[quote]JeffR wrote:
Kerry was a poor choice from the get-go.
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Wow, if the wrong candidate is tied with your candidate and has a legitimate shot at beating him, I wonder what “the right” candidate would have done?!
DLM:
We haven’t seen unemployment at the level of France since the Carter stagflation days. If we had unemployment the level of Belgium we wouldn’t need to be debating politics, because Bush would be headed out of town on a rail. Our economy is more efficient, and more productive, than European economies, and some of the reasons for that are our tax system, our more relaxed labor laws and the fact our welfare system gives fewer disincentives to work.
As for poverty, I have a few questions. First, how does Belgium define poverty? We don’t count the value of benefits that we pay when calculating the poverty stats, so increasing the value of the welfare we provide actually wouldn’t impact the poverty statistics that worry you so. What would affect those statistics is lower unemployment and more economic growth.
Now, there are certain segments of society that don’t benefit as much from the rising economic tide – these tend to be the unskilled and undereducated. Pumping money into welfare won’t help them get ahead either, but it does work as a nice disincentive to work, as was demonstrated when we reformed our welfare system back in the 90s.
BTW, there are a lot of black immigrants – not to the level of the Hispanics, but a lot of black people from the Caribbean immigrate here, and we also have a small amount of African immigration. Note that while smaller overall, as a proportion of the black population, which constitutes only around 11% of the population, it is higher.
One other small note on immigration – as many immigrants tend to be unskilled and undereducated, who do you think they compete with for jobs? I don’t begrudge immigrants jobs, and I think they add quite a bit to our economy – a lot more before you take out medicare and welfare benefits – but the simple fact is that people with similar skills and education levels compete for jobs, and depress the wages for those jobs.
THe solution to that problem, in my mind, is reforming the education system and controlling illegal immigration – what wouldn’t help is handing out more money.
RSU,
“Wow, if the wrong candidate is tied with your candidate and has a legitimate shot at beating him, I wonder what “the right” candidate would have done?!”
Tied?
Been keeping up?
You know what’s sad, Anyone but Bush.
That’s what you have now.
In my eyes, the right candidate would have been Joe Lieberman.
If it had been, the debate would have been more far reaching and constructive.
Anyone think Joe would have spent 95% of the debates ripping on W? Offering no true vision? Regurgitating tired slogans?
No way. Joe would have been looking forward. Setting out his agenda.
For instance, how to WIN in Iraq.
Not “wrong war in the wrong place,” I’ll win because I’m not George Bush.
Dumb.
JeffR
JeffR wrote:
I appreciate your honesty.
Thank you.
At least you accept the inevitable.
If that is the way it is, I will live with it. He’s bad for the country, but I’m lucky to be a white, attractive, married male with arian looking children and a good business that is growing. Other than my disdain for the prez., there is no real effect he will have on me personally except my twofamiliy members, a brother and cousin who are going back for a second for a second tour
Kerry was a poor choice from the get-go.
He wasn’t my first choice, but I’ll take him.
Are you angry that the Dems chose him over Lieberman?
Lieberment has his tongue so far up Bush’s ass he can taste his food for ihm
I would be.
I agree with you fully on the reforming of the educational system, but I believe Medicaid and Unemployment have a huge effect on the education of children. I personally know one girl who dropped out of school at 14 yrs old (not legal but no one at her school cared) to work in a nearby tobacco farm for under the table payments to pay for her mother’s medical expenses and food for her baby brother. Her father, a college graduate, could not find a job in the county he lived in other than odd jobs for a local minister and manual labor at a tobacco farm. The poverty rate in this county was over 30% of the population. This was in Kentucky not exactly a place with high levels of immigrants living there.
This seems unacceptable to me. No child should have to drop out of school to help support their family, no reforming of the educational program could help this, other than maybe arresting her and escorting her to school so she can’t work for her family. Also, even if she had graduated high school, there were no local colleges within driving distance, and she still had to have a full time job (if thats what farm labor can be called) to pay for her family’s food. (No TV, phone, running water) Government money needs to be spent to give jobs to those who want them and are willing to work. Also nationwide health care needs to be established. I’m sorry but I don’t see income and therefore usually level of education reason for letting a person die. (Sure you may be able to get into the emergency room but try getting a heart transplant with no money).
I agree handing out money would not fix the problem, but it may allow children to go to school if they don’t have to get a job. And I’m not proposing giving unemployed people enough to live on, but rather giving them the opportunity to work.
And by the way I think your point of living costs in different areas is very valid, and I think many people would be thrilled by a tax system that took this into consideration. Sadly, it doesn’t look as though this will happen in the immediate future.
DLM: “Government money needs to be spent to give jobs to those who want them and are willing to work”
I completely disagree with that; in your example, if you can’t find work and you have a college degree, why did you get that degree? why dont you move somewhere where there are jobs? I support welfare being given in a transition stage here, but if his daughter is 14, and he has a college degree and no job, was he unemployed for 14 years?
Good point man, good point. If you’re living in a desert, don’t complain about the lack of water. Get the hell outta the damn desert!
Just my .02 I think leberman is a really good politician. I get the sense that he is really trying to make a difference and not just blowing smoke up peoples asses. You never hear anyone rip on him because he is pretty solid all around. If he won the Dem nomination, I probably would have voted for him. He destroyed the other nominees on substance in the primary debates but they were in a battle of who hates bush more and the dems were eating it all up. Lieberman is by far the best Dem he just isn’t very flashy so he wont likely ever be president.
Vegita ~ Prince of all Sayajins
DLM: “Government money needs to be spent to give jobs to those who want them and are willing to work”
So you think that the gov’t - armed with more of our money- can do a better job of creating jobs than those who are in business for their livelihoods?
Why doesn’t the gov’t quit taking so much of my money so that I can hire more people?
I had an Economics course back in 1996-97, and I learned that 5% unemployment is statistical full employment. That’s been several years ago, and right at the heals of the huge boom we had, so maybe the numbers have changed.
But the low level of unemployment we have had cannot be helped by getting the gov’t involved, unless you want to take even more incentives for growth off the table.
Back to the thread…this is a portion of an article on the Times site today:
…And that is why his surprise attack on the hosts of CNN’s “Crossfire” was so satisfying last Friday. Exchanging his usual goofy teasing for withering contempt, he told Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson that they were partisan hacks and that their pro-wrestling approach to political discourse was “hurting America.” (He also used an epithet for the male reproductive organ to describe Mr. Carlson.)
Real anger is as rare on television as real discussion. Presidential candidates no longer address each other directly in debates. Guests on the “Tonight” show or “Oprah” are scripted monologuists who pitch their latest projects and humor the host. It has been decades since talk-show guests conversed with one another, yet there was a time when famous people held long and at times legendarily hostile discussions (Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley Jr. on ABC in 1968, Mary McCarthy and Lillian Hellman on “The Dick Cavett Show” in 1980).
Nowadays, live television meltdowns seem to be pathological, not political - Janet Jackson baring a breast during the Super Bowl or Farrah Fawcett babbling incoherently to David Letterman.
The fuming partisan rants on Fox News or “Real Time With Bill Maher” are aimed at the converted. And celebrities, like politicians, stay on message and stick to talking points, which may help explain the popularity of “Celebrity Poker” - it gives viewers a rare, unfiltered glimpse of stars’ real personalities as they handle a bad hand or a humiliating bluff.
Mr. Stewart’s frankness was a cool, startling, rational version of Senator Zell Miller’s loony excoriation (“Get out of my face”) to Chris Matthews of MSNBC during the Republican convention.
The transcript of Friday’s “Crossfire,” and the blog commentary about it, popped up all over the Internet this weekend. Mr. Stewart’s Howard Beal (of “Network”) outburst stood out because he said what a lot of viewers feel helpless to correct: that news programs, particularly on cable, have become echo chambers for political attacks, amplifying the noise instead of parsing the misinformation. Whether the issue is Swift boat ads or Bill O’Reilly’s sexual harassment suit, shows like “Crossfire” or “Hardball” provide gladiator-style infotainment as journalists clownishly seek to amuse or rile viewers, not inform them.
When Mr. Carlson took the offense, charging that Mr. Stewart had no right to complain since he had asked Senator John Kerry softball questions on “The Daily Show,” Mr. Stewart looked genuinely appalled. “I didn’t realize - and maybe this explains quite a bit - that the news organizations look to Comedy Central for their cues on integrity.” When Mr. Carlson continued to argue, Mr. Stewart shut him down hard. “You are on CNN,” he said. “The show that leads into me is puppets making crank phone calls.” …
RSU:
I rather more appreciate Ann Althouse’s fisking of that Times story:
“He … used an epithet for the male reproductive organ to describe Mr. Carlson.”
The NYT takes on the “Daily Show”/“Crossfire” controversy. Because how could the NYT ever miss an opportunity to fawn over Jon Stewart? The angle here–by TV critic Alessandra Staley–is that “real anger” is a wondrous rarity in television. So even though “there is nothing more painful than watching a comedian turn self-righteous”–as the piece begins–Jon Stewart was just “lashing out at great smug and self-serving television-news personalities.”
If Stewart was great because he displayed real anger at “smug and self-serving television-news personalities,” then surely you’ll also love the way Zell Miller told Chris Matthews to “get out of my face”?
Uh, no, let’s see, I’ll go with: “Mr. Stewart’s frankness was a cool, startling, rational version of Senator Zell Miller’s loony excoriation (“Get out of my face”) to Chris Matthews of MSNBC during the Republican convention.” Yes, that’s the ticket! Stewart is really angry but he’s still cool, he’s rational! And Miller’s crazy!
Hah! Miller isn’t crazy. Miller was just damn mad at the exasperating and rude Matthews. And Miller was way more entertaining in his display of real anger than Stewart was. I’m sorry. I’m going to have to call political bias on the NYT. I mean, look at this:
"[T]he Comedy Central star mocks the entire political process, boring in tightly on the lockstep thinking and complacency of the parties and the media as well as the candidates. More than other television analysts and commentators, he and his writers put a spotlight on the inanities and bland hypocrisies that go mostly unnoticed in the average news cycle.
Mr. Stewart is very funny, but it is the vein of "a plague on both your houses" indignation that has made his show a cult favorite: many younger voters are turning to the "The Daily Show" for their news analysis, and are better served there than on much of what purports to be real news on cable."
Do you even watch this show you love so much, or are you so blinded by partisanship that you don’t see that the show has become practically an arm of the Kerry campaign?
The disturbing thing to me is how much some of this thread resembles the stuff Stewart is talking about: empty stereotyping and sloganeering rather than honest discussion of issues: “Bush is a pretend cowboy jackass, Kerry is an effete fop. Republicans have been wrong in what they’ve done. Oh yeah, well the Democratic record is no better.” There isn’t very much talk at all about what either candidate in office would entail for the future of this country–real talk anyway, rather than backwoods hick or freshman college-level paranoia.
Consider this: folks, not matter who was right or wrong about Iraq, we have a very, very serious problem there now, and it’s not getting better. Contary to what this administration is depicting, the insurgency is growing and getting worse, not the other way around. The ideology of should we have or shouldn’t we have is now irrelevant; whether Bush and company werw wrong ideologically matters much less than the bold and glaring fact that they were wrong in planning. Experienced military minds told the President and the Defense Department that 300,000 to 500,000 troops would be needed at minimum to pull this off, they didn’t listen, and we tried to pull it off with 100,000. We have failed. Less than 5% of the “reconstruction” money has been spent on rebuilding because of the untenable security, and frighteningly, those funds are starting to shift towards security-- in simple terms, we are now officially "baling out’ a ship that is doomed to sink. Incredibly, the President is refusing to admit a misstep, let alone talk about how we might fix this problem. As far as he’s concerned, we’re “finishing the job.” This is madness. The man and his cronies are utterly unfit for the job of commander in chief.
Our budget problems are worsening. It is not a coincidence that no other President before this one has passed a large tax cut during wartime. It is foolish, plain and simple. I don’t want to hear the bull about economic growth-- historically, wars that determine the fututre security of states have required large sacrifices in material wealth and convenience. In world war two, we were rationing metal and food, for god’s sake. There is no excuse for short-changing the ability of our soldiers in the field to defend themselves in the name of “generating more consumer spending.” Is this society nuts? Between 650 and 850, the Byzantine Empire dealt with severe crises that shook its very foundation. The economy during this time not stopped growing, it ceased entirely and retracted! Yet the Empire pulled through and during the 900s experienced the height of its power and prosperity. Fat men in business suits can’t stop wringing their hands over the economic growth of this country-- yes, it’s important, but there are more important things to think about: LONG TERM things that make the affluent American’s ability to feasibly buy another car with more horsepower pale by comparison.
I don’t want to make this go on for too long, so for right now, I’ll stick specifically with these issues. And please, Bush supporters, for once-- defend your President on the issues; don’t give me the “Democrats would be much worse” line and don’t switch the argument to another issue. Show some of the ‘moral clarity’ you all rave about and stick to the point at hand. you might have noticed I left John Kerry out. You know why? I’m disgusted with him for reasons I also don’t want to get into, due to post length. Don’t give me a reason not to vote for John Kerry. I already have plenty of those. Give me a reason why I should vote for Bush on these issues despite my misgivings.
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
Yes, that’s the ticket! Stewart is really angry but he’s still cool, he’s rational! And Miller’s crazy!
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Uh, yes, this is exactly right!
BB – you don’t think Stewart’s points were dead on?