Obama's speech - tremendous

Yawn · Mar 22, 2008

steveu said:

Yawn said:

And it's a shitty 3, for the most part. Three senators, whose collective institutional rating makes Bush look like Reagan at his finest moment.

Seriously people. Obama may bring something fresh to the table, but the cold hard reality is that unless you fundamentally change Washington, from lobbyists to careerist like the Mass. drunk who endorsed him so heartily a few months ago, you won't do shit. The dysfunction is too far entrenched unless you have a major overhaul. Even if you're a Democrat and want everything that is liberal, you have to admit that you can't get it done with the system of bureaucratic abyss you have now.
Click to expand...

What I think about is how Bill Clinton said I'm a "New Democrat". Then came the Omnibus Budget Act of 1993 and it was more same old, same old.

My vote is going to McCain, but I'll say this: Obama is a fantastic speaker and a charismatic presence. He can talk the talk, but can he walk the walk by rising above the same old, same old and doing something different?

It will be interesting to see.
Click to expand...

As I have pointed out, no, not in D.C. But liberals don't care because as long as he "says" the right thing, they'll coo.

Fenian_Bastard · Mar 23, 2008

steveu said:

Yawn said:

And it's a shitty 3, for the most part. Three senators, whose collective institutional rating makes Bush look like Reagan at his finest moment.

Seriously people. Obama may bring something fresh to the table, but the cold hard reality is that unless you fundamentally change Washington, from lobbyists to careerist like the Mass. drunk who endorsed him so heartily a few months ago, you won't do shit. The dysfunction is too far entrenched unless you have a major overhaul. Even if you're a Democrat and want everything that is liberal, you have to admit that you can't get it done with the system of bureaucratic abyss you have now.
Click to expand...

What I think about is how Bill Clinton said I'm a "New Democrat". Then came the Omnibus Budget Act of 1993 and it was more same old, same old.

My vote is going to McCain, but I'll say this: Obama is a fantastic speaker and a charismatic presence. He can talk the talk, but can he walk the walk by rising above the same old, same old and doing something different?

It will be interesting to see.
Click to expand...

You mean the act that every Republican said would destroy the economy, and wound up balancing the budget and jump-starting the boom oif the 1990's. THAT act? Republicans haven't balanced a budget since Ike, by the way.

The Big Ragu · Mar 23, 2008

Fenian_Bastard said:

steveu said:

Yawn said:

And it's a shitty 3, for the most part. Three senators, whose collective institutional rating makes Bush look like Reagan at his finest moment.

Seriously people. Obama may bring something fresh to the table, but the cold hard reality is that unless you fundamentally change Washington, from lobbyists to careerist like the Mass. drunk who endorsed him so heartily a few months ago, you won't do shit. The dysfunction is too far entrenched unless you have a major overhaul. Even if you're a Democrat and want everything that is liberal, you have to admit that you can't get it done with the system of bureaucratic abyss you have now.
Click to expand...

What I think about is how Bill Clinton said I'm a "New Democrat". Then came the Omnibus Budget Act of 1993 and it was more same old, same old.

My vote is going to McCain, but I'll say this: Obama is a fantastic speaker and a charismatic presence. He can talk the talk, but can he walk the walk by rising above the same old, same old and doing something different?

It will be interesting to see.
Click to expand...

You mean the act that every Republican said would destroy the economy, and wound up balancing the budget and jump-starting the boom oif the 1990's. THAT act? Republicans haven't balanced a budget since Ike, by the way.
Click to expand...

This is one of the funniest interpretations of history I have ever read. A Democratic president and Republican obstructionist Congress combine to produce gridlock that ends up with a tax hike and one of those rare times when they can't collude well enough to spend our money into oblivion. Then we enter a period in which we get an exceptionally strong economy that creates a windfall of new tax revenues that way outpaces even their combined efforts to keep spending and growing government (amazingly, because they were spending and growing government), so we got a period of balanced budgets.

Clinton wasn't that much of a genius. His own OMD was predicting $200 billion budget deficits indefinitely during those years. He wouldn't have known a balanced budget if it slapped him upside the head and he could have cared less about one until he was taking credit for it after the fact.

I can make an equally compelling case that Newt Gingrich was the genius who produced a balanced budget and jump-started "the boom of the 1990s." Of course, it would be the same kind of bullshit that ignores half the story and tries to write false history.

There still is the fact that throughout the 1990s, though, that Clinton's proposed budgets were hundreds of billions of dollars higher than what actually passed. He'd propose a $100 billion or more in new social spending, the Republicans would toss most of it and we'd end up with a surplus. We'd still end up spending ridiculously--the Federal budget has never been balanced by any Republican spending reductions, despite their bullshit rhetoric--but we were in a great period of economic prosperity, so even a bunch of elected jackals couldn't spend the freak windfall into oblivion.

That's the reality.

cranberry · Mar 23, 2008

Fenian_Bastard said:

steveu said:

Yawn said:

And it's a shitty 3, for the most part. Three senators, whose collective institutional rating makes Bush look like Reagan at his finest moment.

Seriously people. Obama may bring something fresh to the table, but the cold hard reality is that unless you fundamentally change Washington, from lobbyists to careerist like the Mass. drunk who endorsed him so heartily a few months ago, you won't do shit. The dysfunction is too far entrenched unless you have a major overhaul. Even if you're a Democrat and want everything that is liberal, you have to admit that you can't get it done with the system of bureaucratic abyss you have now.
Click to expand...

What I think about is how Bill Clinton said I'm a "New Democrat". Then came the Omnibus Budget Act of 1993 and it was more same old, same old.

My vote is going to McCain, but I'll say this: Obama is a fantastic speaker and a charismatic presence. He can talk the talk, but can he walk the walk by rising above the same old, same old and doing something different?

It will be interesting to see.
Click to expand...

You mean the act that every Republican said would destroy the economy, and wound up balancing the budget and jump-starting the boom oif the 1990's. THAT act? Republicans haven't balanced a budget since Ike, by the way.
Click to expand...

That one. And it was far from liberal economic policy and even further from "same old, same old." At the time, many of us "New Deal" Democrats were skeptical of deficit reduction as a way to drive the economy.

zeke12 · Mar 23, 2008

Ben_Hecht said:

Zeke12 said:

Ben --

Penn. is surely her dream demo regarding age, but everything I've read shows it to be a little blacker, a little more educated and a little more affluent than Ohio.

Probably not enough to make a huge difference, either way. But that was my point. If you believe the demos are destiny, it's probably going to look like Ohio. That is, a win for Clinton, but not by a margin that does what she needs it to do.

Four weeks out, I'll call it 56-44 Clinton. But if he holds Philly and is competitive in Pittsburgh, that isn't really enough to extrapolate a GE argument from a closed Dem. primary.
Click to expand...

Doubt Pennsy will be that close. She'll get three votes for his two.

Still doesn't alter the basic broad mosiac.
Click to expand...

You might be right, but she's only hit 60 percent once so far -- in Arkansas.

Her negatives are simply too high, even in a Dem. primary, for her to get blowout wins.

old_tony · Mar 23, 2008

The Big Ragu said:

Fenian_Bastard said:

steveu said:

Yawn said:

And it's a shitty 3, for the most part. Three senators, whose collective institutional rating makes Bush look like Reagan at his finest moment.

Seriously people. Obama may bring something fresh to the table, but the cold hard reality is that unless you fundamentally change Washington, from lobbyists to careerist like the Mass. drunk who endorsed him so heartily a few months ago, you won't do shit. The dysfunction is too far entrenched unless you have a major overhaul. Even if you're a Democrat and want everything that is liberal, you have to admit that you can't get it done with the system of bureaucratic abyss you have now.
Click to expand...

What I think about is how Bill Clinton said I'm a "New Democrat". Then came the Omnibus Budget Act of 1993 and it was more same old, same old.

My vote is going to McCain, but I'll say this: Obama is a fantastic speaker and a charismatic presence. He can talk the talk, but can he walk the walk by rising above the same old, same old and doing something different?

It will be interesting to see.
Click to expand...

You mean the act that every Republican said would destroy the economy, and wound up balancing the budget and jump-starting the boom oif the 1990's. THAT act? Republicans haven't balanced a budget since Ike, by the way.
Click to expand...

This is one of the funniest interpretations of history I have ever read. A Democratic president and Republican obstructionist Congress combine to produce gridlock that ends up with a tax hike and one of those rare times when they can't collude well enough to spend our money into oblivion. Then we enter a period in which we get an exceptionally strong economy that creates a windfall of new tax revenues that way outpaces even their combined efforts to keep spending and growing government (amazingly, because they were spending and growing government), so we got a period of balanced budgets.

Clinton wasn't that much of a genius. His own OMD was predicting $200 billion budget deficits indefinitely during those years. He wouldn't have known a balanced budget if it slapped him upside the head and he could have cared less about one until he was taking credit for it after the fact.

I can make an equally compelling case that Newt Gingrich was the genius who produced a balanced budget and jump-started "the boom of the 1990s." Of course, it would be the same kind of bullshit that ignores half the story and tries to write false history.

There still is the fact that throughout the 1990s, though, that Clinton's proposed budgets were hundreds of billions of dollars higher than what actually passed. He'd propose a $100 billion or more in new social spending, the Republicans would toss most of it and we'd end up with a surplus. We'd still end up spending ridiculously--the Federal budget has never been balanced by any Republican spending reductions, despite their bullshit rhetoric--but we were in a great period of economic prosperity, so even a bunch of elected jackals couldn't spend the freak windfall into oblivion.

That's the reality.
Click to expand...

Excellent points.

http://www.uuforum.org/deficit.htm

Note that the trend started with Bush 1, continued slowly in Clinton's first two years, then really took off with the Gingrich Congress. Bush 2 got in and it went the other way. 9/11 had a lot to do with that, but the trend already had gone sharply the other way in Clinton's final year and continued badly once the Dems got control of the Senate with Jeffords' turncoat act.

And the trend has been positive the last three years. The projection for this year is bad. Then again, the last three years outperformed the projections then, too.

You can make the numbers say anything you want, really.

D-Backs Hack · Mar 23, 2008

And what would that graphic look like if the war costs were on the books?

And a big reason the numbers started looking better late in Bush I is because of the 1990 budget deal with Democrats in which he broke his "no new taxes" pledge -- another one many Republicans claimed would wreck the economy and, to this day, some believe caused a recession -- even though the recession started four months before Bush actually signed the deal into law.

Clinton, if I recall, credited Bush with helping the process in one of his final State of the Union speeches.

Ben_Hecht · Mar 23, 2008

The Big Ragu said:

Fenian_Bastard said:

steveu said:

Yawn said:

And it's a shitty 3, for the most part. Three senators, whose collective institutional rating makes Bush look like Reagan at his finest moment.

Seriously people. Obama may bring something fresh to the table, but the cold hard reality is that unless you fundamentally change Washington, from lobbyists to careerist like the Mass. drunk who endorsed him so heartily a few months ago, you won't do shit. The dysfunction is too far entrenched unless you have a major overhaul. Even if you're a Democrat and want everything that is liberal, you have to admit that you can't get it done with the system of bureaucratic abyss you have now.
Click to expand...

What I think about is how Bill Clinton said I'm a "New Democrat". Then came the Omnibus Budget Act of 1993 and it was more same old, same old.

My vote is going to McCain, but I'll say this: Obama is a fantastic speaker and a charismatic presence. He can talk the talk, but can he walk the walk by rising above the same old, same old and doing something different?

It will be interesting to see.
Click to expand...

You mean the act that every Republican said would destroy the economy, and wound up balancing the budget and jump-starting the boom oif the 1990's. THAT act? Republicans haven't balanced a budget since Ike, by the way.
Click to expand...

This is one of the funniest interpretations of history I have ever read. A Democratic president and Republican obstructionist Congress combine to produce gridlock that ends up with a tax hike and one of those rare times when they can't collude well enough to spend our money into oblivion. Then we enter a period in which we get an exceptionally strong economy that creates a windfall of new tax revenues that way outpaces even their combined efforts to keep spending and growing government (amazingly, because they were spending and growing government), so we got a period of balanced budgets.

Clinton wasn't that much of a genius. His own OMD was predicting $200 billion budget deficits indefinitely during those years. He wouldn't have known a balanced budget if it slapped him upside the head and he could have cared less about one until he was taking credit for it after the fact.

I can make an equally compelling case that Newt Gingrich was the genius who produced a balanced budget and jump-started "the boom of the 1990s." Of course, it would be the same kind of bullshit that ignores half the story and tries to write false history.

There still is the fact that throughout the 1990s, though, that Clinton's proposed budgets were hundreds of billions of dollars higher than what actually passed. He'd propose a $100 billion or more in new social spending, the Republicans would toss most of it and we'd end up with a surplus. We'd still end up spending ridiculously--the Federal budget has never been balanced by any Republican spending reductions, despite their bullshit rhetoric--but we were in a great period of economic prosperity, so even a bunch of elected jackals couldn't spend the freak windfall into oblivion.

That's the reality.
Click to expand...

Have long said that a Dem prez and GOP congress is the best combination, under current idological divisions.. Won't be back there, for a good while.

Fenian_Bastard · Mar 23, 2008

Ben_Hecht said:

The Big Ragu said:

Fenian_Bastard said:

steveu said:

Yawn said:

And it's a shitty 3, for the most part. Three senators, whose collective institutional rating makes Bush look like Reagan at his finest moment.

Seriously people. Obama may bring something fresh to the table, but the cold hard reality is that unless you fundamentally change Washington, from lobbyists to careerist like the Mass. drunk who endorsed him so heartily a few months ago, you won't do shit. The dysfunction is too far entrenched unless you have a major overhaul. Even if you're a Democrat and want everything that is liberal, you have to admit that you can't get it done with the system of bureaucratic abyss you have now.
Click to expand...

What I think about is how Bill Clinton said I'm a "New Democrat". Then came the Omnibus Budget Act of 1993 and it was more same old, same old.

My vote is going to McCain, but I'll say this: Obama is a fantastic speaker and a charismatic presence. He can talk the talk, but can he walk the walk by rising above the same old, same old and doing something different?

It will be interesting to see.
Click to expand...

You mean the act that every Republican said would destroy the economy, and wound up balancing the budget and jump-starting the boom oif the 1990's. THAT act? Republicans haven't balanced a budget since Ike, by the way.
Click to expand...

This is one of the funniest interpretations of history I have ever read. A Democratic president and Republican obstructionist Congress combine to produce gridlock that ends up with a tax hike and one of those rare times when they can't collude well enough to spend our money into oblivion. Then we enter a period in which we get an exceptionally strong economy that creates a windfall of new tax revenues that way outpaces even their combined efforts to keep spending and growing government (amazingly, because they were spending and growing government), so we got a period of balanced budgets.

Clinton wasn't that much of a genius. His own OMD was predicting $200 billion budget deficits indefinitely during those years. He wouldn't have known a balanced budget if it slapped him upside the head and he could have cared less about one until he was taking credit for it after the fact.

I can make an equally compelling case that Newt Gingrich was the genius who produced a balanced budget and jump-started "the boom of the 1990s." Of course, it would be the same kind of bullshit that ignores half the story and tries to write false history.

There still is the fact that throughout the 1990s, though, that Clinton's proposed budgets were hundreds of billions of dollars higher than what actually passed. He'd propose a $100 billion or more in new social spending, the Republicans would toss most of it and we'd end up with a surplus. We'd still end up spending ridiculously--the Federal budget has never been balanced by any Republican spending reductions, despite their bullshit rhetoric--but we were in a great period of economic prosperity, so even a bunch of elected jackals couldn't spend the freak windfall into oblivion.

That's the reality.
Click to expand...

Have long said that a Dem prez and GOP congress is the best combination, under current idological divisions.. Won't be back there, for a good while.
Click to expand...

The problem is that the GOP has radicalized itself to the point that it needs to do a serious housecleaning before it's likely to meet any D president anywhere near what anyone would recognize as the legitimate middle. Clinton was as much of a centrist as any D in my lifetime, and they made his life a living hell long before Monica showed up, and Tom Delay's people were running around Capitol Hill saying they'd impeach him anyway simply because they had the votes.

Ben_Hecht · Mar 23, 2008

Fenian_Bastard said:

Ben_Hecht said:

The Big Ragu said:

Fenian_Bastard said:

steveu said:

Yawn said:

And it's a shitty 3, for the most part. Three senators, whose collective institutional rating makes Bush look like Reagan at his finest moment.

Seriously people. Obama may bring something fresh to the table, but the cold hard reality is that unless you fundamentally change Washington, from lobbyists to careerist like the Mass. drunk who endorsed him so heartily a few months ago, you won't do shit. The dysfunction is too far entrenched unless you have a major overhaul. Even if you're a Democrat and want everything that is liberal, you have to admit that you can't get it done with the system of bureaucratic abyss you have now.
Click to expand...

What I think about is how Bill Clinton said I'm a "New Democrat". Then came the Omnibus Budget Act of 1993 and it was more same old, same old.

My vote is going to McCain, but I'll say this: Obama is a fantastic speaker and a charismatic presence. He can talk the talk, but can he walk the walk by rising above the same old, same old and doing something different?

It will be interesting to see.
Click to expand...

You mean the act that every Republican said would destroy the economy, and wound up balancing the budget and jump-starting the boom oif the 1990's. THAT act? Republicans haven't balanced a budget since Ike, by the way.
Click to expand...

This is one of the funniest interpretations of history I have ever read. A Democratic president and Republican obstructionist Congress combine to produce gridlock that ends up with a tax hike and one of those rare times when they can't collude well enough to spend our money into oblivion. Then we enter a period in which we get an exceptionally strong economy that creates a windfall of new tax revenues that way outpaces even their combined efforts to keep spending and growing government (amazingly, because they were spending and growing government), so we got a period of balanced budgets.

Clinton wasn't that much of a genius. His own OMD was predicting $200 billion budget deficits indefinitely during those years. He wouldn't have known a balanced budget if it slapped him upside the head and he could have cared less about one until he was taking credit for it after the fact.

I can make an equally compelling case that Newt Gingrich was the genius who produced a balanced budget and jump-started "the boom of the 1990s." Of course, it would be the same kind of bullshit that ignores half the story and tries to write false history.

There still is the fact that throughout the 1990s, though, that Clinton's proposed budgets were hundreds of billions of dollars higher than what actually passed. He'd propose a $100 billion or more in new social spending, the Republicans would toss most of it and we'd end up with a surplus. We'd still end up spending ridiculously--the Federal budget has never been balanced by any Republican spending reductions, despite their bullshit rhetoric--but we were in a great period of economic prosperity, so even a bunch of elected jackals couldn't spend the freak windfall into oblivion.

That's the reality.
Click to expand...

Have long said that a Dem prez and GOP congress is the best combination, under current idological divisions.. Won't be back there, for a good while.
Click to expand...

The problem is that the GOP has radicalized itself to the point that it needs to do a serious housecleaning before it's likely to meet any D president anywhere near what anyone would recognize as the legitimate middle. Clinton was as much of a centrist as any D in my lifetime, and they made his life a living hell long before Monica showed up, and Tom Delay's people were running around Capitol Hill saying they'd impeach him anyway simply because they had the votes.
Click to expand...

All true. We are in for it.

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Obama's speech - tremendous

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Obama's speech - tremendous

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