The gas prices are rising and will continue to rise regardless of the president and/or his political association. and really who's the blame is irrelevant. The economy sucks. No one can fix it. People are more conscious about what they spend their money on. Walmart and McDonald's thrives, the rest of the world dies. The end.

All good points TJ.......still makes you wonder why Bush got blamed and Obama gets praised though.

amirite?

Bush got blamed for things he did are you really that obtuse or do you just only understand oversimplifications of geopolitics and economics?

Stupid question you proudly assert RNC talking points without a second thought.

George Bush receives criticism because socially he was a bad president. Regardless of how much work you put in, if you can't make intimate connections with people, you are going to be disliked. I think most people will agree that George Bush did not come off as the friendliest guy.

Veta, if democrats are so amazing and infallible then why do they get voted out of office every few cycles? If republicans are so out of touch and stupid, how is it that they ever receive any support? You call it oversimplification, but is it really that complicated to begin with? You shout to the heavens that allowing business to dictate the economy is terrible, but isn't that how it has been for a couple centuries? Don't you agree that the level of welfare being passed out in this country is unsustainable?

Yet you'd rather continue down the path of handouts than stoke the economy and get people back to work. Any time I speak all you can say is "RNC talking points", which is fine, I'm used to it by now. But Obama is outspending Bush by leaps and bounds and in the end it hasn't fixed anything yet. The unemployment rate still blows (it's coming down mainly because people have given up looking for a job), and the deficit explodes more and more each year. You can claim Obamacare is going to pay for itself, but name me a government program that runs as efficiently as it was intended to at inception?

I'll be happy to oversimplify it as best as I can. It's not that fucking complicated. Stop spending so much, make cuts where necessary (especially the military and welfare/handouts/etc.) and when an opportunity arises to help ease the price of oil, no matter how small a change it may make, you fucking take it.

You can overanalyze and quote your college text books until your fingers fall off.

Have at it.

fun fact: I bought gas today and my car is about 20 cents a mile. (I stopped measuring mpg a while ago.)

{{George Bush receives criticism because socially he was a bad president. Regardless of how much work you put in, if you can't make intimate connections with people, you are going to be disliked. I think most people will agree that George Bush did not come off as the friendliest guy. }}

I think I see what you're trying to get at Travis but Dubya was supposedly a really amicable person according to most recounts. That bit about him getting straight Cs at Yale but remembering all 50 of his fraternity brothers' names while pledging is anecdotal but I think it summarizes the guy pretty well. GWB easily made intimate connections, he was elected President for fuck's sake - just a shit President. As far as social issues go, I'd say you have a point. He was really out of touch with progressive societal issues like birth control, evolution, etc. His main fuck ups were his administration's coup of foreign policy and abuse of the economic-political election cycle during a precarious economic climate.

{{Veta, if democrats are so amazing and infallible then why do they get voted out of office every few cycles? If republicans are so out of touch and stupid, how is it that they ever receive any support? You call it oversimplification, but is it really that complicated to begin with? You shout to the heavens that allowing business to dictate the economy is terrible, but isn't that how it has been for a couple centuries? Don't you agree that the level of welfare being passed out in this country is unsustainable? }}

http://kdice.com/discussion/topics/44811411?page=last

That's a link to my post, I linked it so you could read the part where I never said anything about "Democrats" - ever. Earlier in the thread I mentioned Obama doesn't get criticized for the same things as Bush because he didn't do many of those same things.

As far as business dictating the economy... that's sort of laughable. There was nothing resembling capitalism until the industrial age, and before that we had mercantilism. Mercantilism is centered around the merchant class (basically middlemen) which traded and transported goods. Before that the economy was based on feudalism - which as you know was a state-based institution. If anything returning more control to the government would be more historically consistent. Corporations for instance used to require charters from Kings and didn't last longer than the specific task their charter assigned them to do (e.g. building railroads).

As far as us spending too much money on welfare I again point you to the fact that you are just parroting RNC talking points, like some sort of Fox News host, without doing any research of your own.

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/welfare_budget_2012_4.html

According to the actual US Budget we spend less than 1 penny of every US dollar on welfare. And when I say welfare I mean a very very broad definition of welfare, including workers compensation, R&D social protection, and familial tax reimbursements. The largest of which is - get this - family related tax reimbursements.

So yes, maybe you should give back those sweet tax breaks you get for being married and/or having kids because you're a "drain on society". At least part of the biggest portion of the largest part of the "drain on society" that is welfare.

So again, you asked whether I think we can sustain paying less than a penny per dollar on welfare - frankly I don't think we can. I think we should be spend at least 2-5% per dollar on social welfare.

{{Yet you'd rather continue down the path of handouts than stoke the economy and get people back to work. Any time I speak all you can say is "RNC talking points", which is fine, I'm used to it by now. But Obama is outspending Bush by leaps and bounds and in the end it hasn't fixed anything yet. The unemployment rate still blows (it's coming down mainly because people have given up looking for a job), and the deficit explodes more and more each year. You can claim Obamacare is going to pay for itself, but name me a government program that runs as efficiently as it was intended to at inception? }}

Again, a talking point without actually researching the facts. "Real unemployment" has gone down in lockstep with the official unemployment stat. When Obama took office it was around 17% and peaked at around 20%. Right now its been brought down to right around 15%.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm
(number on the far right, same data Fox News uses to scare people but read properly)

{{I'll be happy to oversimplify it as best as I can. It's not that fucking complicated. Stop spending so much, make cuts where necessary (especially the military and welfare/handouts/etc.) and when an opportunity arises to help ease the price of oil, no matter how small a change it may make, you fucking take it. }}

Austerity might sound smart to someone with no historical perspective but let me try to just give you some perspective - without going into the actual numbers or science (since we know that won't persuade you). You know what Spain did after the war of Spanish Succession? Austerity. You know what Spain became after that? A puppet state for Napoleon, a neutered remnant of the Bourbon dynasty, defeated in the Spanish-American War (when America still had savages), a loser in every independence movement through out its vast empire.

You know what happened to the USSR in the 80s? Austerity. You know what happened the USA after WW2? We spent more than we every spent before and became a fucking super power for the next century. Now I'm not saying any spending is good spending, but responsible spending is what got us to where we are today. Keyword being SPENDING. The government built the highway system, the public schools that educated steve jobs and bill gates, the government eradicated polio and small pox. The government ended segregation (actually that one sort of sucked). Long story short: austerity during economic stalling has almost always led to collapse. But that's why we learn history, so we don't make those same mistakes - I expected better from you Rob.



PS wrote this while grabbing lunch so its probs full of typos and such

ps desegregation was a job killer, you're not really for that are you rob?

I'm not too bright and struggle with pie charts, but it looks like for FY 2010 your chart says 15% next to the word welfare, and the table underneath of it states 565.2 billion dollars.

Again, I could be wrong about that.

I'm all for investing money in our country, but military and welfare spending doesn't do that. All welfare spending does is buy democrats votes. Call that obtuse if you want, but there's truth in the statement.

Meanwhile, that same wonderful pie chart you gave me states that by FY2015 our spending on health care, defense, pensions and INTEREST will total $3.511 trillion. Add in welfare for that budget and you're up to about $3.9 trillion. So by 2015 we'll be spending almost $4 trillion on those items and a tiny $146 billion on education.

Sounds like a good spending plan to me Veta.

By the way, there's a portion of welfare that isn't included in the "welfare" line in the chart. If you open up "healthcare" there's an additional section called Vendor payments (Welfare) that adds another $323.9 billion for FY2012 which brings total welfare spending for FY2012 to $775.8 billion or 20.4% of our total spending.

Again, I'm not too bright and could be using my abacus incorrectly.