RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events Great Depression 2.0 May Be On Its Way

Actually Bush's medical deal was a total give away that will greatly add to the debt every year. There was no attempt to pay for anything, that's only expected of democratic presidents during recessions silly.

As for the wars, reallistically no we couldn't just pull out those countries now that we're there. What would have been nice though is if there had been some plan beyond getting there and hanging the mission accomplished signs.

What about free health care to people that are willfully destroying their lives? How much is that going to cost us?

The partisan lies in this post are almost beyond the ability to count.

You mean the prescription drug plan Bush signed with Ted Kennedy and the Democrats? The one that at the time was considered a model of bipartisanship? The same one that at turns Democrats claim as their achievement, or when they are trying to spin it negatively, spin as "Bush's prescription plan" and deny their heavy involvement in it?
How infuriatingly deceitful of the Left.

...

2000s


Kennedy had an easy time with his re-election to the Senate in 2000, as Republican lawyer and entrepreneur Jack E. Robinson III was sufficiently damaged by his past personal record that Republican state party officials refused to endorse him.[171] Kennedy got 73 percent of the general election vote, with Robinson splitting the rest with Libertarian Carla Howell.

During the long, disputed post-presidential election battle in Florida in 2000, Kennedy supported Vice President Al Gore's legal actions.[172] After the bitter contest was over, many Democrats in Congress did not want to work with incoming President George W. Bush.[67] Kennedy, however, saw Bush as genuinely interested in a major overhaul of elementary and secondary education, Bush saw Kennedy as a potential major ally in the Senate, and the two partnered together on the legislation.[67][173] Kennedy accepted provisions governing mandatory student testing and teacher accountability that other Democrats and the National Education Association did not like, in return for increased funding levels for education.[67] The No Child Left Behind Act was passed by Congress in May and June 2001 and signed into law by Bush in January 2002.

Kennedy soon became disenchanted with the implementation of the act, however, saying for 2003 that it was $9 billion short of the $29 billion authorized.[67] Kennedy said, “The tragedy is that these long overdue reforms are finally in place, but the funds are not,”[173] and accused Bush of not living up to his personal word on the matter.[67][136] Other Democrats concluded that Kennedy's penchant for cross-party deals had gotten the better of him.[67] The White House defended its spending levels given the context of two wars going on.[67]

Kennedy was in his Senate offices meeting with First Lady Laura Bush when the September 11, 2001, attacks took place.[169] Two of the airplanes involved had taken off from Boston, and in the following weeks, Kennedy telephoned each of the 177 Massachusetts families who had lost members in the attacks.[169] He pushed through legislation that provided healthcare and grief counseling benefits for the families, and recommended the appointment of his former chief of staff Kenneth Feinberg as Special Master of the government's September 11th Victim Compensation Fund.[169] Kennedy maintained an ongoing bond with the Massachusetts 9/11 families in subsequent years.[169][174]

In reaction to the attacks, Kennedy was a supporter of the American-led 2001 overthrow of the Taliban government in Afghanistan. However, Kennedy strongly opposed the Iraq War from the start, and was one of 23 senators voting against the Iraq War Resolution in October 2002.[169] As the Iraqi insurgency grew in subsequent years, Kennedy pronounced that the conflict was "Bush's Vietnam."[169] In response to losses of Massachusetts service personnel to roadside bombs, Kennedy became vocal on the issue of Humvee vulnerability, and co-sponsored enacted 2005 legislation that sped up production and Army procurement of up-armored Humvees.[169]


Kennedy at the 2002 signing of a border security bill, with Senator Dianne Feinstein and President George W. Bush. Despite the strained relationship between Kennedy and Bush over No Child Left Behind spending, the two attempted to work together again on extending Medicare to cover prescription drug benefits.[67]

Kennedy's strategy was again doubted by other Democrats, but he saw the proposed $400 billion program as an opportunity that should not be missed.[67] However, when the final formulation of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act contained provisions to steer seniors towards private plans, Kennedy switched to opposing it.[67] It passed in late 2003, and led Kennedy to again say he had been betrayed by the Bush administration.[67]

In the 2004 Democratic Party presidential primaries, Kennedy campaigned heavily for fellow Massachusetts Senator John Kerry.[169] and lent his chief of staff, Mary Beth Cahill, to the Kerry campaign. Kennedy's appeal was effective among blue collar and minority voters, and helped Kerry stage a come-from-behind win in the Iowa caucuses that propelled him on to the Democratic nomination.[169]

After Bush won a second term in the 2004 general election, Kennedy continued to oppose him on Iraq and many other issues.[67][69] However, Kennedy sought to partner with Republicans again on the matter of immigration reform in the context of the ongoing United States immigration debate.[67] Kennedy was chair of the United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Refugees, and in 2005, Kennedy teamed with Republican Senator John McCain on the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act. The "McCain-Kennedy bill" did not reach a Senate vote, but provided a template for further attempts at dealing comprehensively with legalization, guest worker programs, and border enforcement components. Kennedy returned again with the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007, which was sponsored by an ideologically diverse, bipartisan group of senators[175] and having strong support from the Bush administration.[67] The bill aroused furious grassroots opposition among talk radio listeners and others as an "amnesty" program,[176] and despite Kennedy's last-minute attempts to salvage it, failed a cloture vote in the Senate.[177] Kennedy was philosophical about the defeat, saying that often took several attempts across multiple Congresses for this type of legislation to build enough momentum for passage.[67]

Meanwhile, American businesses continue to suffer from virtually the highest corporate tax rates in the industrialized world, leaving American companies uncompetitive in the global economy. Yet under President Obama there is no relief in sight. Instead he continually proposes still further tax increases on American business.

President Obama and the Democrats doggedly pursue these tax policies because they believe ideologically in socialist wealth redistribution. But openly raiding small businesses, job creators, investors, and American companies is crippling for the economy, particularly this weak economy. This ends up hurting working people and their families the most, as they lose the jobs, wages, and opportunity they need for a decent life.

Besides this tax tsunami, President Obama is implementing another trillion dollar plus cost burden on the economy through the EPA's cap and trade tax policy. That is one central feature of President Obama's war on production of traditional, low cost, energy, shutting down drilling, extraction and pipelines from the northern tip of Alaska, down through Canada, to the energy rich Western states, through Texas, to the Gulf of Mexico. Obama keeps issuing statements that he is opening drilling or permitting or exploration here and there, only to have it shut down by his bureaucracy soon thereafter. All of this will only raise energy prices higher and higher through to 2013, squelching the economy still further.

President Obama doggedly pursues this because he and his advisers believe ideologically that higher energy prices and less energy production and use are good for the environment. But this extremist view of what is good for the environment is a catastrophe for the economy, jobs, and working people.

This is just the beginning, however, of President Obama's reregulation burden on the economy, which is estimated to be rapidly rising towards $2 trillion, or over $8,000 per employee, in annual costs even before EPA's calamitous cap and trade really begins. That is close to 10 times the corporate tax burden, and double the individual income tax burden. With another 4,225 federal regulations already in the pipeline, and the new regulatory burdens from Obama and the Dodd-Frank financial regulation bill still to come, how high will that burden be by 2013?

Then there is the Fed and the effects of its monetary policy. The Obama Administration has cheered on the Fed's loose-as-a-bordello monetary policy, with near zero interest rates for years now, and the printing presses cranking out reams of cheap money. But once the Fed ends this monetary crack, the artificial pump up for the economy ends as well, and the underlying weakness of the economy is revealed. That appears to be what is happening now, as QE2 ends.

If the Fed stands pat, the downturn will feed on itself, fueled further by all of the above contractionary policies. If the Fed is spooked into resorting to QE3 and the return to easy money, that will cause the inflation started by QE2 to surge. Indeed, once the Fed goes down that road, it surely will not try to cut back again until the 2012 election is past, to avoid a nasty downturn in the middle of President Obama's planned reelection victory tour. Inflation would consequently surge all through next year, cutting the real wages of working people and their families further.

Right after the election, the Fed will stop the merry go round to finally pull the plug on burgeoning inflation. But that extended monetary malpractice will only make the downturn withdrawal from the monetary crack high all the more nasty.

From the comprehensive tax rate increases, to the soaring energy costs, to the costly regulatory burdens, to the monetary policy mindlessness, all of this adds up to one whopping double-dip downturn in 2013. The extended unemployment exploding into double digits will be effectively another depression. Once it starts feeding on itself, there is no telling just how far it will go.

But with the deficit already at $1.6 trillion or so this year, America cannot handle another recession, let alone effectively another depression that will cause the deficit to soar well beyond any possibly manageable levels. World financial markets cannot bear that load, and will not even try. Indeed, it is the Fed's monetary policy working the printing presses overtime for QE2 that has financed the purchase of the debt for the current all-time record deficit.

Our Choice in 2012

Because of the willfully mindless irresponsibility and ideological self-indulgence of Obamanomics, America is mortally vulnerable to another recession at any time soon. The result would be precisely the national bankruptcy of Greece, where we cannot raise in the world credit markets the further debt to finance what will be well over half of our budgeted federal spending. We are already borrowing and adding to the debt to finance 43% of our federal spending today.

That is bad enough for a puny, insignificant nation like Greece, where riots increasingly leave the government dysfunctional, with the EU likely to take over the country effectively. But what is the effect when that happens to the world's supposed superpower? America financed World War II by running up our national debt to its all-time record as a percent of GDP (for now). But that won't be possible when we have already run ourselves into national bankruptcy.

Our potential military enemies will be quite aware of this historic vulnerability of America. Just as Reagan brought us Peace through Strength, Obamanomics will be inviting War through Weakness. With a 2013 American economic collapse that will also disable the entire West, the world's uncivilized rogues from Russia, to China, to North Korea, to the Middle East Islamists dreaming of renewed world conquest, will all be tempted probably beyond resistance and reason to strike. They don't need even to attack the homeland to deal America a decisive defeat. They can just decimate our suddenly overwhelmed allies, from Israel to South Korea to Taiwan to our allies in the Middle East, let alone some even in Europe.

The only way to get off this bullet train to oblivion is to radically reverse Obamanomics in dogged detail. The American people get one more chance to do that in 2012.

The same reason people think bush was a good president. Blind loyalty and a whole lot of retardation.

The Long, Long Depression: Better days are ahead — in the 2030s.

This is a structural depression — just as the long depression of the 19th century was. And it won’t be over until we have fixed the way the economy works.

But the Democrats continue to sing la-la-la with their fingers in their ears, continue to add 1.5 trillion or more to the U.S. national debt each year, and to scapegoat blame onto the Republicans for programs that Democrats either initiated or had a heavy collaborative hand in:

Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, pressuring banks to make loans to people who should not have qualified, mortgage-backed securities, prolonging the real estate crisis with obstructive subsidies instead of letting market forces clear the inventory by letting home prices naturally fall to sellable prices till the crisis ended, jointly passing expensive entitlements like No-Child-Left-Behind and the Prescription Drug Plan and then blaming Republicans, passing legislation for two wars then posturing against the wars Democrats overwhelmingly voted for themselves, homeland security spending, the Patriot Act, Obamacare, Cap-and-Trade, and on and on.)

Everyone agrees that we're headed for the cliff, maybe ten years away at most, maybe only a year or two, or a few months. Europe, Japan, China, the U.S., the whole thing is coming apart.

And when the Republicans actually propose action to contain or reverse the damage, they are bitterly demonized by Washington Democrats, the liberal media, and the radical Left.

Democrats are in complete denial of the clear reality, as they continue to spend 1.5 trillion a year obliviously.
And the media and the Left, likewise indoctrinated, cheer them on, from the cliff's edge all the way to the bottom.

...The minority party in both houses of Congress for the first six years of Bush's tenure as president drove the nation off a fucking cliff from the passenger seat. ...

I'm no fan of Democrats, but ...

Republicans are good and Democrats are bad.

But the Democrats continue to sing la-la-la with their fingers in their ears, continue to add 1.5 trillion or more to the U.S. national debt each year, and to scapegoat blame onto the Republicans for programs that Democrats either initiated or had a heavy collaborative hand in:

Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, pressuring banks to make loans to people who should not have qualified, mortgage-backed securities, prolonging the real estate crisis with obstructive subsidies instead of letting market forces clear the inventory by letting home prices naturally fall to sellable prices till the crisis ended, jointly passing expensive entitlements like No-Child-Left-Behind and the Prescription Drug Plan and then blaming Republicans, passing legislation for two wars then posturing against the wars Democrats overwhelmingly voted for themselves, homeland security spending, the Patriot Act, Obamacare, Cap-and-Trade, and on and on.)

Everyone agrees that we're headed for the cliff, maybe ten years away at most, maybe only a year or two, or a few months. Europe, Japan, China, the U.S., the whole thing is coming apart.

And when the Republicans actually propose action to contain or reverse the damage, they are bitterly demonized by Washington Democrats, the liberal media, and the radical Left.

Democrats are in complete denial of the clear reality, as they continue to spend 1.5 trillion a year obliviously.
And the media and the Left, likewise indoctrinated, cheer them on, from the cliff's edge all the way to the bottom.

If the private sector keeps hiring like it has been the last couple of months than it's going to be pretty grim for the GOP. The GOP storyline of Obama destroying the economy has already become a case of he's slowing the recovery down.

If the private sector keeps hiring like it has been the last couple of months than it's going to be pretty grim for the GOP. The GOP storyline of Obama destroying the economy has already become a case of he's slowing the recovery down.

I don't even have to read it to know...




...it's just Repostmetheus flinging his own cake-like poo, in a fit of infantile impotency, reposting the same unread post for the 20 billionth time.

... obstruct the Keystone Pipeline and another 20,000 jobs, that didn't smother ...

I've debunked the exagerated job numbers concerning the pipeline already. Why keep repeating a number you know that isn't true?

TransCanada Vice President Robert Jones said permanent jobs would be “in the hundreds, certainly not in the thousands,” in a Nov. 11 interview on CNN.

It's not my estimate but the VP of TransCanada.


bloomberg.com

Where did you get your wildly inflated number from?

If in 3 yrs a Republican had gotten Bin Laden, Qaddafi & brought Dow back to 12,000, he'd already be on Mt. Rushmore & the dime. Fact. Funny how it was "Obama's Economy" until he brought it back up. Now, the Extremist Right claims you can't give any credit to him. Fucking racists...