(02-06-2009 02:02 PM)JSA Wrote:  As to partisanship, 0 House Republicans voted for the bill.

The only bipartisanship displayed was by those against this wasteful spending package.

Only Dems voted for the package.

Both Reps and Dems voted against it.

(02-13-2009 12:01 PM)Hambone10 Wrote:  I wouldn't trust Newt Gingrich to govern from the middle either.

And that's a shame, too. If Newt had been able to partner with Clinton
(who could govern from the center) we'd be far better off today.

(02-17-2009 10:25 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(02-13-2009 12:01 PM)Hambone10 Wrote:  I wouldn't trust Newt Gingrich to govern from the middle either.

And that's a shame, too. If Newt had been able to partner with Clinton
(who could govern from the center) we'd be far better off today.

Agreed. The Contract with America was VERY libertarian in nature, avoiding many of Buchanan's far right points... and despite the rhetoric, the two (Newt and Bill) worked well together. Give credit to whomever you choose... Gingrich at least realized that if he put out a plan that SOUNDED Republican, yet appealed to many in the middle, that much of it would get passed... if he put out a platform filled with religious undertones, it would have been discarded. Clinton realized the same thing... they argued over the extreme points, and passed everything that really made sense to most people

(02-17-2009 10:42 AM)Hambone10 Wrote:  

(02-17-2009 10:25 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(02-13-2009 12:01 PM)Hambone10 Wrote:  I wouldn't trust Newt Gingrich to govern from the middle either.

And that's a shame, too. If Newt had been able to partner with Clinton (who could govern from the center) we'd be far better off today.

Agreed. The Contract with America was VERY libertarian in nature, avoiding many of Buchanan's far right points... and despite the rhetoric, the two (Newt and Bill) worked well together. Give credit to whomever you choose... Gingrich at least realized that if he put out a plan that SOUNDED Republican, yet appealed to many in the middle, that much of it would get passed... if he put out a platform filled with religious undertones, it would have been discarded. Clinton realized the same thing... they argued over the extreme points, and passed everything that really made sense to most people

I just wish they'd kept partnering instead of bickering over Monica Lewinsky. I guess Newt had to give the religious righties their day in the sun, but I just think we'd have been better off without taking our eye off the ball.

Might we have gotten Osama long before 9/11? Maybe.
Might we have made the adjustments to get the economy over the dot-com implosion? Maybe.
Are there any number of other things that might have been dealt with? Yes.

(02-15-2009 05:22 PM)Tomball Owl Wrote:  The only bipartisanship displayed was by those against this wasteful spending package.

Only Dems voted for the package.

Both Reps and Dems voted against it.

That ignores the reasons Dems changed their votes to vote against it.

(02-19-2009 04:11 PM)texd Wrote:  

(02-15-2009 05:22 PM)Tomball Owl Wrote:  The only bipartisanship displayed was by those against this wasteful spending package.

Only Dems voted for the package.

Both Reps and Dems voted against it.

That ignores the reasons Dems changed their votes to vote against it.

Explanation?

(02-19-2009 04:14 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(02-19-2009 04:11 PM)texd Wrote:  

(02-15-2009 05:22 PM)Tomball Owl Wrote:  The only bipartisanship displayed was by those against this wasteful spending package.

Only Dems voted for the package.

Both Reps and Dems voted against it.

That ignores the reasons Dems changed their votes to vote against it.

Explanation?

The implication here is that the Republicans and Democrats who voted against the bill were united against its "wasteful" nature. In fact, the Dems who moved over to vote against it did so as a result of the bill being pared down too much for their liking. Thus being not "wasteful" enough.

Somehow, I don't think the blue dog Dems who voted against it (like Heath Shuler) were voting against it because it didn't have enough spending. Here's the list of those who voted against it. Take this article:

Quote:Among the seven Democrats who opposed the measure, Reps. Bobby Bright (D-Ala.), Parker Griffith (D-Ala.) and Walt Minnick (D-Idaho) are all expected to get strong Republican challengers next year, and the three have already been a target of some national GOP attacks.

Quote:Another Democrat who voted against the package, Rep. Heath Shuler (D-N.C.), could be headed for a difficult race, though not in his own congressional district. Shuler is said to be mulling a challenge to Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), and recently hosted ex-President Bill Clinton for a fundraising lunch.

Shuler has one of the most conservative voting records of any House Democrat.

Quote:The remaining three no voters are long-established fiscal hawks. Reps. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.), Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) and Gene Taylor (D-Miss.) all opposed the stimulus bill, though DeFazio voted in favor of the bill in late January.

You may be thinking of the one who voted Present who wanted more transportation funding. But those who voted no were generally against the package or lining themselves up politically to protect themselves in the next election.

You're probably right about the blue dogs, but DeFazio has publicly stated that he shifted his vote due to its going from ~33% tax breaks as passed in the house to 45% tax breaks as finally passed.

Of course, Tomball's post fails to acknowledge that there's another chamber located at the north end of the Capitol which had an opposite result from the south end (D's voting in lockstep, with a few R's crossing the aisle).

I think the point is... voting with your party COULD be partisan, but might not be. You can't REALLY prove it one way or another... Voting against them isn't. You may be further left or further right than your party, but you are inarguably voting your position... or at least what you think your constituents want you to do... not your party.

(02-12-2009 09:12 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  I also lack the computer savvy to do the quotes separately, like you do. Please tell me how to do that.)

Back now from friends' wedding in Sydney; here's my effort at a tutorial on how to split up parts of a quote.

The short answer is that it's a somewhat painful manual process that involves copying and pasting tags, but it's fairly easy once you get the hang of it.

I'll do the long answer via an example. Let's say someone had posted something like this:

(02-18-2009 03:46 PM)TheBigPuma Wrote:  Howdy y'all.
How's everybody doing?

If you hit "reply" to that message, the text editor would get autopopulated with the necessary stuff to quote that posting, and normally you would just type your response below it (or above it, as some prefer). The autopopulated text would be as follows (note: ignore the word "Code"):

Those items that are surrounded in square brackets (they read "[quote = ...]" and "[/quote]") are tags that are interpreted by the message board software and cause the message board to display the intervening text as quoted text.
You can actually create the tags by hand if you want (and in so doing you can conjure a fake posting/user into apparent existence, like I did with TheBigPuma), but the easy way to do it is just to copy and paste the tags using what's already autopopulated into the text editor.

So if I wanted to split the above quote into two pieces, what I would do is copy and paste the tag that reads "[quote ='TheBigPuma' pid='3974248' dateline='1234990000']" and the tag that reads "[/quote]".
Here's an example of what my text in the text editor would look like after I've added in my own responses and done the copying and pasting:
(again, ignore the word "Code")

And if I were to "Post Reply", then that scintillating conversation would display as follows:
------------------------------------------

(02-18-2009 03:46 PM)TheBigPuma Wrote:  Howdy y'all.

Hey there Puma.

(02-18-2009 03:46 PM)TheBigPuma Wrote:  How's everybody doing?

Rockin'!! And yourself?
------------------------------------------

Hopefully my description of how to do this makes sense. Let me know if it doesn't.
Oh, and it's generally a good idea to "Preview Post" when splitting quotes -- it's darn easy to leave out a bracket or a slash, and just one missed character can mess up the whole post.

(02-27-2009 08:21 PM)JOwl Wrote:  

(02-12-2009 09:12 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  I also lack the computer savvy to do the quotes separately, like you do. Please tell me how to do that.)

Back now from friends' wedding in Sydney; here's my effort at a tutorial on how to split up parts of a quote.

The short answer is that it's a somewhat painful manual process that involves copying and pasting tags, but it's fairly easy once you get the hang of it.

I'll do the long answer via an example. Let's say someone had posted something like this:

(02-18-2009 03:46 PM)TheBigPuma Wrote:  Howdy y'all.
How's everybody doing?

If you hit "reply" to that message, the text editor would get autopopulated with the necessary stuff to quote that posting, and normally you would just type your response below it (or above it, as some prefer). The autopopulated text would be as follows (note: ignore the word "Code"):

Code:

[quote='TheBigPuma' pid='3974248' dateline='1234990000']
Howdy y'all.
How's everybody doing?
[/quote]

Those items that are surrounded in square brackets (they read "[quote = ...]" and "

") are tags that are interpreted by the message board software and cause the message board to display the intervening text as quoted text.
You can actually create the tags by hand if you want (and in so doing you can conjure a fake posting/user into apparent existence, like I did with TheBigPuma), but the easy way to do it is just to copy and paste the tags using what's already autopopulated into the text editor.

So if I wanted to split the above quote into two pieces, what I would do is copy and paste the tag that reads "[quote ='TheBigPuma' pid='3974248' dateline='1234990000']" and the tag that reads "[/quote]".
Here's an example of what my text in the text editor would look like after I've added in my own responses and done the copying and pasting:
(again, ignore the word "Code")

And if I were to "Post Reply", then that scintillating conversation would display as follows:
------------------------------------------

(02-18-2009 03:46 PM)TheBigPuma Wrote:  Howdy y'all.

Hey there Puma.

(02-18-2009 03:46 PM)TheBigPuma Wrote:  How's everybody doing?

Rockin'!! And yourself?
------------------------------------------

Hopefully my description of how to do this makes sense. Let me know if it doesn't.
Oh, and it's generally a good idea to "Preview Post" when splitting quotes -- it's darn easy to leave out a bracket or a slash, and just one missed character can mess up the whole post.
[/quote]

Thanks. This old Luddite appreciates the help. I will postpone my first effort to another time, though.

That's actually kinda funny -- my careless use of an unpaired close-quote tag in my original post ended up screwing up the display of your response.
Like I said, manually manipulating this stuff is touchy business; trying to explain how it's done is apparently doubly so.

(02-06-2009 10:01 AM)Hambone10 Wrote:  Thread title to get attention. Obviously he's not stupid, by ANY measure... but his speech last night was about as partisan as you can get... and I'm REALLY pissed of... I thought we were moving past this, and while pointing the finger at Republicans (or just about anyone who is for reducing taxes) for being partisan, he exhibits the most partisan and misleading traits himself.

Is spending stimulus?? Yes. Is stimulus spending? Not necessarily.

Let me give you an easy example where tax incentives are better than government spending. This can be applied to dozens of instances, but this one is easy.

Part of the spending bill I saw was for the government to spend $250mm to buy new vehicles. Is that stimulative?? Absolutely. However, since they buy in bulk, no salesmen make money. They negotiate for the lowest cost, and generally buy the cars with the fewest options. No GPS, no custom wheels, no tinting, basic radio. What if, instead, they gave the public $250mm to spend on new vehicles. Chances are we'd add options and use salesmen. The auto companies would still sell cars, but more industries would be helped... GPS, Radio, wheel and tire... alarms... salesmen etc.

WHAT IF, and I know this has been put out there... we instead provided tax incentives to buy cars. As an example, make the interest tax deductible... provide rebates for trading in less efficient models... and even if we added grants/handouts/cash back incentives.. our $250mm in public monies would go MUCH farther and do MUCH more... because it would be added to monies voluntarily spent by people. Further, because of the deductibility of the interest, banks would be encouraged to loan (isn't that the whole purpose??) because now they can charge 8% when before they could only get 6%, yet the consumer is still better off because of the deduction... you could even make the deduction a rebate for the poor if you wanted... an interest free loan for a new car.

Imagine this... a working poor person needs a car and owns a 72 Buick that runs on leaded gas and gets 2MPG. By trading it in and buying a new $15,000 30mpg Chevy Malibu, he gets blue book for the car... let's say $1,000... plus a $1,000 government "incentive" for trading in an old car... plus a check in hand as he walks out for $2,000 in a government incentive... $2,000 in his pocket and a bank loan for $14,000 at 10%. He makes payments of $199/month and gets a rebate check from the government for the interest of $25/month for 48 months. If he doesn't make his payments, the car gets "put" back to the government at let's say 1/2 of cost. What does this cost the government? $3,000 instead of $15,000 if they simply bought the car themselves... PLUS perhaps they end up paying $7,500 for the car in the next year or two... or perhaps an additional $1200 in interest subsidy if the guy pays it off. WORST CASE, they have added roughly 1/3 to the tax money while stimulating MANY more industries than if they bought it themselves... BEST case, they stimulate the economy more AND clean the environment for perhaps 1/4 the cost of the "spending" plan

If people can't understand this, then I've done a poor job explaining it.

Spending IS stimulative, but it isn't necessarily the best way to stimulate... and Obama is absolutely wrong, and completely misleading the American public to claim that "the other side" is the only one engaging in politics of the past.

I'm mad because I was PROMISED this was over... and in a speech chastising opponents of his plan, he proves he is no better.

Revisiting your original thread post in hindsight, it is interesting to read your thoughts on this in 2009 versus what happened and where we are now.

And seemingly Obama became even less enlightened post-presidency as he appears oblivious to the disconnect between the content of his speeches and earnings in apparent conflict with his actions personally.

Quote:At a recent speech in South Africa, former President Barack Obama criticized wealth inequality, saying those who have more money should share their earnings with the less fortunate.

“Right now, I’m actually surprised by how much money I got,” Obama said of the more than $20 million he earned between 2005 and 2016.

Obama then chided wealthy individuals for excess, saying, “There’s only so much you can eat. There’s only so big a house you can have. There’s only so many nice trips you can take. I mean, it’s enough.”

“We’re going to have to worry about economics if we want to get democracy back on track,” Obama continued “We’re going to have to consider new ways of thinking about these problems, like a universal income, review of our workweek, how we retrain our young people, how we make everybody an entrepreneur at some level.”

Obama Attacks Wealthy For Big Houses Before Returning To His $8 Million Mansion

To piggyback on your OP, IMAGINE THIS, what if the US deported all the illegal border-crossers living her (maybe 30 million??) and thus helped our poorer American citizens be better able to find affordable housing and other goods since the artificial skewing of the markets would not be taking place driving ever-rising rents and housing costs? Has anyone attempted a study of what the American markets would look like without the artificial distortion and skewing the illegal border-crossers effect?

The irony of the left-point of view on helping the poor is they are choosing to favor non-US citizen illegal border-crossers who, by definition are criminally breaking the laws of this country over millions of poor, law-abiding citizens of the US which the left purports to want to 'help"...by importing even more illegal laborers and illegal consumers who drive up prices and hurt the American poor the most.

Oblunder goes for stupid yet again, this time at a Rice University talk (embarrassing for the University)

Quote:Former president of Shell Oil Company John Hofmeister said former President Barack Obama had nothing to do with America’s increased oil production and actually frustrated many areas of the energy sector.

Obama claimed he was responsible for America’s recent oil boom during an event hosted by Rice University’s Baker Institute on Tuesday night and Hofmeister challenged his assessment.

“American energy production — you wouldn’t always know it, but it went up every year I was president,” Obama said. “That whole, suddenly America’s, like, the biggest oil producer and the biggest gas — that was me, people.”

“The facts are the facts. And, yes, the production did increase throughout his term,” Hofmeister said on “Fox & Friends” Thursday. “But, frankly, he had nothing to do with it.”

“This was production in states like Texas, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Colorado — North Dakota in particular. And these were all state decisions made with industry applications for permits. The federal government had no role.”

Hofmeister said Obama opposed the energy industry at every turn with his actions against offshore drilling and his handling of the Keystone Pipeline.

“If anything, he was trying to frustrate the efforts by taking federal lands off of the availability list — putting them just, no more drilling [sic]. He shut down the Gulf of Mexico for a period of six months,” he said. “[He] changed the regulations from an average of 60 to 80 pages per permit to 600 to 800 pages per permit. He also never approved the Keystone XL pipeline after dangling all the potential customers for eight years. And it was in the eighth year when he said no Keystone Pipeline.”

“I would say that he was not a leader when it comes to energy,” Hofmeister said.

Obama didn't have anything to do with increased production

The president of Shell didnt even go into the vastly increased EPA interventionism and Department of the Interior (such as vastly increased Endangered Species Act definitions moving from the definition of an area affected from 'lives in' to 'could live in', for just one issue there) with respect to E&P efforts.

Now the assclown (BHO) wants to take credit for the boon. Just amazing.

Yes. More partisan than stupid.