The Double Dip Has Arrived

[we vs us]

Addendum to Steve Wynn's rant:  a friend of mine who plays semi-pro poker just told me that Wynn's casinos had forged an exclusive marketing deal with PokerStars.com and that the conference call coincides almost perfectly with the total shutdown of internet pokerplaying on all US servers.  So if by "overregulation" we mean "shutting down illegal gambling sites" that would dovetail very nicely.

[Gaspar]

Addendum to Steve Wynn's rant:  a friend of mine who plays semi-pro poker just told me that Wynn's casinos had forged an exclusive marketing deal with PokerStars.com and that the conference call coincides almost perfectly with the total shutdown of internet pokerplaying on all US servers.  So if by "overregulation" we mean "shutting down illegal gambling sites" that would dovetail very nicely.

3 months after.

[we vs us]

3 months after.

Funny.  RomneyCare passed in 2010.  What's the statute of limitations on sour grapes over a business loss?

[Conan71]

And this is exactly what I'm talking about.  Obama hasn't pandered to anyone even vaguely left of the spectrum since he was elected.  His legislation -- even RomneyCare -- has been very solidly center-right, stuff that Bush I would be proud to call his own.  Which is why I look at Steve Wynn's vomitorium + conference call as nothing but unrealistic talking points.  Steve-o has been steeping so long in the Fox Business Channel spin that he believes the same lie that's been pushed from the git-go, which is a variant of Obama = Socialist = baaaaaad for business. 

If business confidence is shaky based on how left Obama's been -- when in reality and by any historical measure he's been center-right -- there's a major disconnect between what business thinks now and what it used to think.  Then business itself has been pushed through the ole' Overton Window. 

Is Madcow referring to Obamacare as Romneycare now?  Sounds like Dims think he's the front-runner.

Brief synopsis on the difference between the two:

"But let's subdue our reflexes for a moment. Without wading into the weeds of health care reform, there are also significant differences between Romneycare and Obamacare.
Chief among those differences: One is a massive federal program without cost controls that requires a vast bureaucracy to operate; the other is a more modest plan that constitutes less than 1 percent of the state budget.
More to the point, one was decided by the people of a single state, by and for themselves. The other presumes to dictate what individual states must do.
Romney's central point was that what's good for one state may not suit another and that states should have the freedom to choose what works best for them rather than have to conform to a federal one-size-fits-all plan, the ultimate costs of which are not really knowable. People who tell you they know what it would cost are fibbing. Off the record, every honest person in Washington will tell you: Nobody knows."


Read more: http://www.timesunion.com/opinion/article/Romneycare-vs-Obamacare-1380042.php#ixzz1U00Xj5v7

Just because you perceive Obama to be to the right of your political leanings, doesn't make him center-right at all.  Ever since the election, he has repeatedly recited the meme of "those people make enough" "we need to redistribute the wealth", "we are going after corporate jet owners".  Do I need to cut and paste the videos?

At what time did Presidents Clinton or Reagan, two Presidents who knew how to inspire confidence in business, ever talk about wealth redistribution as a favored policy, or wind up enacting an expensive overhaul of healthcare which necessarily involves the business community?  Hillarycare vanished like a fart in the wind and business didn't fear Clinton.  He also didn't cite tax increases as being a penalty on the rich or social justice.

Extending the Bush tax cuts hasn't made Obama suddenly center-right.  He had no real choice but to extend the cuts given the current state of the economy.  

[nathanm]

Just because you perceive Obama to be to the right of your political leanings, doesn't make him center-right at all.  Ever since the election, he has repeatedly recited the meme of "those people make enough" "we need to redistribute the wealth", "we are going after corporate jet owners".  Do I need to cut and paste the videos?

Talk is meaningless. If you look at his policies, it's mostly center-right. And the RomneyCare thing isn't new, it's been said since the bill passed, precisely because it is almost identical to Romney's Massachusetts plan. When given a choice between the typically liberal way to handle something and the typically Reaganite way to handle something, he always goes for the latter.

[nathanm]

So greed is the liberal term for when a businesses strives to be more profitable, more efficient, and less expensive.

Got it!

. . .and you can mitigate greed by giving away money?  You can pay people to be less greedy? 

Does anyone else find this to be about the most hilarious thing they have ever read?

It was Nixon's agriculture secretary who put that framework into place, bud.

[Gaspar]

It was Nixon's agriculture secretary who put that framework into place, bud.

Nixon was no conservative.

[AquaMan]

Your right. He was more mainstream America at the time. A true throwback to the 1950's and that generation's last true hope against the emerging more progressive boomer movement. His problems were more personality and integrity related. He was able to keep the extremists of his own party (Reagan, Goldwater et al) at bay so he could administer the government. Pretty F'd up country at the time. Communism, Viet Nam, recession, crime, demonstrations and riots. I remember feeling bad for him at the time even though we all laughed at his foibles.

He was way out of synch with my generation until we became wealthy and mainstream appealed to us. Then Reagan looked harmless. 

[guido911]

Well isn't this just great news. A little more Bush bashing/blaming, then this gem I emphasized:

"It's been a long, tough journey. But we have made some incredible strides together. Yes, we have. But the thing that we all ought to remember is that as much as good as we have done, precisely because the challenges were so daunting, precisely because we we were inheriting so many challenges, that we're not even halfway there yet. When I said 'change we can believe in' I didn't say 'change we can believe in tomorrow.' Not change we can believe in next week. We knew this was going to take time because we've got this big, messy, tough democracy," President Obama said at a campaign fundraiser in Chicago on Wednesday night.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2011/08/03/obama_were_not_even_halfway_there_yet.html

Hear that American? Obama is "not even halfway" through frakking us. Better stock up on...

[Gaspar]

Unemployment has risen (unexpectedly) again, and with our dear leader's most recent comments re-affirming his desire to raise taxes, the market is freeking out.  Down almost 300 pts this morning.

Confidence, a little pat on the back, a "you can do it," rather than a "yes we can" take it from you.  

Anything but threats Mr. President, please.

[Conan71]

Unemployment has risen (unexpectedly) again, and with our dear leader's most recent comments re-affirming his desire to raise taxes, the market is freeking out.  Down almost 300 pts this morning.

Confidence, a little pat on the back, a "you can do it," rather than a "yes we can" take it from you.  

Anything but threats Mr. President, please.

You know that confidence thingy doesn't work Gassy, just look at how badly it backfired on Reagan.  Only esoteric economic theories written by dead people who never created a job in their life works. 

[Gaspar]

Press conferences of the last two days:

Barack Obama just after Congress signed the debt deal: 'Everybody is going to have to chip in. It's only fair.'
Barack Obama again: 'It means reforming our tax code so that the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations pay their fair share."

Harry Reid speaking about the committee established by the debt deal: 'The only way we can arrive at a fair arrangement for the American people with this joint committee is to have equal sharing.

DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz:  "Hopefully now with this compromise on the debt ceiling behind us, with the opportunity, with the economic to sit down and focus on longer-term deficit reduction that will have some balance and ask some sacrifice for our most fortunate."

Immediately back on the raise taxes on businesses train.

This is a scary take today from the American Thinker

Cloward-Piven Paradise Now?
By Jeannie DeAngelis


Combine class warfare, demonizing the rich, getting as many people onto the welfare rolls as possible, and pushing the economic system to collapse and you have a flawless formula for Cloward-Piven 2.0 -- and a vehicle that ensures Obama remains in power.

Cloward-Piven is a much talked-about strategy proposed in the mid-1960's by two Columbia University sociology professors named Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven.  The Cloward-Piven approach was sometimes referred to as the "crisis strategy," which they believed were a means to "end poverty."

The premise of the Cloward-Piven collective/anti-capitalist gospel decried "individual mobility and achievement," celebrated organized labor, fostered the principle that "if each finally found himself in the same relative economic relationship to his fellows ... all were infinitely better off."

The duo taught that if you flooded the welfare rolls and bankrupted the cities and ultimately the nation, it would foster economic collapse, which would lead to political turmoil so severe that socialism would be accepted as a fix to an out-of-control set of circumstances.

The idea was that if people were starving and the only way to eat was to accept government cheese, rather than starve, the masses would agree to what they would otherwise reject.  In essence, for the socialist-minded, the Cloward-Piven strategy is a simple formula that makes perfect sense; the radical husband-and-wife team had Saul Alinsky as their muse, and they went on to teach his social action principles to a cadre of socialist-leaning community organizers, one of whom was Barack Obama.

As the debt crisis continues to worsen, President Obama stands idly by an inferno with his arms crossed, shaking his head, and doing nothing other than kinking the fire hose and closing the spigot.  Spectator Obama is complaining that the structure of the American economy is engulfed in flames while accusing the Congress, which is trying desperately to douse the fire, of doing nothing about the problem.

Although speculative, if the Cloward-Piven strategy is the basis of the left's game plan, spearheaded by Alinsky devotee Barack Obama, it certainly explains the President's inaction and detached attitude.

The greatest nation in the history of the world is teetering on the brink of a catastrophic economic crisis. America was pushed to this point by a rapidly-expanding national debt and a stressed-out entitlement system; in the center of this crisis is the President, who insists on expanding it even further, all in the name "fairness" and "social justice."

As a default date nears and the President threatens seniors that there's a chance they may not receive their Social Security checks, it has been revealed that the federal government disperses a stunning 80 million checks a month, which means that about a third of the US adult population could be receiving some sort of entitlement.
Since the 1960's when Cloward-Piven presented a socialistic guideline to usher in the type of evenhandedness Obama lauds, America's entitlement rolls have swelled from eight million to 80 million.  If the nation's ability to disperse handouts were ever disrupted, it's not hard to see how chaos would erupt should an angry army of millions demand what Cloward-Piven called "the right to income."

Couple the threat of dried-up funds for food stamps, Social Security, unemployment benefits and the like with the Obama administration's vigorous campaign to turn a tiny upper class of big earners into the enemy, and you have the Cloward-Piven recipe for anarchy and complete collapse.

If the worst happened, Saul Alinsky's biggest fan, whose poll numbers continue to plummet, could use mayhem in the streets to remain firmly ensconced in the White House.  Alinsky taught his students a basic principle that community organizer Barack Obama learned well: "Never let a good crisis go to waste." Fiscal disintegration coupled with lawlessness would deliver the type of Cloward-Piven/Saul Alinsky trifecta that progressives have worked toward and waited decades for.

Barack Obama has spent the last 1,000+ days defying reason and choosing policy directions that seem nonsensical to the rational mind: a failed stimulus package; ObamaCare; growing the deficit to astronomical proportions; and cynically portraying wealth as immoral. Now, when cuts are the only fix to a budgetary balloon about to burst, a seemingly illogical President digs in and demands additional phantom dollars to spend on a system that is collapsing under the weight of unmanageable debt.

It's hard to figure out the method to the President's obvious madness, because based on Obama's approval rating, if the election were held today even Pee Wee Herman could replace Obama behind the Resolute Desk.  Maybe the "method" isn't "mad" in the least!

Could it be that Barack Obama is purposely pressuring the system in a premeditated effort to foster a major crisis?   One that would demand extraordinary measures to control by a President who could then mete out basic sustenance to Americans who would agree to anything to regain some sense of normalcy.  And in the process successfully usher in the "socially just" system Barack Obama has dreamed of all his life.

While radical Alinsky/Cloward-Piven disciple Obama appears to be clueless and detached, it may be a ploy; he may actually be focused and engaged as he purposely pursues an Alinsky-inspired course of action to force the system to "live up" to its own rules.  Obama's ultimate goal of once-and-for-all discrediting the capitalist system and replacing America's foundational economic and social tenets with a broad-based socialist one headed by progressive Marxists like himself, is actually within reach.

As Obama pushes and prods the US economy and instigates social unrest, it could be that he believes a Cloward-Piven-style utopia resides just beyond the horizon -- a progressive panacea where an election-free, classless society, thankful for a simple crust of bread, looks to Barack Obama to keep the peace by remaining in power indefinitely.

Therefore, unless all of America, regardless of class or political persuasion, pays attention to the potential for a bleak future that lies ahead and realizes the President's non-plan could be itself an actual calculated plan, the resulting consequences will affect everyone, as Barack Obama transforms a once great nation into Cloward and Piven's idea of paradise.

[nathanm]

Unemployment has risen (unexpectedly) again, and with our dear leader's most recent comments re-affirming his desire to raise taxes, the market is freeking out.  Down almost 300 pts this morning.

Yet private payrolls were up over 100k this month.

Using the non-seasonally adjusted numbers, initial claims are down almost 131k in the last two weeks. The adjusted numbers put the change at a 22k decrease.

I think it's funny that you grumble and whine about a problem that you and your ilk are causing with your focus on cutting government jobs. The private sector is adding jobs, just very slowly. Government, on the other hand (especially state and local governments) are bleeding jobs like mad.

[Conan71]

DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz:  "Hopefully now with this compromise on the debt ceiling behind us, with the opportunity, with the economic to sit down and focus on longer-term deficit reduction that will have some balance and ask some sacrifice for our most fortunate."

She is perfect Vice President material.

[Red Arrow]

Nixon was no conservative.

Not by today's standards, however remember the competition: McCarthy and McGovern.