OT - Thank you, George Bush - gag

[7 Wishes]

There wasn't a recession in 2002....and there isn't one now. For the millionth time, a recession is when GDP is negative for 2 consecutive quarters. Stop throwing ridiculous lies out. My God!

A budget surplus merely means we were being overtaxed. That condition should NOT happen!

You ignorant, gun-toting Republicans never cease to spew bullshit.

* The country still has fewer jobs than it did when the first recession under Bush. This is not even enough to keep up with population growth, and fewer jobs than were created during any year of the Clinton Administration, which created 236,000 jobs per month during Clinton's two terms.
* The economy has lost more than 1.6 million private sector jobs under President Bush. His is the only Administration to lose jobs since Herbert Hoover.
* The budget deficit reached a record high of $674 billion last year, only to see a new record this year of an estimated $815 billion.
* The poverty rate increased to 15.5 percent last year. After falling for seven consecutive years and, in 2000, reaching its lowest level since 1974, the poverty rate has climbed for the last seven years, with 6.3 million more Americans living in poverty last year than in 2000.
* The budget surpluses that President Bush inherited have disappeared. Our budget outlook has deteriorated each year he has been in office as record surpluses turned to record deficits.
* The massive deficits that the President and Republican Congress have created will significantly reduce future economic growth and place a higher tax burden on future generations.

[RossValoryRocks]

There wasn't a recession in 2002....and there isn't one now. For the millionth time, a recession is when GDP is negative for 2 consecutive quarters. Stop throwing ridiculous lies out. My God!

A budget surplus merely means we were being overtaxed. That condition should NOT happen!

You ignorant, gun-toting Republicans never cease to spew bullshit.

* The country still has fewer jobs than it did when the first recession under Bush. This is not even enough to keep up with population growth, and fewer jobs than were created during any year of the Clinton Administration, which created 236,000 jobs per month during Clinton's two terms.
* The economy has lost more than 1.6 million private sector jobs under President Bush. His is the only Administration to lose jobs since Herbert Hoover.
* The budget deficit reached a record high of $674 billion last year, only to see a new record this year of an estimated $815 billion.
* The poverty rate increased to 15.5 percent last year. After falling for seven consecutive years and, in 2000, reaching its lowest level since 1974, the poverty rate has climbed for the last seven years, with 6.3 million more Americans living in poverty last year than in 2000.
* The budget surpluses that President Bush inherited have disappeared. Our budget outlook has deteriorated each year he has been in office as record surpluses turned to record deficits.
* The massive deficits that the President and Republican Congress have created will significantly reduce future economic growth and place a higher tax burden on future generations.

SOURCES PLEASE!

[Eric]

You're asking for sources from someone who thinks there was a recession in 2002......

7 Wishes gets his information from Wikipedia.

It appears that there is some argument as to whether the last recession began in Q4-2000 or Q1-2001. But here is a good link: http://recession.org/history

[Calbear94]

Yes Bush is the president but what majority party is running Congress?

Right...and it was the fault of Congress that the good people of New Orleans were completely ignored by our government after Hurricane Katrina devastated their city! Definitely another one of Bush's "shining moments"!


John from Boston

The main problem in New Orleans was their own fault! They & their local leadership had no precautions or plans in place for disaster. Kinda like the kid that should have had his passport, New Orleans wasn't prepared for what 'could be'. Did the Fed drag their feet in helping after the fact? Sure, you bet. However, if the locals would have gotten off their collective a$$ and been prepared, then the situation wouldn't have been nearly as bad. Geez. I mean, the coast of Mississippi was wiped off the map! Did they cry & whine? Seems that most of New Orleans was just sitting around waiting for a hand-out. Why they re-elected Nagin is beyond me. Where's his '100 day plan'? I guess we'll see what happens with the next hurricane & flooding.


later~

The City of New Orleans had an $8 million plan in place that was to provide buses, to pay for the use of and staffing of the Superdome as a "place of last refuge", and to fund hurricane awareness programs. Nagin gave the evacuation order on television 72 hours in advance, saying that the Katrina order was the "real deal" and not to be taken likely at all. It was an executive type order, enforceable by law.

Another poster here asked why so many residents didn't just get in their cars and leave. I don't think anyone, not even city leaders, expected so many people to ignore the order. Some lacked the means to flee, to be sure, but how many of those that remained behind would have had somewhere to actually go? Not many, I suspect. Besides, in spite the evacuation order, I am not convinced that everyone fully appreciated the danger. The last time that the levees had been damaged by a hurricane was in 1969 (Hurricane Camille). New Orleans had seen several lower-category hurricanes since then. The last big hurricane, Hurricane Ivan, had narrowly missed New Orleans in 2004. I consider the latter issue to be a failure of the educational system (contrast the residents of New Orleans' flood knowledge and awareness with that of the people of the Netherlands, for example).

Under this scenario, I'm not sure how much more the local government could have done. Indeed, most municipalities have a hard enough time obtaining the financial and human resources necessary to provide basic services, let alone disaster assistance and recovery (look at local communities in CA, IA, MO, etc. turning to state and federal help in recent weeks). The fact is that the state and federal governments have the additional resources necessary to respond in times like this. Taxpayers should be outraged that billions are spent on emergency management agencies, yet it took days to respond to Katrina. Kathleen Blanco (gov. of LA) lost her re-election chances over Katrina and charges toward her administration of corruption and inefficiency. Bush, comfortably into his second, and last term, escaped any real accountability over his administration's botched handling of this disaster.

The victims of Katrina are our fellow Americans, despite any socio-economic differences that might have existed between most of us and most of them. I am appalled at the revisionist back turning going on here now. Have some of us really become so self-centered, so unfeeling that we are immune to human tragedies such as Katrina? Conservatives are always accusing liberals of hating America...who hates America now?

[Calbear94]

You're asking for sources from someone who thinks there was a recession in 2002......

7 Wishes gets his information from Wikipedia.

It appears that there is some argument as to whether the last recession began in Q4-2000 or Q1-2001. But here is a good link: http://recession.org/history

Recessions can vary from mild to severe, short-term to longer-term. Because so much of the U.S. economy is based on consumer behavior and confidence, I put the blame squarely on Bush for the severity of (but not the inception of) the recession. His blunders in foreign affairs and his largely being asleep at the wheel on domestic affairs have led him to horribly mismanage this economy.

[7 Wishes]

Why do Democrats on this board have to constantly cite sources, whereas Republicans are given a free pass? I'm an intelligent person - whether or not you agree with my beliefs - and there are countless FACTS I know to be true, but which cannot necessarily be directly "sourced".

Hey, Erica.

Why don't YOU DISPROVE the facts I just put forth? Since you don't want to believe the truth, YOU cite sources to PROVE what I wrote was wrong.

Good luck. You won't find any that aren't funded by "think tanks" run by a deadbeat like Newton Gingrich or a fuckwad such as Pat Buchanan.

[RossValoryRocks]

Why do Democrats on this board have to constantly cite sources, whereas Republicans are given a free pass? I'm an intelligent person - whether or not you agree with my beliefs - and there are countless FACTS I know to be true, but which cannot necessarily be directly "sourced".

Hey, Erica.

Why don't YOU DISPROVE the facts I just put forth? Since you don't want to believe the truth, YOU cite sources to PROVE what I wrote was wrong.

Good luck. You won't find any that aren't funded by "think tanks" run by a deadbeat like Newton Gingrich or a fuckwad such as Pat Buchanan.

It's good debating etiquette, if give the argument, it is YOUR responsibility to back it up.

I almost NEVER claim anything with out supplying a link for it. Sometimes if I a make a quick post I do, but rarely. Most of the conservatives also cite their sources, contrary to what you say here. Fact Finder in particular, though he hasn't been on lately.

If you cannot back up a supposition, then it is NOT a fact, it is a belief, no matter how true you think it is. Example: I cannot PROVE Jesus lived, I cannot PROVE there is a God, but I believe both to be true. But that doesn't make either of those things fact to anyone else.

I believe the phrase about citing sources comes down to this: Put up or shut up.

[Calbear94]

Why do Democrats on this board have to constantly cite sources, whereas Republicans are given a free pass? I'm an intelligent person - whether or not you agree with my beliefs - and there are countless FACTS I know to be true, but which cannot necessarily be directly "sourced".

Hey, Erica.

Why don't YOU DISPROVE the facts I just put forth? Since you don't want to believe the truth, YOU cite sources to PROVE what I wrote was wrong.

Good luck. You won't find any that aren't funded by "think tanks" run by a deadbeat like Newton Gingrich or a fuckwad such as Pat Buchanan.

Sometimes I wonder why we even bother. We could marshall all the evidence in the world and all we will get in return is denial. On occasion, we will also be told that we are wrong, and that we should either crawl back into our hole or simply go away and/or die.

What I don't get here is that we are now being told that we start these arguments, so somehow there is a greater burden of proof on us. This is so typical of paranoid, ultra-conservatives. They feel as if they are on trial...that everything they believe and stand for (even if it is on shaky grounds) is threatened. In their so-called counter-arguments (which are really outright denials), they provide little or no factual evidence....almost zip in the way of statistics, accepted historical facts and interpretations, and factual analysis.

[7 Wishes]

The global warming issue is one that stands out in that respect.

Every single scientific sanctioning body in the world 100% supports the man-caused global warming theory. Now, the odd researcher here and there or minute conservative university-funded "studies" will occasionally attempt to refute the theory, but 80% of Americans and 95% of the rest of the world knows it's real.

So despite the fact the entire U.N. scientific corps fully concurs that global warming is caused by mankind, these quacks are quoted and then given full support by those who choose to make global warming a political issue, when it is in fact a humanitarian issue...a matter of our long-term survival.

[Eric]

The global warming issue is one that stands out in that respect.

Every single scientific sanctioning body in the world 100% supports the man-caused global warming theory. Now, the odd researcher here and there or minute conservative university-funded "studies" will occasionally attempt to refute the theory, but 80% of Americans and 95% of the rest of the world knows it's real.

So despite the fact the entire U.N. scientific corps fully concurs that global warming is caused by mankind, these quacks are quoted and then given full support by those who choose to make global warming a political issue, when it is in fact a humanitarian issue...a matter of our long-term survival.

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm? ... c808e8809e

[7 Wishes]

Global warming is causing significant changes to the Earth's natural systems and it is highly unlikely that any force but man-made climate change can be blamed .
Researchers who analysed 30,000 academic studies dating back to 1970 said man was responsible for changes that ranged from the loss of ice sheets to the collapse in numbers of many species of wildlife.

"Humans are influencing climate through increasing greenhouse gas emissions, and the warming world is causing impacts on physical and biological systems," said Cynthia Rosenzweig, at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

The study reflects the opinion of the vast majority of the scientific community. The largest study of its kind, conducted by U.N. and analyzing climatic data from the past 3,000 years, reported in 2006 that global warming was "almost assuredly" caused by mankind.

The effects on living things include the earlier appearance of leaves on trees and plants; the movement of animals and birds to more northerly latitudes and to higher altitudes in the northern hemisphere; rapid advances in flowering time and earlier egg-laying in Britain; and changes in bird migrations in Europe, North America and Australia.

On a planetary scale the changes include the melting of glaciers on all continents; earlier spring river run-off; and the warming of oceans, lakes and rivers.

The study's conclusions go further than the most recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which concluded last year that man-made climate change was "very likely" to have had a discernible effect on the planet.

It says natural climate variations cannot explain the changes to the Earth's natural systems.

In the study, published in the journal Nature, Miss Rosenzweig and researchers from 10 institutions across the world analysed data from published papers on 829 physical systems – such as glaciers and ice sheets – and 28,800 plant and animal systems. They produced a picture of the changes to each continent. The changes were most marked in North America, Asia and Europe but mainly because far more studies had been carried out there.

The authors said there was an urgent need to study environmental systems in South America, Australia and Africa, especially in tropical and subtropical areas.

In North America, the researchers found that 89 species of plants were flowering earlier, such as the American holly and box elder maple; a decline in the population of polar bears; and the rapid melting of Alaskan glaciers.

In Europe, they found evidence of glaciers melting in the Alps; earlier pollen release in the Netherlands; and apple trees producing leaves 35 days earlier in Spain.

In Asia they reported a change in the freeze depth of permafrost in Russia; and the earlier flowering of ginkgo in Japan.

In Antarctica, the population of emperor penguins had declined by 50 per cent. In South America, the melting of the Patagonia ice-fields were contributing to a rise in sea levels.

Prof Barry Brook, of the University of Adelaide, described the evidence that mankind was altering the world as "overwhelming".

He said: "These changes are only a minor portent of what is likely to come."

Go ahead and keep living in your illusion, Eric. Citing some obscure research that has no scientific validity, or excerpts from a speech from a Senator who is the third-highest recipient of contributions from Big Oil, is hardly anathemic to unbiased debate. The facts are 100% against you. You're just plain wrong. Again.

[RedWingFan]

Go ahead and keep living in your illusion, Eric. Citing some obscure research that has no scientific validity, or excerpts from a speech from a Senator who is the third-highest recipient of contributions from Big Oil, is hardly anathemic to unbiased debate. The facts are 100% against you. You're just plain wrong. Again.

With all due respect. You'd have to be an unthinking sheep to fall for this fearmongering.
The fact is since we've been keeping track. The Earth has had 4 warming/cooling cycles. Including cooling cycles back when there WAS NO emissions regulations. Yet it still cooled.
Anyway even Pro manmade scientists have admitted that we're in for a 10 year hiatus from global warming. But beware, because it's gonna be back and it's gonna be our fault.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0501/p25s01-wogi.html

[LazzMan]

Bush is the Grand Wizard of the "Axis of Evil". Everyone knows this. 9/11 was a total conspiracy created by his administration as well as the subsequent "My daddy didn't kill you so I will, Saddam." war. In fact, all Republicans are inherently evil and are horrible for our country. Conservatism is a tired, old ideology just like Marxism or Fascism. We will all be much better off when Obama is in office. This "Peace by Strength" stuff is nonsense. I say peace by negotiation and Socialism. We need to work toward abolishing the horrible "Class System" that we have in this country and focus more on overall equality. Oh, and a national healthcare program would also be a huge point of strength. Environmentally, the United States is, by far, the worst perpetrator for the Global Warming crisis that is out of control. Hurricane Katrina is a perfect example of the cause-and-effect of poor environmental policies. We need to do away with our huge over-indulgence of natural resources...starting with big SUV's and recreational items such as boats, ATV's, snowmobiles, etc. At the very least these items should be heavily taxed so as to discourage their purchase and use. We could use those taxes to equalize the distribution of wealth a little bit more and create some programs that focus more environmentally-improving choices such as geo-thermal, solar, hydropower, etc. Being leaders in the "green movement"...that is how we repair the reputation that Bush has destroyed with other nations (or, at least a few of the ways we could do that).

I am not a holy person and I don't believe in God (because there isn't one) but, if I did think that there was a theological distinction between heaven and hell/good and evil I would surely say that Obama will "deliver us all from Satan's power". By "Satan" I am referring to the evil Republican empire.

Obama '08 - Salvation is on the way.

[7 Wishes]

The only "evil empire" of which I am aware is the New York Yankees organization.

Wow. That was pretty over-the-top. A lot of conservative ideaologies appeal to me - most notably true fiscal conservatism practiced by Bush's father. Any form of socialism is about the worst approximation of what is good for America as exists. It's inherently paradoxical to suggest there is room for social liberalism and yet allow for the accomodaion of universal healthcare while maintaining a balanced budget. As much as I agree with you about global warming and the absurdity of the war in Iraq, to suggest 9/11 was a conspiracy is the purest form of delusion. Come on, now.

And I also take exception to your assertion that there "isn't [a God]". YOU may not choose to believe in God, Christianity, organized religion, or any other deism for that matter, but you certainly don't have the definitive answer.