Just so I don't look too one-dimensional, I also fault liberals.
The name of my blog reflects my mixed emotions about the political scene - I took parts of the word consevative and liberal and duct-taped them together. (Though some some dictionaries list liberative as an adjective of liberate.)
Being a gun-owner and Second Amendment support has made me much more conservative than I used to be, as has the invasion of illegal immigrants.
For some reason though, attacks on Liberals still get my blood roiling, so there is still some identification there.
It stood up like a New Orleans dike in Katrina's path.
Simply put: You created a straw man argument when you attempt to paint Bush as a "conservative". If you have been paying any attention at all, you would know that Bush's failures to be any sort of Real Conservative are an exceedingly common topic in conservative circles.
If the Dems weren't such imbeciles as to keep putting forth moonbat candidates, they would have had the last election, as well as the current one, locked in.
I mean, come on -- last time it was the Senator with the 4th most left-leaning record (backed by the 3rd biggest lefty)... this time it's THE most liberal Senator?
Combine that with the left's tendency to go frothing cannibal whenever one of their own dares to disagree with the official orthodoxy and you have a recipe for losses.
If the Dems hadn't been taken over by ultra left Wimpodytes in the last 15 years, they'd grasp that middle-of-the-road wins. Every time.
Hey, it was you conservatives who voted in Bush and we are all suffering the consequences of that. After this 8-year fiasco, why trust the judgement of you who foisted this on the American people and the rest of the world?
. Carl said: Perhaps, but you're defending San Francisco liberals. Surely, this is beyond necessary for your self image.
If you look at what I wrote, I think you'll see that I was only attacking the part I quoted, though I should have made it clearer by leaving out the 1st 3 words of what I quoted.
I am about 3/4 through your responses here. I'd like to request that you please hold off replying there until I finish up, later this evening. I'd like to keep this coherent.
It stood up like a New Orleans dike in Katrina's path.
Nice of you to declare victory in advance of any conflict. Too bad we can't do the same in Iraq.
Oh well, nice to get some actual traffic on my blog - at this point it's been seen by dozens, maybe.
Simply put: You created a straw man argument when you attempt to paint Bush as a "conservative".
Well, you conservatives keep voting for him and defending him.
If the Dems weren't such imbeciles as to keep putting forth moonbat candidates
We put up 2 guys who,unlike Bush, can speak a coherent sentence that is occasionally true, *and* had actually been in war zones, one as a decorated soldier. Speaking of Bush's opponents as moonbats is really hilarious.
Combine that with the left's tendency to go frothing cannibal whenever one of their own dares to disagree with the official orthodoxy and you have a recipe for losses.
Oh, like this: If you have been paying any attention at all, you would know that Bush's failures to be any sort of Real Conservative are an exceedingly common topic in conservative circles.
Very fine "frothing cannibal", it would seem.
If the Dems hadn't been taken over by ultra left Wimpodytes in the last 15 years, they'd grasp that middle-of-the-road wins. Every time.
Which way is it OBH? Or is it only Dems that should put up moderates, while the GOP runs right-wing nut-jobs?
(this is a previous post editted to remove a brain fart - bobn)
> Nice of you to declare victory in advance of any conflict. Too bad we can't do the same in Iraq.
I said I *fisked* it.
I didn't say it was the last word.
We'll see how well your defenses stand up. Hopefully a lot better than your initial arguments.
...And we're one hell of a lot closer to victory in Iraq than we'd have been if anyone had listened to the Left in the last 2 years.
> Well, you conservatives keep voting for him and defending him.
A reason for which you KNOW I already offered. So why do you make this comment as though I didn't offer it? This is blatantly disingenuous.
> We put up 2 guys who, unlike Bush, can speak a coherent sentence
Verbal accumen is a valuable skill. It's not essential to do anything but sparkle your audience, however. Useful in a PotUS but far from required.
And you're the one with the candidate whose knowledge of the capitals of all 57 states is in question, aren't you?
> *and* had actually been in war zones,
Ah, so you'll be voting for McCain, this time, then, will you?
Or does "being in a war zone" only matter when *you* WANT it to...?
As far as Bush's military qualities, Bill Whittle over at Eject! Eject! Eject! put paid to that imbecility about a third of the way through Seeing The Unseen (part 1) -- read the whole thing (as well as part 2) but the part of interest would start with "WAR OF THE BUMPER STICKERS".
TANG service was hardly danger-free (and in fact, was probably more dangerous, statistically, than Kerry's service), nor does one learn to fly military jets while stupid... OTOH, it doesn't take a lot of brains to run a Swift Boat, does it?
...Perhaps that's why Bush's college grades are better than Kerry's or Gore's, despite his issues with articulation.
> one as a decorated soldier.
Give me a frigging break. Kerry deserved his decorations as much as I deserve the Nobel prize for Medicine. Am I eligible for the Nobel for getting a scratch on my ass in a hospital?
And that you take them seriously (or suggest that one should) suggests either a lack of any semblance of credulity, or a lack of any semblance of veracity.
The former suggests you probably still believe that Gore Actually Won, right along with his invention of the internet, right?
Which are you, stupid or lying?
> Speaking of Bush's opponents as moonbats is really hilarious.
And instead of backing up the assertion, you just try and blow it off with a handwave. Nice try.
You engage not in rational argument and refutation, but an effort to BS your way out of statements you can't justify, by making still more statements you can't justify. I repeat: Nice Try.
Doesn't work against people who can actually think.
> Oh, like this: ... (snip) ... Very fine "frothing cannibal", it would seem.
Once more, "huh?"
Where in there was any rational comment of any kind? Did you actually refute anything? Or did you just naysay it without actually even making a semblance of a connection, even?
I made an assertion -- that if you actually went out and LOOKED, you would find PLENTY of conservatives who had been quite put out by MANY policies which Bush had either instituted or allowed to pass by -- particularly on immigration issues.
You've done not ONE SOLITARY THING to refute that assertion.
But apparently you imagine you've made some kind of valid refutation of the assertion.
Stupid it is, then.
> only Dems that should put up moderates, while the GOP runs right-wing nut-jobs?
Name ONE "right wing nutjob" who has been a serious candidate in the last forty years. Pat Robertson is the closest you could come, and 3-5% is hardly a "serious candidate".
This election, you've nominated an individual whose voting record -- according to non-partisan sources, is THE most left-leaning senator in the nation, out of 100. (And Clinton, the only viable alternative, is in the left-most 10). LAST election, you put up the #4 out of 100 as your PotUS candidate, and actually were stupid enough to tack on the #3 out of 100 as your Veep.
This hardly constitutes "middle of the road", or even close. Your guys are all off at the edge expanding the ditchwork, along with Pelosi, Reid, and Dean.
McCain, on the other hand, is (without checking) probably in the LEFTmost fifty out of 100, and certainly not further right than the rightmost 40.
So who, exactly, are you claiming is "a right wing nutjob"?
bob, you're so far Left that the center looks like the far horizon. It's not. Not by a long shot.
=============================
> Hey, it was you conservatives who voted in Bush and we are all suffering the consequences of that. After this 8-year fiasco, why trust the judgement of you who foisted this on the American people and the rest of the world?
Yeah, no further terrorist attacks, a "non recessionary recession", unemployment that is still below the average mark for the Clinton admin despite the IT boom, and at least 25 million people free from the thumb of a murderous thug and his rapist sons.
The last 8 years just suck, such horrible, awful consequences -- I can see your point.
But maybe if shut your mouth and comb your hair, it might not be so obvious.
(THAT, by the way bob, was a drooling moonbat... You'll find lots of them over on HuffPo, Atrios, etc.)
The National DEFICIT. The trade imbalance. The housing market foreclosures. And so on. Do you conservatives wear blinders or just always select the facts that support your own prejudices?
> The National DEFICIT. The trade imbalance. The housing market foreclosures. And so on. Do you conservatives wear blinders or just always select the facts that support your own prejudices?
No, unlike you I (and many other "conservatives" -- LOLOL) actually have some sense of economics and know when to recognize the hysteria of the ill-informed... and economics happens to be one of the most singularly ill-informed arenas of discussion, because economics happens to be filled with traps and pitfalls of counter-intuitivenesss (you THINK "such-and-so" makes sense, but, in reality, it just doesn't work that way at all).
1) The deficit as a proportion of the GDP is about average for what it has been in the last 40 years. Only an ignorant fool looks at a raw number and thinks context isn't relevant: Guy "A" makes $20,000 per year, and has $2,000 in credit card debt. Guy "B" makes $70,000 per year, and has $5500 in credit card debt. Which is in worse shape? What if Guy "B" has $7500 in credit card debt. Which one is in worse shape then?
======
2) Trade Imbalance... I have this huuuuuuge trade imbalance with my local supermarket. I buy things from them all the time, yet they never buy anything from me. Clearly, by your reasoning, I should stop buying things from them and grow my own food....
Naaaaaahhhhhhhh.
Once again, context: The real fact of the matter is that an examination of healthy economies vs. unhealthy ones shows that the healthy ones actually tend to show trade deficits, while the unhealthy ones show surpluses. Context.
=====
3) Housing market foreclosures.... Again, hysteria, often produced by looking at raw numbers, but also sheer, unmitigated ignorance of the history of such "crises". The entire country did not go into an economic meltdown with the S&L Crisis (like the FMs, an FDR-era creation -- Democrat welfare programs... the gift that keeps on giving.... Still to come: Social Security).
The current housing market issues, as a fraction of the actual market, are tiny -- despite the apparently vast numbers involved. The current worst-case scenarios are, globally about a trillion dollars (i.e., not all of the losses are "US money", but include foreign investors).
I know, that sounds like a lot, right?
Until you get the context: The ****US**** household net worth alone is more than 55 **trillion** dollars.
This is like *you*, personally, losing 1000 bucks. Yeah, sure, it hurts -- quite a bit -- but it's far from the end of the world, unless you were off to pay Guido the Loan Shark with it. And Guido doesn't deal in housing.
A billion here, a billion there, sooner or later it adds up to real money - Everett Dirksen -
He said that back in the 60s. We need to ramp it up nowadays to replace the "billions" with trillions.
You don't grasp how *rich* this country is.
You don't even grasp how rich > > > > you < < < < are.
So you can't begin to grasp what numbers are relevant or important and more critically how they are important. You could, perhaps, but that would require you to spend some time actually reading and listening to people who know something about economics (as opposed to talking heads on the nightly news, whose key job is to create terrors for you every day so that you will continue to pay attention and watch them. And they're good at *THAT*. Economics, ehhh, not so much.)
Don't geet me wrong, it's a cluster f***, and it's not going to be pleasant to fix the problem -- but it damned sure wasn't Bush who created it.
He may well have contributed, but but not a lot and he certainly didn't make this situation. Most of it was made by the dozen or so PotUSes who preceded him, both Dem and GOP, but an awful lot of them Dems.
And that brings us to:
And as a final note, I'll point out to you that the housing market problem in the first place is a big government problem. It was entirely created by bad government programs with bad internal oversight mechanisms, combined with bad external forces (also created by governments) which overrode historical lending rules long ago developed by businesses with the goal of deciding, effectively, what was a good risk, and what was not.
Then compound the fun part of it by taking that risk, and, instead of keeping it in the hands of those whose lending decisions are directly relevant to the risk, and divorcing that connection and spread it around to all and sundry...
Here, let me rephrase that: =============== I'm going to give you money.
You're supposed to handle it properly. Don't misuse it, and apply it well for your long-term benefit.
But if you don't do that, there's no downside to you. It's not your money, you're not even going to be out of a job or anything if you screw it up.
So... I'll see you at the local strip club tonight... right? You're buyin'? ===============
Q.E.D.
Not only do we NOT have blinders on, *we* actually grasp the bloody source of the friggin' problem.
I don't think your vote in November is going to be for people whose goal is to expressly shrink the size of government.
(Actually, mine probably won't be, either, but unfortunately I don't get to vote for those guys, I can only vote for the ones who I hope will grow it least, and/or spend it more wisely -- which, IMNSHO, pretty much sucks).
13 comments:
Just so I don't look too one-dimensional, I also fault liberals.
The name of my blog reflects my mixed emotions about the political scene - I took parts of the word consevative and liberal and duct-taped them together. (Though some some dictionaries list liberative as an adjective of liberate.)
Being a gun-owner and Second Amendment support has made me much more conservative than I used to be, as has the invasion of illegal immigrants.
For some reason though, attacks on Liberals still get my blood roiling, so there is still some identification there.
Anyhow, time to await the onslaught of OBH.
bobn:
Perhaps, but you're defending San Francisco liberals. Surely, this is beyond necessary for your self image.
> Anyhow, time to await the onslaught of OBH.
I fisked it for you on its own page.
It stood up like a New Orleans dike in Katrina's path.
Simply put: You created a straw man argument when you attempt to paint Bush as a "conservative". If you have been paying any attention at all, you would know that Bush's failures to be any sort of Real Conservative are an exceedingly common topic in conservative circles.
If the Dems weren't such imbeciles as to keep putting forth moonbat candidates, they would have had the last election, as well as the current one, locked in.
I mean, come on -- last time it was the Senator with the 4th most left-leaning record (backed by the 3rd biggest lefty)... this time it's THE most liberal Senator?
Combine that with the left's tendency to go frothing cannibal whenever one of their own dares to disagree with the official orthodoxy and you have a recipe for losses.
If the Dems hadn't been taken over by ultra left Wimpodytes in the last 15 years, they'd grasp that middle-of-the-road wins. Every time.
Hey, it was you conservatives who voted in Bush and we are all suffering the consequences of that.
After this 8-year fiasco, why trust the judgement of you who foisted this on the American people and the rest of the world?
.
Carl said:
Perhaps, but you're defending San Francisco liberals. Surely, this is beyond necessary for your self image.
If you look at what I wrote, I think you'll see that I was only attacking the part I quoted, though I should have made it clearer by leaving out the 1st 3 words of what I quoted.
OBH,
I am about 3/4 through your responses here. I'd like to request that you please hold off replying there until I finish up, later this evening. I'd like to keep this coherent.
OBH, in his own inimitable way, says:
I fisked it for you on its own page.
It stood up like a New Orleans dike in Katrina's path.
Nice of you to declare victory in advance of any conflict. Too bad we can't do the same in Iraq.
Oh well, nice to get some actual traffic on my blog - at this point it's been seen by dozens, maybe.
Simply put: You created a straw man argument when you attempt to paint Bush as a "conservative".
Well, you conservatives keep voting for him and defending him.
If the Dems weren't such imbeciles as to keep putting forth moonbat candidates
We put up 2 guys who,unlike Bush, can speak a coherent sentence that is occasionally true, *and* had actually been in war zones, one as a decorated soldier. Speaking of Bush's opponents as moonbats is really hilarious.
Combine that with the left's tendency to go frothing cannibal whenever one of their own dares to disagree with the official orthodoxy and you have a recipe for losses.
Oh, like this: If you have been paying any attention at all, you would know that Bush's failures to be any sort of Real Conservative are an exceedingly common topic in conservative circles.
Very fine "frothing cannibal", it would seem.
If the Dems hadn't been taken over by ultra left Wimpodytes in the last 15 years, they'd grasp that middle-of-the-road wins. Every time.
Which way is it OBH? Or is it only Dems that should put up moderates, while the GOP runs right-wing nut-jobs?
(this is a previous post editted to remove a brain fart - bobn)
OBH,
Ok, same place, same channel.
> Nice of you to declare victory in advance of any conflict. Too bad we can't do the same in Iraq.
I said I *fisked* it.
I didn't say it was the last word.
We'll see how well your defenses stand up. Hopefully a lot better than your initial arguments.
...And we're one hell of a lot closer to victory in Iraq than we'd have been if anyone had listened to the Left in the last 2 years.
> Well, you conservatives keep voting for him and defending him.
A reason for which you KNOW I already offered. So why do you make this comment as though I didn't offer it? This is blatantly disingenuous.
> We put up 2 guys who, unlike Bush, can speak a coherent sentence
Verbal accumen is a valuable skill. It's not essential to do anything but sparkle your audience, however. Useful in a PotUS but far from required.
And you're the one with the candidate whose knowledge of the capitals of all 57 states is in question, aren't you?
> *and* had actually been in war zones,
Ah, so you'll be voting for McCain, this time, then, will you?
Or does "being in a war zone" only matter when *you* WANT it to...?
As far as Bush's military qualities, Bill Whittle over at Eject! Eject! Eject! put paid to that imbecility about a third of the way through Seeing The Unseen (part 1) -- read the whole thing (as well as part 2) but the part of interest would start with "WAR OF THE BUMPER STICKERS".
TANG service was hardly danger-free (and in fact, was probably more dangerous, statistically, than Kerry's service), nor does one learn to fly military jets while stupid... OTOH, it doesn't take a lot of brains to run a Swift Boat, does it?
...Perhaps that's why Bush's college grades are better than Kerry's or Gore's, despite his issues with articulation.
> one as a decorated soldier.
Give me a frigging break. Kerry deserved his decorations as much as I deserve the Nobel prize for Medicine. Am I eligible for the Nobel for getting a scratch on my ass in a hospital?
And that you take them seriously (or suggest that one should) suggests either a lack of any semblance of credulity, or a lack of any semblance of veracity.
The former suggests you probably still believe that Gore Actually Won, right along with his invention of the internet, right?
Which are you, stupid or lying?
> Speaking of Bush's opponents as moonbats is really hilarious.
And instead of backing up the assertion, you just try and blow it off with a handwave. Nice try.
You engage not in rational argument and refutation, but an effort to BS your way out of statements you can't justify, by making still more statements you can't justify. I repeat: Nice Try.
Doesn't work against people who can actually think.
> Oh, like this: ... (snip) ... Very fine "frothing cannibal", it would seem.
Once more, "huh?"
Where in there was any rational comment of any kind? Did you actually refute anything? Or did you just naysay it without actually even making a semblance of a connection, even?
I made an assertion -- that if you actually went out and LOOKED, you would find PLENTY of conservatives who had been quite put out by MANY policies which Bush had either instituted or allowed to pass by -- particularly on immigration issues.
You've done not ONE SOLITARY THING to refute that assertion.
But apparently you imagine you've made some kind of valid refutation of the assertion.
Stupid it is, then.
> only Dems that should put up moderates, while the GOP runs right-wing nut-jobs?
Name ONE "right wing nutjob" who has been a serious candidate in the last forty years. Pat Robertson is the closest you could come, and 3-5% is hardly a "serious candidate".
This election, you've nominated an individual whose voting record -- according to non-partisan sources, is THE most left-leaning senator in the nation, out of 100. (And Clinton, the only viable alternative, is in the left-most 10). LAST election, you put up the #4 out of 100 as your PotUS candidate, and actually were stupid enough to tack on the #3 out of 100 as your Veep.
This hardly constitutes "middle of the road", or even close. Your guys are all off at the edge expanding the ditchwork, along with Pelosi, Reid, and Dean.
McCain, on the other hand, is (without checking) probably in the LEFTmost fifty out of 100, and certainly not further right than the rightmost 40.
So who, exactly, are you claiming is "a right wing nutjob"?
bob, you're so far Left that the center looks like the far horizon. It's not. Not by a long shot.
=============================
> Hey, it was you conservatives who voted in Bush and we are all suffering the consequences of that.
After this 8-year fiasco, why trust the judgement of you who foisted this on the American people and the rest of the world?
Yeah, no further terrorist attacks, a "non recessionary recession", unemployment that is still below the average mark for the Clinton admin despite the IT boom, and at least 25 million people free from the thumb of a murderous thug and his rapist sons.
The last 8 years just suck, such horrible, awful consequences -- I can see your point.
But maybe if shut your mouth and comb your hair, it might not be so obvious.
(THAT, by the way bob, was a drooling moonbat... You'll find lots of them over on HuffPo, Atrios, etc.)
The National DEFICIT. The trade imbalance. The housing market foreclosures. And so on. Do you conservatives wear blinders or just always select the facts that support your own prejudices?
> The National DEFICIT. The trade imbalance. The housing market foreclosures. And so on. Do you conservatives wear blinders or just always select the facts that support your own prejudices?
No, unlike you I (and many other "conservatives" -- LOLOL) actually have some sense of economics and know when to recognize the hysteria of the ill-informed... and economics happens to be one of the most singularly ill-informed arenas of discussion, because economics happens to be filled with traps and pitfalls of counter-intuitivenesss (you THINK "such-and-so" makes sense, but, in reality, it just doesn't work that way at all).
1) The deficit as a proportion of the GDP is about average for what it has been in the last 40 years. Only an ignorant fool looks at a raw number and thinks context isn't relevant:
Guy "A" makes $20,000 per year, and has $2,000 in credit card debt.
Guy "B" makes $70,000 per year, and has $5500 in credit card debt. Which is in worse shape?
What if Guy "B" has $7500 in credit card debt.
Which one is in worse shape then?
======
2) Trade Imbalance... I have this huuuuuuge trade imbalance with my local supermarket. I buy things from them all the time, yet they never buy anything from me. Clearly, by your reasoning, I should stop buying things from them and grow my own food....
Naaaaaahhhhhhhh.
Once again, context: The real fact of the matter is that an examination of healthy economies vs. unhealthy ones shows that the healthy ones actually tend to show trade deficits, while the unhealthy ones show surpluses. Context.
=====
3) Housing market foreclosures.... Again, hysteria, often produced by looking at raw numbers, but also sheer, unmitigated ignorance of the history of such "crises". The entire country did not go into an economic meltdown with the S&L Crisis (like the FMs, an FDR-era creation -- Democrat welfare programs... the gift that keeps on giving.... Still to come: Social Security).
The current housing market issues, as a fraction of the actual market, are tiny -- despite the apparently vast numbers involved. The current worst-case scenarios are, globally about a trillion dollars (i.e., not all of the losses are "US money", but include foreign investors).
I know, that sounds like a lot, right?
Until you get the context: The ****US**** household net worth alone is more than 55 **trillion** dollars.
This is like *you*, personally, losing 1000 bucks. Yeah, sure, it hurts -- quite a bit -- but it's far from the end of the world, unless you were off to pay Guido the Loan Shark with it. And Guido doesn't deal in housing.
A billion here, a billion there, sooner or later it adds up to real money
- Everett Dirksen -
He said that back in the 60s. We need to ramp it up nowadays to replace the "billions" with trillions.
You don't grasp how *rich* this country is.
You don't even grasp how rich > > > > you < < < < are.
So you can't begin to grasp what numbers are relevant or important and more critically how they are important. You could, perhaps, but that would require you to spend some time actually reading and listening to people who know something about economics (as opposed to talking heads on the nightly news, whose key job is to create terrors for you every day so that you will continue to pay attention and watch them. And they're good at *THAT*. Economics, ehhh, not so much.)
Don't geet me wrong, it's a cluster f***, and it's not going to be pleasant to fix the problem -- but it damned sure wasn't Bush who created it.
He may well have contributed, but but not a lot and he certainly didn't make this situation. Most of it was made by the dozen or so PotUSes who preceded him, both Dem and GOP, but an awful lot of them Dems.
And that brings us to:
And as a final note, I'll point out to you that the housing market problem in the first place is a big government problem. It was entirely created by bad government programs with bad internal oversight mechanisms, combined with bad external forces (also created by governments) which overrode historical lending rules long ago developed by businesses with the goal of deciding, effectively, what was a good risk, and what was not.
Then compound the fun part of it by taking that risk, and, instead of keeping it in the hands of those whose lending decisions are directly relevant to the risk, and divorcing that connection and spread it around to all and sundry...
Here, let me rephrase that:
===============
I'm going to give you money.
You're supposed to handle it properly. Don't misuse it, and apply it well for your long-term benefit.
But if you don't do that, there's no downside to you. It's not your money, you're not even going to be out of a job or anything if you screw it up.
So... I'll see you at the local strip club tonight... right? You're buyin'?
===============
Q.E.D.
Not only do we NOT have blinders on, *we* actually grasp the bloody source of the friggin' problem.
I don't think your vote in November is going to be for people whose goal is to expressly shrink the size of government.
(Actually, mine probably won't be, either, but unfortunately I don't get to vote for those guys, I can only vote for the ones who I hope will grow it least, and/or spend it more wisely -- which, IMNSHO, pretty much sucks).
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