The Many Faces of US Politics...

[Eamonnca1]

...yet another empty vessel, echo chambered non-response rather than
face the music and explain how, with all of the "vastly superior" media outlets that you lads subscribe to... could have possibly gotten this clown oh so terribly wrong   

You think this clown would have done a better job? 

[Tyrones own]

...yet another empty vessel, echo chambered non-response rather than
face the music and explain how, with all of the "vastly superior" media outlets that you lads subscribe to... could have possibly gotten this clown oh so terribly wrong   

You think this clown would have done a better job? 

Remind me of when exactly that she ran for president?

[Tyrones own]

It'd be swell if you actually bothered reading what you are purporting to be responding to.

It's be swell then if you'd post exactly what it is you're trying to get across... That graph that you posted was from 2001 and I told you as much.

You call it shooting the messenger. I call it ignoring people who have a record in being utterly, profoundly, completely wrong.

Does that go for Obummer's record as well then 

And before say that I worship at the altar of Obama, I do not. I subscribe to Paul Krugman's philosophy on the current crisis, one that a) has been highly critical of Obama, and b) has consistently been correct in predicting the outcome of policy choices

Is this the one;
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/15/paul-krugman-fake-alien-invasion_n_926995.html

I rest my case in dealing with you fecking clowns 

[Eamonnca1]

Remind me of when exactly that she ran for president?

She ran for VP as a running mate to a man who was so old that he would have dropped dead from heart failure long before now if (god forbid) he won the election. Hence, she'd be President now. Scary thought, isn't it?

[Tyrones own]

So someone explained the difference in a President and a vice President since you posted it...got it!

[Eamonnca1]

That's nice. Who do you think would be the better President? Obama or Sarah "I'm gonna be a media whore for another few months by making them think I'm going to run" Palin?

[Tyrones own]

Neither of them!...try to get up a bit earlier to come with questions like that FFS
What's with the hateful fascination with Palin anyway?
The shine has come well and truly off of the anointed when you're now reduced
to comparing him to Palin

[Eamonnca1]

The shine has come well and truly off of the anointed when you're now reduced
to comparing him to Palin

So you admit that she's a brain-dead bimbo who's not even fit to lick Obama's boots? I suppose that's progress.

[Tyrones own]

The shine has come well and truly off of the anointed when you're now reduced
to comparing him to Palin

So you admit that she's a brain-dead bimbo who's not even fit to lick Obama's boots? I suppose that's progress.

Jeez, hardly noticed your little immature switcharoo there
You sir... are an out and out clown!

[Oraisteach]

TO, sorry to be pedantic, but a few panels up you said, "I rest my case in dealing with you fecking clowns", but now you're engaging with one of these "clowns".  Please be true to your word.  Your case is rested.  Let it rest in peace.

[Tyrones own]

Too late and no...you're not a bit sorry!
Where's the fun in letting it go when there's
clearly still vast amounts of denial on here
that has to be dealt with

[seafoid]

The internet is amazing. It would never have been possible to sit at home an ocean away and watch this
video when Bush 1 was in charge. This man is also from Texas and he could be the Republican candidate for President. .


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4c5lDszsw68&NR=1

Jesus is of course an American. He wants 1% of Americans to control 23% of all income.
Never mind the what the Tea Party have done to f**k the economy.
Repent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVHhn-c3Kr4

[heganboy]

Just for TO,

a pro Sarah Palin piece in the New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/10/us/10iht-currents10.html

Some of Sarah Palin's Ideas Cross the Political Divide
By ANAND GIRIDHARADAS
Published: September 9, 2011

 

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS — Let us begin by confessing that, if Sarah Palin surfaced to say something intelligent and wise and fresh about the present American condition, many of us would fail to hear it.

That is not how we're primed to see Ms. Palin. A pugnacious Tea Partyer? Sure. A woman of the people? Yup. A Mama Grizzly? You betcha.

But something curious happened when Ms. Palin strode onto the stage last weekend at a Tea Party event in Indianola, Iowa. Along with her familiar and predictable swipes at President Barack Obama and the "far left," she delivered a devastating indictment of the entire U.S. political establishment — left, right and center — and pointed toward a way of transcending the presently unbridgeable political divide.

The next day, the "lamestream" media, as she calls it, played into her fantasy of it by ignoring the ideas she unfurled and dwelling almost entirely on the will-she-won't-she question of her presidential ambitions.

So here is something I never thought I would write: a column about Sarah Palin's ideas.

There was plenty of the usual Palin schtick — words that make clear that she is not speaking to everyone but to a particular strain of American: "The working men and women of this country, you got up off your couch, you came down from the deer stand, you came out of the duck blind, you got off the John Deere, and we took to the streets, and we took to the town halls, and we ended up at the ballot box."

But when her throat was cleared at last, Ms. Palin had something considerably more substantive to say.

She made three interlocking points. First, that the United States is now governed by a "permanent political class," drawn from both parties, that is increasingly cut off from the concerns of regular people. Second, that these Republicans and Democrats have allied with big business to mutual advantage to create what she called "corporate crony capitalism." Third, that the real political divide in the United States may no longer be between friends and foes of Big Government, but between friends and foes of vast, remote, unaccountable institutions (both public and private).

In supporting her first point, about the permanent political class, she attacked both parties' tendency to talk of spending cuts while spending more and more; to stoke public anxiety about a credit downgrade, but take a vacation anyway; to arrive in Washington of modest means and then somehow ride the gravy train to fabulous wealth. She observed that 7 of the 10 wealthiest counties in the United States happen to be suburbs of the nation's capital.

Her second point, about money in politics, helped to explain the first. The permanent class stays in power because it positions itself between two deep troughs: the money spent by the government and the money spent by big companies to secure decisions from government that help them make more money.

"Do you want to know why nothing ever really gets done?" she said, referring to politicians. "It's because there's nothing in it for them. They've got a lot of mouths to feed — a lot of corporate lobbyists and a lot of special interests that are counting on them to keep the good times and the money rolling along."

Because her party has agitated for the wholesale deregulation of money in politics and the unshackling of lobbyists, these will be heard in some quarters as sacrilegious words.

Ms. Palin's third point was more striking still: in contrast to the sweeping paeans to capitalism and the free market delivered by the Republican presidential candidates whose ranks she has yet to join, she sought to make a distinction between good capitalists and bad ones. The good ones, in her telling, are those small businesses that take risks and sink and swim in the churning market; the bad ones are well-connected megacorporations that live off bailouts, dodge taxes and profit terrifically while creating no jobs.

Strangely, she was saying things that liberals might like, if not for Ms. Palin's having said them.

"This is not the capitalism of free men and free markets, of innovation and hard work and ethics, of sacrifice and of risk," she said of the crony variety. She added: "It's the collusion of big government and big business and big finance to the detriment of all the rest — to the little guys. It's a slap in the face to our small business owners — the true entrepreneurs, the job creators accounting for 70 percent of the jobs in America."

Is there a hint of a political breakthrough hiding in there?

The political conversation in the United States is paralyzed by a simplistic division of labor. Democrats protect that portion of human flourishing that is threatened by big money and enhanced by government action. Republicans protect that portion of human flourishing that is threatened by big government and enhanced by the free market.

What is seldom said is that human flourishing is a complex and delicate thing, and that we needn't choose whether government or the market jeopardizes it more, because both can threaten it at the same time.

Ms. Palin may be hinting at a new political alignment that would pit a vigorous localism against a kind of national-global institutionalism.

On one side would be those Americans who believe in the power of vast, well-developed institutions like Goldman Sachs, the Teamsters Union, General Electric, Google and the U.S. Department of Education to make the world better. On the other side would be people who believe that power, whether public or private, becomes corrupt and unresponsive the more remote and more anonymous it becomes; they would press to live in self-contained, self-governing enclaves that bear the burden of their own prosperity.

No one knows yet whether Ms. Palin will actually run for president. But she did just get more interesting.

[LeoMc]

Never thought I would say it but that Sarah Palin bit seems to make sense.... at first read anyway.

[Eamonnca1]

That's why I say, I like ever American I'm speaking with were ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the tax payers looking to bailout. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up the economy– Helping the — Oh, it's got to be about job creation too. Shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americas. A And trade we've got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive scary thing. But 1 in 5 jobs being created in the trade sector today. We've got to look at that as more opportunity. ALL those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.