Obama Supporters Should Vote Jill Stein (rant)

[TaraJo]

And before you say "liberal ideas failed too", we need a comparable test first. I've said before what that is. I want 8 years of the kind of undisputed power your team had.

Interestingly enough, the closest to that we've had was the Clinton presidency. While the Republicans were in power most of that time, they were more than willing to make compromises here and there in order to make progress. So Clinton was able to accomplish more of what he wanted than Obama has of what he's wanted and Clinton presided over a period of general peace and amazing economic growth. I see those signs with Bush saying "Miss me yet?" and I always want to respond by saying "No, I miss Bill."

[A Theist]

I was going to respond with something along the lines of "so if my arguments are such bs then, why not knock them down?" but others beat me to the punch.

Sorry A Theist, but when you get all the power for 8 years, all your ideas are adopted with no strings attached and all your ideas are tried, you OWN the results.

And if you propose more of the same, as Republicans are currently doing, than it means you either like the results or your insane enough to think you're going to get a different outcome.

And before you say "liberal ideas failed too", we need a comparable test first. I've said before what that is. I want 8 years of the kind of undisputed power your team had.

Give your guy another four years? This country can't afford another term of Barack Obama. Obama promised to cut the national debt in half by the end of his first term,....“today I’m pledging to cut the deficit we inherited in half by the end of my first term in office. This will not be easy. It will require us to make difficult decisions and face challenges we’ve long neglected. But I refuse to leave our children with a debt that they cannot repay — and that means taking responsibility right now, in this administration, for getting our spending under control.”

Candidate Obama campaigned on cutting the debt and turning the economy around, even calling Bush unpatriotic for adding $4 trillion to the national debt in his eight years in office, “The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion for the first 42 presidents – #43 added $4 trillion by his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back — $30,000 for every man, woman and child. U.S. Treasury debt no longer deserved to be considered among the safest investments in the world.“

In just three and half years into Obama's term our national debt has increased from nearly $10 trillion when Bush left, to nearly $16 trillion of debt. Our share of the current national debt for every man, woman and child has increased from $30,000 when Bush left office, to $51,000 under Obama....and for the first time in 70 years under Obama, Standard and Poor's (S&P) downgraded the U.S. credit rating from AAA to AA+, saying,"...the U.S. Treasury debt no longer deserved to be considered among the safest investments in the world." Our national unemployment rate still remains above 8%.

You don't get 8 years. Barack Obama said he only needed 4.
Electing Barack Obama to a second term would be disasterous for this country.

[DeistPaladin]

Give your guy another four years?

I'm sorry, you're apparently still under the delusion that Obama is a liberal and his first term was characterized by the kind of unlimited power that Bush had.

In the first place, Obama from day 1 chased after the Republicans, generously giving away concessions in exchange for his dream of healing the nation and creating bipartisanship. In the second place, Republicans returned the favor by literally filibustering every bill and cabinet nomination they could, grinding Washington to a halt and forcing what did get past to be watered down and compromised.

The fact that we still have the Bush Tax Cuts, a major reason for the deficit you wring your hands over, is because of Republicans, not Obama.

Here's a Bill Mahar New Rule for you: You don't get to whine about the debt if you fought to keep the Bush Tax Cuts.

Remember, Bush got EVERYTHING he wanted except for the privatization of Social Security delivered to him quickly with no filibusters and no compromises all on a silver platter. That's the kind of power we need on the liberal side to test liberal ideas.

Also, a milquetoast accommodating centrist like Obama doesn't count as a liberal president.

[Minimalist]

Also, a milquetoast accommodating centrist like Obama doesn't count as a liberal president.

Agreed.... he's still better that a mormon fuckwit and his gang of fascist rich fucks, though.

[A Theist]

Give your guy another four years?

I'm sorry, you're apparently still under the delusion that Obama is a liberal and his first term was characterized by the kind of unlimited power that Bush had.

In the first place, Obama from day 1 chased after the Republicans, generously giving away concessions in exchange for his dream of healing the nation and creating bipartisanship. In the second place, Republicans returned the favor by literally filibustering every bill and cabinet nomination they could, grinding Washington to a halt and forcing what did get past to be watered down and compromised.

The fact that we still have the Bush Tax Cuts, a major reason for the deficit you wring your hands over, is because of Republicans, not Obama.

Here's a Bill Mahar New Rule for you: You don't get to whine about the debt if you fought to keep the Bush Tax Cuts.

Remember, Bush got EVERYTHING he wanted except for the privatization of Social Security delivered to him quickly with no filibusters and no compromises all on a silver platter. That's the kind of power we need on the liberal side to test liberal ideas.

Also, a milquetoast accommodating centrist like Obama doesn't count as a liberal president.

The U.S. has a current spending budget of $3.8 trillion with a federal deficit of $1.3 trillion by the end of this year. Here's a new rule for Bill Mahar: Maybe if Washington would exercise some spending discipline we wouldn't whine about the $16 trillion debt.

[DeistPaladin]

The U.S. has a current spending budget of $3.8 trillion with a federal deficit of $1.3 trillion by the end of this year. Here's a new rule for Bill Mahar: Maybe if Washington would exercise some spending discipline we wouldn't whine about the $16 trillion debt.

And where was all this hand-wringing over the debt when W was in charge and doubled it. You remember how he ran in 2000 against the surplus, saying it was a bad thing and we needed to give that money away in tax cuts for the wealthy? Why is it conservatives only care about the debt when they're not in power?

But back to my original point, we have a revenue problem. The wealthy aren't paying their fair share of the tax burden. Conservative ideology states that we should shift the burden away from them so they trickle down all over us. Well, the wealth didn't flow down and it never will. All it has done is balloon the debt.

So step one is we increase taxes on the wealthy to a level where they're paying their fair share.

Step two is we slash the defense budget in half. We're still racing in the Cold War with only ourselves in the race. Anyone else think that's insane?

We could also cut some conservative favorites from the budget, like the War on Drugs.

[Tobie]

A Theist, if you don't like Deist Paladin telling you what dubya did to your economy, why don't you read what this Nobel Laureate has to say:

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/featu...bush200712

This was made before the end of Bush's 2nd term. At a conservative estimate, the Iraq war alone cost the US economy $2 trillion.

[DeistPaladin]

Oh, let's also start taxing the churches. It's time to revoke tax exemption for woo-woo and treat religion as the business that it is.

[TaraJo]

The U.S. has a current spending budget of $3.8 trillion with a federal deficit of $1.3 trillion by the end of this year. Here's a new rule for Bill Mahar: Maybe if Washington would exercise some spending discipline we wouldn't whine about the $16 trillion debt.

So, if that's the case, why did the GOP fight so hard when the president, commie that he is, try to eliminate oil subsidies? Exxon and other oil companies are making record profits, so they sure don't need us spending even more government money on them. Seems to me if you want to find wasteful government spending, you start there.

Not to mention raising taxes on the wealthy would help. Even the government programs that we keep hearing the evils of do more to help the economy than anything suggested by trickle down economics. I'm not saying they don't reinvest; I'm saying they reinvest in third world sweat shops and things like that. On the other hand, if you give money to the lower and middle classes, that gets reinvested. You give $100 to a thousand poor people, they're going to use that money to fix their car, buy clothes, pay bills or, in short, create demand that businesses need to survive. If you give $100,000 to one rich person, he has no incentive t reinvest it end even if he does, he has no reason to reinvest it in American industries.

The justification for supply side economics is that if you lower taxes for the rich, they'll have more money to reinvest in American jobs, right? Fine. My suggestion is that the companies and wealthy individuals ho are actually creating American jobs can keep the Bush tax cuts. But it's not a blank check for them anymore; if they want a tax cut, they have to show us that they're using the extra money for something good.

So far, we've been giving blanket tax cuts to all wealthy people; corporate earnings are at all time highs and if trickle down really worked, we'd be drowning in jobs. The fact that we aren't indicates trickle down economics is bullshit. Until I can see solid evidence that it works, I'm going to have to rely on the solid evidence that I've seen that it doesn't.

[Minimalist]

Oh, let's also start taxing the churches. It's time to revoke tax exemption for woo-woo and treat religion as the business that it is.

Worse than business they should be treated as exactly what they are.

Lobbying groups for fascists.