Businesses don't create jobs?

[MachineGhost]

That said, messages like these (and those in your mom's emails) are really only embraced by the respective base, IMO.  I think their real intent is to motivate said base to show up at the voting booth.

Thankfully the rank and file base is only around 25% for both parties.  Americans are evolving and 40% are now moderates.  Whew1

[MachineGhost]

2) Obama's analysis on this point is spot on. You've got some people out there who think that in spite of the system they were born into, all the amazing things others have figured out, all the risks their customers run by not hoarding money, and all the infrastructure that greases the wheels of their commerce, that they are fully responsible for their success. That their rugged individualism and little else got them where they are. It's pretty nauseating

Yep, but until they evolve, they will be stuck in a vicious ideological circle just as I once was.  There's not much you can do but engage in intellectual debate and hope that you're the spark.  It really is a filter limitation of vision and perception about how the world, universe and reality really works, scientifically and objectively.  Especially as more and more frontier scientific research shows all life is more and more interdependent on unseen realities than anyone ever imagined.  The whole conception of what being a human being is is changing rapidly.

I am no longer a rugged individualist and now see it for the hallucinotion it really is.

[MachineGhost]

Insulting and fallacious or no?

Hurt feelings doesn't make the harsh facts of bio-reality any less real.

[dragoncar]

You'd be surprised what people claim.... some people definitely need to be reminded about the "part and parcel of living in a society."  I've seen comments on this very forum that scoff at the very notion.

I would be very surprised at that and would want to see examples. Again, this concept is so implicit and obvious that most normal people IMHO don't really feel the need to mention it. Even the most hardcore anarcho-capitalist is going to at least admit that he's benefited from the stock of surplus capital goods produced by the previous generation that he has only "paid for" in an extremely general and indirect way. The notion that conservatives and money-oriented people tend to think of themselves as heroic individuals forging a solitary path through life not benefiting from anyone else's work is just a standard liberal stereotype buoyed by the fact that non-liberals often like talking about success and pride rather than the standard liberal fares of victimhood, self-flagellation, and guilt. To a pretty firm liberal like Obama, the absence of a focus on these subjects reveals selfishness and disbelief in the concepts of community and interdependence. I think it's complete nonsense and yet another example of how liberals misunderstand conservatives more than than the reverse (citation: Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, which is an awesome book FYI).

Just read the comments from any news article from that time.  I wish Fox News still had it's comments available, but they've disappeared down the memory hole.  As an example:

I have been in business since 1996 since being downsized from my last job. I have never received anything but hinderance, especially the government. I have dealt this this from my competitors and thrive on the competition, but I've come to realize that my biggest competitor is government. This statement from the President only exemplifies the truth of this fact.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the ... _blog.html

Closer to home, there's this guy:

Where exactly is this social contract thingy? I can't remember signing one. I'd love to see it; maybe then I could finally get a firm handle on just what benefits I actually signed up to receive and what I have to give up to receive them, rather than relying on the other party to tell me both of these things and threaten to hurt me if I protest. Apparently, without realizing it, I signed up to subsidize old people until I become one myself.

You seem skeptical that this is part of living in a society.

[Pointedstick]

Closer to home, there's this guy:

Where exactly is this social contract thingy? I can't remember signing one. I'd love to see it; maybe then I could finally get a firm handle on just what benefits I actually signed up to receive and what I have to give up to receive them, rather than relying on the other party to tell me both of these things and threaten to hurt me if I protest. Apparently, without realizing it, I signed up to subsidize old people until I become one myself.

You seem skeptical that this is part of living in a society.

Lol... A person can change a lot in two and a half years.

But hey, you have all benefited from my sage wisdom during that time, constituting a clear uncompensated benefit to society, so... when are my tax payments going to start rolling in!?

[Libertarian666]

The "walking, talking parody" comments were directed toward the last two Republican nominees, each of whom almost seemed to play right into liberals' fears and preconceptions. McCain was an elderly warmonger and Romney was a stuffy rich prick. Taken together, that pretty much encompasses what liberals think of conservatives. I long for the Republicans to nominate someone who can break out of the stereotypes and shake things up a little. Someone with more interest in freedom for all rather than bringing back a social vision that's long dead, or identifying enemies everywhere to kill. Maybe appeal to some people outside of the typical Republican demographics. Someone like… Rand Paul, perhaps.

Your only hope is Chris Christie then.  All the rest are extremists of one stripe or another, including Rand Paul.  Paul would never fly with the mainstream electors anymore than Ryan, Cruz or Gingrinch would.

Would Christie beat Hillary?  No, I believe the country wants to elect the first woman President and so it shall.

There are people here who think that Rand Paul is eminently reasonable.
Are they extremists too? Apparently you think so.
I don't see all the civility that is supposed to be the hallmark of this board.

[MachineGhost]

There are people here who think that Rand Paul is eminently reasonable.
Are they extremists too? Apparently you think so.
I don't see all the civility that is supposed to be the hallmark of this board.

Pointing out that certain wingnut extremists are not mainstream electable is incivility?

some might say that the "extremist wingnuts" are the mainstream republicans, and the rand paul types are an attempt to return to reason...

(civility should be a measure of the tone and wording not the content of the comment)

[MachineGhost]

Calling people wingnut extremists is the incivility. And as for electability:
http://usconservatives.about.com/od/201 ... n-2016.htm

I do think it would be quite fitting if Rand Paul started his own party and wound up being the third party due to make a cyclical appearance in 2016.  But over what basis?  Congress creates money and way too many are reliant on the Congressional teat for such an extremist party to actually win the electoral vote.  And any third party is going to split the Republican vote, handing Clinton a victory, unless something truly extraodinarily outside the norm happens between next week and 2016.  World War III maybe?  Paul capturing all 40% of the moderates despite being socially-restrictive?  The women, the minorities?  Then again it could just be the out-of-touch Republican party dying off from irrelevance.  I'm just not seeing it at this time.  Hope doesn't win elections.

[dragoncar]

Calling people wingnut extremists is the incivility. And as for electability:
http://usconservatives.about.com/od/201 ... n-2016.htm

I do think it would be quite fitting if Rand Paul started his own party and wound up being the third party due to make a cyclical appearance in 2016.  But over what basis?  Congress creates money and way too many are reliant on the Congressional teat for such an extremist party to actually win the electoral vote.  And any third party is going to split the Republican vote, handing Clinton a victory, unless something truly extraodinarily outside the norm happens between next week and 2016.  World War III maybe?  Paul capturing all 40% of the moderates despite being socially-restrictive?  The women, the minorities?  Then again it could just be the out-of-touch Republican party dying off from irrelevance.  I'm just not seeing it at this time.  Hope doesn't win elections.

it doesn't?

Hope didn't win that election, running against an unpalatable (pair) candidate did.

i cant strongly disagree.. the progressive/republicans sometimes talk about being real conservatives, which i lean closer to than progressive/liberal but they don't often act like they talk, and their candidates in the last couple elections have been the worst sort of establishment puppets.
you couldn't have payed me to vote for McCain no matter what argument you make for "his being a different sort of just as bad" some how equaling "being better"..

as for hope winning elections.. For the jump off a cliff Lening's and all of the assorted variety's of useful idiots who vote with feelings, instead of sound political philosophy based on reason and principals, hope was one of the big feelings that got them out to vote in that election. It almost certainly didn't win the election alone ...but it sure helped...

[Pointedstick]

Back in 2008 when I was younger, stupider, and a liberal, I can tell ya that I voted for the big O based on hope. It sure wasn't based on experience, qualifications, or political savvy... I got hoodwinked by his powerful oratory and the fact that he was black and wasn't George W. Bush or an old warmonger. Most of my friends did the same. Hope was a really powerful motivator during that hopeless year when everything seemed to be falling apart. Of course there was no real substance there, and Obama has turned out to be a terribly inept politician who is consistently frustrated that he can't get his way by lecturing or scolding. Bad on us for placing image over substance by voting for a nobody who sounded good.

[MachineGhost]

Well, gag me with a pitchfork!  Hope DOES win elections.  Silly me!  Who could forget all the lovely images of the candle-wielding hopemeisters?

I'll put on my double-dunce cap now.

But please, don't repeat 2008, America!  The next President may well turn out to be a tyrant along the likes of Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Poi Pot Pie (wth was his name?), etc..

...

I didn't read this entire thread but did anyone notice that Clinton also said that minimum wage hikes create jobs right before she said businesses don't create jobs?  That's a scary lack of economic intelligence.  One can relish hope that the Executive institution forces her to the moderate center and "those !@#%ing bond traders" teach her a thing or two as it did to her husband. Whew1

[Pointedstick]

Bad on us for placing image over substance by voting for a nobody who sounded good.

Though, as you've said elsewhere (OK, maybe not exactly this), people are really only voting for an image anyway, so I don't see that this is going to change in an era where marketing/style trumps substance.

Yes, I don't think people have really gotten worse in this respect. I place a lot of the blame on the media for turning politicians into celebrities. Most of people we used to elect 75 or 100 years ago were shockingly un-PC compared to the buffed and polished imitations of humans we vote for today. We're just responding to the political environment we live in. And to the extend that we live in a fashion-obsessed culture, you could say that politics is just following the trend.

But I still feel bad about it, in the same way as I feel when I get snookered by advertising or clever sales techniques into buying something that's defective or that I don't need. Obama was an especially skillful salesman. Unfortunately, the product was even more snake oil than the typical midleading junk that politicians peddle.