Fighting By Surrendering

http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2010/01/acorn_gotcha_man_arrested_for.html

Sorry Rev. Maybe Zandi was speaking of the future because a lot of other economists say this is the wrong thing to do. (referring to my other post)

larry d: The republicans are the party of no. They'll probably vote no on this too saying it's not enough. They don't want to agree on anything with Obama. And the "documentarian" looks like he may do some serious prison time.

Rev:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Obama promise a "net spending cut" throughout the campaign?

Of course he did. And of course that was a lie, but it was what people wanted to hear. So he said it.

You didn't really believe this. But you voted for the guy who told whatever lies he needed to tell in order to win votes from unsuspecting fools. You were in on it. Don't act so high-minded about the whole thing.

You lying liar who lies.

Time columnist Joe Klein, shrill elitist tirade
Too Dumb to Believe Liberalism Works
By Bob Beers Tuesday, January 26, 2010

“Today’s CNN poll shows a majority of Americans think stimulus money has been wasted.”

Time columnist Joe Klein decided to go ballistic at this revelation, writing in an op-ed piece that Americans were “too dumb to thrive,” and unleashed a shrill elitist tirade against those who did not attend Ivy League institutions of higher learning and obviously did not understand the delicacies of Obama’s wonderful stimulus package.

Klein went on to call Americans “flagrantly ill-informed” and Fox News viewers “misinformed.” Declaring that the stimulus money was, in fact, “wasted on them”, meaning everyday Americans, in the form of tax breaks and state grants (“this is why your child’s teacher wasn’t laid off”), Klein continued to suggest that the Obama administration may have “done a terrible job explaining the stimulus package,” adding but “it is very difficult to have a democracy without citizens,” and it is “impossible to be a citizen if you don’t make an effort to understand the most basic activities of your government.” Klein, a true mushy-brained progressive, ended his treatise of hatred against the American people by suggesting America’s competitive edge in the world is being undermined by its citizens’ stupidity. You see, according to Joe Klein, the American People are too dumb to see that liberalism works.
Klein “a true mushy-brained progressive”

I call Klein “a true mushy-brained progressive” because he has declared himself to be a fervent follower of Barrack Hussein Obama, a man who declared that one of the fundamental problems with America was its Constitution. Apparently Obama is no fan of George Washington.

Anti-business, anti-capitalism and anti-constitution that is the role of the so-called progressives. Hillary Clinton declared her allegiance to this philosophy during the 2007 campaign. Other famous progressives from the beginning of the 20th century, the time frame she mentioned in her declaration included Karl Marx. A personality Clinton, Klein and Obama would not want mentioned is Joseph Goebbels, the man said to be the one who helped create Adolph Hitler. In an excerpt from Goebbles 1933 diary, he admitted that Germany lost World War I because of propaganda from the West. In rebuilding Germany into the Third Reich, Goebbles said they studied American propaganda coming from the progressives in the Woodrow Wilson administration. Is it any wonder that more and more conservatives are comparing the agenda of the progressives to that of Nazi Germany? And they call us the loons.

Yes, loons. We haven’t called the American people stupid, dumb and other assorted derogatory assertions. There is a site called “loon watch”. On it, I and a great many other conservative writers, some as lofty as Glen Beck, whose research is always impeccable are called out as being somewhat less than rational because of our “non-progressive” views. The example they use for me is where I suggest that American use “the threat of”, not actual, nuking of Mecca to forestall further terrorist attacks against our citizens. It seems the progressives don’t like the idea of the government standing up for its people in preference to fundamental Islam. Loon Watch is yet another example of how mushy a progressive/liberal brain can become.

Joe Klein is a prime example of neural tissue being replaced by sloppy gruel. In searching through his latest example of poor grammar and poorer thinking, you cannot find one instance of him mentioning that every recipient of the lion’s share of these precious stimulus dollars came from his illustrious ivy league. Nowhere does he mention that nearly every single one of the jobs this stimulus was to have created has already ended. Nowhere does he mention that the unemployment numbers would be past those of the Great Depression if they bothered counting those whose unemployment benefits have run out, including extensions. Nowhere does he cite a single long term job created with the stimulus package, because he can’t. There aren’t any.

In order to create jobs you have to be pro-employer. You have to be pro-business and pro-capitalism, and most importantly you have to be pro-constitution, none of which describe Joe Klein and any of those he considers worthy of his respect.
Supreme Court decision overturning the horrible McCain-Feingold Act

On another note, Klein and every single one of his mushy-brained compatriots are apoplectic over the recent Supreme Court decision overturning the horrible McCain-Feingold Act (did you know, McCain also calls himself a progressive). They claim that corporations will now have free reign to control our election process. It seems that to a progressive all corporations are evil. Isn’t Time Magazine part of a corporation? It seems to me that I saw that the ACLU was also incorporated and so were People for the American Way, not to mention George Soros and Starbucks. Ah, I see all corporations are equal; it’s just that some are more equal than others.

You don’t know it yet Joe, but you have handed the GOP its greatest campaign weapon yet. In 2010 the Democrats are going to suffer a death of a thousand cuts…and you sharpened the blade.

Blaming the electorate for Dem leadership's failings is bound to be a productive strategy come fall. More brilliance from the left!

I give up, Rev. What was the point of this post – that Obama is a wimp ?

Something along those lines.

And Jeff….where do you get this trash you are posting. The stimulus created or saved 2.1 million jobs. It has also contributed to GDP growth.

What Joe Klein was saying was that empirical evidence of what the stimulus has actually done positively for our economy is "wasted" on Fox viewers. Fox viewers are told a specific narrative of any one event…..like ACORN, or the stimulus, or climate legislation. All of the time, when it comes to issues like these, Fox is lying or omitting to tell the whole truth.

I've watched this dynamic for too long now. Jeff, you need to quit reading who you are reading. They're lying to you.

The stimulus resulted in a net loss of something like 3.5 million jobs, Reverend. An abject failure that's nothing more than a slush fund.

Why do you continue to deny reality? I mean, other than to try to diminish Obama's leadership. What's the real reason, larry, for denying the facts?

What facts, Reverend? Even most of the administration hacks lack the blatant dishonesty to pretend the stimulus created 2 million jobs. Obama's turning a recession into a depression, just like FDR did.

Are you feeling okay? Seen a doctor lately?

Have you seen the unemployment charts? Have you seen the GDP charts? They both demonstrate that the trend since Obama acted is improving, not getting worse.

Stuck on revising FDR as well, aren't ya.? I guess that's necessary and convenient in the defenseless position conservative ideology has left you in.

Not at all, Reverend. At least one recent scholarly economic study has shown that FDR extended the economic downturn of the 1930s by 7 years. It took a World War and his death to pull America out of the doldrums.

The stimulus failed. America lost more than 3 million jobs this past year.

Rev says, "The stimulus created or saved 2.1 million jobs. It has also contributed to GDP growth."

Read my blog today. The Associated Press tells why the stimulus didn't create or save that many jobs. The White House is lying to you, plain and simple.

I'll say this about the stimulus. It's damn near impossible to spend $862 BILLION and not create some jobs, or not create some GDP growth, even though it's entirely artificial. A stimulus that large had to have some effect. That is not the sole issue. The issue is, were the dollars spent in the most effective manner, and were they used in a maximum stimulative way ? In his SOTU, Obama talked about a company that got $99 million in stimulus funds and created 50 jobs with it. He bragged about that, but that comes out to nearly $2 million spent for every job created. Does that sound efficient to you, or even close to efficient ???? It doesn't to me.

And don't forget we now have to pay that $862 billion back via taxes, along with the rest of the $12.3 trillion and growing debt. How are we ever going to do that ? When have we ever done that ? Never. And the structural deficits/debt just keep increasing, the government keeps on being more and more irresponsible, the hole gets deeper and deeper, and in the end, we collapse under the weight of it all. And you expect me to ENDORSE that ???????? 100% wrong. You can spout all the partisan crap at me you want to, but I won't ever agree with taxing and spending my country down the tubes into poverty. Not gonna happen.

And what happens when the temporary stimulus funds run out ? Do we enact a second stimulus, a third, fourth, and fifth stimulus, to keep the country artificially propped up ? We have no long-term fiscal policy in this country that makes the least bit of sense, and Obama is only making things FAR worse. And that is a NON-PARTISAN statement. The Bush Republicans weren't much better.

King…you continually use what I would call a silly argument.

When Americans borrow to purchase a home….don't they normally take out a 30 year mortgage? How do those Americans know that they can pay back such an ungodly sum (with the interest) over that long of a period? Do the borrowers know for sure that they will have sufficient income over those 30 years? How could they possibly know that?

The fact is…..Americans take major risks, according to your economic reasoning, everytime they take on 30 years worth of debt. Not the conservative thing to do.

Secondly, it is not radical, or extreme in the least, for the government to inject demand into a failing economy where demand has dried up and where business stops investing. American government has acted many times to prevent further national economic decline by doing just that.

The problem you're having is not one of sincerity….I never doubt your sincerity, like I do with some conservatives…..your problem seems to be focusing exclusively on spending and debt, regardless of the reality on the ground. Government, I agree, cannot be the driver of authentic economic growth…..but government can, and has, been successful in the past in preventing further economic deteriorization in major downturns. Government, as Obama is doing, has often softened the blow to regular Americans when the "free market" fails, as it often does.