The Repub Debate

[Guy Chamberlin]

 

Boy, I don't know anyone who thinks the Clintons are squeaky clean.

The caricature of a "liberal" that we hear so much about thinks this.

 

 

True enough.

 

I also dig football, hot ladies, red meat and America, but think Donald Trump is a coward of the first order.

[knapplc]

 

 

Boy, I don't know anyone who thinks the Clintons are squeaky clean.

The caricature of a "liberal" that we hear so much about thinks this.

 

True enough.

 

I also dig football, hot ladies, red meat and America, but think Donald Trump is a coward of the first order.

 

Could you please identify more stereotypical interests to help us figure out which bucket you fit in so we can more easily dismiss your opinions?

[HuskerNation1]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back on topic. I'm amused by some of Newt's comments lately. After being spoken of as a strong VP pic, he has made several comments critical of Trump. This after being an almost apologist for the guy during the primaries. Maybe he is seeing the 'stain on the wall' that being associated wt Trump in any role isn't an image/legacy builder.

Here's the thing....it's much more common for Republicans to call each other out when the screw up. When some have had affairs and such, they are pressured to step down or they lose a spot on a committee they are a part of. I'm not saying it happens 100% of the time, but it's way more common than on the Democratic side. I think it's healthy for key figures in a party to call out each other when they screw up.

I think we view things things through our own partisan glasses. I would be very surprised to find any metric that proves Republicans are better moral police within their party.

 

Remember: Ronald Reagan's 11th Commandment was "Thou Shalt Not Speak Ill of Any Fellow Republican."

 

Donald Trump, a bit like Ron Paul, is carpetbagging the Republican Party, so criticism of Trump is a different animal, especially among those who think he's about to destroy the party.

 

But here's a fun fact: the nearly 8 year Obama administration is among the most scandal free in history.

 

Good times.

Well there was Larry Craig, Trent Lott, and others that lost their seat or stepped down facing pressure for saying or doing something stupid. Had Bill Clinton been a GOP nominee in 1992 he would not have made it to the finish line. This past year's contest has been a total change of script with Trump winning despite his many dumb statements. Let's not forget Anthony Weiner hung around (pun intended) for some time after his lovely scandal.

 

As for your assessment that Obama has been scandal free, how do you figure he was more scandal free than his predecessor? Can you explain? And if you really believe that, does that mean that the "right wing conspiracy republicans" that Hillary and many leftists claim are out to get them are not really as bad as Hillary claims?

There's a big difference between an actual scandal and throwing everything you can think of at someone hoping it'll stick.

So what is your definition of an actual scandal as it would pertain to Bush 43.

Dick Chenney...

 

 

Really, that is all you have? The point I'm trying to make is that Bush 43 and Obama have had fewer scandals following them than the Clintons, and it's not because the GOP is just after the Clintons and want to give Obama a reprieve. The Clintons are shady and always have been. The biggest "scandal' I could see in the Bush administration were the Halliburton contracts, and for Obama its' the IRS targeting Conservative groups (which has proven to be true) as well as the Benghazi cover up and state department email/server violations which speaks more to Hillary than Obama. I realize there are some that believe the Clintons are squeaky clean and you seem to be one of them, but most of the public does not believe or trust Hillary, period.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/03/08/hillary-clintons-honest-and-trustworthy-numbers-are-lower-than-ever-it-might-not-matter/

 

 

Boy, I don't know anyone who thinks the Clintons are squeaky clean.

 

But every time a self-righteous Republican tries to vilify them, he trips over his own hypocrisy. Ken Starr is just the latest.

 

Well before election day 1992, the public knew and believed Bill Clinton was a serial philanderer who got other people -- including Arkansas State Patrolmen -- to cover for him.

 

They just didn't care as much as the Republicans wanted them too. Americans wanted a change, and ended up with a robust economy, budget surpluses, lower crime and few international crises.

 

For the record, things are better today than they were seven years ago. That used to be the litmus test.

 

Still waiting for one of you to tell me what period of greatness you want Donald Trump to return us to

 

 

Again we all see things through a different lens. Over 2/3s of the country still believe this country is on the wrong track...that is about where it was 7 years ago. Taking out the period of time where we had a worldwide financial crisis (starting in September 2008 through 2009) which was a result of policies that both parties had their hands on, the job market has been ok but not great, and there are still more Americans now out of the labor force than at any point since the late 1970s. The world is a more dangerous place now with the rise of ISIS and the higher frequency of terrorism across the globe. Crime and racial tensions have gotten worse in the past 7 years as well. And let's not forget that the national debt has grown more under Obama than any other President before him. All prior Presidents are partially to blame for our national debt, but Obama has done little to nothing to reign in the national debt. This is really just scratching the surface.

[knapplc]

Does google not work on some computers? These things are so easy to look up.

Amount of debt accumulated by US presidents:


Crime rates in the US 1960-2012:


Job growth under the last several presidents, including Obama:

 

The economy has 5.7 million more jobs today than when Mr. Obama took office in January of 2009. That puts his total job creation ahead of presidents John Kennedy, Gerald Ford, and George H.W. Bush, who each served one term or less. It also puts him well ahead of President George W. Bush, whose final year in office also comprised the beginning to the longest and deepest recession since the Great Depression.

 

LINK

 

So Obama isn't worse on National Debt than past presidents - and better than George W. Bush.

Obama saw the crime rate fall during his presidency, not rise - as did the last several presidents

And jobs have grown steadily throughout the Obama presidency, at a greater rate than that under George W. Bush

 

So aside from being wrong on all those key points, yes, it's easy to see we're worse off now than we were seven years ago.

[Guy Chamberlin]

I know it seems simplistic.

 

I know it's a liberal canard.

 

But the biggest reason Americans think America has gone off the tracks under Obama is because Fox News keeps telling them so.

 

As Knapp points out, facts are available if you really want them.

 

A lot of people don't.

[Danny Bateman]

Furthermore, I don't think that anyone is trying to argue that there aren't still problems that America faces today. Just that there are less problems than we faced when Obama took office in 2008. He took a hemorrhaging economy in 2008 and turned it around to the point where we're at least seeing modest improvements. It's not perfect, and there's much yet to be done, but he deserves credit for stopping the bleeding.

 

And I'll just leave this here to show how much partisan influences our opinions:

 

 

 

Well the reason I posed the question is to see what the definition of "scandal" is to those claiming the Clintons really have had no scandals. To me much of your list of Bush 43 has to do with policy differences and not a scandal where there was intentional wrongdoing. For instance, with Katrina, Benghazi, I don't think Bush Clinton intentionally asked FEMA to be slow in responding, wanted American casualties, it just happened and he she suffered some political fallout. The Patriot Act and Iraq wars were both put before Congress before being signed by the POTUS. And let's not forget that HIllary voted in favor of both of these policies. I guess you would include Obamacare as a scandal for the current POTUS since he lied to the American people in trying to sell the proposal?

 

[HuskerShark]

That is not even close to comparable. You're talking about response to a natural disaster vs total negligence to a very specific duty that got people killed.

[knapplc]

Bush's response to Katrina was total negligence to a very specific duty - providing aid to citizens in distress. The response was muddled and delayed, and people died.

 

Just about any way you parse it, it's comparable. I can't imagine why anyone would think it isn't - except for the fact that Bush was a Republican, and Hillary is a Democrat.

[HuskerNation1]

Does google not work on some computers? These things are so easy to look up.

 

Amount of debt accumulated by US presidents:

 

Crime rates in the US 1960-2012:

 

Job growth under the last several presidents, including Obama:

 

The economy has 5.7 million more jobs today than when Mr. Obama took office in January of 2009. That puts his total job creation ahead of presidents John Kennedy, Gerald Ford, and George H.W. Bush, who each served one term or less. It also puts him well ahead of President George W. Bush, whose final year in office also comprised the beginning to the longest and deepest recession since the Great Depression.

 

LINK

 

So Obama isn't worse on National Debt than past presidents - and better than George W. Bush.

Obama saw the crime rate fall during his presidency, not rise - as did the last several presidents

And jobs have grown steadily throughout the Obama presidency, at a greater rate than that under George W. Bush

 

So aside from being wrong on all those key points, yes, it's easy to see we're worse off now than we were seven years ago.

 

[knapplc]

LINK

 

How Obama's Policies Increased the Debt

Is it fair to blame any President for events over which he had no control? During Obama's terms, there was less Federal income. That was due to lower tax receipts during the recession and the Bush tax cuts. At the same time, the cost of Social Security, Medicare and other mandatory spending continued to increase. The War on Terror, although technically over, was still being fought in Afghanistan and Iraq.

 

Therefore, the method is to measure the debt incurred by Obama's specific policies. The largest contribution was the Obama tax cuts, which were an extension of the Bush tax cuts. They added $858 billion to the debt in 2011 and 2012.

 

The next largest was the ARRA. It added $787 billion between 2009-2012. It cut taxes, extended unemployment benefits, and funded job-creating public works projects. Both were attempts to stimulate the economy after the 2008 financial crisis

 

Also, Obama increased military spending to around $800 billion a year on average. In fact, his security budget request of $895 billion in FY 2011 set a new record. Even though troops were withdrawn from Iraq in 2012, and Osama bin Laden was eliminated in 2011, Obama requested $851 billion in his FY 2013 budget. Although Obama abandoned the phrase "War on Terror," he spent $857 billion on it in Contingency funds. That's more than the $850 billion Bush spent.

 

What about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act? It didn't add anything to the debt in Obama's first term. That's because most of its costs began in 2014, after the health insurance exchanges were set up, and coverage was extended to more low-income people. In fact, tax increases will offset costs to the tune of $104 billion between 2010-2019. For more, see Obamacare Costs.

 

Congress and Obama also negotiated the sequestration budget cuts. They cut the deficit a small percent. When all of these are added up, Obama's debt contribution was $983 billion between 2009-2017. (Source: WSJ, Ezra Klein, Doing the Math on Obama's Deficits, January 31, 2014)

 

[HuskerNation1]

Bush's response to Katrina was total negligence to a very specific duty - providing aid to citizens in distress. The response was muddled and delayed, and people died.

 

Just about any way you parse it, it's comparable. I can't imagine why anyone would think it isn't - except for the fact that Bush was a Republican, and Hillary is a Democrat.

 

Wow, you do see things through Blue Donkey-Colored glasses. There is no comparison. Katrina is something that the country had a week's notice about, and that initially it appeared the levies would hold. I am the first to admit that Bush's initial response could have been better, but both political parties (including the idiotic mayor and governor at the time) was less than ideal. Counter that with the situation in Benghazi where ambassador Steven's had been asking for a YEAR for additional security, and Hillary did nothing about it. On top of that, after the attacks, she lied to the families and American people about why those 4 men were killed, and continues to lie to this day.

[HuskerShark]

Bush's response to Katrina was total negligence to a very specific duty - providing aid to citizens in distress. The response was muddled and delayed, and people died.

 

Just about any way you parse it, it's comparable. I can't imagine why anyone would think it isn't - except for the fact that Bush was a Republican, and Hillary is a Democrat.

I could not possibly care less about what party someone belongs to. If someone ties themselves to one party at all that seems fairly irratizonal IMO

[zoogs]

We have a two-party system which is limited enough in that the parties only need to try to outdo the other, and not to be the absolute best they could be.

And then that gets compounded when people remove themselves from both pools -- and thus enable either party to descend to arbitrary depths without appropriately suffering the in-system consequences of being awful via getting steamrolled by their only real competitor.

[knapplc]

We have a two-party system which is limited enough in that the parties only need to try to outdo the other, and not to be the absolute best they could be.

 

And then that gets compounded when people remove themselves from both pools -- and thus enable either party to descend to arbitrary depths without appropriately suffering the in-system consequences of being awful via getting steamrolled by their only real competitor.

What does the bold mean? If you're suggesting that I can't affect change without being a member of either of the two current dominant parties, I don't agree with that.

[HuskerShark]

So in order to contribute positively to the our political process, I have to conform to the ideas of one of the parties when the correct views are usually somewhere in the middle? That's ridiculous.

 

I'd argue that our political system would be much better off if everyone removed themselves from association with these parties and simply voted for the best candidate, regardless if they're a Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, or independent.