Occupy Wall Street protest

[cockgobbler]

CAT FIGHT!!!!!!!

I actually like Hilary.

Strong women are sexy.

[onmyknees]

Last week's Have I Got News For You, a topical news quiz show in the UK, featured a Tory MP who ridiculed the protesters in London for buying coffee in Starbucks and thereby shoring up the capitalist system. She was slammed by all of the other panelists in turn. It's patently ridiculous. We all live, for better or worse, in capitalist societies, where there are no alternatives or where co-operatives have been pushed to the margins.

Maybe the protesters in New York should be burning Teabaggers to keep warm.....

See...there ya go again. Outta your league. Stick to the never ending complimentary responses to the girls...it keeps threads going, and they seem to like it, ( yawn) and you're simply better at it. And for better or worse...we have to go with what we're better at.

[robertlouis]

Well, it's a moot point anyway since Canada doesn't have the death peanality.

Good repsectful healthy debate though.

Thanks. I was born and brought up in Glasgow, where wimps don't prosper, so I can handle myself in a fight ok, but I have never had any interest in firearms, and I have always opposed the death penalty.

I suspect that once it's been abolished, very few countries have the real practical appetite to re-establish it. I'm not talking about tabloid frenzies and rabid right-wingers, but governments and those authorities charged with organising it. We got rid of it in the mid-1960s. It won't be coming back.

[BluegrassCat]

I'm a conservative voter (granted Conservative in Canada is somewhat different than the US, here in Canada the Conservative Prime Minister has no intrest in opening the gay marriage or abortion (both legal) debates)) but from the numbers I've seen Obama has added to the debt in 3 1/2 years as much as Bush added in 8 years.

Am I wrong?

If you go by debt by year this is true, if you go by debt from policy it isn't.

[robertlouis]

See...there ya go again. Outta your league. Stick to the never ending complimentary responses to the girls...it keeps threads going, and they seem to like it, ( yawn) and you're simply better at it. And for better or worse...we have to go with what we're better at.

Aww, and I thought we were getting on so well, omk. LOL.

So protest is only legitimate where there's no compromise?

So how come teabaggers still pay taxes and use services provided by social programmes, oh, and collect their welfare checks too? The argument cuts both ways, you know.

By the way, when you find what you're good at, please let us all know......

[onmyknees]

Dear God, does your intellectual dishonesty know no bounds??? You claim you want to deal in facts, please start, I've been waiting. The entire economics profession has countless charts, graphs and models that all point to the effectiveness of the stimulus and the need for more. Here's one based on the model by conservative Douglas Holtz-Eakin:


Where's your evidence? If what you claim is so obviously true it would show up in the data. You can only point to dishonest Heritage Foundation graphs which I've already debunked in the Politics section. The balance of evidence completely vindicates Keynesianism and refutes your austerity approach.



As for your testimony, first of all the CBO director says he believes according to the evidence that the stimulus worked and more stimulus is needed so case basically closed. But you're taken in by a deceptive and meaningless question by the radical extremist Toomey. Let me illustrate how useless this question by posing another.

SEN TOOMEY: I know it is your view that the recent failure to drop atomic weapons on Chicago has saved millions of lives that would have been lost if we had dropped nuclear bombs on the city. But surely you'd agree, that that essentially asks for a comparison to a counterfactual, and as such, it's completely impossible to prove?

DR. DOUGLAS ELMENDORF, director of the CBO: Yes, that's right, senator.

You see this? Every counterfactual is impossible to prove! And since time only appears to go in one direction we can't go back to do experiments to see what would have happened. But this does not mean we have no idea how the world works because we can track different policies across locations and over time. And the evidence from all this research says, as the CBO director says, the stimulus worked and we need more.



This is basically a red herring. I've never said that tax-cuts are not stimulative, just that they're far less stimulative than fiscal policy and hence a waste of money. It's up to you to defend why you think tax cuts are stimulative but fiscal policy is not, because all the evidence and the experts contradict that claim. In a previous post in this thread I already outlined the case for infrastructure spending now.

You haven't provided a single shred of evidence for your point of view, just misdirection, character assassination and wildly incorrect claims. Btw I'm still waiting for all those examples of when Krugman was "flat out wrong." But I'm not holding my breath.

At some point I just have to throw down and say you're a fool...

that's not a character assassination, just an informed opinion. Both Houses and both parties of Congress use the CBO and its thousands of staff accountants . Their reputation and integrity are beyond reproach, yet under oath when their director cannot provide proof the stimulus actually worked, in fact agrees there is no proof...only supposition..... Blue Grass Cat comes up with some chart that can. He's a miracle man. A liberal secret weapon. Somebody get this man a job in Washington.
Yesterday you dismissed the former Chairman of the Senate finance committe, today the CBO director....tomorrow? You believe what you wanna believe.....Ignorance is Bliss, and thankfully your position is irrelevant, because they'll be no more spending...it didn't pass the Senate, won't pass the House, and it's DOA.

[Silcc69]

Somebody seems to be getting a agitated now.

[MdR Dave]

So how come teabaggers still pay taxes and use services provided by social programmes, oh, and collect their welfare checks too? The argument cuts both ways, you know.

By the way, when you find what you're good at, please let us all know......

That's our RL!

Good show- but you'll never get anywhere with fact and insight- better to make blanket statements with an air of authority, regardless of veracity- you know, fire with fire?

[BluegrassCat]

At some point I just have to throw down and say you're a fool...

that's not a character assassination, just an informed opinion. Both Houses and both parties of Congress use the CBO and its thousands of staff accountants . Their reputation and integrity are beyond reproach, yet under oath when their director cannot provide proof the stimulus actually worked, in fact agrees there is no proof...only supposition..... Blue Grass Cat comes up with some chart that can. He's a miracle man. A liberal secret weapon. Somebody get this man a job in Washington.
Yesterday you dismissed the former Chairman of the Senate finance committe, today the CBO director....tomorrow? You believe what you wanna believe.....Ignorance is Bliss, and thankfully your position is irrelevant, because they'll be no more spending...it didn't pass the Senate, won't pass the House, and it's DOA.

Another post entirely free of evidence, but chock full of invective; a perfect example of the modern conservative movement.
I didn't dismiss the CBO director, I agreed with his assessment that the stimulus worked and more stimulus is needed. If you disagree with that then YOU'RE dismissing him. He simply acknowledged what anyone who's taken basic science or statistics understands: you can't prove any counterfactual. And in the same breath you have the chutzpah (or just cluelessness) to herald his counterfactual assertion about cutting corporate tax rates being stimulative. You don't have a leg to stand on here, so hop on home.

If omk is a parody profile, it's a work of genius. If not, it's just embarrassing.

[onmyknees]

Look...some people are ideologues, some are pragmatists...you're the former, and so is Obama. No matter what the cost....you and he stay tied to your failed assertions and ideology. Unlike Clinton....In the wake of a resounding, historical rebuke in the mid term elections, it phased him not....he did not readjust, adapt, or amend, just hardened his unpopular, ineffective positions. So why could anyone expect you to change or reconsider? But you stay with that belief...if nothing else you're determined. Stay with the ship Captain...even as it descends to the ocean floor . It's entirely probable that even if he did win re-election, and after 8 years and a country crippled in debt and unemployment, bitterly divided between race and class, you'd still be showing us your charts and graphs and telling us not to believe our lying eyes...what a success it's really been.