StrangeSox

There's also this graph showing how consistently growth follows an exponential path.

love the tag

“If you’re younger than 26, you have never seen a month where the global mean was as cold as the 161 year average. ... If you’re 35 or younger, you have never seen a global mean below climate’s real normal.”

QUOTE (bigruss22 @ Aug 4, 2011 -> 10:56 AM) So Mr. Greenberg responded again with: He just doesn't get out that paragraph reads like it what was meant at Soxtalk.com. My response: His response: Very smug. He's either a jackass trying to cover his ass for sloppy, lazy reporting or someone with a limited grasp of how sentences work. Could be both, I guess.

a fair point, thought their stated purpose was to examine a "16 month period around the 2008 US federal elections"

There's also this, from May.

"Imagine, if you will, someone who read only the Wall Street Journal editorial page between 2000 and 2011, and someone in the same period who read only the collected columns of Paul Krugman. Which reader would have been better informed about the realities of the current economic crisis? The answer, I think, should give us pause. Can it be that our enemies were right?" - David Frum.

LOL Ties in nicely with the Salon piece mocking Bolton and his love of endless war forever, pretty sure that was posted here already.

The need to be in fund-raising mode in perpetuity doesn't help.

QUOTE (bigruss22 @ Aug 4, 2011 -> 10:11 AM) Mr. Greenberg's last response: "I'm too lazy to actually do my job and investigate claims, I am no better than a speech-to-text machine"

The corporations are short-sighted because those at the top making the decisions make large personal fortunes for focusing on short-term profitability.

QUOTE (lostfan @ Aug 3, 2011 -> 09:41 PM) The season before that (or the one before that, s*** I forget cuz the seasons all run together) they had spent 108 out of a 109 million salary cap. When is the last time the Bears were hamstrung by a bad contract to some s***ty free agent they grossly overpaid that didn't come anywhere close to meeting expectations? Pretty much never, right? When is the last time they didn't have the flexibility to make a move if they needed to, or to extend a player near the end of his deal? Even when they signed Peppers, they gave him almost all of his guaranteed money in the first year so they could cut bait if it didn't work out (obviously that's not happening but still). You're right, they haven't been cheap lately. I should have said that, but I wanted to point out why their spending binge last year might be a little clouded by other factors.

Democracy Now! is always good

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Aug 3, 2011 -> 07:51 PM) Last off-season they didn't seem that cheap? last offseason the entire management and coaching staffs had their jobs on the line

That's irrelevant to the issue of the US Congress cheering on a foreign official's condemnation of the US President for merely restating long-standing US policy, and then having the ironic outcome of the same foreign official taking the same position as the US President.

CONSTITUTIONALLY MANDATED GOVERNMENT EMPLOYMENT!!!!

Where you could make a philosophical point is the insurance mandate and the broader implications of expanding the commerce clause. That's a pretty expansive view of what government can and cannot regulate.

Ah, my mistake, I thought federal employment was down as well.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 3, 2011 -> 03:53 PM) Nice Rahm quote. And we got the largest expansion of the federal government since the new deal, so he got it. I'm pretty sure the number of government employees is down significantly and the ACA is considerably less expansive than the Great Society and was unrelated to the economic downturn.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 3, 2011 -> 02:57 PM) I left that out there just for you to miss the point. Let me take a stab: These numbers are never available quickly enough and therefore it's impossible to craft good government policy to address them.

If you drop off the ridiculous part of the statement, it raises a legitimate question. How can you implement emergency policy if the true picture doesn't emerge for years?

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Aug 3, 2011 -> 01:41 PM) Because the people have been convinced that deficits are what is causing the stagnant economy. They've been convinced of that because both parties have agreed, said so repeatedly and constantly for 6 months, and because virtually no public figure has stood up and said that the deficit is the only thing keeping us from falling back into recession. Exactly. By validating the Republicans' view that the deficit is our problem, they've cemented the idea that the stimulus was ineffective at best or even detrimental and undermined any future potential for another stimulus. Adopting conservative policy narratives and then working to make them slightly less conservative than the Tea Party would like doesn't exactly warrant a lot of support from liberals. Which is all my original point was: there's good reason to be disaffected right now.

QUOTE (bmags @ Aug 3, 2011 -> 01:48 PM) Yes, this deal will probably hurt the recession, not as much as default, however. But my point is that narrative stood less of a chance if liberals didn't repeatedly remove themselves out of the process. What did you think was going to happen when they didn't vote in 2010, at all, and a wave of "the debt will kill us all" came in? Liberals don't organize unless they are in the minority, but they'll only put in enough work to get into the majority and then stop doing ANYTHING worth a damn. Obama and Congressional Dems could not be giant cowards* and actually fight back against the rhetoric, thus getting their liberal base re-charged? Anything but "adopt far-right economic views and promote contractionary policies in the midst of a terrible recession that's way, way worse than we originally thought?" How, exactly, is that supposed to get the liberals out there and supporting their Democrats? *They're a bunch of neoliberals who actually embrace this policy which is a stronger reason not to vote for them than 'republicans made them do it!' or blaming liberals for failing to force Democrats to enact good policy that are ostensibly party planks.

The easy counter-point here is still "look at the Republicans." Tea Party doesn't represent a majority of Americans. Most Americans want entitlements left alone and want taxes raised on the wealthy/corporations. Even if the Democrats mysteriously have to adopt Republican economic views that say government deficits are stalling our economy and advocate for them often and loudly, why do they need to advocate for a plan that's farther to the right of the general public?

DADT was dead judicially either way. DOMA could likewise be doomed and we're to the point of Republicans passing gay marriage laws. These are victories that are in line with liberal policy, sure, but they're mostly moderate or centrist victories as a majority of the country supports them. You seem to be framing it as "anything not right-wing" is good enough. Politicians can explain why Republicans are wrong instead of adopting their viewpoints and working to come up with bad policy to implement terrible ideology. People were more concerned about jobs, but Democrats never pushed back on the framing. ACA is likely the only major healthcare reform we'll get for decades, and it's largely a pro-private insurance patchwork. Yes, there are benefits here. Yes, Obama's been better than McCain-Palin would have been, undoubtedly. But he's still been a bad President for liberal policy. If anything, liberal economic policy has only been damaged by him. His foreign policy has been a disaster; his record on civil rights in this area worse. When do you say "enough" and stop supporting Democrats just because they're not Republicans?