Don’t let the trolls get to you. Days like these all they do is talk to each other. It means you are getting your point across.

Obama is a globalist operator, created by the banks and the CIA. He’s a freak. A Beard. A Fake. He is against unions, entitlements that work, non-industrial style healthcare and liberty. His past (what has been disclosed) totally out him.

Anyone who can’t see that, yet, is a troll or insane.

Inherit The Wind, August 9 at 3:11 pm

Gee, my very own stalker, how neat!

Get help jackwagon, each subsequent post shows plainly that you need it desperately.

Yet another in a series of crappy posts that speaks to one sentence in a statement and ignores the substance. Shut the Freak up when grownups are talking child. Especially when you are simply feeding your own testosterone fueled ego and not addressing anything else.

ardee, August 8 at 3:13 pm Link to this comment

Speaking of taking leave of ones senses, Lafayette,  you have certainly done so with this latest hyperbolic rant.
*********

There you go again, insulting someone for no good reason just for daring to disagree with your provincial, dogmatic nonsense

You need help. Badly.

Speaking of taking leave of ones senses, Lafayette,  you have certainly done so with this latest hyperbolic rant.

Nonsense. He inherited a horrific mess and then had the American people give the HofR over to the Crazies – tantamount to tying one hand behind his back.

His appointments, upon taking office, made clear where his sympathies lay. From his first days in office he proved to many of his former supporters his phoniness and support of the corporate takeover of government, from which he raises hundreds of millions of dollars.

His cowardice in the face of republican extremism turned former supporters into non voters rather quickly. The losses in the House were HIS responsibility alone. Had he stood up and faced the radical right with his well known erudition perhaps the House might still be in the hands of the democrats.

Cowardice? You dismiss too lightly the fact that our governance is in a tight-jacket called the balance-of-powers in a tripartite sharing.  This charge is too facile.

Coward I call him and coward he seems still.

And yet, you sit there vainly behind a computer to point the finger of blame at Obama. Pathetic.

As you sit behind a computer and support the man and his policies. Pathetic. How many dead or tortured will be enough for you,Lafayette?

You are shilling for the Replicants - who started us down this lonely path a great many years ago. Americans have had enough of the Overweening Darwinian Economics of the Replicants.

My Replicants you claim? Childish debating I state.

After having neutered the Finance oversight agencies and thus promoted the Toxic Waste Mess. After wasting $1.3T on a useless war over in the sandbox - what do your Replicants have to offer? Reduce Medicare! Cut Welfare! Lower retirement payments!

..and again, not my Replicants. The President has refused to use his bully pulpit, attempted to walk a line between truth and corporate money. He continues Bush policies, continues Bushs’ wars and his vaunted appointees have done nothing to save our environment or reform and prosecute the financial community. He is as unworthy to hold his office as was his predecessor. Do you really believe that calling me a republican is maturity? Are you really as callow as this makes you appear?

DOGMATIC NONSENSE

RD: Certainly he inherited the mess on our table, but it has been three years of poor appointments, poor decision making and cowardice in the face of extremist Republican demands. The buck stopped at his desk long ago!

Nonsense. He inherited a horrific mess and then had the American people give the HofR over to the Crazies – tantamount to tying one hand behind his back.

Cowardice? You dismiss too lightly the fact that our governance is in a tight-jacket called the balance-of-powers in a tripartite sharing.  This charge is too facile.

And yet, you sit there vainly behind a computer to point the finger of blame at Obama. Pathetic.

You are shilling for the Replicants - who started us down this lonely path a great many years ago. Americans have had enough of the Overweening Darwinian Economics of the Replicants.

After having neutered the Finance oversight agencies and thus promoted the Toxic Waste Mess. After wasting $1.3T on a useless war over in the sandbox - what do your Replicants have to offer? Reduce Medicare! Cut Welfare! Lower retirement payments!

But don’t touch the DoD budget! No, our friends at the M-I-C must not suffer the loss of one penny! (Or al Qaeda will have our ass!)

MY POINT

If this sort of attitude were not so patently stupid and blindly dogmatic ... it would be sick given the further wreckage it would cause in our society.

Yes, that’s it - you and your friends have lost leave of your senses.

POST SCRIPTUM

Very good exchange of POV nonetheless. These frank exchanges are the sign of a vibrant and free democracy.

It has been obvious to me that certain political forces in the U.S. Congress have been trying to dismantle the constructive programs of FDR’s “New
Deal”,mainly “Social Security” and the programs of Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society”,mainly Medicare.

If the American people allow those evil forces to succeed in their f****d up,greedy and sinister agenda,and end-up encountering more hardship in making a living,they should blame no body except themselves.Period.

Wake-up people.The trend is so glaring and so ominous.

And having said that, THE ENTIRE CULTURE is going back to the 50’s.

As I have said before, we are Post-Post Moderne now. We are not interesting in the cynical accusations and depressingly empty naval-gazing of the Progressives anymore. It no longer resonates with our culture-in-progress. And besides, its been so incredibly “dirtied-up”.

And as we return to Modernity, let’s hope that we keep the humanism and the romanticism, and cut loose the fake-ness and much of the pragmatism that doomed it the first time.

We have absorbed all we can from the Post-Modern era. And we have. Let’s move on.

Act I:
Starve private sector benefits, destroy union retirement plans and drain retirements savings dependent upon Wall Street.

Now for ACT II:

The Credit Agencies Repair Their Criminally Negligent Record by Downgrading America, While Assisting Obama and the Bank Neo-Cons in Smashing Social Security.

This was never a part of the Tea Party message. The criminals in the government OWE SOCIAL SECURITY 9 TRILLION DOLLARS. PAY IT BACK! It’s been so solvent it was used to prop up all the other spending, since Reagan, at least.

Watch how many Democrats and dim-witted, confused and compromised Tea Partiers go for this reasoning. Don’t let them. They all know better.

Its the globalist agenda for the world, as they know their only real enemy is a middle class. Its another well-planned scam to get the last bit of American cash flow.

Lafayette

RD: You seem to be attempting to turn the blame from your hero Obama and company and place it on precisely the folks most dreadfully affected by his (Obama’s) horrific decisions for three plus years and counting.

We’ve been down this rat-hole before.

It is so damn obvious - if you want to point fingers, do so at the Replicant ideologues.

None so blind I guess. Once more you attempt to ignore the message and allow a blind loyalty to cloud your vision. I certainly do not project an aura of victimization, In fact I see YOU as the victim here, a victim of blindness to the culpability of the Democratic Party and the lack of leadership, or rather the leading in the wrong direction of the head of your party.

Stop making a scapegoat of Obama. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. But, he’s one of us.

Certainly he inherited the mess on our table, but it has been three years of poor appointments, poor decision making and cowardice in the face of extremist Republican demands. The buck stopped at his desk long ago!

Queenie, August 7 at 1:22 pm Link to this comment

Ardee: No. I didn’t ask who WOULDN’T want to go back to the ‘50s. The title of the article was “WHO WANTS TO GO BACK TO THE 50’S”.

And I answered, I do. And I gave my reasons. Don’t put words in my mouth.

Can it be possible that you really are as dense as this reply makes you out? I certainly hope not as you would be continually banging into walls and such.

The fifties were fine for the white middle class, but horrific for persons of color. Can I make it more clear than that?

ON THE GOOD NEWS FRONT

Remember the adage “What’s good for GM is good for America”?

As hackneyed as that phrase was, it is nice to see this morning that GM (saved by the bell of Federal refinancing*) outproduced VW in second place by the number of cars produced and sold. (4.1 million).

Of course, Toyota will be bouncing back from the tsunami to likely claim first place - but it is Good News that GM is back in the game. Automotive is a key sector of our economy given the very large expanse of our nation.

POST SCRIPTUM

* Who says Government Intervention cannot save jobs? Of course it can. GM and Chrysler are good examples. (And for Chrysler, it’s the second time around.)

DARWINIAN VERSUS SOCIAL CAPITALISM

Queenie: The title of the article was “WHO WANTS TO GO BACK TO THE 50’S”.

Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be. I can understand the emotion you expressed, but there is simply no going back. There is no Magic Time Machine with which to project us back to the 1950s.

The 1950s were a contrived situation: It was post-war and Europe was reconstructing. The Cold War had begun and nations were asked to take sides - whilst millions upon millions of people disappeared into the abyss behind the Iron Curtain. They were literally taken off the world supply of labor – whilst Europe and the US leveraged its growth in overseas markets.

Lo and behold, in the early 1990s the Chinese finally understood that their destiny stood in the West not in the East. It lowered its ideological Iron Curtain and unleashed upon the market its supply of cheap labor - which doubled literally overnight the Global Supply of Labor.

We are noW 20 years beyond that historic inflection and look what has happened. Our Great Democracy with a Great Economy has been humbled by our own inward-looking set of political ideologues - the Darwinian Republicans.

We need a healthy dose of Social Capitalism in our nation, to bring us up to world standards - in order to stop the slide towards Banana Republic. Once we get the “level-playing-field” level again, Uncle Sam just might have the opportunity to rejoin the Great Nations league of Equitable Economic Justice.

But we must rid ourselves of overweening Darwinian Capitalism that has reigned these past three decades. Which will not be easy, so ingrained has become the notion.

Most people think Wall Street ‘s equity-market is a money printing-press and that getting in “on the ground floor” or “ahead of the curve” is the raison d’être of existence - that is, our lives are fashioned by the capital that we accumulate.

Wrong, dead wrong is that notion.

NOSTALGIA

There is one bit of nostalgia that my mother taught me: Money cannot buy you happiness. And, yes, in first place is Happiness not Money.

VICTIMIZATION

RD: You seem to be attempting to turn the blame from your hero Obama and company and place it on precisely the folks most dreadfully affected by his (Obama’s) horrific decisions for three plus years and counting.

We’ve been down this rat-hole before.

But I’ll repeat myself: I dislike the mindset of victimization that pervades the forums nowadays. It is useless, self-inflicted harm – and diverts our attention from the real challenges that confront us.

It is so damn obvious - if you want to point fingers, do so at the Replicant ideologues.

ABOUT SUFFERING

The Labor Force Participation Rate is at a bit more than 64%, which is only 3% below its all time high of 68% in 1998 (the “Good Times” at the end of the Clinton tenure - remember those?) See here.

For all the hullabaloo in the media, the numbers are no where near the levels of desperation that Americans knew during the Great Recession.

Yes, times are not a good as they once were in the 1990s - but there is no real suffering in a middle-class that is still largely employed and making ends meet. They are at a lower standard of living because incomes are less, but nobody is starving.

Those who suffer most are the down and out without a home. It is a shame that city Public Service do not take care of them - because America depends upon philanthropy to run the Poor Houses.

As for the Plutocrat Class, you are confusing savings and net worth. Savings are what you have in a current or savings account - not invested by your Asset Management counselor. That savings is available for spending, but the Feel-Good-Factor has left our people and they are wary of the future.

So, they have reduced consumption and when we do not consume jobs are not created - it is as simple as that.

WHERE WE SHOULD CONCENTRATE OUR ENERGIES

Stop making a scapegoat of Obama. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. But, he’s one of us.

Let’s put our energy into changing a political system that is whacko - largely because of a party of baneful ideologues that came to the fore during the Reagan Years and is, in fact, dyeing a slow death. The Era of Individualism is coming to its well-deserved end after having caused us all immense harm.

We need only to raise taxes and reduce the DoD budget - thus lowering somewhat the debt (which the US can certainly pay). Then put people back to work with Stimulus Spending on Infrastructural Projects, which America badly needs.

MY POINT

We WILL increase taxes - even the Replicants are coming to that inescapable conclusion, now that they have done their harm. But they will try to contain the tax increases as much as possible.

We must, absolutely, not let that happen - by voting them out of office in large numbers. That aint gonna be easy, but it is the only way out of this Present Mess.

ardee: No. I didn’t ask who WOULDN’T want to go back to the ‘50s. The title of the article was “WHO WANTS TO GO BACK TO THE 50’S”.

And I answered, I do. And I gave my reasons. Don’t put words in my mouth.

Queenie, August 6 at 7:54 pm Link to this comment

Who wants to go back to the ‘50s?  I do. I would gladly go back to a time when both parents didn’t have to work, meals were the family at the table, and kids had a decent family life.

Who, you ask, wouldn’t want to go back to the fifties.? Any person of color, that’s who!

If I was back in the 50’s I’d invest everything I could beg, steal or borrow in IBM and Xerox…and by 1985 unload them.  And I’d bet on the Dodgers to win the World Series in 1955!

LOL!

@Queenie I would just want to live cheap get a bit high and absorb all the great jazz musicians I could in New York whilst I went about my daily business.

No cellphones or internet. That would be nice….

Bliss. I might even make some half-hearted attempt to be a cool artist dude from the future, but I doubt it. Wouldn’t want to mess anything up for the present day cats in New York. Har har.

Actually I would save the world.

Who wants to go back to the ‘50s?  I do. I would gladly go back to a time when both parents didn’t have to work, meals were the family at the table, and kids had a decent family life.

You can take the feminists and their “liberation” and shove them. They rarely if ever speak for poor women. Where was women’s lib when Clinton cut “welfare as we know it” and threw so many women into dire and often deadly positions, and their children left alone by the forced labor thrust upon their mothers?

Give me the 1950s with all its warts over the fucked up mess we are in today. Almost everybody has a cell phone but we have lost the ability to communicate.

Maybe Obama will also note that the top income bracket during Ike’s reign was taxed at 90% and the spread in salaries between CEOs and the shop floor was magnitudes smaller…. but I doubt it, he’s now moved to the Dark Side and become an apprentice to the moneyed elite….and there is no Luke Skywalker or Obi One to bring balance to the Political Force

@ITW, Reagan also knew about “friends across the isle.” 

Here’s a great piece by Chris Matthews to illustrate.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/17/AR2011011703299_Comments.html

—

As for the Dodgers and Giants, my condolences 53 years hence.  Baseball is a game of the heart, and hearts remember.
The Dodgers’ and Giants’ westward moves only mirrored those of the population. 
The moves continue today, judging from congressional reapportionment. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_congressional_apportionment

sidebar:  while the LA Dodgers still embrace and revere their Brooklyn roots, but the Giants not so much.
When records and achievements of the franchise are recounted, they are most often referenced as those of the SF Giants.  Thus team records held by Mathewson, Ott, Hubbell et. al. are ignored. 
Even when Willie Mays’ days in NY (his MVP, WS catch and championship in ‘54) are referred to, it’s with an apologetic, parenthetical “then as a New York Giant.”

Why the contrast?  Probably because the Dodgers’ biggest on-field success has occurred in LA.
And the Giants, despite their current reign as champs, know their greatest glory was earned under McGraw and Terry and Durocher in NY.

And one more thing:
My father’s heart was broken as were millions of others when Walter O’Malley moved the Dodgers out of Brooklyn out to Los Angeles where they went from the working-class heroes to the darlings of Hollywood.  For many years Brooklyn fans agreed the 3 worst people in the 20th century were Hitler, Stalin, and O’Malley.

The Giants moved to San Francisco and New York baseball has never been the same.

I actually think Gerry Ford was the last decent Republican President.  He pushed energy conservation and independence, tried to bring runaway inflation under control (fail).  When Republicans at the 1988 Convention were talking about “enemies” Ford sounded strangely out of tune saying things like “We disagree with our friends across the aisle”  Two things the GOP had lost in the Reagan years: 1) the idea that honorable people can disagree over policy. 2) that just because you disagree and are in different parties doesn’t mean you can’t be friends.

Ford was the last voice on the GOP side who understood that Modus Operandi.  The levels of animosity of confrontation since then are reminiscent of the ante-bellum Congress when Southerners thought nothing of caning a “damn Yankee” on the floor of the House of Representatives.

The fifties are imagined to be this time of peace and quiet and no turmoil, of “My Three Sons” and “Leave It To Beaver” but, like the impression of the 60’s being all hippies and Viet Nam, that, too, is wrong.  The 50’s began with HUAC witch-hunts and Joseph McCarthy picked up on this.  Dissent became dangerous “You’re a Red! You question this gre-a-a-at nation!”

Korea cost us more American lives than Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Bosnia combined.  The Soviets got the A-Bomb, the H-Bomb and beat us into space. China had been “lost” (as if it was ours to lose) in 1949, and Cuba was “lost” in 1959. Lynching of “uppity niggers” increased in the South. 

A revolution was occurring in music as Leo Fender and Les Paul gave us the solid-body electric guitar and electric “Precision Bass” guitar and Rock’n'Roll became possible. 

The seeds of the pre-war and post-war generations were sown.

The Civil Rights movement and the use of non-violent civil disobedience became its primary weapon.

Brown v Board shook America to its core.

Much of this was out of Ike’s control, of course.  He was our last 19th Century President. None before him were 20th Century-born, but everyone since has been.

It’s too easy to slap a label on the behavior of 200 million people over a period of 10 years.

But Lafayette, the money that you claim is there is mostly locked up by the 1% that owns 40% of it. To think a solution to our economic woes lies in adding more credit card debt to those most affected by our downturned economy seems something that a sock puppet like GWBush might mouth rather than an honest appraisal of solutions to our dreadful problems.

You seem to be attempting to turn the blame from your hero Obama and company and place it on precisely the folks most dreadfully affected by his (Obama’s) horrific decisions for three plus years and counting.

To leave in place the unregulated piracy committed by our corporations and financial industry and suggest that Joe and Jane Average are to share blame because they wont spend money today seems an awful attempt to deflect this forum from the real problems besetting us.

If I lived in a home under water, if I had children approaching college age, if I was worried sick about my job, if I was worried about credit card debt and interest on it soaring I would certainly curtail my spending on unnecessary items and concentrate on the absolute essentials.

Please Lafayette, you seem an intelligent enough poster to see the silliness in blaming the victim for the crimes of the rampant capitalists who currently own your party and your president.

The way out of this morass is by law and legislation. By prosecuting criminals at every level ,not exempting the wealthy from due process, by enforcing regulations not by ignoring them. By ending corporate welfare not welfare for the poorest among us. By restoring our republic to its primary purpose, administering to the needs of the people not the desires of the corporate fat cats who own almost every politician and legislator.

As our current Duopoly is owned by the criminals I advocate for third party presence in the Houses of government, legislators pledged to refuse all corporate monies and thus serving the needs and will of the people. I know your own opinion differs, and if you concentrated on showing how to rescue and restore that party I might discuss that with you. But, you and your fellow loyalists never seem to be willing to do so, I wonder why that might be?

THE WEALTH OF WELL-BEING

RD: I cannot state more emphatically that begging folks to spend money they may not have, while insecure about jobs and homes, while unable to send their own kids to college seems almost Tea Party-like nonsense.

I made reference to support my argument to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, which is a government agency.

If you want to dispute those numbers then I suggest you take the matter up with the BEA at their web-site. Otherwise, get your facts right because you are in dire need of them.

The means are there but the will is lacking. From Extreme Exuberance we’ve plunged to the Depths of Despair. It’s time to get a hold of ourselves. First we repair our Propensity to Spend, then we repair the economy.

HARD-TIMES

These are hard-times, yes, for many Americans but it is nowhere near what this country went through from 1929 to 1939. It took a World War to bring us out of the Great Depression.

Let us pull back from the polemics of the Extreme Right or Extreme Left - because they are both nonsense. All the answers, RD, are in the Center. Capitalism, yes, but not too much. Statism, yes, but not too much.

It’s a balancing act. (But, first, we must get the Rabid Right off our backs - and that can only be done by mustering the votes for a Progressive Agenda at the grass-roots.)

POST SCRIPTUM

When we look at the historical trend of the past hundred years we see two central movements:
* An America that moved Right pushed there by Communist dogma - whereupon we replaced Leftist Dogma with Rightist Dogma. It must move back to the Center.
* A Europe that was heavily influenced by the Russian bear on its doorstep and politically established itself, post-WW2, with Leftist principles. It has since moved Rightwards, towards the center (with Social Democracy), having seen the profligacy of too much statism for too little benefit.

I am a Centrist and detest the Rabid Right as much as you do. I suggest that we need a Progressive Agenda to give the American people the sort of Public Services that are central to their well-being as a people. And why?

Because I have seen the Wealth of Well-being it has brought Europeans - of which Americans, with their ramshackle Social Capital Expenditures, can only dream.

MY POINT

That American tripartite governance should be focused on is the Wealth of Well-being for all Americans rather than just plain-old, garden-variety Financial Wealth for a select-group of individuals.

The game was fixed! We been had! Tax the piss outta them!

In the 50s and 60s Earth was pear-shaped with the bulk located in the US. No wonder: US was the sole winner of WWII, exported domestic oil and controlled most foreign oil.
Since then, the shape has become spherical, with a few bumps in China, US, Brazil, and Europe.We are experiencing withdrawal pains. The political climate has become rougher, the powerful step on the weak, democracy has become a game to fool the uneducated masses. The global forces at play are too powerful for any president to control. Stemming the flood with our military has proven to be impossible. Contrary to popular belief: History does repeat itself. Sic transit gloria mundi.
I understand Obama. We both long for the good old times.

The money IS there. Come the elections in November of 2012 there is a very good probability that unemployment will be down to 6%.

Prove me right … go out and buy something. Anything. If everybody is waiting around for their friend or neighbor to show the way by spending then the recovery will necessarily take longer than usual.

Of course the money is there, in annuities and lock boxes, invested off shore by those who have that money, the 1% that owns 40% of our wealth.

I cannot state more emphatically that begging folks to spend money they may not have, while insecure about jobs and homes, while unable to send their own kids to college seems almost Tea Party-like nonsense. But I guess those so emphatically democrats are sort of related , if only by a bad break in the gene pool.

Six percent or sixteen percent, time will tell.

@ Lafayette—hope you’re right about 6% unemployment by November 2012.

Would you believe that unemployment was higher at this point in Reagan’s 1st term than it is today?
9.4% vs. today’s 9.1% figure—Check it out.
http://portalseven.com/employment/unemployment_rate.jsp?fromYear=1981&toYear=1989

Wouldn’t bet on a 6% rate, but how’s 7.2% sound? 
That’s what it fell to when RR got re-elected in Nov. 1984.  And then down to 5.4% when he left office in January 1989.

I’ll get it all started… buying lunch tomorrow!

I wish Eisenhower had called The Military Industrial Complex “The Military Industrial Conflict.”,since its ruling class had/has relentlessly looked to initiate and facilitate a military conflict somewhere in the world,since Eisenhower’s years in the White House till present time,under the pretext that war is good for the economy and good for creating jobs. Both pretexts are merely a facade for more sinister agenda.

In most respects, the 1950’s was a great time to be a white male with a generous income. For practically everyone else in America, it was something else entirely. It was not a good time to be Black (or any skin color other than white) in America. It was not a good time to be a woman of any color; they were still perceived as Mothers and homemakers, and in possession of no other useful skills. Children were stuffed into soul-crushing schools with incomplete lessons, and we were taught to shut up and get in line while we waited to be destroyed by nuclear missiles—-training for our adult lives to come.

The boys were awaiting their turn in the barrel at playing Army for real, once they graduated high school—-at least for those boys with parents unable to pay for a college education. I can clearly remember wondering if I was going to survive to become an adult, or if I would die in war.

The girls could look forward to a life of squirting out hordes of squalling brats, fixing meals, cleaning house, and shutting up when instructed to do so. After all, back then women were largely considered to be the property of their husbands. A good beating was thought to be necessary from time to time, as long as the rod was no thicker than the man’s thumb. Rule of thumb, you know. I was a kid in the fifties, and I saw lots of things wrong with how life worked, but no one seemed to care. Back to the fifties? No thank you.

IKE AND THE M-I-C

From his farewell address as reported in The Atlantic Monthly:

Largely overlooked by most commentators was a second theme that Eisenhower had woven into his text. The essence of this theme was simplicity itself: spending on arms and armies is inherently undesirable. Even when seemingly necessary, it constitutes a misappropriation of scarce resources. By diverting social capital from productive to destructive purposes, war and the preparation for war deplete, rather than enhance, a nation’s strength. And while assertions of military necessity might camouflage the costs entailed, they can never negate them altogether.

“Every gun that is made,” Eisenhower told his listeners, “every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” Any nation that pours its treasure into the purchase of armaments is spending more than mere money. “It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”

Let’s go a step further: DoD spending takes from the many (taxpayers) and gives to a comparative few running and employed in the M-I-C.

In the 1950’s it was “help wanted women and men” with blacks living in their ghettos especially in the south.
My first job I sorted papers all day.  Computer salesmen were attacked for taking jobs from workers.
By 1980 the jobs were going overseas with manufacturing disappearing in the US. Half the budget goes to a large overseas military. We lost billions in equity from the Wall Street crime spree that crashed the global economy.  We have a perfect storm.  The GOP is as crazy and reckless as Confederates trying to do a cold Civil War.  Eisenhower was the last decent Republican.

Couldn’t help but mention, however, that Ike would have loathed the Repuglicans (as in repugnant) of today. I volunteered time to his campaign from Denver all those years ago, back when I waved a trunk rather than waggled my large ears. And, sad to say, I agree—the Herbert Hoover analogy is true, and I wish it otherwise. Lord, help us all!

Eisenhower presided over a society dominated by its middle class, where incomes over $400,000 were subject to 90% federal income tax and “what’s good for General Motors” really was good for America - white America, at least. Obama presides over a society dominated by the Forbes 400 whose aggregate wealth exceeds that of the poorest 40% - that’s 120 million.

Obama is behaving like Herbert Hoover, which is to say his policies are reactionary to a degree of 80 years.

The Republicans are even more reactionary - their policies come from the presidency of Buchanan - the backward looking president of the 1850s right before Lincoln. They are reactionary to a degree of 160 years.

So, by compromising with reactionaries who want to take us back 160 years to the policies before the Civil War, Obama meets them halfway and cuts a deal where we get the policies of 1929.

And we’re supposed to get enthused about his re-election.

Today’s Republicans are insane and there is no point trying to reason with them, persuade them, or negotiate with them.

They will drive our society to the breaking point, like the then-conservative Southern Democrats did in 1861.

When they do, we better have somebody on our side with a whole lot more clarity of vision, courage and fortitutde than Barack Obama.

When Eisenhower was President, the U.S. was an oil EXPORTING nation; and billions of workers were not competing with the U.S. labor force because they were behind the Iron Curtain and the Bamboo Curtain.  Also, the evil of karaoke was unknown.

I’d give anything to go back to the days before karaoke.

Alc: The bad news is: these are drastic cuts that lower spending back to Eisenhower years. The good news: we still have enough money to create some jobs. The real question is, is there really enough money to create some jobs? Will they create the jobs?

Yes, we’ll take some hits on Government Spending. And, yes, had we more of that spending then we’d come down further and faster from the 9.1% unemployment rate. But the Crazies in Congress want unemployment at 9% when it comes time to vote next year. (And that is no pernicious joke. It formal political strategy.)

But all is far from lost. Consider this news from THE major agency for economic forecasting in the country:

Beureau of Economic Analysis:

Personal outlays increased $83.5 billion (3.1 percent) in the second quarter, compared with an increase of $153.5 billion (5.8 percent) in the first.  Personal saving—disposable personal income less personal outlays—was $590.6 billion in the second quarter, compared with $564.3 billion in the first.

The personal saving rate—saving as a percentage of disposable personal income—was 5.1 percent in the second quarter, compared with 4.9 percent in the first.

The money IS there. Come the elections in November of 2012 there is a very good probability that unemployment will be down to 6%.

Prove me right … go out and buy something. Anything. If everybody is waiting around for their friend or neighbor to show the way by spending then the recovery will necessarily take longer than usual.

Is a rehash of Eisenhower’s era really going to help us understand the world of 2012?  I doubt it. Things have changed radically:  Humanizing the control of technology has become a huge problem. Exploitation of
millions of human beings forced to live in inhuman condiitions is another. Reactionary struggles to hold onto illicit governmental powers is still another.
  In Eisenhower’s day it was still not completely unreasonable to think in terms of nation-states. Now it is both stupid and dangerous to do so.
  It is not only the ordinary American people who are lost in the dark; our government itself is completely “retro” when it comes to offering constructive solutions to present problems. If not, U.S. officials would be working intelligently toward the real future, instead of mouthing off, strutting, selling weapons and mercenaries worldwide, and snooping in their constituents’ trash cans.

According to The Sunday Times and Times archives,the greatest TEN American Presidents are:

(1) Abraham Lincoln.
(2) George Washington.
(3) Franklin D. Roosevelt.
(4) Thomas Jefferson.
(5) Theodore Roosevelt.
(6) Dwight Eisenhower.
(7) Harry Truman.
(8) Roland Reagan.
(9) James Polk.
(10) Woodrow Wilson.

In earlier ranking,Eisenhower was ranked as number (8).Since then,he has been ascended to the SIXTH SPOT. Who knows where he would be ascended in ten years or 100 years from now!!!

We could sure use a return to the unemployment rates during Ike’s years as President.

http://portalseven.com/employment/unemployment_rate.jsp?fromYear=1953&toYear=1960

Ike wasn’t perfect.  He let Gen. Marshall be attacked and smeared by the McCarthyites and didn’t defend him from charges Ike knew were false. He played the red-baiting and let it go on.  He interfered in the results of the 1954 election in Viet Nam and got us in there where we didn’t belong.  He kept Nixon, rather than dumping him.

But, compared to today’s Republicans, Ike was a shining bastion of decency, honesty and capability.

BOO-HOO TO YOU TOO

BB: But that’s not what his supporters expect of a president who had promised the country an activist government that would extricate us from futile wars and concentrate on rebuilding a nation left in debt and economic failure after eight years of George W. Bush.

And bollocks to this notion too.

Let’s go back in history, yes, because it is full of lessons. Let’s go back to the Great Depression that lasted all of the 1930s. America was saved finally from perniciously high unemployment by the Gong of War.

So why did Americans expect BO & Co to walk-on-water and save their sorry asses from the worst recession since 80 years - handed to him on a platter by the most inept presidency in modern history?

And why they were so disgusted when he could not pull a rabbit out of a hat that they stayed away in droves at the mid-term elections and let the Crazies take over the HofR.

HISTORY LESSONS

A few years later and Americans have already forgot why the country is in Deep Doodoo, here are some history lessons:
Lesson 1 - No country on earth has any providential guaranty of unending prosperity – particularly when it binges on cheap money.
Lesson 2 - Anybody who tinkers with Toxic Waste is going to pay the financial consequences. And why was the Toxic Waste created? It was a great sham because at the existing marginal income tax rates, all the players keep about 75% of their bets. So it was well worth their risk - particularly because the Oversight Agencies had been neutered by their boss, the PotUS.
Lesson 3 – Any country that allows a lead-head of a PotUS to go off to spend $1.4T in a useless war should have its collective heads examined. And we voted this nerd, who caused much of the off-the-books DoD Debt, into office twice?
Lesson 4 – A country that has a Safety Net with holes large enough for a plummeting elephant to go through should not complain when that Safety Net is dysfunctional. You want a decent Safety Net, you pay for it by expanding taxes (on corporations and individuals), not voting for administrations that reduce them.
Lesson 5 – With all the above, anyone who thinks that just one PotUS could fix all that was wrong is a first-class dork who understands nothing about how LaLaLand on the Potomac works nor the tripartite nature of our system of governance. But, oh boy, do they just LOVE bitching-in-a-blog.

MY POINT

You are playing to the crybabies, BB. BooHoo to you too.

Some positive aspects of President Dwight Eisenhower’s eight years in the White House:

(1) He Stopped the Korean war as he promised,during the campaign in the Presidential election.

(2) During the last 70 years,only President Eisenhower succeeded in keeping America out of a land conflict/war,somewhere in the world. Eight years of no American blood was wastely spelled, somewhere,in the world.

(3) Meanwhile,he kept the Soviet Union in check,during the Cold War.

(4) He lead the free world by his molar authority which was highly admired among the people of the world,including the people who were confined within the boundaries of the Soviet Union. What a difference between the international reputation of the United States during Eisenhower’s years(very high),and the reputation of the U.S.at present time(very low)!!!

(5) Domestically,his strong stand for civil rights for African Americans who lived in Little Rock,Arkansas is well recorded in the Archives of the Library of Congress for historians to evaluate.

(6) It was under Eisenhower’s administration,the Interstate High System planned. If such a long range envision was not in the process then,can any one just imagine how the traffic indigestion would have been by now,on the single lane old highways like the old Highway 66.

(7) The pressure by certain group of powerful forces/people was extremely high on Eisenhower to start a war some place in the world,but Eisenhower was popular enough among the people of the United States and the people of the world and could say to those evil forces of wars:NO.The strong NO Eisenhower bluntly responded with is well recorded for those interested to follow-up on this point. His warning to the American people,in his farewell speech,about the Military Industrial Conflict attests to that.

I can go on citing more of the positive aspects of the Eisenhower’s good ol’years,but the above list should suffice in coveying the point I felt I should explicitly convey,since I was a WITNESS then,an undergraduate university student.

I am NOT an Elephant nor am I Donkey. I have been Independent Centrist,leaning slightly to the left,all of my entire adult life.

Fair means fair.Period.

Beside,Eisenhower is one of my heroes,besides Mahatma Gandhi and two others.

Worst. President. Ever.  Including Bush II.

Where does this “moving toward the center” bullshyt come from.  “o” is so far to the right that he’s in solid Fascist territory.  Don’t let these fuck heads play with your mind.

Well Ike, warned us about the military industrial complex. We should have listened, and
acted on what he said. Now it’s too late…

We’re heading back to the 1890’s as far as labor and civil rights are concerned if they win.