Friday, July 29, 2011
Deeper, Alright
O'Reilly put up this graph that showed how Mr. Obama's daily contribution to our national debt has greatly exceeded that of his predecessors; Bush 2 and Clinton. Assuming that the data is accurate (and it probably is), it would have also been nice if Mr. O'Reilly (not so much to make excuses for Mr. Obama but for some "fairness/"balance") had pointed out that a) Mr. Obama inherited the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression and b) made a concerted effort to salvage a war in Afghanistan that his predecessor, Mr. Bush, had majorly neglected. Not that these two factors alone would have been sufficient in explaining this admittedly massive discrepancy. But it at least would have explained a modicum of it....And this, folks, right after Mr. O'Reilly claimed to his HUGE audience, "We always dig a little deeper here at 'The Factor'."
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13 comments:
I'm missing "this graph".
"We always dig a little deeper here at 'The Factor'." No matter how deep you dig the latrine, it still smells of shit.
That reminds me of a line from "Glengarry Glen Ross"; Al Pacino uttering to Jonathan Pryce, "All train compartments smell vaguely of shit. It gets so you don't mind."...Still cracks me up.
The Leprechaun can indeed be interesting at times.Even entertaining. ;)
What about the fact that bush conducted the wars "off budget"? They were never part of the official budget and the cost of the wars is never included when Republicans compare how much Obama is spending to how much bush spent. Even though with Obama the wars are included in the budget?
(Although I suspect now Rusty will say something about there not being a budget).
wd, according to the NY Times (nytimes.com/2011/07/124/opinion/sunday/sun4.html), the biggest reasons for the Bush deficits were the Iraq War and the tax cuts. I don't know if the former was included in Mr. O'Reilly's tabulations or not. Knowing him, possible not.
Kids,anyway you try to slice and dice it you cannot make custard out of mustard.The policies of the past thirty months have made an already weak economy into a shambles.You ladies are whistling past the graveyard.
I realize 90% of the posters here are Obamabots and would justify his actions even if he were caught on camera beating the crap out of Michelle,but it would be a red letter day if just one of you could honestly say.....wow,the shit this guy is doing just aint working,we need to try another path.
I think some of you realize electing this guy was a major mistake but you're either embarrassed to admit you fell for his flowery B.S.or your scared some other lib will label you a racist if you voice what you are actually thinking about this guy.
There are a couple seemingly smart people posting here so its difficult to imagine you're all lemmings willing to dive off the cliff with the community organizer
from Chicago.
This "community organizer" in over his head meme is total bullshit. Obama is a shrewd politician who knows what he's doing.
Rusty is right that what the collective Congress is doing isn't working though... and I WOULD like to try something different. Something more progressive.
What Rusty wants to do is go back to the polices that got us in this mess... the policies that have been proven to not work. If a Republican is elected president in 2012 we'll go into full blown depression fairly quickly... and we'll stay there for a long time.
Until the voters come to their senses and elect an FDR type progressive.
There is no way in hell I'd vote Republican. I could vote for the Green Party candidate, but why throw my vote away on someone who has no chance? I suppose it wouldn't matter since I don't live in a swing state.
I do not think electing this guy was a major mistake. The major mistake was electing Tea Partiers to Congress and state governorships. That's the mustard you can't make custard out of.
Loose lending caused this recession, wd. And, yeah, George Bush played a humongous role in that. But so, too/unfortunately, did people like Maxine Waters. This women took virtually every critical assessment of Fannie and Freddie as either a racist slight against Franklin Raines (read the Time Magazine piece on this douche-bag) or an attempt to keep poor people from buying homes. As Jonathan Koppell of the New America Foundation/Arizona State University has stated, "Selling Fannie and Freddie as a purely partisan issue, it doesn't really work. Both parties have plenty of responsibility."
"Loose lending"? That's a gross misrepresentation of what happened. It was deregulation that caused the recession.
Specifically, it was the following two deregulatory bills...
[1] The Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999. This bill is also known as "Gramm-Leach-Bliley" after the three Republicans who sponsored it. And, although Bill Clinton signed the bill, every Senate Democrat (save one) voted against it.
[2] The Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. The CFMA was originally a stand alone bill that passed the House but died in the Senate. Later, then-Senator Phil Gramm slipped it into a $384-billion omnibus spending bill, which was signed by Clinton (most politicians were unaware of what Gramm had done or what was in the bill).
This information is from a post on my blog titled, "The Ideology That Screwed The World". The ideology is that of deregulation.
Both parties have plenty of responsibility? Wrong again! It was former President bush's "ownership society" that encouraged home ownership for all (including people who shouldn't have qualified) with new policies like the zero-down-payment initiative.
In fact, Barney Frank introduced legislation to regulate subprime lending, but his bill was defeated because the Bush administration and the Republican controlled Congress opposed it. (See my post "Republican Lies About Fannie, Freddie, And Frank" for more information).
..........................For instance, it has been reported by the Boston Globe reported that Frank, as early as 1991, had pushed these agencies (Fannie and Freddie) to loosen regulations on mortgages for two and three family homes, even though they were defaulting at twice to five times the rate of single family dwellings. They also reported that in 1994, President Clinton's Department of Housing and Urban Development tried to impose stiffer regulations on Fannie....and that they were thwarted by Mr. Frank. Yes, in 2002, Mr. Frank was seemingly coming to his senses on these types of loans but, alas, it didn't last. Get this quote, folks: "I do think I DO NOT (emphasis courtesy of me) want the same kind of focus on safety and soundness that we have in OOC and OTS. I want to roll the dice a little more in this situation toward subsidized housing (ROLL THE DICE?).".The Boston Globe (not exactly a publication that's been hard on Democrats over the years) summarized their most recent interview with Barney Frank thusly: "He missed the warning signs because he was wearing ideological blinders. He said that he had worried that Republican lawmakers and the Bush administration were going after Fannie and Freddie for their own ideological reasons and would curtail the lenders' mission of providing affordable housing."................................................................................................And like I've said in the previous posting, Congressman Frank's own words are themselves a mea culpa; "I was late in seeing it, no question."............................................Oh, and to all of those who happen to think that Mr. Frank has gotten a raw deal in this analysis, this. In 2000, Mr. Frank said that concerns about Fannie and Freddie were "overblown" and that there was "no federal liability whatsoever". In 2002, he said that "I do not regard Fannie and Freddie as problems" and that he regarded them as "great assets". In 2003, he said that there was "no federal guarantee to Fannie and Freddie's obligations". In 2004, he said that Fannie and Freddie were "no real threat to the treasury". Add to this the fact that Mr. Frank received $40,000 in campaign contributions from Fannie and Freddie and even had a romantic relationship with one of its executives and, yeah, it really does sounds to me like Mr. Frank may have at least some explaining to do.
Barney Frank introduced legislation to regulate subprime lending, but his bill was defeated because the Bush administration and the Republican controlled Congress opposed it.
The Republicans were in control during this period of time. Frank points out, "I did not try to stop them from passing legislation to control subprime lending or to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac".
Blame lies not with Frank, but with the bush administration -- in his book "Financial Shock" economist Mark Zandi reveals that it was President Bush who "readily took up the homeownership baton... [and it was the] Bush administration [who] put substantial pressure on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to increase their funding of mortgage loans to lower-income groups".
And the reason the bush administration pushed this had nothing to so with any desire to see lower-income workers attain the American dream of home ownership. Subprime lenders stood to make a pile of money... and if it didn't work out the government could just bail them out.
Will: ...in 1994, President Clinton's Department of Housing and Urban Development tried to impose stiffer regulations on Fannie.
So what if Frank was willing to "roll the dice" a little more? I don't care about any of that because none of it was what caused the recession. The recession didn't start in 1994. Fannie and Freddie didn't cause it.
Frank was late in seeing the extent to which Fannie and Freddie got caught up in the subprime mess... but as to what caused the recession? NONE of that is on Frank. He tried to so something about it.
So, in regards to your comment that "Frank's own words are themselves a mea culpa", I say bullshit.
You're wrong about a lot of things, wd. For one, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act passed the Senate 90-8, NINETY TO EIGHT!!!!!!! And what is this legislation that you're referring to? According to the NY Times 9/11/2003, President Bush proposed sweeping regulatory reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and was opposed by the Dems. And the Republicans in Congress (2004) and McCain (2005) also tried to put forth strong regulatory reform. Each time, Numbnuts like Maxine Waters and Congressman Meeks cried foul and implied racism. Yeah, maybe Bush didn't do enough and the fact that he was President, the buck stops with him but, dude, to lay this entirely on the feet of the Republicans is insane (no matter what you're highly partisan author might say).
"This "community organizer" in over his head meme is total bullshit. Obama is a shrewd politician who knows what he's doing."
WD - Being a shrewd politician that knows what he is doing does not mean what he is doing is good for the country.
Perhaps it makes for a good fox but we didn't elect a fox to office.
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