Thread: Obama quotes

Originally Posted by ebaconjr

Originally Posted by punish3r

Communism and socialism will never work. Call me crazy, but I'd find it difficult to tell a brain surgeon that he's supposed to make about the same money as a janitor.

The example about brain surgeons and janitors is an example of communism, aka a classless society. The USSR proved that Communism fails.

Do you have any examples for socialism? Does the U.S. government have socialist components outside of the obvious such as Social Secuity and Medicare? Of those, which could be successfully replaced with a capitalist model? How would the capitalist replacement be structured?

This is an interesting article on how Canadian Socialized Health care doesn't really work. In the end the taxpayers of Canada pay more in taxes than they would have paid in private health care.

http://www.theadvocates.org/freeman/8903lemi.html

It might also be worth noting how much those countries tax percentages are.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_rates_around_the_world

Originally Posted by SoySoldier

Originally Posted by SonicDogfart

I've learned that when talking to a Liberal (of any stripe) there are only 3 acceptable replies:

1) You're right
2) You've never been more right!

and...

3) Thank you so much for correcting me...clearly, I was wrong.


Conservatives need to stop trying to persuade Liberals of anything. They believe what they believe. Fair enough...beat 'em at the ballot box. There's an old political saying, " when you have to start explaining, you're losing" The ballot box isn't interested in having a conversation...just a decision. Someone wins, someone loses but the loser is free to rally his axioms and live to fight another day. Democracy is cool like 'dat.

Yes the sharing of information and opinions should just be ignored. People definitely should vote based on how they feel, and how their like minded peers tell them they feel, rather than on information from all sides of the coin.

Please... Your statement could easily apply to any political party. In fact I have an issue with conservatives who do not believe in facts and science, no matter how often I explain it. But the reason I don't stop explaining is because I care and I want to share the knowledge so others may be informed. I would hope that people hunger for knowledge and facts...but they do not. They are cognitive misers.

So you think that the two political parties our country has isolated should not communicate but rather should vote regardless of each others information/opinions?

I dare not speak for DogFart, but what I gather is an accurate observation.

Speaking from a stereotypical view of the 2 parties, the right, conservative, republicans are allegedly hard-headed, un-caring, dispassionate greed mongers who have been co-opted by the far religions right and are not tolerant of opinions that stray from their own.

The left, liberals, democrats are the party of acceptance and tolerance, caring compassion, benevolence even...

What I observe to be true, however, is that while some republicans live up to their stereotypical archetype - there is little to no difference between a liberal and a conservative in how they confront a differing viewpoint.

Liberals know they are right, they know that conservatives are wrong.

They KNOW that global warming is real and anybody that disagrees is a rube.

They KNOW that higher taxes on the "wealthy" is "fair" and that anybody who objects is greedy (and probably white).

They KNOW that evolution is the only reasonable doctrine to be taught in schools and that anybody who believes in God is, again, a rube.

They KNOW that I am wrong - whatever I say - since I am a "Republican" that I am wrong.


Again, this isn't some random observation or preconceived notion - this is a fact as I understand it, by interacting with hundreds of democrats over my lifetime. Many of them in my own family - some of them here on TTP, countless others in other aspects of my life.

For being the party of acceptance, they typically only accept those who agree with them.

That may not be fair - it may not apply to you - but I have yet to read a post by a democrat or Obama voter that acknowledged that yes - Obama's fiscal ideas are questionable - possibly damaging - spending almost a trillion new dollars on programs while raising taxes on anybody in this economy is a bad idea. I'm willing to say that going to Iraq may have been dumb - I'm willing to say that corporate CEO's with golden parachutes are excessive and wasteful, I'm willing to say that anybody that can be proven to have been a victim of a predatory lender should be absolved of their financial responsibilities related to that house...

Where is the willingness to look CRITICALLY at Obama's policies on their own merits? The Obama-mania Media isn't going to do it. He'll get swept into office riding a wave of popularity and shabby economic policies.

That's my opinion though. Call me crazy.

It's my b-day - I'm allowed to be crazy.

So then I ask you what deregulation you speak of that is all the faults of the Reps that has caused failure?

Originally Posted by ebaconjr

Originally Posted by Consultant

I have yet to read a post by a democrat or Obama voter that acknowledged that yes - Obama's fiscal ideas are questionable - possibly damaging - spending almost a trillion new dollars on programs while raising taxes on anybody in this economy is a bad idea.

I'm an Obama supporter and I posted several that said just what you are looking for.

On the other hand, I have yet to find a Republican supporter that can explain how deregulation works to improve or stabilize our economy. Civil gave it a valiant effort, but unfortunately he was mislead my loose-speak in the media and in a Wiki article that even Wiki administrators flagged as having questionable accuracy. In those cases, the word "reregulation" was used to mean anti-competition or anti-trust.

First, I am not a scholar of deregulation. I do not know how it works. That's not my bag.

I can relate it to other market areas though - when Cable Television was deregulated, wasn't that the beginning of free market competition and competitive pricing?

We have trillions of dollars flowing around in unregulated markets such as the Credit Swap market - and hedge funds...those things are TOTALLY unregulated, and coincidentally, the hedge funds are the number 1 contributor to political campaigns, so don't expect them to be regulated any time soon - politicians know where their bread is buttered.

In general, I think the goal of deregulation is to facilitate the free market in providing competitive solutions to price and demand issues.

Keynesian economics and all that muckity muck.

Supply and demand, real basic principals that, if allowed to work themselves out, would take care of this garbage.

That's why I was opposed to the bailout. The free market has a way of working this stuff out, and all it costs is a few executive's jobs and some short-term unemployment bumps.

That's all totally off the cuff.

I suspect the reply will be along the lines of "Well, it hasn't worked so far - screw the free market".

My retort to that would be that we've never seen a truly free market - government has always had it's hand in the pie with well-intentioned regulation that just causes people to create work-arounds and find loopholes, thus magnifying the problem rather than alleviating it.

Look at Fanny Mae or Freddie Mac - a guy like Franklin Reigns can make 90 million bucks there in 6 years while a guy like Barney Frank can say that Fannie Mae is stable and push for deregulation in the 1990's while his gay lover (literally, I am not making this up), sat as an executive for the company. That place is fraught with corruption at every level. They had no competition for those loans, certain democratic members of congress pushed for looser lending requirements and it all collapsed.

That wasn't an effective deregulation post - but I don't have time for more.

So is insurance a right or a privilege? Insurance is basically me saying I think by us grouping together we can even out costs. That means for every person spending $400 per month and only using $50 per month there is someone else spending $400 per month using $3200 per month. If you are in the first category would you want more people like you, or more people from group 2 in your group?

I found it a very interesting article too about at least socialization of healthcare. I don't know what the best plan for 'fixing' health care is in this country, but I know that full socialization scares me as much as doing nothing about it.

I think the main point I was trying to make is the fact that in order to make everyone even, you have to take from everyone but those on the very lowest tier of the ladder. This in the end makes everyone even at the cost of many who worked hard to achieve their wealth.

Am i the only one getting tired of this "capitalism will work, regulations make stuff shitty." Yea, okay sounds great to me, i can spend the rest of my life working for minium wage at Nike, or McDonalds, or Wal-Mart, etc. Capitalism is communism in reserve in the end, they both don't work. Communism didn't work because no matter what people want more then their neighbors, and be of higher status so they became "more equal," it seemed like a decent idea on paper but in practice does not work. Capitalism is all about free market policing, and competition driving down price. The problem is that people are greedy and want to have more money. Without regulation you could see THe King and Ronald get together and say "lets charge $5 for a hamburger, then we both make money." I see it all the time with the Gasoline providers around here, Docs charges me 3.34 a gallon, AZ fuel charges me 3.34 a gallon and giant charges me 3.34 a gallon. If Doc raises their price to 3.50, then AZ Fuels raises theirs to 3.50 and so does Giant.

We can even put it into football. i don't have a written quote so doing this off memory but its like Scott Van Pelt says "Tough coaches work." Like his example he uses, Are the cowboys better off with the deregulation policies of Wade Phillips? and are the Dolphins worse because of added regulations by Bill Parcells?

You are so right. Burger King and McDonalds are the only 2 burger joints around, and you have no option to open your own burger shack and sell them for $4 and put both of them out of business. Same BS people for regulation tried to say about franchising and multi-level marketing, and about Wal-Mart when they tried to cut out the middle man.