First point. Dems did vote to go into Iraq. 39% percent in the House and 56% in the Senate. So, combined with Repubs, yeah, Iraq probably would have happened anyway
Your conclussion doesn't follow from that information.
No house vote, no law, no invasion.
No Bush = No cheney cooking the data for haliburton= no invasion.
So, combined with Repubs, yeah,
Well I think thats the crux of the problem. The dems are like the kid who's reasonably well behaved on their own but really doesn't know how to keep their big brother out of trouble and gets dragged along.
Second point: The only two even remotely "ad hom" arguments I've made are "seriously?" and "one true wayism". Using the term "DINO" suggests that you do think that anyone who thinks outside of a narrow box isn't "really" a Democrat, so I feel justified in that barb.
Just because I don't think someone is really a democrat doesn't mean i think they're wrong. It just means they're going to vote with the republicans to filibuster or stop legislation. So while the roster says 60 democrats the reality is there are somewhat less people than that who will help you break a filibuster.
"Seriously" isn't calling you an idiot.
Its dismissive of the argument, and you don't provide a counter argument to go with it.
As far as my comments to the other poster, dude deserved it for immediately playing the Reagan card. Oh, and for basically saying the only way you can not respect Obama is to be a racist. and please don't tell me I'm reading too much into that.
Apparently history isn't your strong suit. <---- is what drew the comment.
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Apparently history isn't your strong suit. <---- is what drew the comment.
Actually, he name checked Reagan before I said that, which prompted that comment. The point being, Teddy Roosevelt is pretty much considered the only Republican "true" Progressive president we've had. My statement prior to the "Reagan" nonsense should have been clear to someone who wants to discuss anything having to do with Progressive politics.
Apparently history isn't your strong suit. <---- is what drew the comment.Actually, he name checked Reagan before I said that, which prompted that comment. The point being, Teddy Roosevelt is pretty much considered the only Republican "true" Progressive president we've had. My statement prior to the "Reagan" nonsense should have been clear to someone who wants to discuss anything having to do with Progressive politics.
What he thinks history says and what he thinks you think history says may be two different things. I know when i read it i thought you were thinking of Reagan not because i think of Reagan as progressive, but because many republicans have been turning Reagan into the saint of all things good and just lately.
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I know when i read it i thought you were thinking of Reagan not because i think of Reagan as progressive, but because many republicans have been turning Reagan into the saint of all things good and just lately.
Which logic theorem did you use to deduce I am a Republican? Because you couldn't be further from the truth.
The only inference I can take from this statement is that, somehow, if I disagree with you, I must be a Republican.
Which logic theorem did you use to deduce I am a Republican?
Your name is houston Derik.
You are therefore from Houston.
You are still able to write
Therefore you have not been shot.
Therefore you are a republican.
*ducks*
I kid i kid.
Because you couldn't be further from the truth.
Actually i had you pegged as a constitutional reform or libertarian.
Also note that i had no plans to gorillia glue you there.
The only inference I can take from this statement is that, somehow, if I disagree with you, I must be a Republican.
No, If you disagree with me i simply assume you're sane. Its just that the phrase true progressive has been used rather often to Ronald Reagan more than anyone else I can think of.
phrase heard applied to Ronald Reagan by republicans------> Ronald Reagan------> You are a republican.
Not the other way around.
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Which logic theorem did you use to deduce I am a Republican?Your name is houston Derik.
You are therefore from Houston.
How many openly lesbian Democratic mayors does your town have?
;-)
Now, seriously though. I'm an atheist, a rational anarchist and somewhere on the libertarian scale, but more on the social side. I tend to believe in a fair market, not a laissez faire one.
I.e. I believe in free trade, but with serious safeguards in place to keep people honest, and to keep the crap Wall Street has been doing for a while now from happening.
My biggest thing is there hasn't been anything in my 41 years that convinces me either major party has any intention of looking out for our (the citizen's) interests.
How many openly lesbian Democratic mayors does your town have?
Including the goat?
Wow you Americans relay know how to tear-down your own country.
You are like a football team self-destructing 10 mins before full time and the opposition only has 3 point lead.
You have a lot of people on the sidelines who want to cheer you on but can only watch in horror as you start pointing fingers at each other blaming other team members for the loss and the game isn't over.
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Obama does as he's told. Nothing more, nothing less.Wow ... Just, wow.
Hey, it's pretty true. Just watch the footage of some of the times his teleprompter has failed. The man has absolutely no idea what to do without it.
People make fun of Bush (or even Quayle) for not being good public speakers, but at least you could always tell they had something to say, even if they didn't put it out there as effectively as they could have. Watching Obama without a teleprompter is kind of like watching a fish flopping around on the ground.
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Which logic theorem did you use to deduce I am a Republican?Your name is houston Derik.
You are therefore from Houston.
You are still able to write
Therefore you have not been shot.
Therefore you are a republican.
*ducks*
I kid i kid.
I'd still rather go hunting with a Cheney than go driving with a Kennedy.
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I deal with reality, not myths. One of the biggest being Democrats aren't the same criminal ass munches Republicans are.That is a pretty big (and quite ridiculous) myth.Which part is the myth? That Dems aren't criminal assmunches, or that they are?
I need some clarification here.
The myth is that Dems aren't the same criminal assmunches that Repubs are. The truth is that both parties are full to the gills with criminal assmunches, and neither one is any better (or worse) than the other.
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First, I'd like to congratulate the mysteriously absent OP on a successful trolling.
Second, *I* am the greatest American president.
Thirdly, shame on you all for allowing this meaningless jingoistic shame-mongering by a pseudo-scientist quack degenerate into a discussion of real political issues. There is so much to mock here, and you're all refuting the point like it has some kind of relevance.
Anyone who buys into the premise that Obama is making us look "weak" needs to seriously reexamine their own feelings of inadequacy before advocating yet another war for the sake of overcompensation alone.
I'm locked out of my office this morning, so you lucky gits get another round.
Superpowers don't concern themselves with seeming weak. We could bomb this planet back to the stone age, and every queen, sheik and prime minister knows it. If our head of state bows, he's being polite, not subservient. Heck Obama could grovel in front of the president of France tomorrow, he's still commander in chief of the most expensive army in the world.
Also, isn't this story over a year old? It hasn't aged well.
Apparently history isn't your strong suit. Try Teddy Roosevelt. And FDR being "successful"? Thank goodness for Lend-Lease (the thing that actually got America working again, not the New Deal).
(And, as an aside, the only consistently successful Progressive president was a Republican...)Can I assume you're jumping on the Reagan bandwagon with that last bit? I've heard that bit of mythology tossed out before.
FDR was quite progressive. Quite successful. Quite a Democrat. And ten times the president Reagan was.
LOL, how did I know you were going to do the whole Lend-Lease > New Deal thing?
As to your second point, um, did you have one? The end of slavery was inevitable, but it was only violent because a bunch of idiots in the South thought Lincoln was going to do something he probably had no intention of doing.
We're going to have to disagree on this one. Too much money was being made under the table on it.
I'd still rather go hunting with a Cheney than go driving with a Kennedy.Which logic theorem did you use to deduce I am a Republican?Your name is houston Derik.
You are therefore from Houston.
You are still able to write
Therefore you have not been shot.
Therefore you are a republican.
*ducks*
I kid i kid.
You disappoint me.
Dr. Lillian Glass, self-proclaimed "expert" in body language, analyzes President Obama greeting various world leaders and comes to the conclusion he is being subservient.
This is important. Being polite to other world leaders and respecting thier customs is an impeachable offense.
I just have to assume that the American standard is rudeness to all other nations. We're the only nation that refuses to dip our flag to the host countries of the Olympics. So I guess a refusal to be arrogant and stuck up equals submissiveness?
After being raised by immigrants and marrying an American, it's interesting to see just how ugly Americans feel they have a right to be abroad.
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Obama does as he's told. Nothing more, nothing less.Wow ... Just, wow.Hey, it's pretty true. Just watch the footage of some of the times his teleprompter has failed. The man has absolutely no idea what to do without it.
People make fun of Bush (or even Quayle) for not being good public speakers, but at least you could always tell they had something to say, even if they didn't put it out there as effectively as they could have. Watching Obama without a teleprompter is kind of like watching a fish flopping around on the ground.
I could not disagree with this more. President Obama is an excellent public speaker, as well as an intelligent and well spoken man with excellent ideas ... if only all the partisan grid-lock and bickering that seems to be crushing Washington lately wasn't making it all but impossible to actually get anything of substance accomplished.
I wish people could get past their own personal agendas and actually do what is needed to make things better.
I guess I'm not a Democrat or Republican so much as I am a hopeful idealist ...
There were other factors as well, but the economy didn't truly stabilize until we entered a period of heavy manufacturing to support Great Britain's war effort.Non-coincidentally, when Congress rolled back the work-creating programs, the country went into a recession and unemployment soared. The economy began recovering when spending went up again.Unemployment didn't seriously start declining until 1940. There was a slight dip under 15% in '36, but it went back up in '38.
I agree. Every time I bring this up in discussions with Keynsians, they laugh at me.
On the other hand, the fact that Citizen HD is the only poster I can find who agrees with me on this point probably means I should rethink my position.
My biggest problem is that Dr. Glass (whose doctorate appears to be in speech disorders) proclaims herself an "expert" in a field, which as far as I know, is limited to anthropologists, psychologists, and sociologists.
Even then, everything else I read about body language is that it is limited to simple, basic emotions and interpreted by other individuals and cultures in different but equally valid ways. Not the wealth of information she is gleaning from minutiae.
The even more disturbing thing is that I could hardly find any places where anybody is calling her on this. She is called in as an expert commentator for CNN and a plethora of celebrities and nobody seems to even care that her credentials might be spurious. She claims to have used her body language skills in an official capacity in actual court cases. It makes me shudder that this "body language" is used as evidence to determine criminal guilt.
Maybe I'm wrong though. Maybe nobody is calling her on this because it is a valid technique, but I sure get pseudo-science vibe from it.
I actually didn't read the article/watch the video that spawned this thread, but I just wanted to say that I am sorry I missed all the action above. Looks like it was just my cup of tea--Civil War, FDR, why both of the parties of American capitalism suck, etc., etc. Damn third shift job!
Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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My biggest problem is that Dr. Glass (whose doctorate appears to be in speech disorders) proclaims herself an "expert" in a field, which as far as I know, is limited to anthropologists, psychologists, and sociologists.
Yeah, but she's no where near as big a dick as her son, Mr. Glass. That a@~~~#! crashed a train just to find out if Bruce Willis had super powers.
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 6
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I agree. Every time I bring this up in discussions with Keynsians, they laugh at me.
Part of that is because on closer examination, it's nonsense. If a bunch of government spending on production helped a crashed economy, it would have it whether or not it was for a war. I hesitate to take that out of past tense, because it's not assured that government production will help any specific crashed economy. But if it does, it won't matter if you were building ships for a war, or building them to ferry people in peacetime.
The idea that "it was for a war, so MAGIC!" is silly. The government paid for a bunch of work. The economy got jumpstarted as a consequence.
The idea that "it was for a war, so MAGIC!" is silly. The government paid for a bunch of work. The economy got jumpstarted as a consequence.I agree. Every time I bring this up in discussions with Keynsians, they laugh at me.
I have a problem with people who say "War is good for the economy" and then turn around and say "government spending can not create jobs" because the two statements are contradictory. War *IS* government spending and it does create jobs which is good for the economy. At least in the short term. The question to ask is whether government spending, regardless of either war or peacetime uses, is worth the debt it causes in the long term.
In other words, what will be the return on this investment?
I don't think these are contradictory: a what-if situation (what if the American government was made up of people who were interested in the welfare of all of its citizens and implemented full-blown Keynsianism--they're not, by the way) does not negate the historical record (don't get me started on how blacks, or should I say "agricultural and domestic workers," were left out of the New Deal), or at least the record as I understand it and as how Citizen HD laid it out.
The government is, however, very interested in winning wars.
I am certainly not one of the people who say "government spending can not create jobs". I have said many times that I am in favor of billions for a jobs-work program.
Does that make sense?
Or rather, am I making myself clear?
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I agree. Every time I bring this up in discussions with Keynsians, they laugh at me.
Part of that is because on closer examination, it's nonsense. If a bunch of government spending on production helped a crashed economy, it would have it whether or not it was for a war. I hesitate to take that out of past tense, because it's not assured that government production will help any specific crashed economy. But if it does, it won't matter if you were building ships for a war, or building them to ferry people in peacetime.
The idea that "it was for a war, so MAGIC!" is silly. The government paid for a bunch of work. The economy got jumpstarted as a consequence.
It isn't that the New Deal was a failure. It wasn't. It just wasn't as wildly successful as people promote it to be. Even Keynes himself cringed at some of FDR's efforts.
The FDR myth is as strong with Dems as the Reagan myth is with Repubs.
I still stand by my assertion that Teddy was the best Repub president, though.
I still stand by my assertion that Teddy was the best Repub president, though.
I prefer Lincoln.
Don't think I like any of the Democrats, though.
The FDR myth is as strong with Dems as the Reagan myth is with Repubs.I still stand by my assertion that Teddy was the best Repub president, though.
Except that Reagan was actively bad for our country socially and economically, and if not guilty of then complicit in war crimes.
I would say Teddy and Ike were both pretty awesome, though.
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Yeah, I forgot that FDR interring all of those citizens of Japanese ancestry was soooooo Progressive...
Amongst a bunch of other crap I won't bother listing.
And Ike laid the groundwork for us to get bogged down in 'Nam. Amongst other things I won't bother listing *cough*Iran*cough*.
Lincoln? We will never know what kind of president he would have been other than the Civil War thing. He didn't have much time for any kind of domestic policy, really. So he always gets the top spot for the one thing that happened during his time in office.
Still think Teddy was #1. Not perfect, but the dude worked for the people.
No, it turned into the best Republican president thread. Sorry, Ben.
Ow! My nuts!
Yeah, I forgot that FDR interring all of those citizens of Japanese ancestry was soooooo Progressive...
Every president has done things that they and indeed the country has regretted. My only assertion is that FDR was a good politician and an effective president in both foreign and domestic matters. He was a fair sight better than the several to hold office before him. As a president he wasn't particularly progressive in a lot of ways.
I'm just saying that FDR was good for the country, not a god, and I don't know any liberals who think of him as such. An icon, yes, but not some infallible Democratic deity. Reagan on the other hand was just a bad president, was detrimental to the US, was a criminal, and yet the Republicans DO worship him as if he was the second coming.
I think it behooves us to think less about what party these men were affiliated with and more about where they would lie in today's political spectrum. Teddy Roosevelt was pretty freaking liberal/progressive.
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See, I just think a lot of the "FDR was good for the country" stuff is myth-making on a Reagan level. Different perspective, I guess. A lot of what he did is no different than what Obama is doing now, with the same result: companies are sitting on a ton of money and not doing anything because they don't like what the president is doing.
Ike was just horrible. More myth making.
I'd put Clinton at #2 for this century, by the way. He did a masterful job of co-opting his opponent's positions and making some of them his own. In short, he looked at the debacle for his party in '94, learned from it, and did what the people wanted. Obama could have learned from that lesson were he not so arrogant.
I agree about Teddy, he was very Progressive (as in the movement). But the biggest thing I like about him is he was his own man, he didn't bow down to anybody.
Obama could have learned from that lesson were he not so arrogant.
Exactly what has he done to make you think he's arrogant? I admit i have less emotional radar than most but I see many vague, insulting terms launched at the president without any real basis.
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I would like to change my vote to William Henry Harrison, because he had the good graces to die after only 38 or so days in office.
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Did this turn into a best president thread? Because, if so, I would remind you that Benjamin Franklin still holds that title.Can I nominate John Adams? He was way more badass than TR, I think. His anger was so refined, he could punch a hole in paradox space.
Man have you seen those photos of him? He is soooooooo angry.
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I would like to change my vote to William Henry Harrison, because he had the good graces to die after only 38 or so days in office.
Hmmmm As an ardent devotee of facial hair, I thought you would be more into Chester A Arthur.