Searching "comments":
| # | Comment | Survey |
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| 51 | I see this sort of attitude from a fair number of people these days. I find it disturbing. It doesn't seem justified. I wonder where it comes from.
I don't want to get in a big argument with you about it either. I don't even think our political views are that different. But, I just don't get it. I wish I understood. I thought I'd ask you because I don't think you're some crazy person with extreme views. You seem pretty normal really. But, your opposition to Obama seems extreme or out of whack from my point of view. I don't agree with everything Obama says. I didn't even vote for him. But, he seems to be very intelligent and working toward improving and fixing the problems in our country based on fairly moderate ideas coming from experts (e.g. economists and health care experts, etc.). My impression is that the political forces on the right (politicians and pundits), after losing power (after Bush) resorted to a kind of extreme resistance where they use very strong negative rhetoric and absolute opposition to almost everything. It amounts to a kind of jamming. And, this approach seems to be working kind of, but it has also turned a lot of voters, especially on the right, very sour on the President and politics in general. I feel that myself sometimes. The whole atmosphere these day is toxic (lots of extreme things being said, like what you just posted in your comment...and really what you said seems fairly mild compared to what I've seen elsewhere). I made a survey about it last month. It seriously worries me, this exaggerated right/left polarization we have and just the extremes that I see in what people say (unwillingness to compromise, extreme disrespect for the other side). I don't mean to single out the right either. I think the left has been just as bad with its elitist attitudes and so forth. Obama himself called some of this out, especially in that GOP question and answer session he had the day after the state of the union speech. He described how the Republicans have painted themselves into a corner by saying such negative things about a variety of proposed solutions (even when the solutions incorporated ideas from the right). The negative stuff that has been said has gotten back to the voters (like you?) so that if the Republicans ever did compromise to pass legislation, they'd lose all respect with the people who elected them. Obama was clearly frustrated with this. I think too, it was clear from that GOP Q&A that the Republicans were frustrated and felt unappreciated and blocked (they mentioned Pelosi being a problem more than once). But, after Obama called it out, you could see the Republicans still using the extreme negative rhetoric and just asked Obama "questions" that were clearly more political tactics to win favor with voters, but in a way that makes it impossible to work with them. There's a lot of other stuff I could bring up, but I don't want this to be too long. I'm not even sure asking you this will help. Like I said, I don't really want to argue point-for-point, but I just don't understand how you can be so against Obama. ...to the point where you wont even give him a chance or listen to him (it's like that "jamming" thing)? Where does that come from? Who is giving you these ideas? I can understand that you disagree with Obama. I do too. But, this can't be a new thing. You must have disagreed with many Presidents in the past. Obama has only been in office a year and yet you skipped his speech when you've never skipped another President's? I don't get how you could be so negative about him and unwilling to give him a chance. | What did you think of President Obama's State of the Union Address? |
| 52 | It's helpful that you're saying it has nothing to do with his views. That allows us to avoid arguing about a lot of stuff that would have been easy to get side-tracked on. And, like I said, I don't think we even disagree that much. I actually voted libertarian in the last election.
Most of what you're saying seems to be general stuff that all modern Presidents could be accused of. You acknowledged this, but somehow Obama is worse for you. I'm still unclear on why exactly. All recent Presidents have had speech writers and advisors; all are influenced by their party and special interests, all have bent the truth, etc. And, it's not just Presidents, but most politicians in both parties. So, what makes Obama worse for you? You've used a lot of insults ("spineless", "puppet", "butt-hole", liar, etc.), but I'm still kind of wondering what it's really based on. I hadn't heard of that Easter speech screw up. But, is that really relevant? Is that reason to hate the guy? He makes speeches all the time, like most politicians, especially acting Presidents. Mistakes are bound to happen, right? I remember Bush was kind of famous for all the mistake he made. But, you're saying Obama is worse? I haven't seen that much about him making mistakes. So, maybe part of what's going on here is that your sources for news are different from mine. Is it Fox News that you hear about stuff like that? Or conservative radio talk shows like Rush Limbaugh? I'm just guessing. Maybe there are other sources I'm not aware of. I guess, that's my impression with this anti-Obama stuff that I see. The people who have been watching Fox News and listening to conservative radio talk shows have been stewing in this anti-Obama coverage for a while now. I haven't been following stuff like that. So, when I hear people spout this anti-Obama stuff, it's shocking. It seems to come out of nowhere. It doesn't fit what I know. And, yeah, it seems kind of unfair and not especially relevant. He made a mistake in some minor speech that was just a mistake. Why make so much hay out of it? But, I assume there's more to it as well. Also, my impression is that Obama is actually very good at speaking on his own, unprompted. So, it's seems especially odd that you have the impression that he's being told what to say somehow. In that GOP question and answer thing he was unprompted. He just had questions posed by Republicans that he answered on-the-fly. And, her answered the questions well, showing a real depth of understanding of a range of issues. I don't think that can be faked. Like I said, I think he comes off very intelligent. I do agree that it seems odd that Obama is still doing campaign-style speeches around the country. I'm not sure I really understand that. I suspect it's not really helping him that much either. Also, one thing that I find kind of jarring is when they show Obama talking to an African-American group of some kind. His speech patterns changes to more of a black style of talking. I guess I'm able to just kind of dismiss it as what politicians do. But it's noticeable. You also mentioned that he talks down to people. Maybe that's part of what's going on here. I get the impression he's intelligent, but you feel talked down to. Are these related, two sides of the same coin? I remember Al Gore got accused of that same thing. And, I think Bush beat him partly because of it. Bush didn't talk down to people. He had a more folksy way of speaking. Did that appeal to you more? I actually had a bad reaction to that myself. It seemed fake to me given Bush's background (multi-generation rich family, Yale-grad, etc.). I guess it's like Obama's black speaking mode. Obama isn't from that background either. Can you think of a specific way in which Obama has talked down? Maybe if there was some example where you got that impression and I didn't, I'd see better how we could get such different overall impressions. Or, just any more specific examples of things that Obama said or did that have given you the bad impressions you have. Anyway, I know this is long and probably annoying. So, no problem if you don't feel like replying more. I suspect it's unlikely I'll really be able to get the understanding that I want out of this. I do appreciate your reply regardless. | What did you think of President Obama's State of the Union Address? |
| 53 | > I hate to do this Brian-like quoting thing, but you asked a lot of
> questions, so I'll just do some editing.  I think if we're careful, it's not a bad thing. It's good to get specific responses to stuff. > I mean I'm against giving > ownership of private businesses to the government. Such as the auto > industry. And I'm against giving ownership of the financial sector > to the government. Obama has said he's against it too. He has been forced into these bailouts. And, I believe him. As I recall, there was a lot of resistance from Obama over the GM bailout. GM begged for it for weeks, maybe months. The financial sector bailout happened under Bush as well. It seems particularly unfair to blame Obama for that. I think it boils down to the concern over what will happen if these large corporate entities were to fail. Many experts think the bad effects from major failures could trigger a chain reaction that undermines the entire economy. And, we're talking biblical disaster if that happens. GM is not just GM, but all their suppliers. AIG (that big financial insurance company that fudgeed up royally and the government took over) had their fingers in a tremendous number of other large corporations. If they went under, the damage would have been incredible. "Too big to fail" seemed to be the relevant point of view that most people believed. I'm saying these things just based on what I've read and seen, financial experts. There were some experts who also said it would be better not to bail them out, but they were a minority. And, I think there's just this factor where if we do nothing and we're wrong, then we fudgeed up and it was our fault. Or, we can do something and at least we tried. I've tried to read about the economics myself and I only partly understand them. They are complicated, unfortunately. And, really, it's mostly theories which are hard to prove. But, we do have the one big event that many theories use, the Great Depression. Many things went wrong back then and I think much of the decisions that have been made today are based on trying to learn from that experience. The government was slow to react to the Great Depression and most economists think that made it worst and last longer. Another notable thing here is that most other nations also did bailouts. It just shows that it's what the general consensus was. Bush and Obama didn't do anything unusual here. They did what their advisors recommended. > And ya know that does influence my opinion of him. He smiled as he > shoved these policies down our throats telling us it was going to > make it all better. It has only made things worse. Unemployment > continues to be at staggering highs. I think part of what's happening is that Obama has to play the leader here and a big part of the economic recovering is confidence. He has to project optimism. Any leader would have to do that. I think he's also acknowledged how serious the problem is and how hard it is for a lot of people. But, the smiles and such are more about "it's going to be OK; we're strong and we'll make it through this". I remember Bush would always say "The state of our union is strong!" in his SoTUs, even when it seemed a bit dubious. Presidents have to be cheerleaders. From what I've seen and read, most financial experts think we likely avoided a second Great Depression. Of course, it's impossible to know for sure either way. It's all just opinion. But, it is the opinion of economists who have studied this all their lives. I think that's meaningful. There isn't absolute agreement. Some economists think the stimulus wasn't big enough. Some think it was too large. I was expecting unemployment to be high for a long time. That's what the experts were saying early last summer. This was a major financial crisis. It's to be expected. We're in a deep hole right now. It will take a while to get out of it. I was actually expecting the stock market to stay down and be more volatile. That's what experts had been saying. But, stocks have actually risen almost back to where they were and they've been stable (not up and down so much). I still think it's possible we could see another sudden down turn, but maybe not. Obama was handed a tough situation. I think it just really hard for anyone to get the presidency right as a major financial crisis is kicking in. He's bound to get blamed for it, not matter what he does. If he stubbornly refused to do any bailouts, he'd be blamed for that too. > We just spent what, about 30 grand per American citizen for this bail out That seemed high, so I tried to look up the numbers. US population is roughly 300 million. The economic stimulus was 900 billion. That's about $3,000 per person. > - and he smiled as he did it. You really don't like when he smiles, eh? > Ok I'll get off my policy horse. Have you ever seen a movie where > the bad guy is such a BAD guy that he's good at it? Anthony Hopkins > comes to mind in Hannibal. The guy enjoyed being evil. And that's > how I see Obama. That's a little extreme. I really still wonder how you got to this point. You say some really extreme things about Obama. This is the kind of thing that worries me. I'm worried that some people will really believe it and there will be assassination attempts or just general violence. I really feel that it's important for everyone to tone down the language, on both sides. But, I really don't know how it will happen. It seems to just be escalating. > He voted for all of it. He voted for every spending bill since 2005. > But now that he's President he's surprised by it all? From my point of view, the long term big ticket item was the Medicare expansion that happened under Bush. That was in 2003 during a period of Republican majority under Bush, before Obama was a US Senator. I remember Bush had a big smile on his face when he signed that bill, did that bother you at all? (see: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/10/23/politics... ) My understanding is that Medicare is something a majority of Americans like, especially old people. Old people vote a lot. So, most politicians can't exist and be against it. So, that's just a political reality. And, frankly, it's scary because it's hugely expensive and costs are just going up and up. If you look at the budget deficit problems going out into the future, it's Medicare that's going to dominate costs. Even social security is a minor problem in comparison, from what I understand. Obama has at least addressed this as the main issue. In that GOP Q&A there was a Republican who was on a budget committee that talked about it some too (that gave me some hope). Either we have to cut Medicare or we have to make health care costs a lot lower. Probably, we'll need to do both, actually. It's going get ugly in 5-10 years, I think. Especially, if nothing is done about it soon. From my perspective, I think that bill was Bush and Republican's greatest betrayal and really just undermines most of what he said about smaller government and less taxes. They helped fudge over our future with that bill. Do you agree with that at all? You have to if you believe what you're saying about government staying out of our pockets. I guess the only thing that was sort of different about this 2003 Medicare expansion is that they didn't fund it. Bush cut taxes and increased spending. It's hard for me be see any good in that. And, I think Obama has some right to blame Bush and the Republicans who voted in all that spending plus tax cuts. It was just irresponsible. You have to agree with that on some level! > Obama is spending money like a drunken sailor and still won't take responsibility for > it. He doesn't take responsibility for anything. I don't agree. Obama got into it in the State of the Union speech. He talked about the situation he was handed when he took office (worst economy in 70 years, worst deficits, etc.) He was basically forced to do the stimulus because of the economy. And, he talked about why it was important. I wrote about it above at the start of this. It's what experts were recommending and what other government were doing. It wasn't radical and it likely prevented a second Great Depression. Things are bad right now, but there not as bad as they were back in the 1930s. They had major bank failures. Depositors lost all their money. The stock market crashed and stayed down for a long time. There were bread lines and massive amounts of homeless (hobos, etc.). Admittedly, it's unfair to compare too much since times have just changed. But, how bad off are we if most people have mobile phones and all kinds of crap. Honestly, a year ago... even 6 months ago, I thought things would get much worse than they did. Maybe we're not out of it entirely yet, but the damage hasn't been too bad overall. > He cares so little about the American people that he doesn't even give them > the decency of reading a speech before delivering it. Yeah, that just seems unfair. I mean, Reagan even screwed up some speeches, especially near the end of his term. > So I guess you can say I listen to pretty much main stream media. I think I'm similar. I watch some NBC News most evenings. Then, I see some articles and such online from random places if someone posts a link or something. Well, there goes that theory. It seemed likely that we just had different sources for our news and bias was a factor. I do believe NBC news has a liberal bias. But, I think I'm able to factor that out somewhat when I watch. Still, I'm sure it affects me too. I just grew up watching news like that, so I'm used to it and prefer how they do it. The format on Fox, CNN, and MSNBC tends to annoy me, especially all the pundits and talk shows. I actually think PBS/NPR news is done well, but it's so dry and long it's hard to watch or listen to. > Obama at the GOP Q&A,"I suppose, uh, uh, the 500,000 jobs we lost > in January before I was inaugurated, I -- I -- suppose that's my policy, > too, right? That's what you'd say, huh? And then in February? Well, > 600,000 more jobs that were lost. You guys probably say that's my > policy, right? That's before my policy had even gone in place but > you're blaming my policy, right, right, right?" > > He may be a good orator, but his words carry no weight. And when > you read his words instead of listen to them, it's a different world. > He can make anything sound good. Because he's evil. Do you think McCain would have done things much differently? Maybe you don't like McCain either, but I think he has been good in many cases (except picking Palin). He was in favor of the bank bailout. I'm sure he would have passed some stimulus bill as well. As far as Presidential candidates go, I think only Ron Paul would have been against both the bailout and stimulus. I voted for him in the primary. > No. I don't think he gives the impression that he's intelligent. > I feel like he's trying to sell me a used car. Picture the stereotypical > used car salesman with the wink in his eye and the sparkle of his > smile. It's not about Obama's intelligence - it's about his belief > that the American people have none. It's not that he insults my intelligence > personally, but he insults the country that I love every time he opens > his mouth. I honestly think he hates this country - thats why he's > slowly buying it so he can crap in it. I guess it comes down to trust. You don't trust him, or worse you think everything he says is a lie or a deception. I still wonder where that comes from. But, maybe it's just something that's hard to put your finger on. An impression you got somehow. I know that I sometimes get that with certain people. Just this feeling that something is not right about them. I've even had that feeling then later had to change it because they turned out to be OK. Anyway, with Obama, I didn't get that impression. I have some issues with some of what he says and sometimes how he says it, but it's all just sort of typical politician stuff. He doesn't stand out as better or worse in that respect. But, he does seem intelligent when he talks about an issue and is able to touch upon various aspects of the problem and sometimes even bring them together into some way of looking at it and often has a solution based on that. That makes me think he's intelligent and honestly trying to solve problems. I may not agree with his solutions, but I'd never say he's stupid or doesn't care or that he's trying to do harm. It's interesting that you've mentioned his smile a number of times now. If he smiled less, maybe you'd like him more? > No, Bush looked like an idiot when he spoke. But at least he spoke > to us, not at us. And on 9/12 I think he did an awesome job. But > no, Clinton was a smooth speaker too. He could make anything sound > good as well. Yeah, I was going to mention Clinton. Didn't he have that nickname, "Slick Willy". But he didn't bother you like Obama? I still wonder what the difference is. > But he wasn't destroying the country with a smile on > his face. Obama actually enjoys destroying the country. I think > it's his plan. Again, I wonder how you could be at this point with Obama. Destroying the country is very extreme thing to be saying. I don't see how you can justify it. From my perspective, he's only been around for a year and much of what he's done, he didn't have much choice about. I take it you were against Obama before he took office? > Leave the gitmo folks in gitmo. Simple. Obama promised to close Gitmo in his campaign. Of course, it turns out to be a pretty complicated problem to solve. What do we do with these Gitmo prisoners? Can't put them back where we found them, they hate us (if they didn't before, they do now for sure) and will just try to blow us up more. Can't give the trials because we've got no evidence. Can't just shoot 'em. Gitmo is a real problem and I think it's fair to blame Bush for that as well. Our allies have a major problem with Gitmo and I think they have a point. We picked some guys up in a foreign country based on sketchy evidence. Now we've held them for several years. They got no due process, no rights. Some maybe well be innocent. We had German prisoners of war, but we let them go home after a few years. It's just a bad situation. Keeping them in Gitmo is not a good option either. > Anyway - "the worst of the storm has passed." It has? Where? Like I said, that's the same BS that any President has to say in a State of the Union. Bush said all kinds of wonderful things in his state of the union speeches too, then our economy went to Hell. | What did you think of President Obama's State of the Union Address? |
| 54 |
You mentioned this czars thing a few times. I guess I don't really understand why that's an issue. They are just people with a certain focus. They don't have any new powers. The idea of Czars has been around a while. I looked it up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._executiv... ..since FDR, apparently. And Bush seems to have been the president that made the huge increase (7x times what Clinton had). But, anyway, I don't really see how Czars broaden government control or have "unchecked power". Where does that come from? I don't disagree with what you're saying about GM and Capitalism in general. I would have let GM fail too. I assume they will fail ultimately regardless. It will now just take longer. My point was more that Obama's bailout of GM was not such a strange thing. There were reasons for it and it was debatable either way. I would have done it differently, but I can see their reasons for bailing them out. It seem unfair to vilify Obama over it. An impression I get is that you've focused on Obama being the one behind all these socialized policies. But, my impression is that its really a majority of politicians who are like this, both Democrats and Republicans. They all increase government spending, all work for bringing government money back to their home districts and states. Many Democrats are more liberal, more on the left than Obama as well. Obama is a moderate, similar to Clinton. Take the health care bill, for example. If it was a purely socialist thing, it would have been pure government run single-payer (like Canada or UK). Obama wanted a public option, but that was along with private insurance. But, he didn't even fight for the public option. It wasn't his focus. His plan seems to be about this "health care exchange" which is a kind of hybrid approach, largely dependent on private insurance. That's a moderate health care solution. It's what Germany, France and Japan do. Obama's solutions often incorporate market-based ideas. They are hybrid approaches, compromises, and thus moderate and not so far to the left. > Everyone involved is on the take. I see this as the real problem. I think there are a lot of signs that Washington is heavily influenced by powerful lobbyists groups, often by large corporate interests. I think corruption is the real problem in our government. Any entity with a lot of money has a lot of power. That's what we need to keep in check. I hear what you're saying about free markets and letting Capitalism do its thing. But, I think some regulation is needed too. The recent economic disasters seem to show that pretty clearly. The situation with the mortgage markets that triggered the house of cards could have be averted fairly easily with some simple/basic regulations (like making banks keep 20% of the loans they make). With banks selling off all of them, they had no motivation to make good loans. A lot of people got rich quick off that mortgage market. They're still rich now too. They didn't have to think long term, they suckered people the got out with millions. Capitalism is clearly the engine that drives a lot of positive things and I think it needs to remain central to our lifestyle. But, it can cause a lot of trouble too. We just need to manage it and avoid disasters where we can. We need some regulation. > So what? I think a depression would be awesome. I'm surprised you're whining about corporate bonuses. Isn't that just Capitalism? You're not suggesting that we regulate corporate salaries and compensation. > I liked the idea. Seniors would get better coverage from private > insurance than they will from medicare. That 2003 Medicare bill was about expanding drug coverage. It was just a huge socialist government spending spree. Tax payers now pay for all the drugs of people on Medicare. It's going to cost trillions in tax payer money. No checks and balances on costs, no bargaining, no market, full prices for all drugs, etc. It's a big handout to pharmaceutical companies, corporate welfare. It's also an incredibly complicated, bureaucratic red-tape mess. The government had to create all kind of agencies just to help people understand it. I'm mean, come on! Even the Bush administration said it would cost $584 billion for the next 10 years and that was just initial estimates. They've risen much higher since, like most government spending. A lot of conservative Republicans have been critical of this Medicare bill. I'm not pulling this out of my ass or siding with Democrats. Frankly, I'm shocked you think it was a swell idea given everything else you're saying. It seems inconsistent. This Medicare bill is exactly the kind of thing you're criticizing Obama for. > Nope, when you cut taxes, people have more money to spend. When they > have more money to spend, the government makes more money. Yeah, unless the economy tanks. Then, not so much. Bush spent trillions on Medicare and Iraq and also cut taxes. Is that how you'd run your business? Is that conservative? What ever happened to "don't spend money you don't have"? I'm not against tax cuts, but if you cut taxes, then cut spending too. Or better yet, cut spending first, then save a little and then cut taxes when you're in good shape. That's all I'm saying. > WAH! Regan wasn't handed anything to brag about, and turned it around > without a stimulus package. I agree. I think Reagan did well and he deserves credit for it. He deregulated and for the most part, that really helped the economy in the long run. I think the booming economy of Clinton years may well have been because of Reagan. Though, to be fair, Reagan did a lot of deficit spending. And, that's basically what Obama is doing too. Also, unemployment was over 10% during Reagan's term too. > [Obama] chose to do the liberal thing and grow > the government to a size that if you told me 16 years ago could happen Every President has grown the government. It's just what they do as far as I can tell. > The government owns banks? I actually think they've done well at avoiding that. Though, I give credit more to Geithner and Bernanke. They've tried to do more with loans and so forth, instead of straight take-overs and bailouts. The S&L bailout from the late 80s (near the end of Reagan's term) cost something like $150 billion. There's a good chance the recent bailouts could end up being less. Given how much worse this crisis was, I think that's impressive. > Due process for terrorists my ass. The trouble I see with this is we're really talking about the power of the federal government. It's all well and good when you're sure they make no mistake and don't misuse their power. But, we're talking about the federal government here. You're giving them the power to label anyone they like a terrorist and throw them in a military prison indefinitely. That's a lot of power. That kind of power needs checks and balances. That's what due process is all about, human rights and freedom. 9/11 was a wake up call. But, if our reaction is to throw away our ideals, then we lost before we even got started. America is great because we believe in freedom and justice. If someone punches us in the nose and our reaction is to sloppily grab people off the street and torture them, we've lost our way and maybe we deserve to get punched in the nose. I can't really tell if your pro-war or not. Obama seems to be fairly pro war. He has increased troops in Afghanistan (as he promised in his campaign). And, he has also been doing a lot more bombing of terrorist sites, more than Bush surprisingly. That isn't getting a lot of media coverage, though. I think because it is being done in secret. But, anyway, I would think you'd like that. ...except that somehow I assume you'll twist this so that Obama is just doing that to trick us into thinking he tough or terrorist. | What did you think of President Obama's State of the Union Address? |
| 55 |
I thought it was ironic that the union ended up owning GM. Do you think that was a good deal for the union? The union drove GM into the ground, now they get to try to put it back together. And, once they do, if they do, who will they make their demands for more pay and benefits to, themselves? Ha! > > FLIP FLOP MAN In 2003 he said at an AFL/CIO conference, "I > happen to be a proponent of single payer universal health care coverage. > A single payer health care plan, universal health care plan. That's > what I'd like to see." So, Obama changed his stance on health care from the left to something more moderate and in the middle. And, for this you call him a socialist puppet? It seems like no matter what he does, you'll criticize it. If Obama did exactly what you wanted, you'd find fault in it. You just seem absurdly biased against him. It makes you seem like a puppet of the right wing pundits. Aren't you just regurgitating their BS? C4C was part of the economic stimulus package. It was just about trying to get people buying stuff and in particular cars because of American car companies being in trouble. Ford was helped tremendously by C4C, by the way. No one forced people to trade in their cars either. It's unfair and unjustified to blame Obama for this. > [Capitalism] regulates itself. What about the mortgage market? Did that regulate itself? It did eventually, I guess. But, it left a huge mess in its wake. Some minimal common sense regulation could have helped prevent a lot of damage. You can't complain about 10% unemployment in one breath then say the answer is unregulated Capitalism in the next. Unchecked Capitalism resulted in a big economic collapse and justified bailouts and stimulus packages worldwide. > I think we need more rich people. ...Businesses employ people. I don't really disagree with that. But, what has also been happening is that the middle class has been shrinking over the last few decades. That's worrisome. I'm not convinced that tax cuts for the wealthiest people actually trickles down to workers. Average worker pay is going down, not up. Admittedly, it's probably more because of globalization. But, protectionist policies wont fix that either. > I'm all for cutting spending. But if you start with cutting taxes, people succeed. I don't know. Just cutting taxed and not spending seems to create large deficits and that has meant China loans our government money. I don't see the positive side of that. It's irresponsible and damaging to not cut spending. I'm sure tax cuts do help people, but the effect seems subtle at best. We've had a lot of tax cuts since Reagan, but it's hard to correlate them to economic gains. Bush's tax cuts happen then the economy tanked. I'm not saying they caused the economy to tank, but they didn't do much to prevent it. Bush's stimulus checks didn't help much either. Putting cash in people's hands may help a little, but it doesn't seem to fix everything. > How about this? Every time the government decides it needed to raise > taxes there was a ballot. I'd love that. I think that would really help limit government and that would be good. I'd love to see more stuff that forces voters to see there's a cost for these entitlements they get sold. I'd also think it would be nice if everyone had to file quarterly taxes. You probably do that for you business right? I do too. It sucks. I have to write this big fat check to the federal government every 3 months. I really feel it. They are taking my hard earned money! I think the automatic deduction from paychecks that most workers have hides taxes too well. They just don't feel the loss. It's better to have the money be put in their pocket, then taken out by the federal government. If people really felt that pain, I think, they'd understand better what it's really costing them. >  [full]
I know you can't give Obama credit for this. But, most of that had nothing to do with him. The Great Recession caused tax revenue to plummet and already in-place social programs to need more money (like automatic expenses that kick in to cover unemployment compensation and expansion of various other social programs). Even if you removed the stimulus bill (that would have happened with Obama or not; even the senate Republicans had a $700 billion stimulus proposal), the deficit would still be huge. It's unfair and unjustified to blame Obama for this. > But we're dealing with an enemy that has no respect for human rights > or freedom. They have no checks and balances. We can't defeat an > enemy by applying rules to a rule-less game. If America doesn't stand for human rights, we are the bad guys. We have to be better than them. If we fight dirty like them, we're not better than them. Whew, I think I actually managed to use less words that time! | What did you think of President Obama's State of the Union Address? |
| 56 | It's not entirely devil's advocate on my part. I have mixed up political views. I'm like a moderate libertarian, which doesn't make any sense, I know.
Mostly, the problems just seem really hard and I don't know what the best solution is. I try to consider any solution no matter which side it comes from. But, the extreme negative stuff that gets said about Obama isn't helping the situation. Calling him names and making him the personification of evil is just damaging our county's ability to work things out. The left does it too with stuff like Keith Olbermann saying ludicrously offensive stuff about Senator Scott Brown. All sides have to compromise. We all love this country. Refusing to listen to each other is just going to make everything worse. We're all on the same team; stuck with each other whether we like it or not. I liked the State of the Union and especially the GOP Q&A because it showed both sides talking. I see hope in that. Obama, has a role to play as our current leader. I thought this effort to engage the Republicans was a good first step. I hope it continues. I think the lack of super majority may help as well. | What did you think of President Obama's State of the Union Address? |
| 57 | Does posting a " | When was the last time you said "I Love you"? |
| 58 | I may have tried my mom's pantyhose on when I was a kid, but I'm not sure. I'm pretty sure I put pantyhose over my head to look like a burglar when I was a kid. I don't hate pantyhose, but I kind of wanted to say never since it was closer to my situation than "over a year" (it's more like over 30 years). | When is the last time you wore pantyhose or stockings? |
| 59 | I meant to include in the explanation this quote from the wikipedia page: "It is estimated that one percent of the general population are psychopaths."
Given this, it seems likely that I know 1 or 2, but I'm not aware of it. | Do you know any psychopaths? |
| 60 | Do you remember what that psychopath was like? Anything noticeable, or were they just like anyone else? | Do you know any psychopaths? |
