I got fooled.

[Jenne]

I think it does matter who is going to win:  the new stats on what Bushfuck did to our bottom line point to that right off.  More Americans are in a shittier position after he took office than before.  In fact, the world is in a shittier position...so yes, it definitely fucking matters.

Apparently you forgot about the mass layoffs and unemployment in late 2000.  Things were already shit when Bush took office.  Bush was a dismal failure at fixing things for any length of time, and may have smashed it beyond repair, but Clinton, and the fucktards in congress, are the ones that broke the economy in the first place.  What makes the current crop more qualified than the last one?

Really?

How?

By moving the nation from record economic deficits to record economic surpluses including the creation of over 22 million jobs (more than any other administration)?

By lowering levels of unemployment to reflect more gainful employment for American citizens than any Republican administration?

By ushering in the highest homeownership and college enrollment rates in history?

By administrative economic policies that fostered the largest peacetime economic expansion in history?

Where was this broken economy of which you speak?

Explain to me how Clinton did any of what you just gave him credit for? Aside from appointing Alan Greenspan, which began with Reagan and who Bush Sr. also appointed prior to Clinton. How did Bill Clinton "move the nation from record deficits to record economic surpluses..."? Did he invent the internet and .coms and begin the upward economic trend that was beginning at the end of Bush Sr.'s term? How did he lower unemployment? And what were the economic policies that he himself administered which brought peace and prosperity to the land? Seriously, for lack of image at hand, CITATIONS NEEDED.

I'm not giving Bush Sr. credit for the economic trends of the 1990's either, I'm just trying to point out, once again, that economics have almost nothing to do with the president, and that the belief that they do is a misconception of the general population who know nothing about economics. Economics is a tide: presidents can make some waves, but no president in the history of the US has ever singehandedly turned the tide.

Bull.  Shit.

And, I'll see you your citations needed and raise you a paddling down River of Denial.

[nostalgicBadger]

You can't just respond to an argument with "bullshit" and be convincing, you know.
You don't actually have any credibility, any formal education in economics to my knowledge, I don't even know that you've studied economics independently, and maybe you were just born smart enough to know it all a priori, but from what you've said so far, I have no reason to believe that's true.

[lemurdue]

What TGRR said.

And also, -10 pts for using the Fox News "messiah" bullshit. 

As a former Obama supporter, I can state the term 'messiah' is completely accurate in the effect he has on his followers.

It's OK. We all had faith in all that democracy bullshit at one point. But seriously, the only ways to make a difference is either getting rich and joining the corporate shadow masters who really run the show or turn to violence and decrapitate the clowns.

K.  Y'all need to go live in motherfucking Afghanistan for a while.  Get a taste of what the democracy bullshit is about. 

Fucking whiners.

[Jenne]

You can't just respond to an argument with "bullshit" and be convincing, you know.
You don't actually have any credibility, any formal education in economics to my knowledge, I don't even know that you've studied economics independently, and maybe you were just born smart enough to know it all a priori, but from what you've said so far, I have no reason to believe that's true.

O rly?  Ha!  I just did.  Onus is on YOU to prove your argument.  HOW did Bush NOT affect our government policies?  How did Clinton TANK everything and leave only dregs for Bushie to slurp up?  Or how did either do neither?  Show ME that the president is ineffectual.  Do it.  I'm practically begging you.

And no, I won't google.  You are expounding a bullshit argument.  That a nation's leader does NOT affect social and political and fiscal policy.  The economy is a runaway car with a brick on the gaspedal...fuck that.  You're wrong.  Dead fucking wrong.

So I call bullshit.

Show me where Bush hasn't undone anything that was good out of the 90's.  Show me where are rights are ALL the SAME as they were in 2000.  Show me where the banks, the taxes and the housing are the SAME.  That his vetoes, that his bullshit powergrab tactics, cronyism and isolating of the US geopolitically has NOT cost us ONE DAMNED THING.

See, I'm even going easy on you and not asking you to show me what's better, like a hardcore Democrat would do.  No, I'm calling bullshit on your premise that the seat in the White House is a placeholder.

I actually don't care who is Democrat or Republican--to me they are all pigs in the same room, some tagged blue, some red.  Very few untagged but they snort and have curly tails just the same.

However, to deny the possibility that the agenda, the mindset, the forward motion and direction that movement is in of the person in power, and in power in the most powerful and richest country on the Earf, is just an empty, meaningless pile of bull...wow, you've basically shot to shit any premise that government matters at all. 

By the bye:  economics is only one little part of the body politic.  You cannot rely upon it as a science (cough!) or as a rubric for the testing of social change and upheaval, let alone how a people are governed inside-and-out.  What you do, essentially, when you rely on economics to point you in the "correct" legislative direction, is you blatantly deny that there are any other forces that supply change, maintain what's already there or protect what's necessary and already existing.  Economics does not measure everything human, so it's no wonder to me at all that if this is how you go about these judging things, you are so very very in the wrong.

As for my so-called credentials.  I don't need to prove a goddammed thing to you.  Let's just say my opinion is informed.

[Jenne]

What TGRR said.

And also, -10 pts for using the Fox News "messiah" bullshit. 

As a former Obama supporter, I can state the term 'messiah' is completely accurate in the effect he has on his followers.

It's OK. We all had faith in all that democracy bullshit at one point. But seriously, the only ways to make a difference is either getting rich and joining the corporate shadow masters who really run the show or turn to violence and decrapitate the clowns.

K.  Y'all need to go live in motherfucking Afghanistan for a while.  Get a taste of what the democracy bullshit is about. 

Fucking whiners.

I'm not kidding.

When the post office stops delivering your mail, when you can't tell anyone who asks for someone on the phone where someone has gone for fear they'll try and find them to capture them and torture them, when your banks only take your money if you're rich, when the police only stop harrassing you with bribes, when you have to sell your boys and/or girls to 1) the local pimp 2) the local nabob and/or 3) the local sweatshop in order to make ends meet/not be killed, when your relatives don't turn you in for bullshit treason reasons only because you feed them, when the stores are empty, when money is so devalued that it takes a YEAR'S worth or more of wages to buy necessities...

THEN you can whine about what bullshit democracy is.

[lemurdue]

What TGRR said.

And also, -10 pts for using the Fox News "messiah" bullshit. 

As a former Obama supporter, I can state the term 'messiah' is completely accurate in the effect he has on his followers.

It's OK. We all had faith in all that democracy bullshit at one point. But seriously, the only ways to make a difference is either getting rich and joining the corporate shadow masters who really run the show or turn to violence and decrapitate the clowns.

K.  Y'all need to go live in motherfucking Afghanistan for a while.  Get a taste of what the democracy bullshit is about. 

Fucking whiners.

I'm not kidding.

When the post office stops delivering your mail, when you can't tell anyone who asks for someone on the phone where someone has gone for fear they'll try and find them to capture them and torture them, when your banks only take your money if you're rich, when the police only stop harrassing you with bribes, when you have to sell your boys and/or girls to 1) the local pimp 2) the local nabob and/or 3) the local sweatshop in order to make ends meet/not be killed, when your relatives don't turn you in for bullshit treason reasons only because you feed them, when the stores are empty, when money is so devalued that it takes a YEAR'S worth or more of wages to buy necessities...

THEN you can whine about what bullshit democracy is.

Seriously, I'm trying to think how all those things DO NOT already exist in democratic societies. I work the news wire and half the shit you mentioned is reported all the time, often in just one state.

Me, I can't wait until we're the pets of a higher from of life.

[nostalgicBadger]

You can't just respond to an argument with "bullshit" and be convincing, you know.
You don't actually have any credibility, any formal education in economics to my knowledge, I don't even know that you've studied economics independently, and maybe you were just born smart enough to know it all a priori, but from what you've said so far, I have no reason to believe that's true.

O rly?  Ha!  I just did.  Onus is on YOU to prove your argument.  HOW did Bush NOT affect our government policies?  How did Clinton TANK everything and leave only dregs for Bushie to slurp up?  Or how did either do neither?  Show ME that the president is ineffectual.  Do it.  I'm practically begging you.

And no, I won't google.  You are expounding a bullshit argument.  That a nation's leader does NOT affect social and political and fiscal policy.  The economy is a runaway car with a brick on the gaspedal...fuck that.  You're wrong.  Dead fucking wrong.

So I call bullshit.

Show me where Bush hasn't undone anything that was good out of the 90's.  Show me where are rights are ALL the SAME as they were in 2000.  Show me where the banks, the taxes and the housing are the SAME.  That his vetoes, that his bullshit powergrab tactics, cronyism and isolating of the US geopolitically has NOT cost us ONE DAMNED THING.

See, I'm even going easy on you and not asking you to show me what's better, like a hardcore Democrat would do.  No, I'm calling bullshit on your premise that the seat in the White House is a placeholder.

I actually don't care who is Democrat or Republican--to me they are all pigs in the same room, some tagged blue, some red.  Very few untagged but they snort and have curly tails just the same.

However, to deny the possibility that the agenda, the mindset, the forward motion and direction that movement is in of the person in power, and in power in the most powerful and richest country on the Earf, is just an empty, meaningless pile of bull...wow, you've basically shot to shit any premise that government matters at all. 

By the bye:  economics is only one little part of the body politic.  You cannot rely upon it as a science (cough!) or as a rubric for the testing of social change and upheaval, let alone how a people are governed inside-and-out.  What you do, essentially, when you rely on economics to point you in the "correct" legislative direction, is you blatantly deny that there are any other forces that supply change, maintain what's already there or protect what's necessary and already existing.  Economics does not measure everything human, so it's no wonder to me at all that if this is how you go about these judging things, you are so very very in the wrong.

As for my so-called credentials.  I don't need to prove a goddammed thing to you.  Let's just say my opinion is informed.

Oh, sure, government matter - government makes laws.
However, who owns those politicians, democrats and republicans alike?

Obama is owned.
McCain is owned.

George Bush is owned.
John Kerry is owned.
Al Gore is owned.

Who you vote for doesn't matter. They're all somebody's puppet. That best you can hope to do is elect the most merciful master.

[East Coast Hustle]

I'm not giving Bush Sr. credit for the economic trends of the 1990's either, I'm just trying to point out, once again, that economics have almost nothing to do with the president, and that the belief that they do is a misconception of the general population who know nothing about economics. Economics is a tide: presidents can make some waves, but no president in the history of the US has ever singehandedly turned the tide.

I'll make a deal with you.

I'll say "FDR (good) and Woodrow Wilson (bad)" and you'll stop being a neo-con apologist.

[Jenne]

What TGRR said.

And also, -10 pts for using the Fox News "messiah" bullshit. 

As a former Obama supporter, I can state the term 'messiah' is completely accurate in the effect he has on his followers.

It's OK. We all had faith in all that democracy bullshit at one point. But seriously, the only ways to make a difference is either getting rich and joining the corporate shadow masters who really run the show or turn to violence and decrapitate the clowns.

K.  Y'all need to go live in motherfucking Afghanistan for a while.  Get a taste of what the democracy bullshit is about. 

Fucking whiners.

I'm not kidding.

When the post office stops delivering your mail, when you can't tell anyone who asks for someone on the phone where someone has gone for fear they'll try and find them to capture them and torture them, when your banks only take your money if you're rich, when the police only stop harrassing you with bribes, when you have to sell your boys and/or girls to 1) the local pimp 2) the local nabob and/or 3) the local sweatshop in order to make ends meet/not be killed, when your relatives don't turn you in for bullshit treason reasons only because you feed them, when the stores are empty, when money is so devalued that it takes a YEAR'S worth or more of wages to buy necessities...

THEN you can whine about what bullshit democracy is.

Seriously, I'm trying to think how all those things DO NOT already exist in democratic societies. I work the news wire and half the shit you mentioned is reported all the time, often in just one state.

Me, I can't wait until we're the pets of a higher from of life.

Heh.  You don't work that newswire ENOUGH--you need some motherfucking perspective.

[nostalgicBadger]

I'm not giving Bush Sr. credit for the economic trends of the 1990's either, I'm just trying to point out, once again, that economics have almost nothing to do with the president, and that the belief that they do is a misconception of the general population who know nothing about economics. Economics is a tide: presidents can make some waves, but no president in the history of the US has ever singehandedly turned the tide.

I'll make a deal with you.

I'll say "FDR (good) and Woodrow Wilson (bad)" and you'll stop being a neo-con apologist.

8 gajillion portraits of adolf hitler modded by ECH: if you're going to bust yourself out as a troll, the least you can do is find an amusing pic to imagebomb the thread with

[Jenne]

You can't just respond to an argument with "bullshit" and be convincing, you know.
You don't actually have any credibility, any formal education in economics to my knowledge, I don't even know that you've studied economics independently, and maybe you were just born smart enough to know it all a priori, but from what you've said so far, I have no reason to believe that's true.

O rly?  Ha!  I just did.  Onus is on YOU to prove your argument.  HOW did Bush NOT affect our government policies?  How did Clinton TANK everything and leave only dregs for Bushie to slurp up?  Or how did either do neither?  Show ME that the president is ineffectual.  Do it.  I'm practically begging you.

And no, I won't google.  You are expounding a bullshit argument.  That a nation's leader does NOT affect social and political and fiscal policy.  The economy is a runaway car with a brick on the gaspedal...fuck that.  You're wrong.  Dead fucking wrong.

So I call bullshit.

Show me where Bush hasn't undone anything that was good out of the 90's.  Show me where are rights are ALL the SAME as they were in 2000.  Show me where the banks, the taxes and the housing are the SAME.  That his vetoes, that his bullshit powergrab tactics, cronyism and isolating of the US geopolitically has NOT cost us ONE DAMNED THING.

See, I'm even going easy on you and not asking you to show me what's better, like a hardcore Democrat would do.  No, I'm calling bullshit on your premise that the seat in the White House is a placeholder.

I actually don't care who is Democrat or Republican--to me they are all pigs in the same room, some tagged blue, some red.  Very few untagged but they snort and have curly tails just the same.

However, to deny the possibility that the agenda, the mindset, the forward motion and direction that movement is in of the person in power, and in power in the most powerful and richest country on the Earf, is just an empty, meaningless pile of bull...wow, you've basically shot to shit any premise that government matters at all. 

By the bye:  economics is only one little part of the body politic.  You cannot rely upon it as a science (cough!) or as a rubric for the testing of social change and upheaval, let alone how a people are governed inside-and-out.  What you do, essentially, when you rely on economics to point you in the "correct" legislative direction, is you blatantly deny that there are any other forces that supply change, maintain what's already there or protect what's necessary and already existing.  Economics does not measure everything human, so it's no wonder to me at all that if this is how you go about these judging things, you are so very very in the wrong.

As for my so-called credentials.  I don't need to prove a goddammed thing to you.  Let's just say my opinion is informed.

Oh, sure, government matter - government makes laws.
However, who owns those politicians, democrats and republicans alike?

Obama is owned.
McCain is owned.

George Bush is owned.
John Kerry is owned.
Al Gore is owned.

Who you vote for doesn't matter. They're all somebody's puppet. That best you can hope to do is elect the most merciful master.

They are influenced, yes, but they, truly, are the ultimate puppetmasters.  They are subject to influences, moreso than we can possibly imagine.  With so many fingers in so many pies, it would be impossible NOT to be.  Especially now that the age of technology has made information so much more ready-to-hand than it has been formerly.

But if you REALLY think that a president has NO sway in how a government is run, that he BLINDLY signs off or doesn't sign off on things that turn the page of history in time, then you really need to start reading some American history.  Read how wars are waged in backrooms of the Oval Office before they even are whispered of in the halls of the Pentagon.  How stocks went up and bills were drawn because of a mere half-hour press conference.  This is not always at the behest or whim of a politico or a board of executives...it is usually a small group of very powerful, savvy and well-educated white men who through privelege have risen to the very tippy top of the pile.  The president, chief among them.

Just because George Dubya was more of a pawn than a High Priest doesn't mean he didn't wield a large stick when he wanted.  And he did so alot, if tales of those who've since retired from service to their "kind and country" are to be believed.  He's a "mad warrior" with a crazed look in his eye much like the religious zealots of yesteryear.  He's a national jihadist, really, in a lot of ways.  To say that such a person has no real power other than his functionality is to really miss the mark.  The fact that he has held so firm in every way and gotten things so far down in the nub shows exactly how intractable he can be...

And now the power of Dubya is quite reversed...for he holds in his hands the key to Republican doom...unfortunately, McCain seems hell bent on repeating its shape...I hope everyone who thinks he's the better choice will realize that the pain they are feeling at having Dubya this past decade will not lessen and will indeed continue on if they vote for status quo.

[Jenne]

I'm not giving Bush Sr. credit for the economic trends of the 1990's either, I'm just trying to point out, once again, that economics have almost nothing to do with the president, and that the belief that they do is a misconception of the general population who know nothing about economics. Economics is a tide: presidents can make some waves, but no president in the history of the US has ever singehandedly turned the tide.

I'll make a deal with you.

I'll say "FDR (good) and Woodrow Wilson (bad)" and you'll stop being a neo-con apologist.

[spam]

A simple "fuck off" would have done.

[East Coast Hustle]

I think the troll was trying to say that FDR couldn't have turned the economy around without hitler's help.

too bad the New Deal was in place LONG before America got involved in WW2.

[Requia ☣]

Explain to me how Clinton did any of what you just gave him credit for? Aside from appointing Alan Greenspan, which began with Reagan and who Bush Sr. also appointed prior to Clinton. How did Bill Clinton "move the nation from record deficits to record economic surpluses..."? Did he invent the internet and .coms and begin the upward economic trend that was beginning at the end of Bush Sr.'s term? How did he lower unemployment? And what were the economic policies that he himself administered which brought peace and prosperity to the land? Seriously, for lack of image at hand, CITATIONS NEEDED.

I'm not giving Bush Sr. credit for the economic trends of the 1990's either, I'm just trying to point out, once again, that economics have almost nothing to do with the president, and that the belief that they do is a misconception of the general population who know nothing about economics. Economics is a tide: presidents can make some waves, but no president in the history of the US has ever singehandedly turned the tide.

Bull.  Shit.

And, I'll see you your citations needed and raise you a paddling down River of Denial.

Didn't you *just* say Clinton wasn't responsible for the crashes in 2000?  Are presidents responsible for the economy or not?

As for how it happened.  Putting a heavy load on short term capital gains tax trashed investor confidence.  (note I'm not saying taxes are bad, or taxing the rich is bad, just the STCG fucks things up, also keep in mind that this was a record breaking tax hike, little chance to adjust), businesses in turn, did their usual short sighted panicky BS, usually involving layoffs or price hikes, to get that quarters profits up in the name of the stock prices.  A couple years roll by, profits are down because of said stupid decisions, and they did it again, it'll keep happening until the market realizes that short term profits are a bad investment, or the dipshits that keep doing it finally get tossed out on their asses for running too many businesses into the ground.  Along with 8 digit severance packages of course.

All of this of course, starts us on the long road to the US dollar being worth less than Canadian, as international markets realize the US has gone mad.

[nostalgicBadger]

I think the troll was trying to say that FDR couldn't have turned the economy around without hitler's help.

too bad the New Deal was in place LONG before America got involved in WW2.

High school textbooks like the New Deal much more than most economists. There is correlation, but not necessarily causation, between the New Deal and America's recovery from the Depression. Take a look back over the history of America's economy and you will notice a trend of roughly 17 year economic cycles on average (from peak to peak). There are two ways to interpret this phenomenon, and which you prefer most likely depends on whether you consider politics or economics to be a more influential force: either a politician has gracefully rescued America every time there has been an economic downturn caused by whomever served two terms before him (else fairly consistent timing of the cycle is purely coincidental), or politics is itself dictated by the stability of the market. By my own reasoning, the latter seems the more rational interpretation. Obviously some of your reason differs from mine, and may in fact be valid, but nobody arguing with me has demonstrated to me any reasoning nearly solid enough to be convincing. Believe me, I am perfectly willing to be convinced, only ad hominems and idealistic rants won't do it. Of course there is the old standby, "but nB, why would I care to convince you?" Good question. If you don't, though, why not stop wasting your time? You must have better things to do than sit around jerking off to how much you all disagree with me.

and East Coast Hustle, those are pretty gross words to put in my mouth, particularly considering that if that had been what I meant, the argument would have directly contradicted my position, which is that economic highs and lows would happen entirely independently of political influence. Again, this does not mean that politicians can't have an influence, but you would be hard pressed to find proof that any politician has singlehandedly turned the tide. Google the topic. You'll find a lot of interesting studies. The spam was just a nod to Godwin's Law in response to my being called a NeoCon because somebody happens to disagree with me. On pd.com, calling somebody a NeoCon is roughly equivalent to calling somebody a nazi. I'm still not impressed, and the only people who are "convinced" are people who already agreed with you anyway. Congratulations.

Finally, Roger, I have seen you spam threads for lesser reasons. Hypocrisy is not becoming of you.
Don't edit my posts. Don't be a pussy. If you're going to abuse your mod priveliges, quit fucking around and just ban me. I mean, you can't have Discordians who think differently from yourself running around, can you? Shit no.