Thursday, October 23, 2008
Expect More Layoffs
With an Obama win almost a certainty, corporate executives are already planning more layoffs to offset the expected tax increases. It is possible that most of the job loses will occur even before he takes office.
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Both Wal-Mart and the Health Industry execs were on CNBC this morning saying that obama's people are readying for a wave of unionization. The very last thing a struggling nursing home needs is a union. The Wal-Mart exec said that prices would rise 20% over the next three years if stores were unionized.
I wouldn't mind if they bought American goods. But hell, even American flags are made in China -- what the hell is that!
On the flip side, I've never seen job losses as great as we're seeing under Bush. Bush I was brutal, but Bush II has been hell for the working man:
"Initial claims for state unemployment insurance benefits increased to a seasonally adjusted 478,000 in the week ended Oct. 18 from a revised 463,000 the prior week."
And that, after 800,000 have been lost this year. Then you look back at the economy and surplus that Bush inherited from Clinton, it's very sad that the man doesn't care enough about his country to not to be working his butt off 24/7 to help his countrymen.
I'm not saying obama will do better; his entire presidency will be crippled by the devastation Bush the repubs dealt the country with the wars, inability to regulate (6 years they had triple-control of legislation), expanded government more since Roosevelt with Homeland Security, and then passed insane and unpaid for mandates like Medicare Part D and No Child Left Behind.
If obama's elected, look for it to play out like Jimmy Carter II, i.e., not good at all.
The Democrats had control of the Senate shortly after Bush took office (Jeffords sided with the Dems). Plus the Democrats had filibuster power over his entire administration.
Joe if you stubbed your toe walking across the room, you'd try to blame the Democrats.
The power of the filibuster is amazing. Many laws/judges/regulations are never voted on just because one Senator says he will filibuster. And the pubic never knows who because of Senate rules. Without a 60 vote majority, discussions on non-financial bills cannot be stopped.
I agree with Joe the Dems were playing politics and could have done alot more starting with stopping the funding for the war and the impeachment of Bush and Cheney and the indictment for war crimes of Rumsfeld, Rove, Perle, Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz...and about 100 others...but if they had done that Obama would have had no chance to be elected...long term an Obama administration will transform America, we all hope, an Obama administration will stop America from committing more war crimes and crimes against humanity for a long long time. It will strengthen America's economy to new heights never before seen which includes the lower classes...we will be like Europe only much better and stronger. Democrats punted alot sure but that will change soon.
Thomas Sowell
http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell062608.php3
Some of the people who are most adamant against outsourcing economic activity from the United States to other countries often seem to think we should outsource our foreign policy to "world opinion" or act only in conjunction "with our NATO allies."
Like so many things that are said when it comes to public policy, there is very little attention paid to the actual track record of "world opinion" or of "our NATO allies."
Often there is a blanket assumption that European countries are just so much more sophisticated than American "cowboys." But there is incredibly little interest in the track record of those European sophisticates whom we are supposed to consult about our own national interests— including, in an age when terrorists may acquire nuclear weapons, our national survival.
In the course of the twentieth century, supposedly sophisticated Europeans managed to create some of the most monstrous forms of government on earth— Communism, Fascism, Nazism— in peacetime, and to start the two World Wars, the bloodiest in all human history. In each of these wars, both the winners and the losers ended up far worse off than they were before these wars were started.
After both World Wars, the United States had to step in to save millions of people in Europe from starving amid the wreckage and rubble that their wars had created. These do not seem like people whose sophistication we should defer to.
Between the two World Wars, European intellectuals— more so than ordinary people— completely misread the threat from Nazi Germany, and were urging disarmament in France and England, while Hitler was rapidly building up the most powerful military force on the continent, obviously aimed at neighboring countries.
During the Cold War, may European intellectuals once again misread the threat of a totalitarian dictatorship— in this case, the Soviet Union. When they finally recognized the threat, many saw the question as whether it was "better to be red than dead."
They were no more prepared to stand up to the Soviet Union than they had been ready to stand up to Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Worse yet, much of the European intelligentsia objected to America's standing up to the Soviet Union.
Many of them were appalled when Ronald Reagan met the threat of new Soviet missiles aimed at Western Europe by putting more American missiles in Western Europe, aimed at the Soviet Union.
Reagan, in effect, called the Soviet Union and raised them, while many of the European sophisticates— as well as much of the American intelligentsia— said that his policies would lead to war.
Instead, it led to the end of the Cold War. Are we now to blindly imitate those who have been so wrong, so often over the past hundred years?
Very well said. Europe did nothing about the Serbs in Bosnia and blocked action in Rwanda.
So Joe, you're saying the buck stops at the minority party's feet?
Bush didn't veto a single bill until his seventh year in office. At least McCain/Palin are willing to confess the sins of their party. You should, too.
Sooner or later, we're going to need a populist, Joe-the-plumber revolution or something to bring about multi-party participation in our government. Otherwise, we'll continue to get two sides of the same coin every four years. We don't need one "Joe"; we need about 500 of them in Congress.
To say Bush and the Republicans had complete control is false. The last time it happened was the first two years under Carter. National health care failed under Hillary because the Republicans had filibuster power.
Bush started out well, worked with the Democrats (like Kennedy with No Child left behind). Then 9/11 came. The "non-fiscal conservative" Republicans spent money with the Democrats to buy their incumbency. Bush senior had to raise taxes to fund his war, the younger Bush allowed the Congress to spend like crazy. Then to win the election he created the drug plan for Medicare. There is no way anyone would call Bush a fiscal conservative.
The problem with Republicans is that there are too many religious conservatives and not enough fiscal conservatives. They tried to be like Democrats in spending. It cost them Congress. The Democrats ran social conservatives in the tight districts and won.
The Democrats, after losing in 2004, spent the next two years blocking most of efforts of the Republicans and won. They couldn't accomplish anything in the next two years, but because Bush is worried more about the War than anything else, he did not fight back. It is not his style. Unfortunately for the Republicans, it was Pelosi's and Reid's style.
We now face the prospect of an Obama mandate and a filibuster-proof Senate. It is possible we will see the most liberal agenda since Johnson.
Anonymous everything you said I more or less agree with however you don't see the full picture, this is not a critique nobody sees the full picture, myself included of course, that is why dialectic is important as our philosopher friend zaine should understand if he studied Hegel.
You could not answer my question to you concerning Ayers you did not even give it a try, these kind of questions our important because they determine the moral fabric of our society, we can have the most perfect system in the world but if the people are immoral no system will work. Our founding fathers fled the tyranny of Europe to build a better system, a "Republic" (not a democracy) a Republic is rule by law not by majority rule. Unfortunately Republicans since Reagan and especially since Bush have been undermining our Constitution and Bill of Rights (our Republic) which is what makes America America. In fact we should call the Republicans Democrats and the Democrats Republicans since their roles have reversed since Reagan. Democrats today protect the Bill of Rights and the Constitution far better than the Republicans today (though they could do better). If you were to put the candidats Obama and Biden and compare them to McCain Palin on a John Birch society scale of left Right, Obama Biden would be far to the right of McCain Palin, in other words Obama is far more "conservative" than McCain...McCain and Palin are much closer National Socialism than Obama and Biden.
Europe is far more conservative today than the US since Bush...Bush and the Republicans have pushed America far to the left on a John Birch type scale.
Obama believes in much smaller governement than McCain as applied to keeping the fruits of one's labor, means of production, freedom from government oppression etc. Health care is a right, like freedom, it is not a means of production, without health you have no freedom, Obama wants to lower taxes for 95% of the population, that have been paying way too much for way too long in accumulated and future debt taxes and military industrial complex taxes.
We should not take our lessons from Europe, we should lead but until we become more moral than the Europeans, the Europeans will continue to lead, the morality of the people is what counts most, not military might. We used to be more moral than the Europeans, since Vietnam and Nixon we have degraded as a moral people, the "me first" 80s and 90s, was the beginning of the end, we ignored what our military industrial complex was doing around the world in our name. Actually the people in South America will probably be doing the leading of the World in the future as they seem to be more moral than even the Europeans today. I hope with an Obama Presidency America can take the lead again on the moral front, our founding fathers said it clearly no system no matter how perfect can save an immoral people, Vietnam, Iraq, Lebanon, Chile, Argentina, Philippines, Palestine, racism, waterboarding, Abu Graib, Guantanamo, treatment of immigrants, police brutality of journalists and protesters...the list is long... Europe has nothing on us since the end of WWII it seems Europe has become more like the America our founding fathers wanted wanted and we more like the Europe of the Colonization days. I hope an Obama administration will put us back on the right track. We need strong moral leaders to give the people moral guidance, Bush's go shopping and waterboarding morality is not the kind of moral leadership we need...the Republican party is no longer a conservative party since Nixon it is the party of immorality war greed torture polic brutality etc..we need a new opposition party to the Democrats, on that keeps them honest, maybe the Green party in the future, however the Republicans have done nothing but harm America once the most "moral" nation on Earth.
Bush socialism or American fascism or whatever you want to call it, with the trillions lost for war, maybe 6 or 7 trillion when all is said and done ( and millions of Iraqi children dead or suffering enormously) is the reason at the roots of this crisis combined with the deregulation of the investment banks allowing them to gamble with other peoples savings in essence...trying to say jobs will decline further if Obama is elected and Democrats regain control is insane..just insane!! Carter inherited a recession combined with Opec, Obama will inherit the same...I just hope the American people are smarter this time and re-elect Obama, had they done so with Carter, we'd be swimming in solar energy and electric cars today with a booming economy instead of a crisis.
And how do you figure "millions of Iraqi children dead or suffering enormously"? What are your sources?
Your arguments would be better if you cite your sources instead of just pulling numbers out of thin air.
My sources are numerous the most reliable are the United Nations, Amnesty International, Docters without borders...and numerous others just Google and you'll find hundreds of legitimate sources but it doesn't take an Einstein to figure out that after carpet bombing the place and five years of war and occupation that there are not going to be millions of children suffering enormously out of a population of 30 million people...you can get a whole load of information on what's going on in Iraq at Information Clearing House a very reliable news source, where a lot of courageous reporting is put out, not the embedded kind you get from corporate news sources or the Pentagon. If it wasn't for Seymor Hersh we never would have known about My Lai or Abu Graib.
Then cite a source. Place a link to the info or quote it.
There was no carpet bombing in the last war. And in there previous war, the carpet bombing was limited to the troops.
You assume the children was not suffering prior to the war. When, in fact, it was cited as a reason for selling oil for food program and releasing the sanctions. The majority of the children who died were probably a result of Al-Qeada and insurgency actions.
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