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Old 12-26-2010, 02:55 PM
 
19,198 posts, read 31,464,947 times
Reputation: 4013

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Quote:
Originally Posted by Frankie117 View Post
Now you are just being facetious.
No, that's just what happened. The search for stealth began in the 1950's, but it remained within the province of lab-coated nerds with thick glasses until the now well-noted Skunk Works produced two half-sized models that actually worked in 1977. They had a production contract a year later and we were secretly off to the races.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Frankie117 View Post
And once again, Predator drones came out of H.W. Bush and late Reagan era defense spending. GPS received most of its funding during the Reagan years and the first satellites were launched in 1989. Global Hawks are a recent development, Clinton had nothing to do with it and never did. DOD computer systems and advanced intranets all came out of the 80s defense projects, something Congressional Democrats always whined would be wasteful, and that computers had no place in our military in place of bullets.
Yet again, an R&D-based claim. No Predators were operational until 1995 and it was Clinton's budgets that first finished the work and then produced the ones Bush ended up using. Interesting by the way that Clinton would have had "nothing to do" with Global Hawk. They were setting UAV flight records by early 2001 and were quickly put to use in Afghanistan, but it seems that the start-to-finish R&D that was done under the Clinton administration doesn't count. Isn't that just a little tiny bit out of synch with your previous Reagan/Bush R&D claims?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Frankie117 View Post
It seems like a Yale economist knows more about the housing bubble than any anonymous face on the internet (this is from 2006 by the way):
Yes, Schiller's work is what underlies the Case-Schiller Index that has been successfully pushed as a popular benchmark by Standard & Poor's, but there are dozens of other signficant indexes produced, and the CSI tends often to be an outlier against other major indexes (e.g., NAR, OFHEO, and Realogy) making it somewhat suspect. For instance it includes data for just 20 major MSA's, meaning that sales in just eight states dominate its data. It includes only resales of existing single-family homes -- no new homes, no refi's, no duplexes, no condos, no co-ops. This means that its so-called New York index excludes 99% of the actual housing in Manhattan, but includes trailer park sales a two-hour drive up the Hudson River. The index is also value-weighted, meaning that trends in expensive housing are emphasized. There are also time-lag questions since the CSI takes its data from county-level tax records where other indexes access more timely information, as in OFHEO's use of GSE recordations. If you want to read a more detailed critique of the CSI and Schiller's work, here is one from mid-2007 by Andrew Leventis at OFHEO.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Frankie117 View Post
In other words, a mirror image of the current situation. For the sake of consistency will you also agree that the stimulus bill also failed to produce any significant increase in economic activity?
What's significant? The stimulus bill has been almost exactly on the path that was projected for it. Just about 3.5 million jobs saved or created, 2.0 to 2.5 points shaved of the unemployment rate, and nearly the same added to the quarterly GDP growth rate. The actual number of people employed has risen by 2.6 million since January 2010. That's more than over Bush's entire first term and way more than over his entire second term.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Frankie117 View Post
In the past 5 quarters GDP growth has averaged only 2.9%, which is below the average rate during a normal economy, and only a fraction higher than the first 3 years of recovery under Bush (2.8%). Just like the 2001 recession unemployment rose even after the recession was officially over, and after 11 months, the rate is actually higher now than it was when this year started.
The Lesser Bush Recession was mild and short-lived. There is no comparison whatsoever to be made between it and the Great Bush Recession, the worst economic calamity in 75 years, and no worse than that only because of some fancy footwork by a new administration. In GDP terms meanwhile, the past five quarters are on a par with the best five quarters Bush ever had.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Frankie117 View Post
Spin spin spin, you may have achieved lift this time.
Like to provide some details on the counter-terrorism program that Bush-41 left to Clinton? Like to tell us what Bush and Cheney did when the final USS Cole report was presented to them in February 2001? Like to recall for us the date on which bin Laden was finally hunted down and smoked out?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Frankie117 View Post
Massoud.
Ah, it's the proxy of the Iranian mullahs, then. A fine choice. Maybe ALL the choices were bad at the time and only got worse.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Frankie117 View Post
No, you don't either. I have sparred with you in the past and you will spin any situation, even if it defies facts and consensus, in order to support Democrats and make Republicans look bad. You also have a pronounced double standard, if the economy grows for a quarter at 6.9% under Bush, you have a slew of excuses and claim it is an outlier, but I suspect if I said Obama managed 6.9% for a quarter, you would hail him as some hero of epic proportions for saving the economy with his bare hands.
No, 6.9% is an unsustainable growth rate no matter who it might occur under.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Frankie117 View Post
It is similar to when you mentioned the stock market came down in 2000 only becuase Bush was elected, ignoring the collapse of the Dot Com bubble, while at the same time claiming the same hesitation was absent when Obama was elected.
It was gross private domestic investment that fell in advance of and after Bush's election, an expression of doubts and concerns over his radical proposals to upset the economic apple cart that had served so many so well for so long. You'd think that a bunch of people so recently doing a grotesque version of the Chicken-Little Dance over "uncertainty" alleged to pertain to expiration of the Bush tax cuts might comprehend this, but no.

Meanwhile, there was no such thing as the dot-com bubble. It amounted to a bunch of rigged IPO's, particularly on the NASDAQ, perpetrated by the same gang of wizards who would later manufacture the credit crisis. Then there was a wave of Enron-style accounting scandals that hit several well-known telecommunications firms. Add a little dash of out-of-control cable business channels trying to convince students and housewives that they could be rich next week simply by leveraging the right rumor, and there you'd pretty much have the whole nine yards of it. Meanwhile, Moore's Law continued to operate, the internet continued to blossom, government, business, and personal investment in software and IT infrastructure all continued to expand, all as if nothing had ever happened. Because it didn't.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Frankie117 View Post
Or my personal favorite, you being anti-free market and lassiez faire, yet lauding Clinton for his (wait for it) .. free market and hands off approach to the Dot Com bubble.
Well, I think it was wise of him not to have spent billions on trying to prevent an imminent invasion from Neptune as well. Otherwise, laissez-faire free-market capitalism has a long and distinguished history of abysmal failure in industrial and post-industrial economies. All that has worked or is ever likely to is managed capitalism -- what responsibility-shirking, Liberty & Freedom-loving right-wingers for some reason like to call socialism. We have three sectors in our economy: households, business, and government When all three are respected, encouraged, and supported in doing what they do best, good and even great things can happen for us all.
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Old 12-26-2010, 03:56 PM
 
Location: Southeast
4,301 posts, read 7,031,604 times
Reputation: 1464
Quote:
Originally Posted by saganista View Post
No, that's just what happened. The search for stealth began in the 1950's, but it remained within the province of lab-coated nerds with thick glasses until the now well-noted Skunk Works produced two half-sized models that actually worked in 1977.<snip>Isn't that just a little tiny bit out of synch with your previous Reagan/Bush R&D claims?
Truth be told, I do not care either way. But military projects, especially black projects and the like, take time, lots of it. Often times more than the span of even a two term presidency. I was not going to let you sit by and claim Carter and Clinton were the patron saints of the military without pointing out that the technology originated with their predecessors.

Quote:
Yes, Schiller's work is what underlies the Case-Schiller Index that has been successfully pushed as a popular benchmark by Standard & Poor's, but there are dozens of other signficant indexes produced, and the CSI tends often to be an outlier against other major indexes (e.g., NAR, OFHEO, and Realogy) making it somewhat suspect. For instance it includes data for just 20 major MSA's, meaning that sales in just eight states dominate its data. It includes only resales of existing single-family homes -- no new homes, no refi's, no duplexes, no condos, no co-ops. This means that its so-called New York index excludes 99% of the actual housing in Manhattan, but includes trailer park sales a two-hour drive up the Hudson River. The index is also value-weighted, meaning that trends in expensive housing are emphasized. There are also time-lag questions since the CSI takes its data from county-level tax records where other indexes access more timely information, as in OFHEO's use of GSE recordations. If you want to read a more detailed critique of the CSI and Schiller's work, here is one from mid-2007 by Andrew Leventis at OFHEO.
Deja vu. We discussed this in the past. For the purpose of identifying a housing bubble, it seems prudent to consider resale of existing homes. Perhaps new home construction can be considered as well, but the bulk of the bubble was concentrated on single-family homes, and across the board, values rose at abnormal rates from 1997 to 2006, save for a small downturn during the 2001 recession. One could argue with some degree of success that part of that was a recovery from the fall 1991-1996.

Quote:
What's significant? The stimulus bill has been almost exactly on the path that was projected for it. Just about 3.5 million jobs saved or created, 2.0 to 2.5 points shaved of the unemployment rate, and nearly the same added to the quarterly GDP growth rate. The actual number of people employed has risen by 2.6 million since January 2010. That's more than over Bush's entire first term and way more than over his entire second term.
I used two indexes to measure employment, total civilians employed and the net payroll figures to research your claim:

2001-2005: +2.46 million jobs
2005-2008: +6.17 million jobs

January 2008 was used as the peak, 4.2 million jobs were lost between January 2008 and January 2009. By this measure, we netted 4.3 million jobs during the Bush years.

Between January 2010 and November 2010, 555k jobs were added. No where close to 2.6 million.

This is in the "civilian employment level" data from series LNS12000000 on the BLS website.

The other index is non-farm payrolls, which I am sure you are familiar with.

2001-2005: -32k jobs
2005-2008: +5.6 million jobs

December 2007 is the peak, 4.4 million jobs were lost between January 2008 and January 2009 through this measure. Using this series, Bush netted only 1.2 million jobs.

Between January 2010 and November 2010, 951k jobs were added, also no where near 2.6 million. During the first 6 months of the year 61% of the new jobs were temporary positions with the Census Bureau, as were most of the losses during the Summer months of 2010.

Quote:
In GDP terms meanwhile, the past five quarters are on a par with the best five quarters Bush ever had.
Best 5 under Bush:

6.9%
5.4%
4.1%
3.6%
3.5%

Best 5 under Obama:

5.0%
3.7%
2.6%
1.7%
1.6%

Granted, we have only seen 5 quarters under Obama so it is not really fair, but your claim is incorrect. However, Bush is still among the worst ever for GDP growth along side dismal job growth.

Quote:
Like to provide some details on the counter-terrorism program that Bush-41 left to Clinton? Like to tell us what Bush and Cheney did when the final USS Cole report was presented to them in February 2001? Like to recall for us the date on which bin Laden was finally hunted down and smoked out?
Care to tell me how many terrorist attacks were prevented by Clinton's so called counter terrorism programs? As I recall, our embassies were still bombed, the USS Cole was still attacked, a bomb still went off during the '96 Olympics in Atlanta, even McVeigh carried out the OKC bombings.

If Bush inherited Clinton's military, by the same token he inherited Clinton's counter-terrorism programs. Tell me this, after 9/11, how many terrorists have successfully hit us at home? In contrast, how many terrorists have been successfully apprehended before they could carry out their plot?

Quote:
Ah, it's the proxy of the Iranian mullahs, then. A fine choice. Maybe ALL the choices were bad at the time and only got worse.
Perhaps, but I did not see the Taliban cooperating after the US invasion or in the prelude to invasion. The Northern Alliance on the hand was at least helpful. I often wonder how much more difficult our job would have been in Afghanistan if we had not forged links with those same leaders during Operation Cyclone.

Quote:
No, 6.9% is an unsustainable growth rate no matter who it might occur under.
It is still nice to have every once in a while.

Quote:
It was gross private domestic investment that fell in advance of and after Bush's election, an expression of doubts and concerns over his radical proposals to upset the economic apple cart that had served so many so well for so long. You'd think that a bunch of people so recently doing a grotesque version of the Chicken-Little Dance over "uncertainty" alleged to pertain to expiration of the Bush tax cuts might comprehend this, but no.

Meanwhile, there was no such thing as the dot-com bubble. It amounted to a bunch of rigged IPO's, particularly on the NASDAQ, perpetrated by the same gang of wizards who would later manufacture the credit crisis. Then there was a wave of Enron-style accounting scandals that hit several well-known telecommunications firms. Add a little dash of out-of-control cable business channels trying to convince students and housewives that they could be rich next week simply by leveraging the right rumor, and there you'd pretty much have the whole nine yards of it. Meanwhile, Moore's Law continued to operate, the internet continued to blossom, government, business, and personal investment in software and IT infrastructure all continued to expand, all as if nothing had ever happened. Because it didn't.
The fact remains that since 1995, stock market indexes, including the Dow, have been more and more erratic and unstable. Previously it had been on a clean, reliable, and stable growth pattern. After 1995, it was taking huge swings (up or down) by as much as several hundred points in a short period of time.

You deny the bubble, yet the performance of the stock market worked wonders for consumer sentiment, especially after 1996, that kept our economy moving.

Quote:
Well, I think it was wise of him not to have spent billions on trying to prevent an imminent invasion from Neptune as well. Otherwise, laissez-faire free-market capitalism has a long and distinguished history of abysmal failure in industrial and post-industrial economies. All that has worked or is ever likely to is managed capitalism -- what responsibility-shirking, Liberty & Freedom-loving right-wingers for some reason like to call socialism. We have three sectors in our economy: households, business, and government When all three are respected, encouraged, and supported in doing what they do best, good and even great things can happen for us all.
"Managed capitalism" has been the norm for nearly a century now.
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Old 12-27-2010, 07:22 AM
 
3,128 posts, read 6,530,789 times
Reputation: 1599
Reagan should be on there. He accelerated the selling out of America, his immigration policies failed, he gave tax cuts to the rich, the debt exploded, Iron-Contra under him, he supported Bin Laden, we made bankruptcy easier, lied about balancing the budget, spent billions on star wars and we lost manufacturing and he started to pave the way for NAFTA
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Old 12-27-2010, 08:47 AM
 
Location: Pittsburgh, USA
3,131 posts, read 9,371,085 times
Reputation: 1111
In their public poll for worst president George Washington is winning at 70%. BO is 2nd with
12%. W is 3rd.
Political News Headlines - US News
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Old 12-27-2010, 09:23 AM
 
Location: San Antonio Texas
11,431 posts, read 18,993,162 times
Reputation: 5224
Quote:
Originally Posted by RandyWatson13 View Post
Reagan should be on there. He accelerated the selling out of America, his immigration policies failed, he gave tax cuts to the rich, the debt exploded, Iron-Contra under him, he supported Bin Laden, we made bankruptcy easier, lied about balancing the budget, spent billions on star wars and we lost manufacturing and he started to pave the way for NAFTA
In addition, he called MLK a communist, ignored the AIDS crisis, gutted the civil rights dept of his admin and promoted racism and indifference.
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Old 12-27-2010, 09:33 AM
 
4,154 posts, read 4,170,113 times
Reputation: 2075
Worst is Woodrow Wilson and then follow by FDR.

Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserves act and the income tax act. In less than 100 years, the value of our dollar dropped over 95%.

FDR who confiscated all our gold and overnight devalued our dollar by 40%. and coined the social security ponzi scheme.
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Old 12-27-2010, 03:29 PM
 
19,198 posts, read 31,464,947 times
Reputation: 4013
Quote:
Originally Posted by Frankie117 View Post
Truth be told, I do not care either way. But military projects, especially black projects and the like, take time, lots of it. Often times more than the span of even a two term presidency. I was not going to let you sit by and claim Carter and Clinton were the patron saints of the military without pointing out that the technology originated with their predecessors.
No one claimed either man as a patron saint of the military, though both gave them high priority and did well by them. The claims -- each quite properly made -- were first that Clinton was the driver behind force integration and the push to the latest generations of smart weapons and tactics that Bush would use in Afghanistan and Iraq, and second that Carter was the President who put stealth technology into our future.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Frankie117 View Post
Deja vu. We discussed this in the past. For the purpose of identifying a housing bubble, it seems prudent to consider resale of existing homes. Perhaps new home construction can be considered as well, but the bulk of the bubble was concentrated on single-family homes, and across the board, values rose at abnormal rates from 1997 to 2006, save for a small downturn during the 2001 recession. One could argue with some degree of success that part of that was a recovery from the fall 1991-1996.
Don't recall a previous discussion, but the increase in housing prices that was relevant to the credit crisis was that between 2002 and 2006, fueled at first by the Fed's freeze of interest rates at near-zero levels, then carried along by pass-through demand for MBS products coming from the secondary mortgage markets being stoked by Wall Street. Draw a trend-line through the three post-WWII peaks in real housing prices (circa 1955, 1980, 1990). The actual is nearing but still below the trend at 2000, but rather than leveling off in the near-term, it suddenly explodes. That's private label securitization leaning on unregulated private brokers to move cheap credit and provide more original paper even if they have to short underwriting standards to do it. After a bit...BOOM!

Quote:
Originally Posted by Frankie117 View Post
I used two indexes to measure employment, total civilians employed and the net payroll figures to research your claim:
2001-2005: +2.46 million jobs
2005-2008: +6.17 million jobs
January 2008 was used as the peak, 4.2 million jobs were lost between January 2008 and January 2009. By this measure, we netted 4.3 million jobs during the Bush years. Between January 2010 and November 2010, 555k jobs were added. No where close to 2.6 million. This is in the "civilian employment level" data from series LNS12000000 on the BLS website. The other index is non-farm payrolls, which I am sure you are familiar with.
2001-2005: -32k jobs
2005-2008: +5.6 million jobs
December 2007 is the peak, 4.4 million jobs were lost between January 2008 and January 2009 through this measure. Using this series, Bush netted only 1.2 million jobs.
Between January 2010 and November 2010, 951k jobs were added, also no where near 2.6 million. During the first 6 months of the year 61% of the new jobs were temporary positions with the Census Bureau, as were most of the losses during the Summer months of 2010.
Yes, I'm familar with all of the series, as you might imagine. The question however is over the total number actually employed. Why muck around in the subdetail?

Series Id: LNU02000000
Not Seasonally Adjusted
Series title: (Unadj) Employment Level
Labor force status: Employed
Type of data: Number in thousands
Age: 16 years and over

Jan 2001: 136,181
Jan 2005: 138,682 (4 years = +2,501)
Jan 2009: 140,436 (4 years = +1,754)

Jan 2010: 136,809
Nov 2010: 139,415 (10 months = +2,606)

Quote:
Originally Posted by Frankie117 View Post
Best 5 under Bush:
6.9%
5.4%
4.1%
3.6%
3.5%

Best 5 under Obama:
5.0%
3.7%
2.6%
1.7%
1.6%
The best five quarters Bush ever had kind of should have been five consecutive quarters, not just five pulled from any old place at all. Comparability and all? Kind of like the best season Babe Ruth ever had would have been 154 games all played in the same year, not the best 154 games he ever had. He'd have had 228 home runs one year if you were allowed to do that.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Frankie117 View Post
Granted, we have only seen 5 quarters under Obama so it is not really fair, but your claim is incorrect.
No, it's entirely correct if understood properly.
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Old 12-27-2010, 03:32 PM
 
3,071 posts, read 9,135,150 times
Reputation: 1659
If Bush isnt the worse the list is bogus
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Old 12-27-2010, 04:22 PM
 
Location: Flyover Country
26,212 posts, read 19,509,699 times
Reputation: 21679
Quote:
Originally Posted by RandyWatson13 View Post
Reagan should be on there. He accelerated the selling out of America, his immigration policies failed, he gave tax cuts to the rich, the debt exploded, Iron-Contra under him, he supported Bin Laden, we made bankruptcy easier, lied about balancing the budget, spent billions on star wars and we lost manufacturing and he started to pave the way for NAFTA
He also paved the way for a stolen election, Karl Rove, and two terms of George W. Bush. And dont forget all the Central American blood on his hands. They are still trying to get their lives right from the terrorism Reagan exported to Central America
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Old 12-27-2010, 04:24 PM
 
Location: Flyover Country
26,212 posts, read 19,509,699 times
Reputation: 21679
Quote:
Originally Posted by hawkeye2009 View Post

The economy was in great shape until the democratic congress took control four years ago.
Cuckoo! Cuckoo!
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