You and a number of others here clearly do not understand what “elitism” means. It has nothing to do with how much money you may have or how you grew up or whether you attend more or less necessary events for Congress. It has everything to do with a state of mind.

There may be a tax here, or a regulation there, that can be both reasonable and palatable. You all seem to act as if that is NOT possible.

ernesto on October 23, 2008 at 10:33 PM

Got no problem with intelligent regulation. It was the Republicans who repeatedly tried to increase regulation of FM and FM.

But increasing taxes in the currently tanked economy are absolutely not the answer. Increasing taxation, while also increasing spending is a guarantee for disaster. Surely you understand this.

You also make the assumption that we are unwilling to work together to find a solution. Not so. I contend that the far left controlled dems consider Conservatives a mortal enemy and have been and will work against Conservatives at every opportunity.

Reaching across the aisle has not worked for the GOP. The dems don’t want to work together. They want complete capitulation. They want to dominate and control the GOP for the petty sake of power alone. The behavior of the dems in the House and Senate is disgraceful. I’ve seen high school kangaroo courts with more dignity.

All i ever ask is why i should accept that adhering to the same guidelines that have driven this current president will produce different results.

ernesto on October 23, 2008 at 10:33 PM

But you’re failing to realize that the results over the past 8 years have been truly amazing. You don’t agree with Bush’s policies. I get that. I will even agree with you on several, most likely.

Bush was elected and immediately contested by gore, and then we got attacked, the internet bubble burst, the wall street scandals went down, we had Iraq and Afghanistan, etc.

Despite all that, we came back amazingly quick from every one of those major hits and have enjoyed a prosperity level seldom seen in our history. This despite the media, in lockstep with the dems every inch of the way, attacking the success constantly to a point where it’s now Orwellian. I’m all for reasoned dissent, but this has been open sedition.

I’ve watched the countryside property around me be built up into enormous new communities with local businesses flourishing, never more vigorously than the past 8 years. I see affluence even at the lowest levels of society.

Do I give Bush credit for all of it? No. He, like Clinton, doesn’t really deserve the bulk of the credit, no matter what ‘conventional wisdom’ says. I mostly credit the American People who have always been extremely resilient, productive, and successful. When it comes down to it, we’re the ones that really make the wheels go ’round. The politicians usually just screw things up. We generate the income the politicians misuse.

I know you didn’t say it, but I’m sick of the implied ‘worst economy ever’ and ‘squeezed middle class’, and the soup line poor-mouthing of America’s economy. It’s just not true. You must have never lived through a truely bad economy.

I remember living through the carter years waiting in line for gas for hours, and interest rates being 18%, the misery index, etc. It sucked. You know what sucked more? I voted for carter. I brought it upon myself. Actions have consequences.

But our recent economy? Have you not seen the outrageous number of decked out Hummers and Escalades, and Lincolns out there as you’re out and about? I, for one, am stunned at the common and open displays of wealth I’ve been seeing for several years. And it’s not just us evil white folks either. I see every race, creed, and color showing that prosperity. Bling bling.

America still has enough voters with strong senses of preservation. People are finally focused and looking for info about the candidates and a lot of them are going to notice that the messiah’s halo is a little more than tarnished during the next two weeks. They’re going to find out that they just might’ve been bamboozled. After the shock wears off, they’ll think about it, vote for McC, and then spend a while questioning everything they think they know. Just like I did after carter.

Visualize Victory.

Gaah. Here is a verbatim quote from you above “lower taxes on businesses and so on…and where are our job numbers now?” There is a very clear implication on your part that one is the cause of the other. It is safe to say that no economic sector other than the government failed because its taxes were too low.

And you are engaging in another fallacy, that idea that social and economic problems would not have manifested themselves if some other policy were in place. This is not always true. If a business fails when its tax burden is relieved, all that tells you is that the same business — like the donkey — would have failed even more catastrophically if its burden were higher.

You think you are kind of like a football coach who wants to throw out the old playbook because he is losing games, which is a fair enough conceit. But then you are essentially saying that the new playbook won’t involve passing or running because that’s been proven to fail, and every player on the team has to wear a 80 pound backpack full of sand on the field and that will somehow help things because it’s different from what you were doing before which was proven to be a failure. Well, good luck with that.

techno_barbarian on October 23, 2008 at 10:30 PM
shazbat on October 23, 2008 at 10:17 PM

I never made the case for government intervention or socialism or barack obama’s policies. All i ever ask is why i should accept that adhering to the same guidelines that have driven this current president will produce different results. Im not saying the other extreme is correct, im saying that arguing from the extremes makes it impossible to actually SOLVE the problem. There may be a tax here, or a regulation there, that can be both reasonable and palatable. You all seem to act as if that is NOT possible.

To tax is to burden. A donkey won’t walk faster uphill if you throw two more sacks of grain on his back. If you throw ten heavy sacks of grain on a donkey’s back and send him uphill, and when he slows you take two of those sacks off, if the donkey collapses sometime later, do you say, “His collapse happened because I lightened his burden, because I stopped taxing him. It would have been better if I had left those two sacks on.” post hoc ergo propter hoc To tax is to burden. Repeat, to tax is to burden. Lightening that burden doesn’t guarantee perfection, but it does guarantee that things are better than they would have been. I can’t believe I have to point out such a simple truth.

shazbat on October 23, 2008 at 10:17 PM

Well put. I can not understand why idiot dems insist that tax cuts are stealing from the government. It doesn’t make any sense. Lower taxes always result in much greater revenues for government. Taxes have exactly the inverse effect, and have the bonus effect of killing economies.

It just doesn’t make any sense to be pro-tax. Things will get fixed much faster if we’re not taxed to death.

economics are more complex than “pro growth policy” and domestic social issues are more complex than “elitist”…

ernesto on October 23, 2008 at 8:48 PM

What you say is true enough. But because economics and domestic social(ist) issues are complex does not mean they are unknowable and does not mean they cannot be solved. But the answer is NOT more government or socialism, which is what we’re heading for if we don’t pull our heads out of our asses.

The challenge we have right now is a battle of ideologies, Free Market Capitalism against socialist communism. I’m on the Capitalist side because that is the side that enables freedom and prosperity.

I’m against socialism because it seeks to destroy my incentive to be independent. It seeks to prey on me rob me, and give the fruits of my labor to those who are unwilling or unable to make their own way.

“you idiot liberals destroyed everything”…

ernesto on October 23, 2008 at 8:48 PM

Sure it goes back further than 2 years. Back past Clinton, who opened the door, making things much worse, all the way to the worst president ever, Carter… um, you dolt.

I’m not trying to absolve the GOP from their share of the blame; W spent like a democrat for the past 8 years. But for you to imply that the dems were and are not at the heart of this financial crisis is just ignorant of the facts.

And I said nothing at all about elitists, though I very much believe that those who consider themselves elite are deluded.

You are engaging in a logical fallacy, post hoc ergo propter hoc. Just because the economy is doing poorly doesn’t mean that low taxes on corporations caused the problem. I’d like to see your argument how higher corporate taxes would help an economy. To tax is to burden. A donkey won’t walk faster uphill if you throw two more sacks of grain on his back. If you throw ten heavy sacks of grain on a donkey’s back and send him uphill, and when he slows you take two of those sacks off, if the donkey collapses sometime later, do you say, “His collapse happened because I lightened his burden, because I stopped taxing him. It would have been better if I had left those two sacks on.” post hoc ergo propter hoc To tax is to burden. Repeat, to tax is to burden. Lightening that burden doesn’t guarantee perfection, but it does guarantee that things are better than they would have been. I can’t believe I have to point out such a simple truth.

Pencil skirts are a pain. If she was standing up the skirt would probably be to the middle of her knee but when you sit down in those suckers they creep up and it is a constant battle to keep it down.

techno_barbarian on October 23, 2008 at 8:39 PM

This economic insanity goes waaaaaay further than the last 2 years you dolt. To insist that the entire financial mess was the cause of housing market distortion is to ignore 4/5′s of the damn problem!

The policies to address for this crisis go all round…Monetary policy from greenspan, housing policy from liberals (with a republican controlled congress at the time…jeez)…the “ownership society” rhetoric and banking deregulation agenda of the Bush administration…the “all risk is good risk” financial managers like Hank Paulson…so dont give me that “you idiot liberals destroyed everything”…

all im saying is that when we decide to latch onto one facet of an issue and incessantly harp on it we lose sight of the issue and no one solves it. economics are more complex than “pro growth policy” and domestic social issues are more complex than “elitist”…

Just like when people use the term “pro growth policies” to defend McCain…those are the same policies Bush evoked…lower taxes on businesses and so on…and where are our job numbers now? where are the growth numbers now? blind adherence to silly generic musings like “elitist” and “pro growth policy” sooner or later falls over itself…kind of like our economy under the current administration…

ernesto on October 23, 2008 at 6:46 PM

The dems own the current state of the economy. The economy WAS terrific under Bush. The dems, (many of them, but specifically Franks, Dodd, Waters, Raines, Obama, etc…) were the ones who tanked things, after being in charge of congress for the past two years.

Yes. Look at the job numbers now. Look at the damage your precious idiot dems have done to this country.

$150,000 well spent.

- The Cat

P.S. This is how we’ll beat Putin. Palin will distract him and McCain will hit him over the head with her hockey stick.

CC – BHO: “my Muslim faith”

The One leads, according to some polls, by as much as 15 or 16 points? We don’t need Iowa; we need some combination of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Colorado — and Ohio and Indiana, needless to say. What am I missing here?

Obviously you don’t know what they know. Given the money difference and the time constraints, I hardly think they are going to toss away time that is not well spent. Why don’t we see what the REAL Iowa poll shows on Nov 4.

CC – BHO: “my Muslim faith”

Of all the legitimate grievances (and there are many) one can have about obama…this elitist junk is downright silly.

ernesto on October 23, 2008 at 6:44 PM

No it ain’t. You need to get out of your little pocket of the world.

He’s an elitist who thinks he can run our lives better than we can.

He is the perfect personification of what is commonly referred to as political ‘elitist’.

I never said McCain was ‘one of the folks.” He’s not. He is however, a very humble man. Was he b4 his capture and incarceration? By his own admission, NO. I do not believe from what I know of McCain, however, that he is an elitist.

Obama on the other hand most certainly fits the definition of elitist. He served on a board with the laughably elitist title, “Intellectuals in Times of Crisis.” He has courted the label for God’s sake. He truly believes in the radical advocacy of the projects he funnelled money to while on the Woods Foundation. He believes in the radicalization of children b/c they are not being taught ‘awareness’ of their oppressive upbringing here in America. If that isn’t elite, meaning he believes that he “knows better” what kind of education children need, then I don’t know what is?

I see a very clear distinction between John McCain and Barack Obama when it comes to elitism. Very clear indeed.

Sarah, that skirt is too short. Not professional.

jgapinoy on October 23, 2008 at 5:30 PM

If you got ‘em flaunt ‘em. Doesn’t make me think the Fox News ladies are any less professional.

Sarah, that skirt is too short. Not professional.

jgapinoy on October 23, 2008 at 5:30 PM

No it’s not. She looks hot, and that’s the way I like her. Although it’s not the reason why I like her.

:)