Sounding like a stuck phonograph record...

[altivo]

I know, that may be an unfamiliar concept to younger readers. Nonetheless, this describes it...



--David Horsey in the Seattle Post Intelligencer, last May...

(He has a couple of other standard answers: "Family values", "9/11", and "Terrorists!") And again, on this year's elections...



--David Horsey in the Seattle Post Intelligencer, last April...

Comments

[atomicat.livejournal.com]

Damn. Missed replying on your comment about the 2004 election... re: gay marrage scare. Ooo! Yah, some fags in Jew Yawk getting hooked up is gonna lead to buddy in Kansas loosing the farm. *sigh* Tough on terrorism eh? The people who've done oh such a good job so far are on the right track, as always. Stay the course, and the course leads off a goddamn cliff!

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Not for them. Somehow the mass of voters just don't see that the wealthy guys leading all these crusades stand to make huge amounts of money when it goes their way, and are busy cutting their taxes on in just in case they succeed.

[kamodragon.livejournal.com]

I need to move out of this place.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, Canada hasn't been doing a whole lot better. ;p

[hgryphon.livejournal.com]

Horsey, huh? :)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

That's what he signs, yep.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

We're not doing so good down here either, still the next election will come and they won't be in anymore *la tee tah*

[altivo.livejournal.com]

But will the people who voted the current pols in have caught on and learned their lesson? That's the problem here. They keep getting re-elected, even when everyone seems to despise them.

[animist.livejournal.com]

The Democrats only virtue is that they are not Republicans. That's enough for me.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Well, that's what we said here in Illinois in 2002. But we don't seem to be any better off with Democrats in the state house. The same corruption, nepotism, and short sightedness still prevails. We've reached a point where it's not even choosing the lesser of two evils, it's like "one potato, two potato." Both parties are morally bankrupt and completely lacking in vision, concerned only with retaining their own power and profit with utter disregard for the future or the constituency.

On the other hand, it's becoming increasingly difficult to understand how the GOP has arrived where it is today. These current demagogues make Barry Goldwater look like a moderate.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

Viva la revolution!! Overthrow the status quo!! *lights the torches*

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Shall we set up a guillotine in front of the Washington Monument? ;p

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

I thought the George Washington monument would've been more appropriate.

[chrissawyer.livejournal.com]

Oh, you know gay marriage will get trotted out somewhere in there.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

That's rolled in with "family values" ya know. Gay people grow out of the ground like fungus, they don't have and aren't qualified as "families."

It's the same kind of narrow minded thinking as Bush, Sr. displayed the time he said that atheists should not be allowed to vote or have any other privileges of citizenship.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

Don't forget people who wear turbans. There might be one with a bomb under my bed right now!

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough, and maybe because I have too much background in comparative religions and cultures, I can't figure out the connection between turbans and Islamic terrorism. The common ethnic insult in English, "towel head," refers to such cultural groups, but I associate turbans with Sikhs rather than Muslims. True enough, Sikhs have also engaged in terrorism, but mostly against the Hindi-speakers in Indian government rather than against westerners. The turban or similar headgear is indeed worn in some Muslim cultures, but it is not a distinctive marker.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

Republican foreign policy could distinguish between the turbans of an Iranian mullah and a Sikh businessman, but that would negatively impact the number of people the CIA can arbitrarily detain. I mean, obviously, people who don't want to see arrests in the War Against Terror hate freedom.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

America's problem is that it just might be a nation of idealists after all, and Bush is very adept at appealing to the kinds of good intentions David Webster warned against.

Bush's tax cuts were too large and possibly misapplied given his specific circumstances. I have nothing against lower capital gains taxes, in fact I applaud the idea for various reasons I'm not going to go into. But Bush absolutely should not have went through with such sizable cuts if it was his intention to pursue expensive military action and other spending plans. The fact that he did so anyway was to be expected because of voter dynamics, but it does say something about how little economic sense or regard for US public finances he has. I would've ultimately preferred the $900 billion Democrat tax cut plan a while back, because it would've had a stronger actual impact on domestic demand, and even that with reservations given how America seemingly wants to fight expensive wars. But no. Bush has apparently convinced the electorate that it can have its cake and eat it, too.

Bush has sold his kooky vision largely on dramatic, boisterous ideological grounds, both domestically and in foreign policy, and - amazingly enough - this has helped him to push away critics of his economic plan. Bush is a hip shooter, a folksy man with a great dream! Numbers are boring! Don't look at the deficit - liberating Iraq is worth the cost!

I fear that Bush has exhausted America's ability to cope with its economy in pursuit of temporary benefits. Sure, the US economy is doing adequately well, but the engine is going to start sputtering and coughing. There is a recession or a downturn coming up in about a year or two. The Republicans, with their love for corporate welfare and deficit spending, are lacking in economic skill and economic tools. Their solution is more pork and they know it. Their platform is thus increasingly about "family values" and "protecting marriage" and other social nonsense designed to make them look as if they could run the country. They can't. Because it's the economy that counts, not how many brown people America has in its jails.

Of course, the Democrats with their newfound zeal for blind and arbitrary protectionism aren't going to be helping one damn bit. I'm not happy with their plans. But either way Bush will be gone soon, and that's what matters.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

In general, you have a good handle on US politics and society. Unfortunately. ;p

I do question whether the Democrats have any "plan" at all. They seem utterly unfocused and directionless to me right now, which is not helping the situation.

As far as the economy goes, it's sputtering now. One thing that we have noticed right here locally is a huge increase in the number of legal notices in the newspaper of home mortgages that have been defaulted. Each time that happens a notice must be posted of the lender's intention to foreclose. Suddenly those notices have expanded from one or two a week to two or three pages a week. We are about to see people paying the piper for the spending spree and easy credit they've had under this administration's constant cutting of interest rates and floating of currency. I expect inflation to heat up again too. Unfortunately, that takes a while, and we may see a repeat of what happened to Jimmy Carter. He came to office under similar conditions and the inflation caused by economic policies during the Nixon and Ford administrations peaked during his four years. Of course he got blamed for it.

I have mixed feelings about capital gains taxes. The real issue for me with reducing them is that they truly are primarily a tax on the wealthy, who can definitely afford them. So their profit is reduced from 150% to only 90% on their investments? So what? How many billions do you need anyway? I'd rather see an exemption for gains under a certain dollar amount, or a better adjustment for the length of time the investment was held before selling. The present requirements for tracking that with stocks and bonds are outrageously difficult for ordinary people. The only good thing we have is an exemption that applies to gains made when you sell the house you actually live in. I think that is fair. If you sell a house you bought for an investment and rented out, that certainly ought to be a taxable gain.

I'd rather see capital gains taxed at the same rate as any other income in the long run. The same graduation levels should apply, which means that the wealthy will pay a higher percentage then those of modest means pay, and that seems fair enough to me.

Bush seems to almost be a carbon copy of Ronald Reagan in my observation. Reagan played similar games with public emotion and twisting the statistics, as well as creating distractions to keep people from seeing major issues and problems. I am utterly amazed that so many people think of him as a "great man" when I can only see him as a stage actor who played on his acting skills to pull the wool over the eyes of millions.

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

Why, thank you. I feel it pays to keep tabs on the old US of A. Whatever happens there affects what happens here, after all.

Bush's major malfunction in terms of public finances and the economy is exactly the same as Reagan's. As it was with Reagan, what Bush says and what he does are two completely separate things, except insofar as cutting taxes for the wealthy is concerned. Doing that alone not a workable, comprehensive economic policy. There's a deficit to tackle. Bush's so-called conservative record shows bouts of protectionism, careless spending, refusal to dismantle major subsidies, arbitrary corporate welfare, and complete spineless at the WTO. His foreign appointees are frequently irritating economic nationalists. All this I could cheerfully forgive, if there were pressing reasons. But Bush has run for years and years on this economic doctrine of his, not because he's been compelled to do it, but because he and his pals feel like it's a good idea.

I'm not a fan of his wars, either. They're expensive. They're directionless. They're geopolitically naive, diplomatically abrasive, and obviously geared to maintain his domestic support rather than Middle Eastern stability. At least he didn't mishandle the Lebanon crisis.

What I'm afraid of is that America's colossal trade deficits will prompt Congress into slapping tariffs on foreign goods in the middle of a downturn. That would be profoundly unconstructive. A minor downturn has positive effects as well as negative. A major recession doesn't. Whoever gets the job after Bush absolutely needs to be an economically responsible individual, regardless of their party affiliation, and not a partisan populist.

I should really try and avoid getting on the soap box about this, though.