(03-30-2012 11:16 AM)zyxwvutsru Wrote:  

(03-30-2012 10:15 AM)Max Power Wrote:  Obama was handed a dumpster fire of an economy from Bush that Bush's own advisors were telling him could lead to another Great Depression, and increased the deficit because there was a massive demand shortage in the economy and to fix it required massive increases in government spending. Voila, we have a recovery.

Bush was handed a booming economy and balanced budget from Clinton, and increased the deficit with unpaid for tax cuts and unnecessary wars.

You can't compare the two because they walked into VERY different situations. If Obama took over a booming economy, he would't have spent so much because it would have been unnecessary. And if Bush took over the country in the shape he left it, God help us all.

Really? Can you also tell me the winning numbers for the Mega Millions Jackpot tonight while you are predicting the future?

Disagreeing on events in the past and their consequences today is healthy for the Union, but making definitive statements about hypothetical scenarios is silly.

I can. I have the winning numbers. :)

(03-30-2012 12:59 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(03-30-2012 11:51 AM)Max Power Wrote:  Here's a pretty good summary:

There are many different ways to spin numbers. This is one of the more extreme partisan spins. Not the most, I have seen worse. But not objective either.

That graphic is from the New York Times dude, not some far left low traffic website. Explain how it's extreme partisan spin.

(03-30-2012 01:48 PM)Max Power Wrote:  That graphic is from the New York Times dude, not some far left low traffic website. Explain how it's extreme partisan spin.

This is hilarious on so many levels.

(03-30-2012 01:48 PM)Max Power Wrote:  That graphic is from the New York Times dude, not some far left low traffic website. Explain how it's extreme partisan spin.

I think you just explained it.

It's still Bush's fault. And if O gets 4 more years, it'll still be Bush's fault.

Well, it is kinda Bush's fault that O got 4 years in the first place. If he hadn't had Bush to run against, he probably wouldn't have gotten very far.

And it's Florida's and SCOTUS right wing's fault that Bush got in office in the first place.

Raider, whose fault is it then that we were losing 800k jobs/month and our economy was shrinking at 9% when Bush left office?

Two can play that game BTW. Why were GOPers insisting that Obama "own" the economy when it had a slight dip late last year, but now they won't let him 6 months later?

What sources do you find credible then, Owl? Any?

(03-30-2012 02:37 PM)Max Power Wrote:  And it's Florida's and SCOTUS right wing's fault that Bush got in office in the first place.

Another lie that has become a staple of the left in this country. Sad really.

Quote:Raider, whose fault is it then that we were losing 800k jobs/month and our economy was shrinking at 9% when Bush left office?

Lots of people were to blame. Banks that bought and issued CDO's were a huge cause. Fannie and Freddie, congress, people that bought homes they never could afford etc. There are hundreds of thousands that are to blame for what got us in the mess we were in. Bush isn't in the top 100.

(03-30-2012 02:37 PM)Max Power Wrote:  What sources do you find credible then, Owl? Any?

If you define credible to mean that if they publish it then I'm going to believe it, none.

If you define credible to mean that I'm going to read/watch/listen to them and consider what they say in light of what other sources say, and determine for myself which makes the most sense, then my "ready list" of sources would include the Economist (probably my number one source), Fox (yes, the right-leaning slant is just as essential to a broad understanding as is the left-leaning slant), the BBC, CNN, NPR, and Reuters. Then I discount for bias and try to resolve discrepancies. What I usually find is that nobody actually lied, but different sources just covered different parts of the situation, and only by going to multiple sources can you get a complete picture. So what you get from any single source is the truth, but not the whole truth or nothing but the truth. And I don't think any source can be relied upon to produce all three, and I don't think it makes sense to believe implicitly what any source says if that source cannot be relied upon to produce all three (truth, whole truth, nothing but the truth).

I find very little truly objective reporting from any source. Probably more from the Economist than from all those other sources listed, combined. Or maybe it's just that, not living in the UK, I'm not familiar enough with the biases at work there to recognize them.

To put it in terms of the graph, I would say that the appearance of this graph in the NYT means that it's probably possible to put the numbers together in a way to produce that graphic. But I recognize that the process of putting those numbers together requires a methodology to do so and a number of assumptions about exactly how certain elements should be treated, that the way it was done to produce this graph is not the only way to do it, and that other ways to assemble the data may be more reasonable. I actually saw this graph for the first time a while back, I went through a few of the calcualtions to see what the author had done, and I found some treatments in this graph that definitely seemed to me to be dishonest or disingenuous. I posted an analysis pointing out the obvious errors, but I cannot remember whether that was on here, or the Memphis Political-Religious board, or on Facebook and I'm too lazy to do it over.

Michael savage talking to max power

Owl I think your response is reasonable, though if you believe the Economist to be your idea of centrist I think your compass is out of whack. I subscribed to that magazine a few (5 or 6) years ago and IIRC it was very libertarian. On issues like foreign policy it was centrist, but when it came to economics, look out! Now you being a libertarian yourself that might seem more centrist to you.

I watch CNN mostly because I think they make a serious effort to be fair and centrist (relative to the other networks) but I consider PBS Newshour to be just as good if not better. And yes, Politifact, which really only judges statements that are verifiably right or wrong (or, if it's based on opinion then whether or not it's in line with experts from both sides of the spectrum). Most personalities on Fox and MSNBC can't be trusted, but I'll add a caveat that I bet I'll get hammered for: I think Fox's bias is more institutional, permeating even their "straight news" reporting meanwhile MSNBC straight news reporting is from NBC and does a better job of being fair. Straight news is very hard to find these days, except on PBS because it's not for profit (which of course would go up in a puff of smoke if Torch had his way).

In the NYT defense, although the editorial page is more liberal, it does have conservative writers like David Brooks. It even had Bill Kristol before he was fired for lying.

Max, we obviously have very different ideas of where the center is.

I would tend to define the center in terms of where you might find, say, the US Senators ranked from say 45 to 55 on the "most conservative" or "most liberal" lists (since the two should basically be the inverse of each other) or members of congress ranked from about 200 to 235 on the comparable lists. Basically, moderate republicans and blue dog democrats. Unfortunately, in the present political climate, both groups are endangered species. In terms of specific policies, something like the Bowles-Simpson or Domenici-Rivlin recommendations, both of which were developed by truly bipartisan groups and were approved by supermajorities of both the entire group and the D and R component subgroups.

Where would you say the center is?

Most of my friends who appear to lean close to you politically seem to think Obama is a centrist. I don't see that, I don't see any way that someone who has pretty much spent his whole life at the far left end of the democrat scale can be reasonably regarded as a centrist. I do think that many leftists like to call Obama a centrist, because he is where they'd like the center to move. I don't.

Quote:Deficits aren't bad so long as it's not significantly outpacing our ....

This is why our debt is at 16 trillion, and will be at 21trillion before you know it.

Quick question, I want to see just how retarded some of you deficit hawks are.

If we could double our GDP by adding $1T of debt, should we?

(03-31-2012 07:28 PM)Max Power Wrote:  Quick question, I want to see just how retarded some of you deficit hawks are.

If we could double our GDP by adding $1T of debt, should we?

We already tried that, it was called the stimulus plan, should have been called Obaffoon's payola plan.
So I'd be hesitant to put more money at risk in another "if we could" plan

Nonresponsive.

If we could snap our fingers and quadruple our GDP by adding $1T in debt, should we? Answer the damn question.

(04-01-2012 09:08 AM)Max Power Wrote:  Nonresponsive.

If we could snap our fingers and quadruple our GDP by adding $1T in debt, should we? Answer the damn question.

With no risk, yes.

Good. That relieves me a little bit. So you're not necessarily against all increased deficits and spending, it's just a question of ROI and you don't think the stimulus got enough ROI?

ROI? You are talking about Obaffoon's payola plan?

When I said "stimulus," I meant the stimulus.