[QUOTE=DonB;437766]If there was a regulation in place, why was there a spill?
Don.[/QUOTE]I'm still waiting for answer from Mr. Know-it-all.
Don.
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[QUOTE=DonB;437766]If there was a regulation in place, why was there a spill?
Don.[/QUOTE]I'm still waiting for answer from Mr. Know-it-all.
Don.
[QUOTE=Esten;437855]There were some good headlines this month worth noting. It's OK to talk about good things too.
1. Unemployment fell below 7%, to 6.7%. We've come a long way from 10.2% in 2009.
2. Affordable Care Act signups now exceed 3 Million.
3. Obama made some favorable comments on marijuana. And Holder says he is planning to roll out regulations soon that would allow banks to do business with legal marijuana sellers. Maybe that's an example of some good regulation.
4. We got a bipartisan budget agreement with little fighting and no brinksmanship.[/QUOTE]1. Most of the decline in the unemployment rate is due to the unemployed running out of benefits and no longer being counted and the million plus jobs created in the fracking industry. Although I personally consider fracking to be an economic lifesaver for America, the politically acceptable response is to put it in the negative category.
2. I believe it was 7 million people who lost their healtcare insurance due to Obamacare, myself included. So, you are saying that at least 4 million people are now without healthcare insurance? Yay?
3 & 4 I agree are good things.
[QUOTE=MiamiBob;437871]That is modeling it's policies on Venezuela where those same policies failed. I heard this this morning. Shudder![/QUOTE]And yet you are completely unfazed by the fact that Obama is pursuing exactly the same course in the USA.
[QUOTE=Jackson;437878]And yet you are completely unfazed by the fact that Obama is pursuing exactly the same course in the USA.[/QUOTE]And how do you figure that?
[QUOTE=Gandolf50;437880]And how do you figure that?[/QUOTE]Both Obama and Cristina were elected and re-elected with votes bought by promising free money to their supporters.
However, neither of them have the cash or the tax revenue to actually pay for the votes that they've promised to buy.
Nevertheless, Obama can borrow the money from the Chinese to pay for his votes, whereas Christina's only option is to print the money to pay for her votes.
Both strategies will result in the same failed economys, but the effects of the borrowed money take longer to develop.
Thanks,
Jax.
[QUOTE=Jackson;437882]Both Obama and Cristina were elected and re-elected with votes bought by promising free money to their supporters.
However, neither of them have the cash or the tax revenue to actually pay for the programs they've promised to their supporters.
Nevertheless, Obama can borrow the money from the Chinese to pay for his votes, whereas Christina's only option is to print the money to pay for her votes.
Both strategies will result in the same failed economys, but the effects of the borrowed money take longer to develop.
Thanks,
Jax.[/QUOTE]I thought you were comparing to Chavezland. Obama, while not my favorite also inherited a load $hit from Bush baby. But then so did Cristina, or at least Nestor did!
[QUOTE=Jackson;437878]And yet you are completely unfazed by the fact that Obama is pursuing exactly the same course in the USA.[/QUOTE]Only a propagandist of the highest order can make the same comparison. As usual, you are blaming Obama for the 1998 financial meltdown, and 50+ years of American partying. Plus every itch in your body.
[QUOTE=RevBS;437884]Only a propagandist of the highest order can make the same comparison. As usual, you are blaming Obama for the 1998 financial meltdown, and 50+ years of American partying. Plus every itch in your body.[/QUOTE]On the contrary, I believe that it only takes a person of average intelligence, abet one who is NOT being bribed with free money, to see what's going on and subsequently draw the same conclusion.
FYI, I do not blame Obama for the 1998 financial meltdown, but I do blame him for pursuing his politically expedient socialist agenda instead of having the political balls to do what was really needed to fix the US economy.
However, I understand the angst in your comments, given that it is becoming clearer by the day that your emperor, like Christina, has no clothes.
Thanks,
Jax.
[QUOTE=RevBS;437884]Only a propagandist of the highest order can make the same comparison. As usual, you are blaming Obama for the 1998 financial meltdown, and 50+ years of American partying. Plus every itch in your body.[/QUOTE]Brother Black Shirt,
You are a very trusting individual. This has certain advantages. But it has its disadvantages as well. For example, when you encounter someone with an Adam's apple, large fingers and vagina who swears she(?) is not a post-op lady boy. Or when you start listening to what U.S. presidents say. You were a big Bush supporter until you realized the truth. Someday you will come to the same conclusion about Obama, because Obama is Bush on speed. Government deficits as a % of GDP under Obama have been the highest since World War II. The percentage of Americans in poverty is the highest since the early 1960's. Middle class incomes have fallen more than any period since World War II. And, at this point in time, 5 years later, it's ridiculous to blame it on George Bush. Kirchner and Obama make a big deal of helping the poor and middle class, but their policies in the long run do the opposite, by stifling economic growth and encouraging dependency.
I am slowly-but-surely reading the article you recommended by the way. I get the hardcopy New Yorker, and this week's edition is sitting in front of my commode.
[QUOTE=Jackson;437882]Both Obama and Cristina were elected and re-elected with votes bought by promising free money to their supporters.
However, neither of them have the cash or the tax revenue to actually pay for the votes that they've promised to buy.
Nevertheless, Obama can borrow the money from the Chinese to pay for his votes, whereas Christina's only option is to print the money to pay for her votes.
Both strategies will result in the same failed economys, but the effects of the borrowed money take longer to develop.
Thanks,
Jax.[/QUOTE]Jackson-.
Are you completely delusional? Under the Obama Administration the stock market is at an all time high and housing prices have rebounded from the utter destruction wrung upon them by the Bush Administration's gross mismanagement (two bankrupting wars, housing market collapse, wall street collapse, resultant unemployment). Yes, the middle class in the USA is declining but this is the continuation of a process that began over thirty years ago; the current underemployment is at its root structural in the sense that many people are unemployable because they are not trained / educated in the "jobs of today". Comparing Obama to any Argentine political figure simply makes you appear to be an ignorant misinformed racist. Instead of making such a ridiculous comparison, why don't you just admit that you despise Obama because he is black, that the very thought of a black president causes you to foam at the mouth in disgust, and that to this day you simply are incapable of accepting the results of two elections in which Obama was elected president by a majority of voters. You dismiss Obama voters as "people who vote themselves free money"; if this is the case, how do you explain the fact that ALL of the wealthiest and most highly educated states (by per capita income, percentage of population with college degrees, or use any yardstick you want) voted for Obama?
Thanks.
RH.
1. I'm not sure how much of a factor the loss of unemployment benefits was on the December report, but to the extent that loss of benefits caused the unemployment rate to go down, all that tells me is that the rate could have dropped below 7% sooner if the benefits had not been extended so long. With regard to 1 Million fracking jobs, that's great if true, but one component of the 6 Million jobs created since the recovery began in 2009. These data easily demonstrate that Republicans were wrong when they said the Stimulus failed, and that the Affordable Care Act was going to be a huge job-killer. It is true we could have been lower than 6.7% at this point, but our challenges have been more with large government job losses (700 K), and the effects of Corporatism.
2. I think the number was more like 5 million policies cancelled, due to ACA [I]and[/I] the decisions of insurance companies. Insurance companies have been cancelling policies for years before ACA came along. There are not millions of people who are now without insurance because of ACA. In December, it was estimated that fewer than 500,000 people who received cancellation notices have not yet signed up for new coverage. Why are you one of them, Dccpa? I don't think the cancellations and signups can be directly added / subtracted. It gets complicated to dissect the numbers. Ultimately, a key and simple number to follow is simply the overall uninsured rate. It was at 17.3% in December, and at 16.1% earlier this month. We should expect ACA will keep moving that number lower.
When you take into account people who are no longer looking for jobs, and not counted as unemployed, it's not a pretty picture:
[URL]http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS12300000[/URL]
In the long term, as the baby boom generation retires, the employment-population ratio should decrease. However, for the time period in the graph, you can't put much of the blame on demographic or secular trends. There was a big fall off in the % of the population that was employed in 2008 and 2009, and it hasn't rebounded as was the case for past recoveries from recessions.
Government is partly responsible. Policies to grow the economy and get cheaters out of the social security disability system would help. And, as Esten says, reducing corporatist influences would help, although we may differ as to our definitions of corporatism.
[QUOTE=Esten;437894]1. These data easily demonstrate that Republicans were wrong when they said the Stimulus failed, and that the Affordable Care Act was going to be a huge job-killer. [/QUOTE]
Esten, the graph above supports the Republicans. The stimulus did fail. It probably is too early for the effects of the ACA to have shown up in the employment data though.
[QUOTE=RockHarders;437893]Comparing Obama to any Argentine political figure simply makes you appear to be an ignorant misinformed racist. Instead of making such a ridiculous comparison, why don't you just admit that you despise Obama because he is black, that the very thought of a black president causes you to foam at the mouth in disgust, and that to this day you simply are incapable of accepting the results of two elections in which Obama was elected president by a majority of voters. You dismiss Obama voters as "people who vote themselves free money"; if this is the case, how do you explain the fact that ALL of the wealthiest and most highly educated states (by per capita income, percentage of population with college degrees, or use any yardstick you want) voted for Obama?
[/QUOTE]WTF? You've got at least part of that ass backwards. Poorer people overwhelmingly voted for Obama. More wealthy people voted for Romney. There wasn't much of a correlation between education level and voting preference.
It's ironic, someone playing the race card who obviously believes people from the northeast and Pacific coast are superior to the poor and uneducated inbred hayseeds who populate southern states, Wyoming, etc.
I love it when liberals call rational people delusional and then blame the malady on their own delusional belief that not admiring King Obama has something to do with Race. How racist is it that you assume everyone who doesn't like this present must be a racist. Not even mentioning the fact that Obama shares far more in common with the narrative liberals ascribe to the elite class of evildoers etc. Obama's fiscal policies have held back the economy on all fronts and are driving us into the ground. His health care lunacy alone will be untenable let alone all of his other brilliant non-capitalist ideas. In fact, Jackson is dead on correct in his drawing parallels between the political leadership of Argentina and the US. How can you blame Bush for the housing mess when it was he and numerous Republican legislators who desperately tried to point out to the Democrats the Freddie and Fanny were broken and that the loans being given out were dangerous etc. Do you not remember all the Democrats like Barney Frank, whose lover was at the head of one of these agencies, all coming out and claiming there was no housing bubble and that Republicans were just trying to scare people and keep houses away from the poor? You can still find the video on you tube if you want to check it out. Our economy has had and incredibly slow recovery as can be seen in the eyes of the huge number of people who still can't or won't get a job; partially because to buy votes Obama continues to try to provide more benefits to them. Your post truly proves that Liberal have had some form of lobotomy in childhood leaving them incapable of rational thought and consideration of the facts. I used to argue with liberals until I realized they simply can't see facts any more than the color blind can see green. If our economy is so great then explain why we have so many more people on food stamps. What happened to Obama's promises of lower health care premiums and lower college tuition? Wasn't there something about transparency in there also? He is a complete and utter failure and will go down in history as the most egotistical, pathetic, ineffective, partisan President of all time. He also recurrently seems to forget this little thing called the Constitution he swore to uphold and which is the only instrument giving him any power. Without it he is a community organizer so before he tramples it again he should consider that if the rest the country treated it with the same disdain that he does, he would be out of a job. Have you seen his majesty's approval rating lately? By the way, the only racism I have seen in regard to this President was the fact that nearly every black american voted for him and when asked again and again why, the response almost uniformly was, "Because he is black." That is racism. I did not vote for him because I quickly realized he was all smoke and mirrors and had an agenda that he elevated far above his actual duties as President and would stop at nothing to try to force his will over due process. This is very very dangerous and has been the same mentality that brought us Mussolini, Stalin, Hitler, Chiang Kia-sheck, Leopold II, Tojo, Pol Pot, Jim Jones and Mao Zedong to name just a few. The only delusional ones are those who still think this President has done anything other than alienate us from our allies and kited checks onto the accounts of our children and their children.
Pete.
[QUOTE=RockHarders;437893]Jackson-.
Are you completely delusional? Under the Obama Administration the stock market is at an all time high and housing prices have rebounded from the utter destruction wrung upon them by the Bush Administration's gross mismanagement (two bankrupting wars, housing market collapse, wall street collapse, resultant unemployment). Yes, the middle class in the USA is declining but this is the continuation of a process that began over thirty years ago; the current underemployment is at its root structural in the sense that many people are unemployable because they are not trained / educated in the "jobs of today". Comparing Obama to any Argentine political figure simply makes you appear to be an ignorant misinformed racist. Instead of making such a ridiculous comparison, why don't you just admit that you despise Obama because he is black, that the very thought of a black president causes you to foam at the mouth in disgust, and that to this day you simply are incapable of accepting the results of two elections in which Obama was elected president by a majority of voters. You dismiss Obama voters as "people who vote themselves free money"; if this is the case, how do you explain the fact that ALL of the wealthiest and most highly educated states (by per capita income, percentage of population with college degrees, or use any yardstick you want) voted for Obama?
Thanks.
RH.[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Tiny12;437896]WTF? There wasn't much of a correlation between education level and voting preference.
[/QUOTE]Wrong. Highly educated urban voters overwhelmingly voted for Obama.