue. Do you say that the federal government does not cause inflation? Or that this inflation has no effect on our economy?
What do you call it when there is only one entity setting the price for a certain industry,by law? I would call that a government backed monopoly. That is precisely what the Federal Reserve is.
posted
"It's interesting how so many people seem so convinced that they know exactly why Bush has made the choices he made."
I agree completely, Geoff. All those people who like Bush because they think he's doing what he thinks is best for the country are completely misguided, right? They shouldn't engage in pointless speculation like that, I'm sure. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
I'm the one with the fundamental misunderstanding of money? I'm not the one who misunderstood what cash was.
Yes, in fact, the government can create money out of thin air to finance its debts and such. This is a natural consequence of a fiat currency. It even applies to such "hard" currencies as gold and silver -- countries used their reserves to control money, the same as they currently use printing and interest rates, only in this case countries reserves become more important and thus they tend to conserve -- leading to the deflation that prevailed across the 19th century (which is just as bad as inflation).
If you would care to read the article you pointed at, you would see that atrributed to inflation are
quote: the invalidation of already faulty entrepreneurial calculation, the disruption of many entrained production processes, and the implicit frustration of contracts between lenders and borrowers, and savers and investors.
, which clearly apply only in the case of unanticipated inflation, and thus my first point is validated.
As for dancing around the question, I maintain I did not. I acknowledged that the current principle actor in monetary fluctuations was the federal government. Then I argued that dispatching of its influence wasn't a good idea.
Let us consider a scenario -- the US monetary system is abolished. In an attempt to create a scenario both semi-feasible and quick, this is done via a three step process -- the privatization of all banks in america and the dissolving of the federal reserve, followed by a period of pure replacement policy on money (despite increasing demands for US currency from abroad), followed by abandoning the printing of money altogether and the abolishment of fiat currency.
Now propose what system would arise in its place and demonstrate to me why it would not be subject to monetary fluctuations at least as bad as those of the governmental system.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
Looks like the fifth paragraph to me. And yes, I read the article. The author is more than a bit reluctant to actually provide evidence for his views, and cheerfully ignores facts that would suggest against him -- for instance, the lack of inflation under the gold standard hardly means the governments weren't influencing the economy in bad ways, they were just causing deflation instead of inflation because under the gold standard deflation was in their best interest.
Furthermore, he spends entire paragraphs rambling about tenuous analogies that serve more to impress me with his boorishness and lack of literary ability than economic analysis. Case in point:
quote:Sadly, with the secret of the magic having been revealed to the foreign dupes who have long been avid buyers of so many tickets to the show, the Grand Illusionist himself is no longer regarded as an initiate of Hermes Trismegistus, a guardian of the eternal mysteries, but rather as a mere fairground conjurer. So, not only is his prestidigitation less able to hold his audience's attention and to prevent its members from wandering off to sample some of the other acts and exhibits at the carnival, but such a house as he can still command will be drawn only by conceding a drastically lowered price of admission.
In fact, he clearly acknowledges the point on anticipated inflation here:
quote:These, the Fed's precious cartel members, are therefore characteristically sanguine about seeing the actual worth of their assets erode, as long as their liabilities are likewise degraded. The banks are thereby largely indifferent to whether the achievement of accounting success in conducting their business translates into real, rather than simply numerical, gains.
And you clearly didn't read the quote I pointed you at, which clearly lists effects that do not apply to anticipated inflation. Inflation is only a "hidden tax" (and its only hidden to people to stupid to open a macroeconomics textbook) upon people who keep cash assets. If one is keeping an investment asset, even a positive inflation can have a great positive effect on one's investment, provided it is lower than expected by the institution being invested in. In such a case it is only a frustration of the one taking out the loan. In fact, a short period of higher inflation right now might do greatly to lift the economy out of its dolldrums as it would greatly reduce the impact of personal debt, allowing people to buy their way out before more reasonable levels again set in!
But this is largely beside the point; I have acknowledged that monetary fluctuation is generally a bad thing, but have challenged you to find a system that has less monetary fluctuation that the current one.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
As a conservative who is disenfranchised by Bush I feel a need to point out that even most conservatives should not approve of Bush. He has done away with the characteristic fiscal responsibility of the GOP. Whether you like the tax cuts or not you cannot ingore the fact that Bush has driven us into one of the worst deficits we have ever faced and the dollar will weaken because of it. He has crusaded around the world in ridiculous human rights campaigns and his environmental policy is making the US public believe that the GOP hates nature as a default atttitude. Even here in Alaska where it is heavily conservative, I was volunteering to judge a high school debate round and it shocked me how both sides assumed that reupublicans wanted to drill the earth to the core and kill all the animals. Not only this, but Bush is eroding the civil liberties that most real conservatives cherish more than most liberals.
posted
What specifically do you mean by monetary fluctuation? Changes in the money supply? Changes in the value of the dollar?
The free market is what should be used in this and every country to handle our economy. Centralizing control of the banking sector can only serve to remove the corrective effects of competition from the system. Do you remember a little thing that happened in 1929? The stock market boom of the late 20's was brought on by a Fed that was lowering interest rates to help out their friends in the UK who were too embarassed to raise their rates and wanted to stop their gold from flying out of the country. This caused an over abundance of easy money in the US and fueled the boom. When the Fed saw what was happening, they started cutting back on the money supply, but since their actions take a little while to have an effect, they over-reacted and caused the crash in '29.
Before FDIC and the FED, banks had to raise their interest rates when they were getting low on assets, in order to keep enough on hand to give out to depositors. This acted as an automatic throttle control to the economy, not allowing it to get all liquored up on easy money and they regret it the next day. The Fed and FDIC removed this safety valve in favor of government oversight.
Posts: 859 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
You say it should be handled by the free market, but have yet to offer any evidence that the free market would have fewer fluctuations -- lets just say in the value of currency, to keep things simple.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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I apologize if my comment offended anyone. I did not mean it as an insult. There has been so many threads discussing the liberal leaning of Hatrack that I thought it is great for the Bush supporters to have a thread of their own where they can openly proclaim their love for the man. Posts: 4116 | Registered: Apr 2002
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quote: If we have a president who is throwing away our money, our freedom, and our national security, helping only giant corporations and religious extremists.... we have a responsibility to stop it.
Selfish, my arse. Selfish is allowing Iraqis to continue to die in the mess that WE CREATED!
Agreed on everything before the word corporations and the word itself. How is he helping religious extremists? Do you have any proof or even rumor of this?
As for the mess in Iraq, yes we created it. But is not the world a better place? Bush believed the lies of the intelligences of the US. He moved congress to vote for war. Is it his fault that he was lied to?
Posts: 4229 | Registered: Dec 2002
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quote: You say it should be handled by the free market, but have yet to offer any evidence that the free market would have fewer fluctuations -- lets just say in the value of currency, to keep things simple.
Fair enough. Since my explanations are no good for you, read someone else's.
quote: Murray N Rothbard Money, in short, is not a "fixed yardstick." It is a commodity serving as a medium for exchanges. Flexibility in its value in response to consumer demands is just as important and just as beneficial as any other free pricing on the market.
The value of money need not be static, but the changes in it need to be in response to real market forces, not Alan Greenspan's best guess.
Why should banking be treated differently than any other business? We see that any business which the government gets into, is a failing or already failed business. Amtrak is a good example. My point is, central control over our lives is a direct cause of many of the problems we face.
posted
I don't really understand what all the fuss is about. Regardless of his qualities Dubya is just a man. I honestly don't think that four more years will do any irreperable harm to the U.S. And after him will come another forgettable president and another and another, until either nuclear fire rains from the skies, or I die. I neither love nor hate the man. I am...ambivalent towards him.
posted
Why I love the Man. First and foremost, because he is NOT LIBERAL and not even close.
He is religious. Not simply proclomation religious, but really religious. Of course, it helps that I lean toward his religious views. So far he has taken stands on those views I agree with. There are other views I wish he would be more stringent with, but understand the prudence of not going after them just yet.
He is NOT wishy-washy. He tells it like he sees it regardless of what others think of him; and he hires people who have the same attitude. It isn't the "I feel your pain" Clintonianism. Rather, it is "This is what I feel should be done and I am not going to pander to anyone to make it look otherwise."
He has a wife and children he obviously loves and who obviously loves him. That adds a lot of respectability to him for me, giving me more trust in him as a leader.
He takes action. You may not like the action he takes, but he takes it! It helps tremendously that he takes it on issues I agree with; tax cuts, taking the UN with a grain of salt, going after countries that deserve to be kicked in the butt both verbally and physically, going gung-ho against liberal ideals, supporting big business that I think allow for little businesses to become big, sticking it to the extremist environementalists.
He admits mistakes, even when it costs him politically. Sure, he doesn't call himself evil like his enemys, but at least he investigates those things he feels are problems. Does he do enough? It depends on what you think enough happens to be.
He geniunely seems like a great guy. He is definantly someone I could hang out with and not feel uncomfortable being around.
These are only some of the things I can think of why I love the man.
Posts: 2207 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
So it's a cult of personality thing, like the Kennedys. I can understand that, at least, even if the Bushies can't play football.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
He never seems to listen to criticism... even when it's accurate! And I really hate those "So Glad I voted for Bush" bumper stickers for some reason.
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. Lets see . . . if a Democrat gets elected and they at least try to take action on repealing the currently provisions most objected to in the PATRIOT act and not extending the tax cuts (eliminating already existing tax cuts counts too) (the troops in Iraq thing is just too indefinite and dependent on other nations), even if they're stopped by Congress (we can appoint a referee who can judge what a reasonable effort is), then you, oh, donate $5 to a political campaign or PAC of my choice.![[Angst]](graemlins/angst.gif)
