dagblog - Comments for "Could Obama have fixed the economy?"

What a bunch of malarkey.

Resistance — Mon, 10 Nov 2014 21:54:35 +0000

In reply to To me it sounds like you are

What a bunch of malarkey to think Obama has our best interest in mind.

Look a little closer and it's not hard to spot the schemes and empty promises of a dupe/dope

Who'd have thought Benedict Arnold would be a traitor? He dressed and looked like a typical American.

That article is not describing somebody who is out to screw the American worker for the oligarchs' benefit, but someone who is trying to get the American people the best trade deals he can, according to what he believes will benefit them the most.

The American workforce knows de - scented manure is still manure.

The problem in America, is that our citizens are unfamiliar with what the Greatest World Power did to control and manipulate commerce, detrimental to the colonists.

A manipulation and control for the benefit of the Royalty class and their commercial interests.

For after all, America was a colony to be exploited. They didn't care at all about the plight of the colonists.

But of course they would try to maintain this level of control as long as they could and would deny their true intent, otherwise the colonists would resist. Interrupting their grand plan for wealth creation.

Eventually; the colonist rebelled against the commercial interest of the Crown, when our forefathers threw a little Tea Party; sending a message.

Why do you forget? Or maybe it isn't stressed enough, because it would go against the interest of the oligarchs? NO DEAL is not a term they want to hear.

So they have to sell these trade deals.

"Look at one of the benefits you'll receive; You'll get Chilean cherries in the off season"

What have we become? A bunch of Manhattan Indians accepting trinkets?

Manhattan

According to the document by Pieter Janszoon Schagen our People, Peter Minuit and Dutch colonists acquired Manhattan in 1626 from unnamed American Indian people in exchange for trade goods worth 60 guilders, often said to be worth US$24, though it actually amounts to around $1,050 in 2014.

Right on the money Ocean-kat

Resistance — Mon, 10 Nov 2014 20:14:35 +0000

In reply to Its not so confusing.

Right on the money Ocean-kat .

Strategy for GOP Congress: Keep Doing Nothing.

Its not so confusing.

ocean-kat — Mon, 10 Nov 2014 18:46:38 +0000

In reply to To me it sounds like you are

Its not so confusing. Americans want America to trade more i.e. sell more goods to Canada or Mexico and don't care if that causes Canadians or Mexicans to lose their jobs. What they don't want is Canadians and Mexicans trading more with America and causing Americans to lose their jobs.

You know, people aren't stupid, but they don't spend a lot of time studying policy issues. They have a gut sense that their life is getting harder, that their children's life is getting harder. They look into the future and it sure seems like that trend is going to continue. People can accept stagnation in their life if it looks like their kids will have a better life but to many it looks like their kids are going to have it even harder then they did.

Most people aren't policy wonks. They make their best guess about what may be causing the problem in their life. They see good paying manufacturing jobs disappearing and blame NAFTA because they've been told that's the cause. They really don't know the solution so they react against any more trade deals. I'm not a policy wonk either. I, and everyone here, spends more time studying the issues than the average American but I too just see the problem just in a little more depth and don't know what to do.

I was working in consumer electronics repair during the early NAFTA years. Fixing TVs and VCRs. Virtually every American job making TVs went to Mexico. A friend of my father, a 50 year old man, went from making $20 an hour to minimum wage at Burger King. He was one of the lucky ones, he found a new job. But it wasn't just manufacturing. TVs began to be redesigned, Zenith was the first. The basic functions were separated in to different boards, a sound board, a power supply board, a video board etc. When a TV came in I determined which board was the problem, swapped it out with a new one, and sent that board to Mexico to be repaired. I was capable of repairing the board but Zemith no longer made the schematics available. Most repairs were done under warranty and Zenith would no longer pay for board level repairs. All they would pay for was to swap out the board and send it to Mexico. I had a degree in electronics but I didn't need it to swap out boards. You could get a monkey to do that job and pay him peanuts. NAFTA probably eliminated 80% of the consumer electronics repair jobs in America.

In your link, Obama touted the pan-Pacific deal as an “opportunity to open up new markets in the fastest, most populous region of the world – the Asia Pacific region.” The problem is that most of those people don't have enough money to buy American goods. What they have is an enormous poor and desperate supply of labor that will work for peanuts. America is the largest richest market. I read article after article and the plan in every country to build their economy is to sell more to America. Its not just the poor nations. I'll read some article about the economy in France and some minister of finance will say, "What we really want to do is export more goods to America" Hell even Germany is saying, what we really want to do is sell more goods to America. It doesn't take a genius to see that America can't save the economies of every nation on earth by buying their exports and if we try it will destroy the American economy.

What globalization has brought us is an oversupply of labor. Couple that with raising productivity and increased automation which will only accelerate and we have a big problem that will only get worse. I don't know the solution but free trade isn't the answer.

To me it sounds like you are

artappraiser — Mon, 10 Nov 2014 15:39:16 +0000

In reply to The enactment of NAFTA has

To me it sounds like you are making up your own narrative where somebody promised you to make the U.S. protectionist and to get rid of NAFTA. Nobody promised that. They basically all said in one way or another " It's more complex than that , but I'll do the best I can to make trade deals better for the American worker" because only sound bites work on the campaign trail.

There is confusion because in polls people say they are for trade with Canada but against NAFTA

...A 2010 poll by the Pew Center points to seemingly contradictory attitudes in the U.S. on trade.

Some 76 per cent of respondents said they supported more trade with Canada, and 52 per cent said they supported more with Mexico, but only 35 per cent of those surveyed said they liked NAFTA.

The Canadian-American Business Council said it's probably best if North American countries team up to negotiate as a united front with Asia — and not renegotiate NAFTA against each other.

"We took note of USTR Ambassador Froman's comments today that the Obama Administration is looking to the TPP to fulfill a campaign promise to renegotiate NAFTA," said Maryscott Greenwood, a D.C.-based senior adviser with the council....

He's been trying to do what he thinks will fulfill the promise, what he thinks will make things better for the American worker.and also make the majority happy. That article is not describing somebody who is out to screw the American worker for the oligarchs' benefit, but someone who is trying to get the American people the best trade deals he can, according to what he believes will benefit them the most.

If you care that strongly on a complex issue, you have to dig deeper about candidates than sound bites on the campaign trail. There aren't a lot of 100% protectionist candidates out there (including in other countries) because few believe that would work out well for their country in this day and age. If you studied up and dug deep on their policy beliefs, you could probably find them. You'd have to do that rather than rely on believing what you heard in a sound bites on the campaign meant what you thought it did.

I really don't believe any Democratic candidates and few Republican ones are out to make slave workers of their citizens so they can get rich after they leave office.They just disagree with you on what would make for a healthier job situation. You are turning this topic into a high drama narrative of conspiracies against "the people" that just isn't true, you cast it into a "people vs. politicians in bed with the oligarchs" story that just made up of whole cloth. And that makes me think you're not capable of really studying up on it in the first place, and that's why they have to use sound bites when they run for office and why they can't get into the intricacies of what they would do about trade deals if elected.

The enactment of NAFTA has

Resistance — Mon, 10 Nov 2014 11:54:47 +0000

In reply to Obama just doesn't seem to

The enactment of NAFTA has always been a hot issue for me.

In the important primaries of Ohio and Pennsylvania, Obama and Hillary were both vying for the same voters and voters wanted to know their stance on NAFTA.

We were elated to hear, there would finally be a look back on the issue.

Many have always felt NAFTA and GATT, led to the destruction of the American middle class, robbing them of their dreams for themselves and loved ones.

We'd read the pollsters findings when voters were asked "do you think your kids future will be better or worse”. Many voters remembered, the previous debates, years before, on this subject and were convinced, the dark forces that rule DC was the problem.

I and many others knew, we needed CHANGE, the future was looking bleak.

We remembered that giant sucking sound, Ross Perot warned us about and how Perot warned us about the devastating effect of the loss of a tax base would undermine our American dreams.

It wasn't lack of Bi- partisanship that needed to be changed; because the voters already knew both sides were feeding from the same pig trough, getting the same money from the dark forces and WE knew it was going to take someone brave, to take on the deeply entrenched corruption,

Obama: “Here I am; I’ll be your champion”

Obama was talking to the older voters of the decimated industrial belt, who remembered the good days before NAFTA; they were the ones that knew the TRUTH and they wanted to get back to the days before the calamity and if Obama should be charismatic enough to get the young voters to agree, we older ones thought for sure the Change we believed in, could really be possible

I knew politicians lied in order to get votes, but I and other convinced ourselves and others, Obama would be different, he just might do it. He came across as someone to trust and that what we needed was TRUTH in Washington DC to run the corruption out of town.

Truth would be the disinfectant; to expose the underhanded dealings that robbed all of us of a government of the people, for the people

Chants of “Obama, Obama, Obama", BY the People everywhere, who believed in that hope that finally might bring the Change we needed.

Turns out Obama's NAFTA comment was followed by a wink, crossed fingers and denials.

Many of us thought the claim of possible betrayal, was just the lies of the Dark forces that would say and do anything to remain in power.

We didn’t want to believe Obama would lie, to remove one group of deeply entrenched power brokers only to be replaced by his select group of power brokers.

It turns out Eugene Debs was correct. It was all about the spoils.

Washington DC was not going to Change

Once elected, the people’s dreams were dashed, the Truth about Change we thought we were getting, was quickly cast aside.

The only change we got, was just from one pandering politician to another

The TRUTH about the Bankers deception was met only by more cover up by Geithner because supposedly he knew how to ferret out the Truth, and then the people find TRUTH had no teeth.

So the Change we were promised, was just an empty promise, just as his NAFTA position was only a wink and crossed fingers.

Now in retrospect, as you point out, Obama stayed true to himself, but when pressed in Ohio and the industrial belt; TRUTH to the voters was a little fuzzy, a little ~~white / black lie~~. Gray

P.S. Some of his attitude may

artappraiser — Mon, 10 Nov 2014 09:30:39 +0000

In reply to Obama just doesn't seem to

P.S. Some of his attitude may come from his start in Chicago in anti-machine politics: I just re-read Ryan Lizza's 2008 article on his Chicago years in a new light where entrenched one-party control is the enemy of progress, and networking with power people in an independent manner is the way to go to break free of a moribund entrenched party system. Interesting that the "networking with power people" thing is also in the new New Republic article about Jarrett, and Jarrett is, of course, in the Lizza article as playing a part in the beginning in doing this.

(A reminder that he decided to marry a corporate lawyer upon meeting her working at a major corporate law firm for the summer; the "community organizer" thing is way overplayed. A corporate lawyer who, I would note, upon becoming first lady, chose support of military families as one of her main causes; I don't think that was a cynical choice, I think she is a believer in what she says at the link.)

Could mean he may feel the need to start fighting the Republicans now, because they've become more entrenched, and the balance has tipped far too much from center?

Obama just doesn't seem to

artappraiser — Mon, 10 Nov 2014 08:32:00 +0000

In reply to The whole democratic party

Obama just doesn't seem to learn

No he believes it. He's a true centrist, a Bloomberg-style centrist. The article on Jarrett I just posted is more proof for the pile. She's a centrist too. They agree with Republicans on some things, hence they see consensus where Harry Reid wouldn't.

He's honest, he just said again: "I continue to believe..." Read the 2006 DKos post, where he tells the readers, liberal Dems, that they don't get the majority of Americans' opinions right.

I don't know where the idea he's got liberal sympathies comes from, actually. Because of the color of his skin? Because he worked as a community organizer as a young man? Because he recycled RFK quotes in his campaign speeches? Because Fox News calls him one?

Read his stuff, what he wrote in the past. Listen to what he says back before he ran, during the campaign and now.. Look at all his appointments. He believes what he has said he believes, and he's always pretty much been honest about it. (If you've read :"Dreams from My Father", you get the impression that his visits to Africa may have been a turning point, where he sees what too much reliance on government jobs and on a kind of "dole" can do.)

He's mostly with the majority. of the country on almost everything. It wouldn't surprise me to know he himself voted for moderate Republicans, it won't surprise me if he registers as an Independent after he gets out of office.

Pick an issue, I bet I can find where he agrees with a majority of the country, often right down the middle between left and right. When he said he hadn't made up his mind about gay marriage, he was telling the truth. When he plays both sides of the immigration issue,it's because he agrees some with arguments on either side. Preference for some gun control is another example: the majority agrees. Promising people if they like their health insurance the way it is, they can keep it, and trying to effect that, is another example.Wanting to keep Geithner as long as he can, another. Look at his judicial nominees. Etc. etc.

He's a very consistent centrist, amazingly so.

I am reminded of when M.J.Rosenberg wanted to believe he was going to be a leftist on Israel because for some reason he thought an Afro-American candidate would be, I guess. (Never gave any other reason!) He was trying to convince himself that candidate Obama was just pandering to AIPAC. He wasn't. When he said over and in many places that Israel was America's friend, he meant it, he believed it. He was being honest.

He has fulfilled what he said in his first campaign, tough on defense, not against all wars but against "stupid wars." Remember when he disagreed in a debate with Hillary about Pakistan? He had said he would bomb them under certain circumstances and she was trying to make him look dangerously hawkish? He wasn't doing that for political effect, he believed it,he believed that is the posture that should be taken. Look at the risk he took with the Abbottabad raid, actually flying into their airspace without their knowledge and without ironclad proof.

Where is the evidence that he is not just not a liberal, but that he is even a loyal Democrat? I can't think of any. He's not partisan, he was always telling the truth about that, too. He especially dislikes the extremists of both parties, that is one thing that has become ever more clear..

(No subject)

Resistance — Mon, 10 Nov 2014 03:31:43 +0000

In reply to I was too young for the

I was too young for the

ocean-kat — Mon, 10 Nov 2014 03:15:39 +0000

In reply to I agree, he's very honest,

I was too young for the Beatlemania era, just 10 in 67. Many years later I watched films and documentaries of live concerts and I had this WTF moment. Teen girls weeping and screaming for tens of minutes. Security guards carting them off when they fainted. I had a similar WTF moment in 2007. Obama-mania never reached the level of Beatlemania yet still... all these people weeping at a politician's speech. It just seemed weird to me. Couldn't understand it. I'm not even going to try to speculate why or how it came about. I wouldn't know where to begin. Crying over a politician's speech. I was and still am flabbergasted.

I agree, he's very honest,

artappraiser — Sun, 09 Nov 2014 23:32:54 +0000

In reply to Yes, he lied about NAFTA. All

I agree, he's very honest, honest to a fault. Before he ran, he said what he thought over and over, he put it in his white papers and he wrote it in his books. He dissed leftists early on, he made it clear, in writing, on the internet for all to see, that he thought they were wrong. There was the speech at the Call to Renewal conference in 2006 where Professor Obama lectures progressives on politics and religion. And here's the Aug. 2008 NYTimes "Obamanomics" article where he lays out that he's going to find consensus, some middle ground, between the economics of Bob Rubin vs. the economics of Bob Reich.

And he's stuck to it. He's very consistent. I can't think of one thing in "The Audacity of Hope" or "Dreams from My Father" that he's contradicted.

This tendency is also why he's no good at schmoozing people Bill-Clinton-style. He's straightforward, doesn't chum up to people of all types, just tells them what he thinks.

Which is why I still think the whole Obamania thing is one of the more puzzling and curious events of our epoch. Even the Nobel committee got swept into it. If they had given it to "all the fans of the image called Obama, dreaming of hope and 'yes we can!'" that I would have respected. But they didn't, they got swept away like all the others. If I were them, I would be ashamed of the strange version of reverse racism that I am sure was part of their decision.

It's beyond me what he was supposed to do about it. Look a gift horse in the mouth? Say "I'm not that person, I told ya over and over, don't vote for me."?

Why anyone should feel bamboozled by him is beyond me. Those who do need to think about their own comprehension of reality when they get all het up about an election.