President Obama's Press Conference

Devil,

They're not rants there facts did I hit a nerve? And no I can't change your mind nor do I intend to you picked you screen name.
You make statements and people respond ain't that why we do this to see other incites or opinions.

Bill S.

BillMarti wrote:you picked you screen name.

Does my screen name bother you?

Edit: My screen name was the call sign of the lead character in a great book about the air war in N. Vietnam called "Flight of the Intruder" http://www.amazon.com/Flight-Intruder-S ... 151&sr=1-1

I recommend it.

Devil505 wrote:I don't know how I ended up in a corner defending a big business bailout which, if you go back through my posts, I was against from the beginning! I am not an economist but am now simply saying that I intend to back my President since both sides originally felt that a massive spending bill was imperative, we have already tried the tax cut for the wealthy approach (with devastating results) & now most economists seem to back the current spending bill. I feel allot more comfortable following our new President than I do the congressional Republicans who simply want more of what we've tried & has failed & have suddenly found their fiscal responsibility just in time to be against anything a Democratic President proposes!
Do not ask me specific questions on how the bailout bill will work or fail..........I am simply flying on FAITH...& admit it!
My OPINION is we should back President Obama...You are entitled to your opinion & we won't know the answers for years.

"Faith" works on Sunday. The rest of the week is up to you. Ignorance is a choice. The information is out there. You simply need the will to uncover the truth. Copping out the way you do is what got us here. Trusting to do the government to do it's job is never a good idea.

beemerboy wrote:

heatwithcoal wrote:Tell me again how putting billions of dollars into infrastructure and roads is going to help the (for example) 5K? people laid off from Microsoft? Do you suppose they know how to operate heavy machinery? Are they all going to pick up a shovel? I just don't get it, I guess.

Mark

A bridge being built means workers getting jobs. From the people designing it to the people building it. Add to that, the secretaries and the janitors in the office to the people making the steel and the concrete to the truckers hauling the materials now have work; not to leave out the food vendor with his "roach coach".

All these people now working on this bridge and it's various components and support positions now have money to spend on things like food, cars and yes, computers (which puts Microsoft to work). And the people that makes the cars now have money to by computers. Business that get the contracts to build the bridge and its components now have money to up-grade their computers putting Microsoft to work.

Multiply this by a couple of hundred bridges and a few thousand miles of road across the country and the effects are multiplied exponentially.

The point is putting people to work in one sector of the economy has far reaching effects in all areas of the economy.

What happened to all the money we paid to build and maintain roads through fuel taxes? Or maintain schools through our property taxes? I know my state takes out loans for big projects through bonds and the bonds are paid with my income taxes. Where'd that money go?

Does paying for infrastructure twice seem fiscally prudent to you? Only to have the government sell the roads to foreign countries and give them 99 year leases so they can charge you tolls for roads you already paid for?

jpete wrote:Copping out the way you do is what got us here.

I see........So exactly which of our problems did I cause again?...The economic crisis? The war in Iraq? The war in Afghanistan?...All of them???

I didn't come here looking for an argument, I simply stated my opinion, but It would seem that you & BillM are bound & determined to argue tonight. If that is your intention, I'll offer you the same Flame Central thread that I offered to BillM.....Dunk The Devil.....Carnival Dunking Game

I have a better idea....Why don't you & BillM meet after school!!

Devil.

Getting a little hot under the collar?

Bill S.

Devil505 wrote:

jpete wrote:Copping out the way you do is what got us here.

I see........So exactly which of our problems did I cause again?...The economic crisis? The war in Iraq? The war in Afghanistan?

I didn't come here looking for an argument, I simply stated my opinion, but It would seem that you & BillM are bound & determined to argue tonight. If that is your intention, I'll offer you the same Flame Central thread that I offered to BillM.....Dunk The Devil.....Carnival Dunking Game

I have a better idea....Why don't you & BillM meet after school!!

I use "you" as representative of the 52% of America that voted for Obama. Since they all aren't here, I have to talk to you. Don't take it personally. You are here way too much to go around stirring up wars and ruining economies around the world.

To screw up that big, you need the unchecked power of the Federal government.

And I'll say it again, copping out and trusting the government to do the right thing is what got us here.

jpete wrote:And I'll say it again, copping out and trusting the government to do the right thing is what got us here.

and I'll say it again..." copping out and trusting (a corrupt, criminal) government to do the right thing is what got us here"

We have a brand new government now & I'm going to give it a chance.

Devil505 wrote:

jpete wrote:And I'll say it again, copping out and trusting the government to do the right thing is what got us here.

and I'll say it again..." copping out and trusting (a corrupt, criminal) government to do the right thing is what got us here"

We have a brand new government now & I'm going to give it a chance.

Brand new? Say again? How many Clinton people are in the Obama administration? Even Geithner is a protege of Zbigniew Brzezinski. And that guy has been around since the Carter administration. He's also one of the most evil a$$holes on the planet.

I'll say it again. Ignorance is a choice. You really think your boy is pure as the driven snow? Please. You don't come out of the Chicago machine and not have mud on your shoes. He's as dirty as the day is long.

jpete wrote:He's as dirty as the day is long.

Have proof of that accusation against The President of The United States?

jpete wrote:How many Clinton people are in the Obama administration?

Another real fact, not revisionist history:

Bill Clinton's first economic bill failed to get ONE Republican vote in Congress...NOT ONE!!....They said it would cause another Great Depression.........When Clinton left office our economy was great & he left a big SURPLUS.
Now, the very same Republican voices are crying that Obama's economic plans will be our downfall...etc....etc...etc & didn't get one single vote in the House....NOT ONE!!

It's a broken record that we heard b4 & rejected BIG TIME in 2006 & again on 11/6/2008.

Those are facts & that's why I don't believe a word you....or Rush....or Sean....or John Boehner say.

See you in four years!

Edit: Since nothing new has been said in a number of pages here.........As far as I'm concerned.....this topic is closed for me.

Devil505 wrote:

jpete wrote:How many Clinton people are in the Obama administration?

Another real fact, not revisionist history:

Bill Clinton's first economic bill failed to get ONE Republican vote in Congress...NOT ONE!!....They said it would cause another Great Depression.........When Clinton left office our economy was great & he left a big SURPLUS.
Now, the very same Republican voices are crying that Obama's economic plans will be our downfall...etc....etc...etc & didn't get one single vote in the House....NOT ONE!!

It's a broken record that we heard b4 & rejected BIG TIME in 2006 & again on 11/6/2008.

Those are facts & that's why I don't believe a word you....or Rush....or Sean....or John Boehner say.

See you in four years!

Edit: Since nothing new has been said in a number of pages here.........As far as I'm concerned.....this topic is closed for me.

Here's a little "fact" about Clintons alleged balanced budget.

You know that little digital TV conversion that is scheduled to take place tomorrow? WJC included expected proceeds from the sale of the freed up frequencies in his budget! And he also didn't bother to include Social Security and Medicare into his "balanced budget" so he was still running a net deficit.

And I don't want you to believe me, I want you to stop acting like an 8 year old threatening to hold his breath until he gets his way. I want you to go out and prove what I say is false.

HEy Devil, it doesnt matter which forum we are in, you are cracking under the heat. Rhetoric instead of answers. We got into this mess about 78 years ago so stop carping about the last 8. And the real deal with SlickWC was that he immediatelly raised taxes on upper middle class and the "rich" and lo and behold, the dotcom bubble occured. The gov. was flush with cash! It was not forsight or his overwhelming intelligence. Maybe he inhaled and had a vision. Other then that he was a tax and spend democrat and spend it they did. His surpluses were on paper only. But you dont want to hear this, you are secure in your dellusions about the gov. doing the right thing and taking care of everybody with mystery money. Oh thats right, you have the Savior, he can make wine from water and money from thin air. By the way, just watched a good piece on NBC about how the Bush admin tried to regulate Freddy & Fanny but the Dems. along with a jr. senator from Illinois(guess who) blocked every attempt. Its called a fillibuster and you carp about the Rep. using it or even attempting to. Everyone must bow to the savior. Wow, what a rant! I am having fun! See you in Flame Suit Central!

Here are sad sad facts of the truth,

By Jerome R. Corsi
© 2009 WorldNetDaily

As the Obama administration pushes through Congress its $800 billion deficit-spending economic stimulus plan, the American public is largely unaware that the true deficit of the federal government already is measured in trillions of dollars, and in fact its $65.5 trillion in total obligations exceeds the gross domestic product of the world.

The total U.S. obligations, including Social Security and Medicare benefits to be paid in the future, effectively have placed the U.S. government in bankruptcy, even before new continuing social welfare obligation embedded in the massive spending plan are taken into account.

The real 2008 federal budget deficit was $5.1 trillion, not the $455 billion previously reported by the Congressional Budget Office, according to the "2008 Financial Report of the United States Government" as released by the U.S. Department of Treasury.

The difference between the $455 billion "official" budget deficit numbers and the $5.1 trillion budget deficit cited by "2008 Financial Report of the United States Government" is that the official budget deficit is calculated on a cash basis, where all tax receipts, including Social Security tax receipts, are used to pay government liabilities as they occur.


But the numbers in the 2008 report are calculated on a GAAP basis ("Generally Accepted Accounting Practices") that include year-for-year changes in the net present value of unfunded liabilities in social insurance programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

Under cash accounting, the government makes no provision for future Social Security and Medicare benefits in the year in which those benefits accrue.

"As bad as 2008 was, the $455 billion budget deficit on a cash basis and the $5.1 trillion federal budget deficit on a GAAP accounting basis does not reflect any significant money [from] the financial bailout or Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, which was approved after the close of the fiscal year," economist John Williams, who publishes the Internet website Shadow Government Statistics, told WND.

Find out what's behind the chaos at the White House, in the No. 1 best-seller "Obama Nation"

"The Congressional Budget Office estimated the fiscal year 2009 budget deficit as being $1.2 trillion on a cash basis and that was before taking into consideration the full costs of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, before the cost of the Obama nearly $800 billion economic stimulus plan, or the cost of the second $350 billion in TARP funds, as well as all current bailouts being contemplated by the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve," he said.

"The federal government's deficit is hemorrhaging at a pace which threatens the viability of the financial system," Williams added. "The popularly reported 2009 [deficit] will clearly exceed $2 trillion on a cash basis and that full amount has to be funded by Treasury borrowing.

"It's not likely this will happen without the Federal Reserve acting as lender of last resort for the Treasury by buying Treasury debt and monetizing the debt," he said.

"Monetizing the debt" is a term used to signify that the Federal Reserve will be required simply to print cash to meet the Treasury debt obligations, acting in this capacity only because the Treasury cannot sell the huge of amount debt elsewhere.

The Treasury has been largely dependent upon foreign buyers, principally China and Japan and other major holders of U.S. dollar foreign exchange reserves, including OPEC buyers purchasing U.S. debt through London.

"The appetite of foreign buyers to purchase continued trillions of U.S. debt has become more questionable as the world has witnessed the rapid deterioration of the U.S. fiscal condition in the current financial crisis," Williams noted.


"Truthfully," Williams pointed out, "there is no Social Security 'lock-box.' There are no funds held in reserve today for Social Security and Medicare obligations that are earned each year. It's only a matter of time until the public realizes that the government is truly bankrupt and no taxes are being held in reserve to pay in the future the Social Security and Medicare benefits taxpayers are earning today."

Calculations from the "2008 Financial Report of the United States Government" also show that the GAAP negative net worth of the federal government has increased to $59.3 trillion while the total federal obligations under GAAP accounting now total $65.5 trillion.

The $65.5 trillion total federal obligations under GAAP accounting not only now exceed four times the U.S. gross domestic product, or GDP, the $65.5 trillion deficit exceeds total world GDP.

"In the seven years of GAAP reporting, we have seen an annual average deficit in excess of $4 trillion, which could not be possibly covered by any form of taxation," Williams argued.

"Shy of the government severely slashing social welfare programs, federal deficits of this magnitude are beyond any hope of containment, government or otherwise," he said.

"Put simply, there is no way the government can possibly pay for the level of social welfare benefits the federal government has promised unless the government simply prints cash and debases the currency, which the government will increasingly be doing this year," Williams said, explaining in more detail why he feels the government is now in the process of monetizing the federal debt.

"Social Security and Medicare must be shown as liabilities on the federal balance sheet in the year they accrue according to GAAP accounting," Williams argues. "To do otherwise is irresponsible, nothing more than an attempt to hide the painful truth from the American public. The public has a right to know just how bad off the federal government budget deficit situation really is, especially since the situation is rapidly spinning out of control.

"The federal government is bankrupt," Williams told WND. "In a post-Enron world, if the federal government were a corporation such as General Motors, the president and senior Treasury officers would be in federal penitentiary."

Give BO a chance,

President Barack Obama has turned fearmongering into an art form. He has repeatedly raised the specter of another Great Depression. First, he did so to win votes in the November election. He has done so again recently to sway congressional votes for his stimulus package.
[Commentary] AP

In his remarks, every gloomy statistic on the economy becomes a harbinger of doom. As he tells it, today's economy is the worst since the Great Depression. Without his Recovery and Reinvestment Act, he says, the economy will fall back into that abyss and may never recover.

This fearmongering may be good politics, but it is bad history and bad economics. It is bad history because our current economic woes don't come close to those of the 1930s. At worst, a comparison to the 1981-82 recession might be appropriate. Consider the job losses that Mr. Obama always cites. In the last year, the U.S. economy shed 3.4 million jobs. That's a grim statistic for sure, but represents just 2.2% of the labor force. From November 1981 to October 1982, 2.4 million jobs were lost -- fewer in number than today, but the labor force was smaller. So 1981-82 job losses totaled 2.2% of the labor force, the same as now.

Job losses in the Great Depression were of an entirely different magnitude. In 1930, the economy shed 4.8% of the labor force. In 1931, 6.5%. And then in 1932, another 7.1%. Jobs were being lost at double or triple the rate of 2008-09 or 1981-82.

This was reflected in unemployment rates. The latest survey pegs U.S. unemployment at 7.6%. That's more than three percentage points below the 1982 peak (10.8%) and not even a third of the peak in 1932 (25.2%). You simply can't equate 7.6% unemployment with the Great Depression.

Other economic statistics also dispel any analogy between today's economic woes and the Great Depression. Real gross domestic product (GDP) rose in 2008, despite a bad fourth quarter. The Congressional Budget Office projects a GDP decline of 2% in 2009. That's comparable to 1982, when GDP contracted by 1.9%. It is nothing like 1930, when GDP fell by 9%, or 1931, when GDP contracted by another 8%, or 1932, when it fell yet another 13%.

Auto production last year declined by roughly 25%. That looks good compared to 1932, when production shriveled by 90%. The failure of a couple of dozen banks in 2008 just doesn't compare to over 10,000 bank failures in 1933, or even the 3,000-plus bank (Savings & Loan) failures in 1987-88. Stockholders can take some solace from the fact that the recent stock market debacle doesn't come close to the 90% devaluation of the early 1930s.

Mr. Obama's analogies to the Great Depression are not only historically inaccurate, they're also dangerous. Repeated warnings from the White House about a coming economic apocalypse aren't likely to raise consumer and investor expectations for the future. In fact, they have contributed to the continuing decline in consumer confidence that is restraining a spending pickup. Beyond that, fearmongering can trigger a political stampede to embrace a "recovery" package that delivers a lot less than it promises. A more cool-headed assessment of the economy's woes might produce better policies.

Bill S.