Some thoughts on obama's jobs summit and the economy

[Jccarlton]

Sorry, but if you are 70 years old, you should have had the time to read enough books to know these things, ESPECIALLY, if you are attacking them (quite pointlessly, IMHO) in your campaign.
And, to make this clear, I want - NO I REQUIRE- the leader of the most powerful nation in the world, actually anyone who wants to have authority over me, to be better educated and more intelligent than me.
A person that is not, does not deserve to rule over me, period!
Of course I cant always have my will (with the "beerheads" here in Austria, I never will), but I can at least voice my opinion about these people in a land of free speech and that is what I happily do.

You live in Austria. Ergo, you don't have vote anyway, anymore than I have a vote for the president of Austria or the EU for that matter. Though it seems you Europeans want a vote on how we run our affairs without actually moving here and becoming a citizen. As for planetaria, well in times of economic crisis and low taxes, spending on stuff like planetaria is foolish with enormous deficits and lowering tax revenue.

[Jccarlton]

Sorry, but if you are 70 years old, you should have had the time to read enough books to know these things, ESPECIALLY, if you are attacking them (quite pointlessly, IMHO) in your campaign.
And, to make this clear, I want - NO I REQUIRE- the leader of the most powerful nation in the world, actually anyone who wants to have authority over me, to be better educated and more intelligent than me.
A person that is not, does not deserve to rule over me, period!
Of course I cant always have my will (with the "beerheads" here in Austria, I never will), but I can at least voice my opinion about these people in a land of free speech and that is what I happily do.

First of all you live in Austria, so you have no knowledge of what Bush did or what Obama is doing. You are just spouting cliches with no substance.
Second of all, read this for starters:
http://jim.com/econ/contents.html
and this:
http://books.google.com/books?id=ax6dsq ... q=&f=false
also this:
I hate long urls - they interfere with the flow
That should get you started. According to Karl Rove, President Bush reads more books than I do, which is very impressive as I usually top 60-70 new books a year.:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123025595706634689.html
Bush's problem was not that he was stupid. His problem was that he was, in the end stuck in the same mold as the rest of the "establishment." Plus the fact that he had to use most of his political capitol fighting a major war against both an unscrupulous enemy and the opposition in his own country. The Dems took advantage of the necessities of war and exploited them for their own shallow ends. Meanwhile President Bush did not have the political capitol to fight the economic battles that needed to be fought and constrain the spending of the progressive culture of Congress.

I forgot to add the most important books:
http://books.google.com/books?id=c_9mWz ... q=&f=false
and
http://books.google.com/books?id=eTve6X ... q=&f=false
http://www.iea.org.uk/files/upld-publication43pdf?.pdf
Freidrick Hayek uses the history of austria to good advantage o how to avoid serious mistakes.

[TallDave]

And, to make this clear, I want - NO I REQUIRE- the leader of the most powerful nation in the world, actually anyone who wants to have authority over me, to be better educated and more intelligent than me.

I've always suspected no one was fit to rule me. Now I know for sure.

Seriously, though, intelligence and education does not correlate to good political decision-making. I'll take marginally competent, right principles, and completely honest over marginally honest, wrong principles, and uber-competent every day.

[MirariNefas]

What a non issue..
You hear a word you've never heard before. You need to reply to whatever the person was saying by using that same new word in the plural. Simplest way to get the point (that you're meaning plural) is to put an S at the end. Otherwise there's just no end to the anal nit picking and word pedantery. I know french pretty well and don't bother correcting mistakes (pretty much every single french word english speakers use) when there's a good debate happening because it's beside the point. The point is to understand what's meant and correspondingly get a response across.
If someone says they put an S at the end of something "as a way to solve a problem the US way", it's to cut across a lot of the useless semantics gordian knot. IE the "American" quick & dirty solution to that kinda problem, not americanized grammar.

You forget the context. This stemmed from a criticism of politicians who have a habit of constantly abusing grammar/pronunciation, not frenchmen.

[Skipjack]

First of all you live in Austria, so you have no knowledge of what Bush did or what Obama is doing. You are just spouting cliches with no substance.

Oh my god the ignorance!
Ok, so where do I start:
1. My wife is a US citizen
2. I have spent a signifficant amount of time in the US during Mr Bushes presidency.
3. I am capable of reading and understanding the english language, thanks.
4. I do have access to US TV channels.
5. The internet is a powerful tool if you know how to use it, btw McCain did not(meanwhile, he supposedly does though).
6. Me and my wife did actually watch every single debate that was available online during the primaries and the presidential campaign. I think I did get a rather good overview of the available "material". To be bluntly honest, I was not too impressed with either side. Though compared to Bush, even McCain would have been an improvement.

You live in Austria. Ergo, you don't have vote anyway, anymore than I have a vote for the president of Austria or the EU for that matter.

Please forgive me for not being ignorant enough to the point that I do not care about who rules the most powerful country in the world. You know it is not like the decisions made by your president wont affect the rest of the world including me.
Bush brought about the worst financial crisis since the 1920ies and sure it did affect the rest of the world including my country, though not as badly as yours.

Though it seems you Europeans want a vote on how we run our affairs without actually moving here and becoming a citizen.

As aforementioned, my wife is a US citizen and under some circumstances we will move to the US. We have the luxury of being able to choose where we live. Naturally we do have an interest in how the US develops, as it is one possible place for us to raise our children. Makes sense, yes?

As for planetaria, well in times of economic crisis and low taxes, spending on stuff like planetaria is foolish with enormous deficits and lowering tax revenue.

EDUCATION AND SCIENCE IS NEVER FOOLISH. Especially not in a time of economic crisis. The US is producing less and less in their own country. One of the last things you are selling to other countries in order to generate value is know how. Bad education equals lack of know how. You loose that too and you are done! Just selling stuff that others have produced wont help you keep your riches for very long.
Given we have simillar problems here in Europe, but that does not mean that I am not allowed to critize an opinion that I regard foolish.
Besides the amount of money spent on planetaria is ridiculously low compared to the things that really cost you dearly all the time.

You hear a word you've never heard before. You need to reply to whatever the person was saying by using that same new word in the plural. Simplest way to get the point (that you're meaning plural) is to put an S at the end. Otherwise there's just no end to the anal nit picking and word pedantery.

My problem was that McCain did not inform himself sufficiently on a topic that HE actually brought up and that HE used in his campaign to attack his oponent. He did not sufficiently inform himself to get the plural right.
That is a problem for me. If he is that negligent with everything else, then he is not a good candidate.

[MirariNefas]

And, to make this clear, I want - NO I REQUIRE- the leader of the most powerful nation in the world, actually anyone who wants to have authority over me, to be better educated and more intelligent than me.

I've always suspected no one was fit to rule me. Now I know for sure.

Seriously, though, intelligence and education does not correlate to good political decision-making. I'll take marginally competent, right principles, and completely honest over marginally honest, wrong principles, and uber-competent every day.

Why does it have to be a choice? Aren't there any smart people who have the right principles?


Intelligence = best capable of using their resources to get a result

Correct principles, politics that agree with you, etc = wants the right result (subjectively)

I'd rather have a smart person who wants the same things I want.

[Diogenes]

While I am not sure what Obama is doing right now is ideal in any way, I would like to point out that the current crisis came about in 8 years under a right wing conservative government...
That did not go to well either, as we all know and can feel now.
It took Bush 8 years to ruin the economy, dont expect Obama to fix it in a singe year. I think that is quite unfair.
Oh and I stick with my previous statement about Palin and McCain come over as being really stupid. Anyone who says "planetariums" should go back to highschool, especially if he has been around for that long.

What planet have YOU been living on ? First of all Bush is hardly a right winger. He was a fiscal spendthrift. The only right wing position that he put forth was strong support for the military, but when it came to spending, he spent like a drunken democrat. (edit. I take that back. At the top of his Insane spending, he only spent 1/4th of what the new guy is spending.)

Second of all, The current economic mess is the result of (Government Backed) Freddy Mac and Fannie may forcing banks to loan money to people who couldn't pay them back. (look up LIar Loans.) The program was started by Jimmy Carter,(CRA or Community Reinvestment Act.) and Expanded by Bill Clinton. These UTTERLY STUPID ideas took a little while to blow up, but blow up they did, just as other Democrat ideas, (Social Security, Medicare, War on Poverty, Housing Projects, etc.) blew up, or will eventually blow up.

As for Obama, he couldn't poor water out of a boot with the instructions on the heel. The man is a complete idiot who's only qualification is that he's black.(and not George Bush.) The man has never held a job that didn't entail some sort of sucking on the government teat. If you put your faith in him you are indeed a lost soul.

[Diogenes]

It is planetaria of course. It is a word of latin origin, like many words in the english language.
Just like it is pizz(a)e and not pizzas and just like it is cacti and not cactuses.
But I am sure that hick would have gotten those cacti right, but then, maybe not.

Definitely no hope for Palin though.

The English language is made up of Predominately German, with a healthy dose of Latin and Greek, and a quite a bit of French and some Spanish, and h3ll, there's even at least one African word in it. (Juke box) Here in the USA, a lot of the names are from various Indian tribes. (Chicago, etc.)

My point is, the language is VERY convoluted. It is a mongrel (like much of America) I doubt any other language has so much foreign intrusion in it, and obviously there are differences in pronunciation, spelling, sentence structure,etc. among the various languages making up English.

Apart from that, the language is still evolving. So, for these and other reasons, I don't get wrapped around the axle when people flub the language. Perhaps in a hundred years, their usage will be correct.

I have been told that English is the only language in the world that has spelling bees, and this is because it is the only language in the world that needs them. (all other languages spell the words exactly the way they are pronounced.)

[Diogenes]

And, to make this clear, I want - NO I REQUIRE- the leader of the most powerful nation in the world, actually anyone who wants to have authority over me, to be better educated and more intelligent than me.

I've always suspected no one was fit to rule me. Now I know for sure.

Seriously, though, intelligence and education does not correlate to good political decision-making. I'll take marginally competent, right principles, and completely honest over marginally honest, wrong principles, and uber-competent every day.

Wasn't it Reagan that said "That is so foolish only an intellectual could believe it. "

[Diogenes]

Bush brought about the worst financial crisis since the 1920ies and sure it did affect the rest of the world including my country, though not as badly as yours.

How exactly did Bush do this ? Please explain. I am all ears.

[Betruger]

You forget the context. This stemmed from a criticism of politicians who have a habit of constantly abusing grammar/pronunciation, not frenchmen.

No. The context's fine. Frenchmen isn't the gist of it. Constantly abusing pronunciation is significant, occasional slips or mispronounciation aren't. See here:

My problem was that McCain did not inform himself sufficiently on a topic that HE actually brought up and that HE used in his campaign to attack his oponent. He did not sufficiently inform himself to get the plural right.
That is a problem for me. If he is that negligent with everything else, then he is not a good candidate.

So he might know the workings of something inside-out, but because he didn't take the time to learn some obscure grammar rule that's inconsequential to the meat of the subject, he's negligent and incompetent?

[Skipjack]

What planet have YOU been living on ? First of all Bush is hardly a right winger. He was a fiscal spendthrift. The only right wing position that he put forth was strong support for the military, but when it came to spending, he spent like a drunken democrat. (edit. I take that back. At the top of his Insane spending, he only spent 1/4th of what the new guy is spending.)

Oh come one...
Stem Cell research.
Tax cuts for the very rich.
Trying to ban abortion.
One of his main councellors was a pastor, the other one was praying to god every morning to get the right ideas...
A lot of his decisions were religiously motivated.

How exactly did Bush do this ? Please explain. I am all ears.

1. Starting a pointless war in Iraq, that cost money that nobody has and that has not brought any of the investment returns that he had promised.
A lot of that he did to give HB a reason to exist.

2. Doing nothing to prevent the outselling of US production and technology to other countries, especially China.
You can not, you can not run an economy that does not produce any value. You cant. You are just circulating money inside your country and then you are sending money abroad, but you have very little money coming in in return. The only value that the US has with no production in the country is in Know How and that is quickly copied by your "partners" abroad.
Leading to point 3...

3. Religiously motivated regulations that caused the US to fall behind in one of the most promising fields of medical science: Stem Cell research.
GW Bush did very little to improve the creation of new Know How in the US. That means Education and Science. I have never seen a President more adverse to science than he was (mostly religiously motivated).

All of the above direclty caused the USD to plummet to its lowest level ever, which in return caused loans that some ruthless US bankers had shifted abroad to rise to unpayable levels. One problem is that the US does not even have a government regulated national bank. Who is printing your money?

Finally he failed to give the government and non government banks and agencies any rules to prevent the hedge fund and credit catastrophy.
He just let wallstreet do their stuff regardless of how bad it was. It was all a bubble that burst.

Btw, the new government should not have approved the bailout plan.
I would have let those banks die after the crash btw and would have rather given the people tax cuts and small amounts of cash so they can pay their debts to the banks instead. The bankers deserved nothing, definitely not the fat bonuses they paid themselves from the bailout money.
Oh and Chevy and some of the others did not deserve any bailout money either. They produce almost everything in China, you might just as well send the money directly there.
These libertarians got themselves into this mess, let them get out of it themselves, or die.

[Skipjack]

The English language is made up of Predominately German, with a healthy dose of Latin and Greek, and a quite a bit of French and some Spanish, and h3ll, there's even at least one African word in it. (Juke box) Here in the USA, a lot of the names are from various Indian tribes. (Chicago, etc.)

Exactly, but that was not the point.

So he might know the workings of something inside-out, but because he didn't take the time to learn some obscure grammar rule that's inconsequential to the meat of the subject, he's negligent and incompetent?

So he learned everything there is to know about "planetariums" and certainly talked to people who know about them right? And NOT ONCE, NOT ONCE, did anyone ever say the correct plural of the word? I am sure that especially, had he ever bothered to talk to the owner of a planetarium, to verify why that "overhead projector" is so expensive, he would have gotten to hear the right plural word, wouldn't he?
My point is that he cant have informed himself sufficiently if he is talking about "overhead projectors" in "planetariums".
So he clearly did not inform himself on the topic, but did make the decision that the funding a new projector for a planetarium is wrong.
He even made the decision to make this a rather important topic (as he mentioned it repeatedly throughout multiple discussions) in his campaign.
Again, all that based on insufficient information.
I call this negligent.
This is clearly not the kind of leader I want to see.
What else would he do? Maybe he would refuse to fund an important fusion project, because "those reacters do nothing but blow up anyway, I saw it on that movie Fox showed the other night". Ok maybe not a good example, but you get my point. Or hey, maybe he will start a war based on insufficient information. Would not be the first time, would it?

[Jccarlton]

What planet have YOU been living on ? First of all Bush is hardly a right winger. He was a fiscal spendthrift. The only right wing position that he put forth was strong support for the military, but when it came to spending, he spent like a drunken democrat. (edit. I take that back. At the top of his Insane spending, he only spent 1/4th of what the new guy is spending.)

Oh come one...
Stem Cell research.
Tax cuts for the very rich.
Trying to ban abortion.
One of his main councellors was a pastor, the other one was praying to god every morning to get the right ideas...
A lot of his decisions were religiously motivated.

How exactly did Bush do this ? Please explain. I am all ears.

1. Starting a pointless war in Iraq, that cost money that nobody has and that has not brought any of the investment returns that he had promised.
A lot of that he did to give HB a reason to exist.

War is a waste and nasty. But it beats the alternatives. Bush had a hard decision vis a vis Iraq. The cease fire was becoming unsustainable. It was costing money and American lives with no clear resolution. But if the cease fire was lifted it was very likely that Saddam would return to pre gulf war patterns of behavior. The sanctions were going to be lifted soon due to a very effective lefty propaganda campaign and Saddam's bribes and payouts. Al Qeada and other terrorist organizations were given sanctuary by Saddam and cooperating with Saddam's security forces. All of this actually made removing Saddam a necessity, sooner rather than later.
As to what followed, leaving a power vacuum in Iraq was contraindidcated. Al Qeada also chose Iraq as it's main battlefield, and proceeded to fight in the worst way possible, in a Muslim country. Al qeada basically acted like an occupier and did much of the winning hearts and minds job for us. When you cook local tribal leaders kids and put them on the table in front for them it tends to change people's minds about you. In any case it's better to fight Al Qeada in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan where the muslim world can first hand what Al Qeada is than just suppress al qeada in the us and Europe.

2. Doing nothing to prevent the outselling of US production and technology to other countries, especially China.
You can not, you can not run an economy that does not produce any value. You cant. You are just circulating money inside your country and then you are sending money abroad, but you have very little money coming in in return. The only value that the US has with no production in the country is in Know How and that is quickly copied by your "partners" abroad.
Leading to point 3...

I think you would be amazed by what the US produces. I work in the making stuff area and even I am amazed at some of the stuff. But it doesn't happen in huge multi acre assembly plants and places with great big belching smokestacks, so it isn't as evident as it once was.

3. Religiously motivated regulations that caused the US to fall behind in one of the most promising fields of medical science: Stem Cell research.
GW Bush did very little to improve the creation of new Know How in the US. That means Education and Science. I have never seen a President more adverse to science than he was (mostly religiously motivated).

You know, considering the history of the last century, we should know that taking the moral point of view that KILLING BABIES is a good thing is in any way the right thing to do is a big mistake. You might start out KILLING BABIES FOR SCIENCE, but somehow it always ends up that you start killing other people too. Look up Margaret Sanger. or ask any of the Jews in your neighborhood. Oh wait, they all were killed in the '40's. For SCIENTIFIC reasons. And embryonic stem cell research has been largely a dead end anyway.

All of the above direclty caused the USD to plummet to its lowest level ever, which in return caused loans that some ruthless US bankers had shifted abroad to rise to unpayable levels. One problem is that the US does not even have a government regulated national bank. Who is printing your money?

Finally he failed to give the government and non government banks and agencies any rules to prevent the hedge fund and credit catastrophy.
He just let wallstreet do their stuff regardless of how bad it was. It was all a bubble that burst.

Btw, the new government should not have approved the bailout plan.
I would have let those banks die after the crash btw and would have rather given the people tax cuts and small amounts of cash so they can pay their debts to the banks instead. The bankers deserved nothing, definitely not the fat bonuses they paid themselves from the bailout money.
Oh and Chevy and some of the others did not deserve any bailout money either. They produce almost everything in China, you might just as well send the money directly there.
These libertarians got themselves into this mess, let them get out of it themselves, or die.

Which is of course my whole point. The establishment is too inbred and out of ideas. They created the mess by searching for ways to buy votes, calm the inner cities and add to the available rents. Bush or Obama, in the end it's all Progressivism, Like Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson and in the end it's all going to end badly.
read chapter 4 and 5 from economics in one lesson to see what I'm talking about:
http://jim.com/econ/chap04p1.html
http://jim.com/econ/chap05p1.html
and you might want to hit "The Economy of Cities" for more good stuff:
http://books.google.com/books?id=5jgzAA ... =firefox-a

[Jccarlton]

As for tax cuts:
http://www.allegromedia.com/sugi/taxes/
If you pay the most in taxes you get the most back if there is a cut. If you are paying much more than your fair share, than you get great benefits in a tax cut, which if you use the money for investment, benefits everybody:
http://jim.com/econ/chap05p1.html
And lower rates don't mean lower revenue:
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/200 ... er_23.html

and high taxes only accelerates the rate of business flight out of the country:
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell102908.php3
http://www.manufacturingnews.com/news/0 ... ctric.html

Welcome to the real world. Capital flows to where it receives the greatest return. Governments that distort markets only, in the end, hurt themselves:
http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell112409.php3
Which, in the current economic situation, makes what Obama is doing, economic suicide:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/08/ ... usine.html