OK, I'll play this ballgame:

1.) Bush passed first stimulus measures; GOP, after bitching, went along.
2.) Obama didn't promise unemployment wouldn't go over 8%, but rather, some of his people issued a whitepaper, riddled with disclaimers, warning that we could go over 8% without the stimulus.
3.) Economic predictions are increasingly less accurate the further out you make them (One of the disclaimers.)

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Yep. Straight into Iraq....

Replies:
1. The first stimulus was necessary at the time. The minute Obama won the election the conditions changed and it was completely unnecessary from that point on, thus my concrete conclusion that Obama is evil.
2. Bush said it's likely that Saddam has WMD's, but if none were found then the public believe Bush said Saddam certainly had them, thus Bush lied.
3. Well, if that's the case then why make any long range decisions at all?

1.) We'll know after the Christmas season if the C component of GDP has truly started to recover. The I component (business investment) continues to give off conflicting indicators. That leaves G, (Government) because the balance of our exports and imports (X-M) hasn't been in our favor for nearly two generations now.

2.) False equivalency, and to boot, Obama's people specifically did not portray their prognostication as being the only possible interpretation of what was to come.

3.) Making long range decisions based on the economy....it's like predicting the path of a hurricane. We have good models, but the further out the projection goes, and therefore the further out we're trying to plan, the less accurate those predictions will be, and thus, our attempts to make policy based on them need to be more open-ended and adaptable to the realities that actually unfold.

In the case of that specific prediction, we're only about 25% off so far. While that happens to represent a good couple million Americans, in actual practice, it's still close enough for us to say it was a reasonable projection. And in any case, the remedy is the same in either outcome: Government must spend to compensate for failing consumer and investment spending in the short-term, in the hopes of avoiding a deeper fall in the longer-term.

We're no longer talking about falling into a full-bore Depression. That's a really good start. Personally, by the end of Obama's term, I'd like the national discussion to be turning back towards balanced budgets.

"Obama's people specifically did not portray their prognostication as being the only possible interpretation of what was to come."

And Bush did? The UN had already found chemical weapons in Iraq in the mid 1990's, plus Saddam didn't cooperate with the UN, thus the logical conclusion he had more WMD's. PLUS there were other legit reasons for the invasion.

"Personally, by the end of Obama's term, I'd like the national discussion to be turning back towards balanced budgets"

IMPOSSIBLE when the people are spoiled and short sighted. We must re-learn the lessons of the great depression, and make our children suffer because of it. American's are pathetically spoiled and ignorant.

The UN didn't need to find chem weapons, like I said, we checked our invoices to recall that info. That doesn't make up for Bush suckering Powell into getting up before the UN and making all those bogus claims about nuclear weapons research.

More importantly, you're talking two things that are separated by orders of magnitude in terms of both their relative importance and their relative truth value.

"we checked our invoices to recall that info"

Please cite your sources that prove we provided them chemical weapons. The fact is, other nations armed Iraq.

"you're talking two things that are separated by orders of magnitude"

What exactly do you mean by this? That chemical weapons aren't a big deal and only nukes are? Would a chemical weapon detonated in your neighborhood change your mind?

Pfft. Why do you think that famous photo of Don Rumsfeld being greeted by Saddam exists? I doubt Rummy was there to discuss Saddam's ideas on decorative rugs.

But, in any case, hereyago, courtesy of a five-second Google search....

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Now, you wanna talk about who sold Saddam all his T72 tanks and outmoded MiGs, well, obviously, that was the Soviets. But we --and our NATO allies-- provided the chemicals and biological agents he used against Iran, with our tacit blessing, and later the Kurds, to our slight-but-inadequate chagrin.

Oops!

First link cites Wikipedia, which is not a neutral source when it comes to political issues. That's why many universities do not allow wikipedia as a source for items of those subjects. Further, the comment on wikipedia is from Donald Riegle who is a democrat, thus it's to be dismissed as typical political bias.

If we sold Saddam lead pencils, and that lead was melted into bullets, then according to your logic we are guilty of proving him ingredients to make weapons with.

This was dual-use technology. Also, why didn't you acknowledge that the anthrax strain is useful for livestock research? Because we didnt sell a weaponized version, we sold the SAME VERSION WE SELL TO MANY OTHER COUNTRIES.

Now, tell me, what killed the most Iranians? Chemical weapons or soviet bullets? Of course we know it's bullets, thus your argument has little value. If we sold bleach that was made into mustard gas, well, so what?

What next, we should not send fertilizer to poor nations because someday they might make it into bombs?

What do you have against the people who are starting in africa, how dare you deny them their human rights by refusing to supply them with free fertilizer paid for with the tax money of responsible american citizens?

As for your second link, it clearly states that non-american firms provided the chemicals to Iraq. And what America provided was "Thiodiglycol has both polar and nonpolar solvent properties. It is used as a solvent in a variety of applications ranging from dyeing textiles to inks in some ballpoint pens. In chemical synthesis, it is used as a building block for protection products, dispersants, fibers, plasticizers, rubber accelerators, pesticides, dyes, and various other organic chemicals. In the manufacture of polymers, it is used as a chain transfer agent. As an antioxidant, it is used as an additive in lubricants."

What do you have against iraqi's having lubricants?

Wow, a Straw Man built entirely of Red Herrings. You're really furthering the art of fallacy. Karl Rove would be impressed with you.

Oh, and only an idiot would sell a guy like Hussein ingredients that could be used to make WMD, and then assume that he is not doing precisely that. Are you calling Ronald Reagan and his cabinet a bunch of idiots, Dick?

Oh, I'm committing logical fallacies, eh?

Let's see, did I claim Saddam had WMD's that we provided him? NOPE.
Did I claim we gave him WMD's chemicals? NOPE.
Did I ignore the fact that Europeans and others gave him the real chemicals and weapons, and instead blame my own country while ignoring the majority contribution from other countries?

Yeah, I'm really making errors of logic.

You're an idiot.

You keep having this problem with reading the actual words I'm actually typing. I specifically mentioned "our NATO allies".

You "debunked" one link out of six provided, and that by simply dismissing something in it as false purely on the basis that a Democrat said it. Strong work.

"Strong work."

Thank you for acknowledging the amount of time and effort I placed into addressing an issue that doesn't really exist beyond political rhetoric, as in we are not guilty of arming saddam in the grand scheme of things. I see you missing the entire train of thought that perhaps helping saddam was the right choice at the time, especially considering that Iran's government was born from a lie. Both iran and iraq served the world best by weakening each other, because they're both camel riding tribal nomad scumbags.

I see you missing the point that we pushed war on the basis of him developing nuclear WMD, then we only found evidence of the chemical/biological weapons we helped him obtain. If you can't see the egg-on-face that accrues from that, I can't help you.

Are you one of the maroons who paid big bucks to watch Dubya talk about his dog Barney at that "success seminar" in Dallas? You ask me, the organizers of that event made such a poor choice of speaker that they should be sued into bankruptcy for false advertising.

The simple fact is that George Walker Bush failed at every single thing he ever, ever turned his hand to.....except running a baseball team. (I wish to hell Major League Baseball would've considered him for Commissioner; he'dve been happier, and this country would be a helluva lot better off for it, too.)

"then we only found evidence of the chemical/biological weapons we helped him obtain"

I never saw you come up with any good evidence that we provided saddam with WMD's.

"George Walker Bush failed at every single thing he ever, ever turned his hand to."

Well, considering that he was re-elected, that says a lot about America doesn't it?

I remember him failing at social security overhaul, because the democrats would not assist, they just insisted there was no problem with social security. When you're old and gray, remember that.

I see no evidence that Gore or Kerry would have been wonderful presidents. Please explain how we did not end up with the lesser of the evils? Or did you forget to give that any thought?

Do you have an MBA degree from an ivy league school like Bush does? Oh, wait, let me guess, you'll discount that too since his rich daddy bought and paid for it too, right?

What next, are you going to claim how wonderful Obama is because he SUCCEEDED at EARNING a nobel peace prize?

- Dick

Yeah, because a guy that's sitting on a big-ass oil field really needed those chemicals we sent along for lubricants and solvents.



Yeah, it sure does. Not sure we're drawing the same conclusion from that, though. FWIW, I do put some measure of blame at the Democrats' feet for nominating Kerry in 2004. But I think Gore would've been just a mediocre President, but that would've put him a couple steps up on Dubya.



Ha! As I recall, Bush wanted to put Social Security funds in the stock market. That would've worked out real well. And he couldn't pass THAT, despite his party owning both houses of Congress at the time. The blame for Social Security's "insolvency" accrues to both parties across the last forty years; if that "fund" had been left alone, it'd have trillions of dollars in it today. Can you say "lockbox"?



Yeah, because C- Yalies routinely gain admission to Harvard's MBA program, whether their daddy is VP at that moment or not.



Quite the opposite; I wince every time somebody gives him an accolade that he has the potential to achieve, but hasn't yet put in the time to deserve. That was only one such incident among many.

how come all the liberal democrats think that they are not racist? Has any "minority" called your honky cracker ass whitey looking ass a racial epithet? of course not! Minorities are just a loving all inclusive people.... unless you are a cracker ass honky. however white women are given a pass. because the minorities can fuck them and spread their genes. stupid ass white women are a dime a dozen.