Comments Posted By michael reynolds
Displaying 601 To 610 Of 839 Comments
IF IT WASN'T SO FRIGHTENING, I WOULD LAUGH
It'll be so great when we can finally bury Hope and Change and get back to the GOP's message: Despair and Stasis. Ah, life will be good then.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 14.02.2009 @ 10:52
OBAMA GLIDES THROUGH PRESSER UNCHALLENGED
He was addressing complex issues in detail. I realize you may be happier in the sound bite, "Bring 'em on!" world of Republican political speech, but unfortunately the mess your party has made now requires the full-time efforts of actual adults who must deal with complex matters and attempt to explain same to American public over the bleats of GOP sheep.
If you want pithier answers in pressers maybe you could prevail upon future Republican presidents to f--- up in less spectacular fashion. Then Democrats would have a chance to utter simplistic slogans and inanities.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 10.02.2009 @ 14:56
It was awful the way Obama kept answering whatever questions were put to him in a detailed, comprehensive, non-condescending way. I've never been so ashamed. Doesn't he know he's just supposed to puff out his chest, babble something in his own made-up version of English and angrily announce that he's The Decider?
Did someone say "babble?" To wit; JFK answered 37 questions in a 45 minute press conference. Obama answered 13 in a 1 hour press conference. This is something you would have immeditately noticed if your head wasn't so far up Obama's butt you could smell his small intestine.
ed.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 10.02.2009 @ 13:37
THE STIMULUS SHOULD GO BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD
I think it's very generous of Republicans to ensure that when the recovery comes the Democrats will receive all the credit and Republicans none.
The recession will end eventually, almost certainly before the end of Mr. Obama's first term. The GOP won't even get credit for an assist.
GOP sets the economy on fire, refuses to call 911, then actively obstructs the fire department.
This is a good idea why, exactly?
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 9.02.2009 @ 18:58
CDOR:
We've had 8 years of your way or the highway. And we are now up to our necks in alligators. Your way produced net zero jobs. Your way produced net zero increase in living standards. Your way produced a bankrupt auto industry, a financial sector that had to be rescued by the United States Government. Your way has been tested and it failed -- just like Marxism was tested and failed. It didn't work.
Now we are trying to fix the mess your party got us into.
We face zero threat of inflation at this point. We have close to 8% unemployment and the odds are that that will continue to rise for some time. When 8 to 10% of the population is out of work inflation ain't really the major concern. We're looking at deflation which is to inflation what cancer is to pneumonia.
I wish we didn't have to do this. I wish we were not in this shit. I wish I wasn't passing this along to my children. I wish I wasn't screwing up their future. I wish we still had Mr. Clinton's surplus. But we elected Republicans. So here we are.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 6.02.2009 @ 21:31
CDOR:
What is important is not your quasi-religious faith in Republican dogma. What's important is what will work. Will giving a tax break to well-off people work? No.
And while you may be an ideal boss, most people aren't. Most bosses obey the logic of the marketplace which holds that you shed employees you don't need. You're arguing simultaneously that the marketplace is sacred and that you will ignore it.
I don't complain about unemployment benefits because they are stimulus, giving money to people who need it and will immediately spend it. I don't complain about infrastructure because it will create jobs and not only will those salaries be spent, but the projects themselves provide benefit.
Bi-partisanship isn't about creating bills that are 50% smart and 50% stupid. We're trying to push money into the economy and get some side benefit off improving infrastructure. That makes sense. Giving money to people who won't push it back into the economy is stupid.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 6.02.2009 @ 14:03
CDOR:
I pay a lot of taxes. If you give me a tax cut I will put the money in cash and hold onto it because 1) I don't need to spend that money and 2) I don't see an investment I want to jump in on just yet. Way down the road I'll probably buy a new house, but not any time soon, my friend. So net benefit to me? Plenty. Net benefit to the economy? Zip. Jobs created? None.
But back in the day I was a struggling working stiff. If you had given me $1000 I'd have had no choice but to spend it because I had huge pent-up demand for goods and services. That $1000 would have barely felt the touch of my fingers before it went flying back out the door.
If you cut taxes on business they will behave exactly as I would: they would hold onto the cash. They will not keep on employees who they don't need, they'd still let them go because that would make business sense. Net benefit to the business owner? Plenty. Net benefit to the larger economy? Minimal.
Stop looking at the world through the assumptions of ideology. People don't act ideologically, they act in what they perceive to be their own best interests. I can tell you with absolute certainty that any tax cut you give me now will not see the light of day outside of a T-Bill.
If you want to cut taxes, stop collecting payroll tax on people making under 40k. Every penny will go straight back into the economy.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 6.02.2009 @ 12:15
A SHORT NOTE ON THE DEMISE OF THE PJ MEDIA AD NETWORK
Something big and game-changing is coming to internet advertising. Remember the words "blink link." Sorry to be cryptic, and I doubt it's something that will help PJM, but it's big and cool and probably about a year out.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 31.01.2009 @ 13:23
IF GOVERNMENT MAKES LIFE EASIER, DOES THAT MAKE IT BETTER?
Rick:
Yes, it was over my head, that's the problem. I'm slow that way.
You ask a philosophical question, but you do it at a particular time and in a particular place, and you do it while carrying your own political baggage. Had you posed this question when your party was in power, riding high and cheerleading the idiots who've all but bankrupted the United States, it would have more standing as a genuine philosophical inquiry.
Instead you framed it in a "what liberals don't get" snark that rather tarnished the genuineness of the question posed.
Government isn't the only threat to liberty. A man who can't feed his family is himself a threat to liberty because he will, of necessity, do whatever it takes to get by. Every time some Wall Street whizz kid tosses a thousand guys into the street and yanks their health insurance and lobbies to limit their unemployment, and lobbies to change the rules that protect their pensions, that CEO is creating threats to liberty. Plutocracy is inherently unstable, it creates its own backlash.
But I don't recall you expressing concern that conservatives just don't get that it's self-destructive to enrich themselves while the middle class stagnates or slides. Conservatives pushed the pendulum as far as they could and are now shocked and dismayed to find it swinging back. Which is why it isn't really all that clever to cheerlead the worst excesses of capitalism and ignore the pushback it will inevitably generate.
We've had capitalism divorced from virtue, morality and a sense of decency. Exhibit A: Mr. Thain. This kind of robber baron ethos is unsustainable in a system where voters have the capacity to push back using the government. And it is completely absurd in a situation where the endlessly reviled government is required to rescue the same geniuses who, even now, will lecture you on the magic of the marketplace and the perfidy of government.
If we are to expect restraint from the frightened unemployed guy, we'll need to see compassion, civic virtue and a sense of decency from men like Mr. Thain et al and their giddy handmaidens in the GOP.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 30.01.2009 @ 02:43
There are conservative trade-offs for liberty, too. In a world where a CEO can pay himself 50 million dollars while cutting 50 million dollar's worth of jobs at his company and call it efficiency, where is the freedom for the working stiff? He didn't make a bad choice. He didn't do a bad job. He improved his productivity, but not enough to compensate for the CEO's executive compensation. So now the worker who did all he was supposed to do loses health care and home. Nice freedom.
It's a pendulum, it swings both ways. Conservatives had it swinging their direction but they screwed the pooch with sheer, bloody-minded greed and irresponsibility. They used government to reward the greediest. They turned their ideology to the task of glorifying greed and belittling people who lack the talent for bankrupting billion dollar banks and corporations.
At the same time so-called conservatives were abusing the taxpayer every bit as much as liberals.
It was never going to be sustainable, this conservative class warfare that saw upper incomes skyrocket and lower incomes flatline. It may not fit within conservative ideology, but a certain moral sense on the part of the lucky and successful few, a sense of duty, a sense of owing something to their employees as well as to their rich investor friends, the concept of fairness, of simple decency, is required. Instead it's been all Gordon Gecko. Gimme, gimme, gimme, more, more, more. The Bush administration and corporate America have been a continuum of greed, arrogance and incompetence.
The freeze-frame moment when came after 9/11 when I got a big tax cut and a bunch of mostly working class guys ended up humping 100 pounds of rucksack and body armor through the Iraqi desert for Wal-Mart pay. And we secured my tax cut with . . . wait for it . . . money we borrowed from the very enemies those grunts may some day have to fight. The current conservative ideology in action.
Plutocracy does not make for stability. So now the pendulum is swinging back. Hundreds of thousands of people who did exactly what you wanted them to Rick -- lived good lives, made smart choices, shouldered responsibility, improved their skills, worked their asses off -- are now out of work, without health insurance, unable to maintain, humiliated in front of their children -- because half-smart, tax-break millionaire assholes needed to make still more money by inventing securities based on thin air.
Now the unemployed guy gets a lecture on why he shouldn't trade some fragment of theoretical liberty so his kids can buy glasses or his wife can get her pain meds? Really?
How in god's name does someone losing their job equate with freedom? A Non sequitor extraordinaire!
And Jesus lord I am getting tired of your rants. You are talking grubby politics. I was hoping to write on a much higher plane. And your explanation for the financial crisis is absurdly simple minded.
And who the fuck is lecturing the unemployed? This wasn't a lecture anyway, it was an exploration. I set down nothing except the "velocity of my thoughts" - how you can turn that into a lecture is beyond understanding.
Face it - this whole piece went right over your head. You haven't a clue about what I was talking.
ed.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 28.01.2009 @ 14:16
