“The Dow Jones Industrial Average has fallen faster under President Obama than under any new president in at least 90 years.”
They’ve finally done it!
“…the wipeout of dividend income by companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index this year already has surpassed what was eliminated in all of 2008.”
The rich are no longer getting richer!
Hats off to our friends on the progressive left as you mark this long sought after achievement. (Is there nothing that Obama can’t do?)
And the success doesn’t stop there. After all those years complaining about corporations and their “obscene profits”, well, there’s no longer much doubt that things are finally going your way. So, a toast to you and that “social science” degree in this brave new era of obscene losses. It couldn’t happen to more deserving folks!
Update – angry responses from the left in the comments help me to realize that I shouldn’t be so flippant. It’s just that with access to 5 sections of mixed bush/farmland and a lifetime’s supply of 30-30 shells, the words “impending economic collapse” stir the same sort of emotional response around here as “longer hunting season”.
Go Obama GO!!
We can only do this if we are a team. So you lefties, you keep on thieving what ain’t yours. In return, I promise to stop producing more of it for you to thieve!
So congrats, once you have it all there will truly be no-one left to blame!!
OBY-One-Knob is marvellous with his telepromptercrutch. Without it he is just another far leftard. Folks who are swooned every time he delivers a great speech can’t come to their collective senses fast enough every time he opens his clapptrap to shoot from the lip. Its like “huh, what’he say – I didn’t catch that”.
Wake-up America! You are being led down the garden path by a dyed-in-the-wool SOCIALIST. I know he is in there for another loooooooooooog three years- ten months but you have to let this guy know that the path he is leading you down has a dead-end date with disaster.
“Now is not the time for profits”
-BO
I say
“Now is not the time for Prophets”
old , but interesting. the underachiever at the top, far past his pay grade, jumped past his level of incompetance via teleprompter.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/510lpuif.asp?pg=1
one wonders when the MSM will tire of errors and turn Judas like on the Obamessiah.
whats the buzz , tell me whats happening.
whats the buzz, teleprompter blathering.
whats the buzz , tell me whats happening.
Keep it up, one day you will wake up and realize that you can’t tax or increase taxes on something that isn’t there anymore. Watch for restrictions on US citizens taking money out of the Country, it’s coming, and soon. I would love to know the number of US dollar accounts Americans have opened up in Canadian banks this past while.
Dumbonomics rules, take your ears and fly back to the cover of Mad magazine you idiot.
I fear that it is very likely that Oblaba equates stock ownership with the leisure class, and regards the descent of the DJIA as a victory.
Apart from the skills necessary to woo followers, he is shockingly ignorant.
I’d love to see a list of the last ten books he’s read, along with the time span required.
Yes, it’s Progress to celebrated, certainly, but alas, we will never achieve Social Justice. We may asymptotically approach it, but will never get there. Mind you, ‘there’ lacks definition. The definition of ‘There’ is as situational as left-wing ethics, naturally.
I’ve long admired those with the fortitude to depart on a journey with an undefined destination. With no destination, anything can be justified in the name of the journey. Freedom from accountability and justification. Liberating, indeed.
Come on ‘professional’ journalists… define ‘social justice’ for us. We’re ignorant. Please educate us. We await your pearls of wisdom.
Yep…that was the plan.
Like Mike Harris, Obama will do what he said he was going to do, but Mike was cleaning up a socialist mess with Common Sense.
Bob, you’re definitely a little different. There are two obvious problems with calling Obama a Socialist. First, my sense is that the well meaning bright folk around here don’t particularly care for Obama and thus I ask why flatter him by calling a Socialist? But secondly, and more seriously, as a socialist I consider Obama the greatest threat to the socialist movement since Tony Blair. These are third way apologists for capitalism. Obama didn’t win because of grassroots organizing; rather because he was heavily backed by the economic elite.
Under the guise of economic justice, these affable, articulate, and charismatic men actually only threaten to forestall the inevitable restructuring that will need to take place. Capitalism, or more accurately, socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor is ultimately untenable, although it was a necessary step towards something better. Blair and Obama hold on most dearly to capitalism, so how could you ever call them socialists? Do you smell what the socialist is cooking?
btw bowing to market pressures (demand is high these days) I’ve had to increase the price for my “How’s capitalism working for you now?” t-shirts. I do have some left though. Any one round here want one?
When I worked and had money invested the proceeds one year bought my daughter a car. A couple of good years and the proceeds bought me a car. Now no profits so no new cars, TV or anything else. Hey that helps out doesn’t it?
Bill – what’s a leftie like you doing actually selling anything? Are you a closet capitalist? What I detect here is someone liking the present state of affairs so you can make a buck on it.
The difference between you and the true capitalist is the latter grows the economy, creates jobs, pays taxes while you profit from the decline in the economy and probably hope it never turns around.
Here’s an interesting comparison of Obama and Palin, pointing out how Obama seems to have ‘unlimited potential’ yet in every instance of his career, he has failed to move beyond this first impression.
Obama and Potential
The articel refers to “a pattern of under-achievement, or more specifically non-achievement, that has followed Obama since law school”.
The author compares Obama to Palin, pointing out that she has accomplished many things while despite Obama’s promised potential, his accomplishments are virtually as empty as his words for on cannot ignore “the various stops in Obama’s career where he occasionally held impressive titles but accomplished little”.
So “what did Obama choose to do with his limitless potential after leaving Harvard? Not much. His first two years out of law school, he began writing a book, commenced lecturing at the University of Chicago Law School and returned to his old vocation of community organizing”.
And, “He didn’t finish his book during the two years in question. He didn’t pursue any scholarship at the University of Chicago, so his career there stalled”.
Equally, his time in the Senate was marked only by his noting that he was ‘present’; and he began instead to spend all his time campaigning for the presidency.
My own opinion is that he is not someone interested in solving problems, not interested in the analysis of a situation and the development of policies and programs to deal with it. This includes finance, economic, foreign affairs and indeed, every situation. His focus is only on developing an infrastructure where he controls people. Period.
“I’ve had to increase the price for my “How’s capitalism working for you now?” t-shirts.”
Bill, come on, capitalism is more than a reflection of the cyclical boom and busts of markets. How well did communism work out for the USSR prior to its collapse in ’89? Seven decades after Lenin and their crappy one bedroom apartment, bulky grey clothes, queuing four blocks for soap, and diet had changed much. Socialism hasn’t put Europeans into small businesses, suburban homes or into two car families. Their elites rule them increasingly by bureaucracy rather than democratic elections. Socialism hasn’t kept their economies from imploding either. Quality of life is contracting faster for them.
The US was a country founded on the premise of demolishing the elites, they’ve made a return with our socialist Democrats now.
Elites are synomymous with socialism. There is no common man in the equation. You’ve really missed a lot. Your naivety isn’t supported by the facts on the ground.
The problem with the USA and BHO is not socialism Bill it’s communist socialism lieberalism. BHO, Biden & Polosi have only had jobs in government and the only thing they understand is big governance.
Meanwhile back at the ORanch: O and his Deniers are having a revel by night*.
…-
“Obama leads ‘Happy Birthday’ for Ted Kennedy”
NECN.com
…-
“THE EVE OF WATERLOO
*THERE was a sound of revelry by night,”
(by: Lord Byron (1788-1824))
The irony of the socialist hawking his t-shirts while lecturing us on the woes of capitalism is humorous. Poor Bill doesn’t understand that supply and demand is natural law, not some harebrained scheme like the one he prescribes to.
The core problem with all forms of Socialism is that eventually, you run out of other peoples money to spend.
So sayeth the Prophet.
My concern, echoed by others here, is that one day the government will not be happy with taxes as Obama raised them and just seize all bank accounts to redistribute savings, IRAs, checking balances, etc.
Indeed, Obama himself wrote:
“Theoretically, there is nothing that can stop the government from taxing 100% of income so long as the people get benefits from the government commensurate with their income which is taxed…Certainly there is no limit to taxation if the benefits derived from public services by society measure up to the cost in taxation which they have to pay. It is a fallacy to say that there is this limit, and it is a fallacy to rely mainly on individual free enterprise to get the savings.”
So I’m watching closely, in order to pull my money in case Obama decides my $3k in savings is too much for me to handle.
Its interesting that big “O” want to rach out to Cuba.
He has the US on a path to be just like Cuba.
Destroy the stock market with doom and gloom, deliberate bad policies and indiference. At the same time introduce far left socialist policies and soon they will be just like Cuba, with everyone at the “bottom”. No more stock market but at least they have socialized medicine.
Horny Toad
Bill Capitalism has ebb and flow. Socialism is flow all the time. O is a capitalist. He is opening up Cuba for 1958 car parts as part of the bailout fo GM, it won’t cost much.
a different bob writes, “OBY-One-Knob is marvellous with his telepromptercrutch.” He is? I find this empty suit altogether irritating and unconvincing, teleprompter or not. He’s a total phony.
By the grace of God, I think, I’ve never been attracted to Obama: he’s fairly attractive looking—very well dressed—but he loses me the second he opens his self-serving, arrogant mouth. His acolytes may hear mellifluous bons mots; all I hear is empty braying.
We’re in for a l-o-n-g four years, but the rash of criticism, after only a few weeks, is quite energizing. I’m enjoying it immensely!
au contraire kate & co.
thank YOU for demolishing the ability of the rich to get richer
your philosophy of the untrammeled unregulated free market, your idiotic voodoo economics passed down by reagan, giving tax cuts to the rich while cutting the social net & creating massive deficits, adopted by bush II (as cheney said “reagan proved deficits don’t matter), who blew trillions in a war (that oil revenues were supposed to finance), leaving behind the biggest deficit in human history while being the only society ever to cut taxes in wartime.. .
no, thank YOU, Kate, and groupies. hope you’re proud of your handiwork. according to the polls people know EXACTLY who to blame. hope ya all lose your shirts! 🙂
The leftards make me laugh, they are hailing the current global destruction of capitalism as a victory yet when they lose their jobs and money what do they expect is going to happen? Will a fairy from Utopian Commie land just pop down to earth and build their utopian dream where we are all one sex to mingle amongst each other.
ET I have to correct one minor item in your comment on the under or non acheiving Obama. One position he held was with Acorn and in the 90’s he initiated and led the legal team in the court action he brought after CitiCorp. Seems they were not closely adhereing to the Carter/Clinton banking requirement to make loans to “deserving” inner city dwellers. Check out citibank stock price today, as a result.
Oh Kate, I just love watching you slam university education. You would certainly know all about it, right?…or wait, maybe not, because you’ve never set foot in a university.
Deep down inside, Kate, I know that one of your biggest regrets and insecurities is not getting a degree and amounting to anything in that regard. This is why you’re so inclined to attack university, not because you know anything about it…because you just don’t.
There’s still time for you though! Why not sign up next fall?! 🙂
Yes, The One has finally managed to “get even” with The Rich. Way to go.
Next up, how do you keep the bread and circuses coming for the now majority of the population who stay home and sell their votes? There’s no more “The Rich” left, they are all now “The Poor”. Whatcha gonna do, Barry?
Short victorious war!
Y’all just wait, I bet The One invades someplace before his 4 years are up. Probably Saudi Arabia, they’re about the only guys small enough to beat really easily who have anything worth stealing. Plus they are a bunch of racist/bigot/homophobe/slave owners, and they actually deserve to be invaded, pillaged and burned.
The clue will be when the MSM does a 180 and starts in about honor killings, African kids enslaved as camel jockeys, Arabs-only facilities and etc.
I foresee it.
When trolls starve, the first thing that goes is their common sense.
Troll hunger . . . social justice that I can support.
Sociology majors are so cute when they’re scared.
Face it… Ogabe is heading the USA in the same direction as his famous namesake. We’re witnessing Ogabe’s Zimbabwification of the USA economy. And we all know what comes next – Ogabe will soon declare himself ‘Dear Leader’ for life!
Post hoc, ergo propter hoc.
A delusion a day keeps reality at bay. (as well as responsibility.)
A poster at U of S a few years ago, reminding philosphy grads to “order their grad rings.”
Someone had written across it: But I can’t wear jewelry at McDonald’s.
ha.
I am wondering if randu is secretly Kow Kollege Keith?
There has always been a “third way” it is known as fascism. That is when multi billionaires support political candidates with the media outlets that they own, think GE and NBC News, and then the govt repays them by spending hundreds of billions on projects by which GE will directly benefit. Ever wonder why billionaires like Soros support a socialist? Because they are not, it is because they are supporting Green Fascism. We used to call it watermelon socialism but if you read about the fascism, the economic system, you will see that this has been the goal all along. The beauty of fascism for these people is that it keeps the currently wealthy and politically collected on the top, and their families, for as long as the system lasts.
Philboy: “Post hoc, ergo propter hoc.
A delusion a day keeps reality at bay. (as well as responsibility.)”
Except that the markets have gone down 35% since the election, 20% since the inauguration. This kind of response to the election of a new president is unparalleled. I suspect that soon — much sooner than expected — Obama won’t be let off the hook by his constant appeals to the ghost of Bush.
Polls remain all right for Obama — about where they were for Carter, Clinton, Reagan and the Bush’s after 7 weeks — but his supporters who cling to those polls need to be reminded at every turn that millions and millions of people are losing mountains of real money and real retirements while the White house plays games, like the attacks on Limbaugh, Wednesday night soirees, an unstaffed Treasury Department/echo chamber, endless telemprompted speeches, a finger in the eye to the British PM ….
Post by: The Phantom at March 9, 2009 12:26 PM
I hope not, but to forward their agenda it could be a possibility.
phillboy,
Listen to me now and hear me later. What has destroyed the markets is the obvious truth that Obama is not going to let this downturn in the business cycle work itself out while increasing safety net and trying to stimulate the economy. Instead, Obama has made it abundantly clear that he intends to dismantle the economy, pursue policies that have always, in the past, led to high inflation, high unemployment, and low economic growth. For this reason, Obama owns this market.
The reality is we haven’t had capitalism in almost a century now. One the one hand, we have a small band of economists which control interest rates and the money supply. These dimwits flooded the system money. On the other we had a bunch of socialists that directed all that money into real estate.
And I’m honestly tired of the lie that the Bush tax cuts caused the deficits. The tax cuts raised revenue by stimulating the economy. The problem is that Bush spent like a drunken sailor. Remember deficits don’t matter? Furthermore, between 1980 to 1996, the Dems controlled the House of Reprentatives and hence the budget. It is therefore the Dems that are largely responsible for the high levels of debt that the US finds itself with today.
I would add that the market is most definately reacting to the bailouts and the Keynesian stimulus. The bailouts are preventing the system from cleaning itself out. The Keynesian stimulus will destroy more jobs than it creates and saddle the US with debt which it will no doubt inflate itself out of in the future.
I remember a comment I heard several years ago that is more valid today. The USA is a Marxist nation if one defines Marxism as “the workers’ control the means of production”. The comment was made because the ownership of corporations via public shares was majority owned by pension funds (union, corporate and individual retirement funds) and mutual funds (in turn owned by average working stiffs).
One could argue today that the US administration and congress are Marxist (Groucho not Karl).
Obama is a dilettante like Trudeau – Just watch him!
Woo-hoo! I can hardly wait for my first job working for a poor man.
For the record, the t-shirts thing was done with tongue in cheek (we need an emoticon for that one if one doesn’t already exist).
Although I didn’t realize some many of you subscribe to natural laws of markets and invisible hands. You know, the market fairies and gnomes whose sleight of hand harmonizes the market. Some of you even think that invisible hand belongs to the Christian God. You scare me the most. I mean who periodically leave credit derivatives at the faerie tree to feed the market faeries?
Again, for the record, the left has long dealt with the whole what about the USSR/China… thing. The left rightly condemns the USSR as no less an imperial capitalist power (state capitalism) than the US. Totalitarianism in all its evil incarnations (fascist or “communist”) is not tantamount to Marxist communism.
And if the best argument against the left becomes “really existing socialism” (which in fact has never really yet existed) has never really worked, keep in mind that “really existing capitalism” is about the prove itself completely unworkable. Capitalism could end up being the shortest lived mode of production in human history, which may not be a bad thing since it seems that new modes of production are always far superior to their predecessors. Guess what comes after capitalism? Barbarism OR Communism (the social appropriation of socially produced surplus). The choice is ours to make.
Update – angry responses from the left in the comments help me to realize that I shouldn’t be so flippant. It’s just that with access to 5 sections of mixed bush/farmland and a lifetime’s supply of 30-30 shells, the words “impending economic collapse” stir the same sort of emotional response around here as “longer hunting season”.
LOL! Migawd, Kate, that’s gotta be the funniest, and at the same time apt, sentence you’ve ever put up here. I am especially appreciative of it, ‘cos earlier today I had a long chat with my retired business partner and old friend, the upshot of which was, “we don’t really know how to do anything”. It’s clear, however, that you DO.
Bill Stewart’s argument: falling back on ET’s earlier instruction on the widely misunderstood phrase “begging the question” (I hope I got it right, ET!), Bill begs the question, like this:
1. What the US had was capitalism
2. The US economy has cratered.
Ergo:
3. Capitalism doesn’t work.
But as we all should know, the first premise is wrong, and therefore the syllogism fails. We did NOT have CAPITALISM but a heavily mixed economy. We did not have, to use Mises’ phrase, a “umhampered free market economy”. Far, far from it.
Even our “beloved” W whom so many people mysteriously miss, was not a capitalist. Only a sunny-sky one. “I’ve suspended the rules of the free market in order to save the free market”. He liked free markets only when on an upswing. However, the business cycle (according to the Austrian school) is a government-created phenomenon. The system was not a true capitalist one of “profit and loss”, rather, “private profit, socialized loss”.
So you say you’ll give me 30 pieces of silver to kiss this Obama fellow on the cheek!
Hummmm…make it 30 pieces and a Prius!
OK, done deal.
Sure, Bill, we are all waiting for that salvation bound train to deliver us to that REAL come-to-Jesus, oops, Lenin socialism after all of the existing ones that didn’t work out too well. The only difference between you and the type of Christians you ridicule is that your televangelists are different. You’ve got a mind mired in contradictions, the fervor of any religious zealot and utter worn out cliches. You are the mirror image of what you are deriding and simply not getting that.
You need to got to the troll penalty box where people that spew undigested college freshman stuff do penance. See ya.
Bill Stewart, denier.
Bill,
Do you think that there is some enforcement agency or personage who makes sure that the laws of supply and demand work? There can be no “market fairies” after all that go around raising the price of wheat when demand rises, or supply drops, after all. It must be some central power that has enforced the law of supply and demand throughout history, sort of like that blond guy who works for the Pope in The Davinci Code. Is that what you think Bill?
Or is the “invisible hand”, the sum of all of the decisions made by the parties involved, in control of the law of supply and demand? Is that what you really think?
Aside to everyone by Bill:
Here are his reply options. Reject my argument without answering it, then ask a rhetorical question.
Point me to some web site from a leftie with no hint as to what part of it he supports. I guess this option means that he supports every word of the linked web site uncritically. Except, if this were true, you would think he would be able to express these arguments in his own words.
Fusilade of rhetorical blasts.
Claim that he does not “have the time”, or like Obama, he is “too tired” to respond. (My bet)
Or he just slinks away.
The option he won’t take is to address my argument that the ‘invisible hand’ exists, and is a metaphor for the collective decisions of thousands of people.
“”I’m having a ball,” he said.”
Did ya hear the one ’bout the two cannibals and the missionary?
…-
“‘Facebook for filthy rich’ prospers despite bad economy
BY KEITH NIEBUHR St. Petersburg Times
Bob Smith is hooked. He spends 10 hours a week online messaging his pals, shooting e-mails to new acquaintances and popping off about a variety of topics.
It makes him feel like a teenager — not a successful 57-year-old business executive. “I’m having a ball,” he said.
Smith’s Web site of choice, Affluence.org, is free, but don’t fire up that computer just yet.
It’s a tad exclusive.
Membership requires a verified net worth of at least $3 million or an annual household income of $300,000. If you don’t qualify, there is one other way to join: convince at least five wealthy folks to vouch for you.
“It’s Facebook for the filthy rich,” said Palm Harbor’s Scott Mitchell, the site’s founder, president and chief executive officer.
Launched in September, Affluence.org reports more than 20,000 members (apparently, the economic downturn hasn’t hit the yacht club scene just yet).
The site’s members are chief executives, celebrities, investors, magazine publishers, philanthropists and socialites from around the world, Mitchell said. Rolling Stone co-founder Jann Wenner is among those with a profile, and Mitchell — who helped launch Rolling Stone’s Web site — swears, “It’s him.”
The question is: Are all members legit?”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2202693/posts
Minor point, me no dhimmi, but your syllogism fails, not because your first premise is invalid as a fact (The US Economy is a capitalist mode) but because your syllogism is logically invalid.
The fallacy, if it matters, is the ‘undistributed middle’.
Your syllogism is:
The US economy is a capitalist mode.
The US economy is a failed economy.
Therefore, failed economies are capitalist.
You can’t validly connect the two predicates (is a capitalist mode, is a failed economy). A comparable example, equally logically invalid, would be;
Canada is a cold country.
Canada is a large country.
Therefore large countries are cold countries.
However – syllogisms aside, your major premise, that the US has a capitalist economy IS correctly defined as flawed. But, heh, only if you define the ratio of capitalism. Is there any country in the world, ever, that has operated its total economy in a completely capitalist mode? I doubt it.
bill stewart – come now, you are making an unsubstantiated ‘revelatory’ declaration when you state that:
‘new modes of production are always superior to their predecessors’ and
‘communism follows capitalism’.
First, the mode of production is directly related to two variables: the environment and the size of the population. Did you know that you can’t grow wheat in the arctic? Or in a rain forest? Or in the tundra? And this means that your population size is limited to the food supply.
Second, there is absolutely no historical deterministic law, where one economic mode ‘naturally and lawfully’ follows another one.
Pure Marxist speculation. As fictional as any text. Marx had no knowledge of the ecological realities of different societies, of causes of population size; and of the relation of economic mode to these first two variables.
Capitalism functions when individuals are free to make decisions. Without individual freedom, you can’t have capitalism. Trade has always existed; it requires surplus production but this production can be confined to a tribe or class.
The expansion of capitalist freedom, in the West, began to develop in the 14th c with the emerging market economies and expanded by adding a capacity to produce surplus beyond the local sustenance requirements and also, by empowering more of the population to engage in this surplus and trade economy.
It works best with a combination of societal regulation and individual entrepreneurship. You need societal regulation to prevent interactions operating by ‘thuggery’, aka, mafia style. This type of economy is a Growth Economy and can permit larger populations. Growth Economies require innovation and entrepreneurship. Only individuals think – and therefore, only a capitalist economy can innovate.
Socialism rejects the individual and therefore, can only function in non-surplus producing, No Growth economies.
randu – I have four university degrees and I’ll slam university degrees – except the hard sciences – any and every day. They are primarily useless; you can do better on your own, and your mind isn’t filled with sophist, leftist nonsense that takes you years, if ever, from which to free yourself.
MJ – the approval ratio for Obama is steady; that is, the ‘slope’ is horizontal; the approval is not going up or down. BUT, the disapproval is a positive slope, going higher and higher every day. That’s rather important. Watch what happens when the two lines meet!
ET, great link and fits in well with your anaylsis of O as a narcissist personality. I worry about your statement that he will reject advise from those who don’t fully support and agree with him.
I remember the discussion with the 4 people on CNN where the one announcer asks the question “What really do we know about Obama? We sent 30 people to dig up dirt on Palin in Alaska but none to Chicago to investigate Obama, why?”. Blank stares and mumbles from the other 3.
I just caught a piece of the Oscars, as I can’t stand these leftists like Penn hugging each other, and saw Tina Fey come out to much applause. Her claim to fame was the character assassination of Sarah Palin. She should be real proud.
Well, ET, your “mode” looks like a cop-out to me.
Now, I certainly agree, there is no “pure form” of any ideology to be found anywhere on earth. We agree here, for sure. (just as there’s no pure form of marxism too, so that Obama can indeed be a marxist, despite his deliberate lack of transparency [read: bait and switch lying]. And BTW, my thesis is gaining ground, daily!
It wasn’t my syllogism, it was what I took to be Bill Stewart’s implied syllogism, the first premise of which is that the US economic system is unalloyed capitalism, which clearly, we agree it is not!
So, that’s what I mean when I say “begging the question”. What I took to be his first premise, that the US has an economic system which is unalloyed capitalism, is false.
It’s a mixed economy (and more than ever, with all this Too Big to Fail, private profit-socialized loss).
All I’m saying is that in a mixed anything, it’s not fair to blame only one of the ingredients.
As Mark Styen says, “in a mixture of vanilla ice cream and dog feces” the latter will tend to determine the overall taste.
Bill Stewart dropped a steamer here!