This is unprecedented. Instead, the White House is saying Obama won’t dignify S&P’s downgrade with a response, which just means they haven’t been able to come up with one. Christina Romer has, though. She said we’ve been intercoursed. Our economy’s intercoursed. Christina Romer, yeah. I got the sound bite. Grab audio sound bite number five. This Friday night, HBO’s Real Time, that idiot, Bill Maher, talking to former chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisors Christina Romer about the economy, and Bill Maher says, “How intercoursed are we? I mean, right before the show S&P downgraded our credit rating.”
ROMER: Pretty darn (bleep).
MAHER: Ooh.
AUDIENCE: (applause and laughter)
ROMER: I’ve been hanging around Tim Geithner too long.
AUDIENCE: (laughter)
MAHER: Why? Does he swear like a sailor?
ROMER: Oh, like a seventh grade boy.
RUSH: So our former head of the Council of Economic Advisors is going on a comedy show on
HBO to talk about how our economy is now “intercoursed,” and she was one of the former economic team that helped introduce policies that led us to the point where now we’re intercoursed.
[…]
World War II, we had a AAA credit rating, and we lose it now, and for what? For what great purpose did we lose it? Except an ideological hatred of American capitalism and a love of class warfare, what did we lose our AAA rating for? A naked effort to get still more and more money to buy votes. A never-ending quest for power, that’s why we lost our AAA credit rating.
“Why are facts ‘moronic logic’?”
They’re not, but attacking the stimulus package by costing out price per job as though the sole purpose of stimulus funds (or tax cuts) is to create jobs, is. The 4th Branch’s tax cut example was intended to highlight the absurdity of the Weekly Standard’s original argument (you can tell because they write, “This example highlights the absurdity”).
Davenport:
And another thing Obama inherited from Dubya.
A AAA credit rating.
Black Mamba: “Almost all Black Americans almost always vote Democrat. Almost all Latinos too, and the more get in and get citizenship the bigger that bloc gets; and these voting patterns are based on the perception that Republicans are a bunch of racist old White men…So yeah, actually, “It is about politicians bribing voters with other people’s money.”
In your example, if “Black Americans” and “Latinos” constitute the voters whom politicians are bribing, who exactly constitutes the “other people” whose money is being used?
Just curious.
The middle-class. Blacks and Latinos who are middle-class still vote dem., of course, which isn’t in their best interest; but then so do Jews and the Judenhass on Israel is getting pretty epic.
People don’t vote rationally, Davs. Could be Five Feet of Fury is right and women just should never have been allowed to vote.
The American middle class?
That would be the Tea Party. Ordinary Americans who are taxed enough already.
Like Chretien, the Democratic Party uses divide-and-conquer methods.
They divide by race and they divide by class. One has to be the victim and one has to be the oppressor ie Big Business.
Yet, once average, everyday Americans of all races and class understood that it’s their money that’s being used to finance this fraudulent ‘social justice’ they refused to play along.
The Democratic Party portrays itself as the protector of the victims and the Tea Party, comprised of average middle-class people, realized they are victims of the political class.
Fortunately, the US political system was designed to guard against the concentration of potential tyrannical power and its power is split in three ways … the House of Representatives, the Senate and the Presidency.
Gridlock at least assures a stalemate with the greedy control freaks who believe they are more qualified to spend your money than you are until the next election, guaranteed to happen every two years.
And so, here we are at another crossroads in US history.
Will the electorate believe that somebody else can spend their money better than they can or do they believe they themselves are the final arbiter of what to do with their money?
Next November will tell and I’m willing to bet, right now, that the people will stand up for independence from the utopian socialists.
“….But when the cloud of rhetoric has passed … when the roar of the crowd fades away … when the stadium lights go out, and those Styrofoam Greek columns are hauled back to some studio lot — what exactly is our opponent’s plan? What does he actually seek to accomplish, after he’s done turning back the waters and healing the planet? The answer is to make government bigger … take more of your money … give you more orders from Washington … and to reduce the strength of America in a dangerous world.
America needs more energy … our opponent is against producing it…”
Remember the RNC ’08?
You betcha!!
In your example, if “Black Americans” and “Latinos” constitute the voters whom politicians are bribing, who exactly constitutes the “other people” whose money is being used?
The “other people” are actually the ChiComs.
Let’s not forget that the bribes are entitlements that are driving up the national debt and yearly deficits.(topic of the thread)
No one is really paying for most of these things right now, all that’s being paid for is to keep the unsustainable debt/deficit gravy train limping along so that politicians and the non-taxpaying class(this includes government workers) can be irresponsible a little while longer until the train rolls through the ‘Bridge Out’ sign and piles into the canyon floor below.
What the Dems want is for taxpayers to pay more, during a recession while many taxpayers are on a self-imposed austerity track to pay down their own household debt, so that the gravy train can continue limping toward inevitable destruction later, rather than sooner.
Understandably the taxpayers don’t want to pay more now and erode their declining living standard today just so that the nearly 50% in the U.S. who don’t pay any taxes at all can be free riders for a bit longer.
For your viewing enjoyment:
Estonia gets S&P upgrade, shows way for Greece, others
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/09/estonia-rating-idUSLDE7780Z420110809
Found this while trying to confirm that 40% of Grecian jobs were with the gov’t. Fail so far. Actually I’m looking for a global chart. These jobs add nothing to GDP, at a price well above what the private sector offers. Perks extra. Health & education are the biggest part of the feds & pro’s budget. Both are unionized monopolies & failures. Privatize please.
just noticed your Down Jones ticker, quite a rebound this afternoon.
quite a rebound this afternoon.
Dead cat bounce designed to scoop up the money they didn’t get the first time.
If you can’t put your finger on the reason for a rally, that rally is artificial.
A never-ending quest for power, that’s why we lost our AAA credit rating.
Give the man a cigar. He at least knows what the omens say.
Lets not forget the old staple greed either.
It all comes back to pride. A Nation sundered for one mans ego.
Davenport said: “Interesting definition of corruption, given that it arguably encompasses either NOTHING or EVERYTHING that any basic functional government does.”
I notice you never actually address the argument at hand Davenport, you just change the subject and dance around the edges.
You’re wrong too. A basic, functional government has three, and only three, services it provides. Defense of the nation, keeping the public peace, and enforcing contracts.
Medicare is a redistributionist scam masquerading as an actual service.
Not to worry though, its going to collapse under the weight of its own infernal inefficiency pretty freaking soon. Hopefully it won’t kill too many people when it goes down.
Phantom
Exactly, I wonder how many public service employees in the federal government work on the health file, 20,000…50,000..?…and not one of them providing actual front line healthcare services.
The redistribution seems to begin with the paper pushers.
Synchro,this is so true.
If you walk in to a hospital you see scads of people running around doing things. Out of all that, the only ones who contribute significantly to patient care are the doctors, the nurses, the lab, the kitchen and the cleaners. The rest of them could by and large not even be there and things would still run just fine. Yet they are all very busy, some are over worked.
Then there’s OHIP. Care to hazard a guess how many OHIP employees it takes to process one doctor’s billing? Hint, its more than one.
Above Davenport said: “All told, I’m guessing the amount of money freed up [by shuttering the DOE and halving the EPA] won’t nearly be as high as you or Walter think, and certainly not enough to cover Medicare.”
Couple threads up from this one we have a new “Is There Nothing That Obama Can’t Do?” with the Barry announcing new EPA mandatory fuel mileage standards for heavy trucks and other large over-the-road vehicles. Owners will have to upgrade all existing vehicles to meet the new standards or take them off the road.
Davenport seems not to be here, or I’d ask her to explain that “multiplier effect” thing again.
The U. S. should streamline the tax system, dispense with loopholes and deductions, impose a low flat rate tax on corporate income (gross income, not profits) and keep personal taxes under control.
It should also increase the tax base by getting government out of the economy as much as possible. Deregulate, privatize intelligently (i.e., not like the 407), and scrap subsidies (a.k.a. pork) to anybody who hasn’t earned it — outside the welfare state at first, then include it later.
WalterF: “Money for nothing is the opiate of the masses.”
I must remember that one!