Obama's Wars

[dolfan]

Let's see....

A War on the Economy
A War on Private Property
A War on Business
A War on Our Children


What is he NOT trying to destroy??? The man must be stopped.

[Full Quiver]

A war on our three branch govt. since he insists that he won the presidency and Congress will do as he instructs.

[pastorables]

A War on the Church
A War on Israel

etc, etc, etc....

[Tim Elston]

Let's see....

A War on the Economy
A War on Private Property
A War on Business
A War on Our Children

What is he NOT trying to destroy??? The man must be stopped.

The monetary system is designed to destroy itself, and what Obama is doing is trying to rescue it based on the system's own assumptions and demands. If he weren't doing it, someone else, namely John McCain, would be doing it. Regardless of who is doing the inevitable, is he trying to destroy the economy? No, he is trying to rescue the economy based on the advice of the custodians of the economic system--you know, those capitalists that conservatism so reveres and, I know, who are willing to forfeit the future for this quarter's earnings.

I presume that by private property, you are referring to raising the tax on earnings over $250,000 from 36% to 39.5% in order to reduce the deficit and fund whatever health care program comes down the pike. I have no problem with that tax increase. What I do have a problem with is Obama's plan to increase spending along with growth, as though a $500B deficit is acceptable in perpetuity, and Congress's complete lack of fiscal discipline, whether it is led by Democrats or Republicans. But is a three percent tax increase on earnings over $250K a "war on private property"? No, it is not.

A war on business? What specifically is he implementing to warrant that accusation?

A war on children? Everything that is within me recoils in abhorence at Obama's abortion policy, but I do not see that policy as justifying a blanket accusation of waging a "war on children." Do you really think that kind of hyperbole is going to help anything? Is it accurate? Do you think that Obama and the Democrats are trying to destroy children and make life as bad for them as possible, with the intent to do that, or do you think that, for whatever reason, they have lost sight of humanity in the womb and, on the assumption that a fetus is not a human being deserving of protection, their policies aim to reduce teenage pregnancy domestically and the abuse of women internationally? When I read today's abortion news I had an immediate reaction of disgust and anger, too, but I do not believe that Obama is waging a "war against children" any more than I believe that Bush was waging a war against Sunnis.

[Dr. Ron]

This man is a conspiracy in progress.,

While we all fall seriously short of Tim's ability to absolve the "king of the world", there might remain a few of us who are still simple minded enough to see the forrest and the trees at the same time.

The "president of hope" is talking down the economy and allowing the market to implode. When he has sufficiently added his fiscal policies and his minions do his bidding (Pelosi, Frank, et al) , put the country in a slog hole of desperation, given away the farm, put states in untenable positions to continue his policies without the continued stimulus money, takes federal ownership of banks and the auto industry, creates the "Green Scheme" (scam) pours billions and trillions more into energy production for which he has no forseeable plan of implementation, makes baby killing the sport of teens, rips the heart out of the military, and finally enslaves the tax payers , he will then talk the econmy up and his friends and cronies will invest in the market while it is low and make back all the hundreds of millions they gave him to make him king.

As a sociopathic narrcisist, he doesn't care about this country...He simply wants another opportunity to see himself on camera, fill halls, watch the adulation of the masses, and hear the praise of the idiot.

This my friends is what America elected.

So , Tim, and those who would excuse him and think him "doing the best he can with what he "inherited" , march along .............does the word "lemming" mean anything to anyone other than me?????

He is pitiful.

[Full Quiver]

and might I add that he did not inherit a thing. He chose to seek the office of the president and one that office through democratic elections. He asked for this and now he must deal with it. Had his father been president or king and stepped aside and placed Obama in power then he would have inherited it but that is not the case at all.

[Tim Elston]

and might I add that he did not inherit a thing. He chose to seek the office of the president and one that office through democratic elections. He asked for this and now he must deal with it. Had his father been president or king and stepped aside and placed Obama in power then he would have inherited it but that is not the case at all.

That's an arbitrary, self-serving limitation on the semantic domain of the word 'inherit.' The word applies to what one receives from a predecessor:

"to receive as if by succession from predecessors: the problems the new government inherited from its predecessors."

[Full Quiver]

OK Tim, then by that definition what will the next president inherit? A socialist nation?

[Dr. Ron]

And btw, Full Quiver, you were right on with your definition.....it being used in the context it was.

Not only that, but He (notice the caps) helped create what he "inherited" by virtue of being a Senator during the process. He was against the limits on Fannie and Freddie....he was for the initial bail out.

If he inherited anything, He inherited the mess his party made of things after they gained power a full 4 years ahead of him being elected.

I was certain Tim would come back with a rejoinder on your definition. He can't help himself......

But Tim, in the immortal words of one just passed, AJ Creel, "I love you ha ha goody and you can't do anything about it,"

[Tim Elston]

OK Tim, then by that definition what will the next president inherit? A socialist nation?

No, we'll still be capitalist, and I expect that we'll have doubled the national debt again. The next president will inherit roughly a $20 trillion national debt, assuming that Obama lasts eight years. That's not because of the president per se but because the monetary system demands it. From here on out I expect there to be roughly a doubling of the national debt every decade until the system collapses in on itself. It doesn't matter who the president is, or whose scapegoat he or she is.

[bibleguy]

OK Tim, then by that definition what will the next president inherit? A socialist nation?

Socialist ... or fascist: The jury's still out.

[bibleguy]

OK Tim, then by that definition what will the next president inherit? A socialist nation?

No, we'll still be capitalist ...

Capitalist, only all the nation's capital will be in the nation's Capital.

[dolfan]

Tim,

His policy is a war on the economy because of the unparalleled in history increase on spending that will be followed soon enough by an unparalleled increase in taxes. Either of those alone are sufficiently devastating, and there is no separating them. He will absolutely cause inflation at levels that would make the late Carter/early Reagan years look like Romper Room in comparison.

Is the monetary system designed to destroy itself? Perhaps, but I don't argue that either party is better than the other here. We create money from the existence of debt. It's insane. Obama is very simply throttling that to its maximum, all at once.

Spending increases and any tax increase at all are, by their nature, diluting of existing wealth and confiscatory, in that order. Whatever amount they may cause to increase them is inherently bad news for all of us. So, yeah, they are damaging private property rights. They are killing small business, they are going to raid pensions to gain control of national wealth. I'm not arguing here that Republicans are good, Democrats bad. You know my opinion on that is that they all need to be removed summarily. They're ALL guilty, and no separation or distinction in their culpability matters now.

War on business: He's extending the Section 179 expense deductions from last year through this year. That's fine. The problem is that it is a smoke and mirrors device designed to distract attention from his health care proposals and labor union no-more-secret-ballots policies, both of which will saddle small businesses and larger ones alike with the certainty of unionization and devoting more resources to things that do not have ANYTHING to do with their core businesses. Every time we have to sit down and submit information to the government for unemployment, workers' compensation, taxes, etc. is time spent away from us selling soft drinks, chips and snuff. Time we could spend on cleaning, employee training, negotiating, finding new products (things we do that directly affect our bottom line and improve our business). He is going to, with the Congress and with Republicans, take a billy club to small business. War? Perhaps not. A wholesale mugging is more like it.

War on Children: Simple. He's going to nationalize all education by spending plans that tie state acceptance of ALL federal programs as a condition of getting ANY federal money. The federal government has done zip, zero, zilch to help children get better education. He's going to shove all of them into a national health care system so that all kids, rich, middle class and poor, receive equally crappy health care. That's a war on my kid, and I'll defend her to the death. So, yeah, I'm p.o'd at Obama. Frankly, his abortion policy will kill fewer kids than his health care policies as a whole. So, I'm not really sawing logs over his abortion views. I'll leave that to the protestors and letter-writers and clinic bombers.

[Tim Elston]

Is the monetary system designed to destroy itself? Perhaps, but I don't argue that either party is better than the other here. We create money from the existence of debt. It's insane. Obama is very simply throttling that to its maximum, all at once.

This is a maxim of our monetary system: On average, every year debt must increase by at least the amount of interest on existing debt. This means that debt must grow at an annually compounded rate, which, in turn, means that debt must grow exponentially. Annually compounded debt growth is not an option for our monetary system to avoid collapse.

When debt growth fails in the private sector, government has no option but to become the proxy for spending. The reason that Bush and Obama put 2 trillion non-existing dollars down on a bailout and a spending package is because the monetary system absolutely demands that, on average, debt increase at the annually compounded rate of the average interest of all existing debt.

The problem with this monetary model is that an even steady rate of increase produces an exponential curve along which the total amount of debt must increase. An exponential curve is theoretically relative to arbitrarily placed x and y axes, but when in the real world it is relative to units that measure finite resources, the range along which the curve happens marks the beginning of the end of the viability of the curve itself. Whereas it may take hundreds of years slowly to approach the curve, once the curve turns the corner it takes only a few short years for it to collide with real-world limitations and disintegrate.

What is happening before our very eyes is, we are turning the corner relative to the capacity of our system to keep up with its own demands for growth. Since growth is equal to an exponential increase of debt within the system, borrowing has to happen exponentially in order to keep the system from collapsing, and if that borrowing is not occuring within the private sector due to a contraction of the system under its own weight, then the government, if it continues to presume that the system must not be allowed to collapse, must become the borrower at exponentially increasing amounts.

This demand of the system to increase debt exponentially one way or another is a truism that is irrespective of party or administration. That's why I think it is a mistake to rally the political troops with partisan rhetoric. If we scapegoat Obama and direct our efforts to a change of administrations, then we will miss any opportunity there still exists to correct the system. In my opinion there is slim to no real possibility that we will correct the system, because it would take massive political will to uproot the entrenched powers that gorge themselves on the system's vulnerabilities. But without question any candidate that either the Republican or Democratic party would nominate for the presidency would be firmly in the pockets of those whose interests in the status quo are too great to allow the kind of fundamental change that might rescue our economy from its current destiny with collapse.

Blaming Obama is barking up the wrong tree, because the ones to blame are the Republican and Democratic parties, equally and without distinction. That is, those who must be stopped are the Republican and Democratic party politicians, who have symbiotically held power during the last century and created the system by which they now theive the American people and bring their economy to its rapid end, obliterating private property on a scale that the policy of a single administration could not achieve over several terms, let alone one or two. Obama's economic recovery plan, at a high level, is only in keeping with the demands of a system that has been created and nurtured by the bi-partisan plutocrats who have been ensconsed in Washington for nearly a century.

[dolfan]

But, the monetary policy is a means to an end for these people, regardless of party. For them all, to the person, the end is power for themselves. The means, then, becomes an end unto itself --- use power in ever increasing proportions and by doing so, gain even more. There is no finish line. That's the problem. If it were otherwise, somebody would stand up and say, and demand to the point of jeopardizing their own safety, that enough is enough. Someone would say that government must be restrained and that the private sector must be allowed to survive or fail largely on its own.

I don't buy this argument that government is to blame for the mortgage crisis due to equal opportunity lending requirements. The same lenders who made credit available to poor, minority or just plain ol' irresponsible borrowers (who are being blamed for this, and to a large degree rightfully so) are the same ones who are now ignoring demands by the government to use bailout money to jump start credit. The fact is that these selfsame lenders were enjoying skyrocketing pie-in-the-sky stock values as much as homeowners were feasting on imaginary atmospheric increases in their home values. The whole thing was a feeding frenzy from the CEO of Citi to your neighbor who is in a Chapter 13. Responsible borrowers who wisely refinanced for the correct reasons and didn't go out and incur new debt to swallow up the cushions that refinancing created in their monthly outlays have paid the highest price because their home values have fallen with those of the "losers" in this situation. Their equity has vanished and they've got only the irresponsible fat-cat bankers and irresponsible skinny-wallet borrowers to look to. Problem is, the same people who created the mess are getting rewarded for it by people (Congress, parties, president) who have everything to gain in terms of power and control by both bailing them out and seizing control of banks as a shareholder.

Now, maybe .... just, maybe .... this strategy with Citi is smart. Maybe the government puts the burden on taxpayers to bail out Citi, Citi keeps its toxic assets, and the taxpayer essentially pays them to do it, making good on as much of the declining value as possible. Then, hopefully, the system corrects somewhat and stabilizes and then the government unloads its Citi shares at a price that restores the taxpayer's "investment". That's the rhetoric we hear, and on the surface you have to hope it is right. But, we haven't had that happen here before, and there's no reason to think that the unprecedented is do-able as long as the folks responsible for making this mess are being called upon to do their own clean up work. "Yes we can" is meaningless, no matter who is saying it now. What it translates to is "yes, you will because we're going to make you." That's not liberty. It shouldn't be up to me, you or any of us to save the system from itself. This is enough of an assault on us that full scale revolution is justifiable. What King George III did to the colonists is nothing compared to this. But, in the age of MTV and MySpace, there's no one who cares.