This is one of the more infuriating things about our mendacious new president. And Matt Welch discusses the two faces of Barack Obama.
29 thoughts on “Barack Obama’s Straw Men”
Ah yes, but what you FPOTP (“Failed Policies Of The Past”) troglodytes fail to understand is that self-contradiction is post-modern wisdom. There is no truth and falsehood, you see, nor black and white, nor us and them. These are outmoded, primitive, patriarchal concepts that hold down decent people only because they happen to be axe murderers or terrorists, and reject noble ideas merely because they happen to have never worked.
The wise slacker-generation post-modernist understands that it’s really not about finding any “truth,” or really even conveying information from here to there — it’s all about the wry and witty narrative, about the good story. And all good stories contain a strong dose of contradiction, dramatic tension.
It’s a bit rich for Rove to complain about straw men. Here’s Rove in 2006:
Let me be as clear as I can: President Bush believes if Al Qaeda is calling somebody in America, it is in our national security interest to know who they’re calling and why. Some important Democrats clearly disagree.
He didn’t name the “important Democrats” because there were none.
That doesn’t make the observation any less accurate, Jim. And it doesn’t change the fact that it’s Obama’s favourite tactic. He’s only been President for just over a month, and he’s already built himself quite the legion of straw men.
Of course, what I think Jim really meant wasn’t that Rove didn’t name Democrats, but that the Democrats, particularly Senator Russ Feingold, weren’t against wiretapping terrorist. They were just against the President circumventing the courts to obtain them easily. Senator Byrd, in his vote against Patriot Act renewal, stated his concern that some provisions removed necessary checks and balances.
I wonder if Jim agrees with Senator Byrd today in regards to the White House eliminating checks and balances.
“reject noble ideas merely because they happen to have never worked.”
You mean they were never implemented correctly, they would have worked, but it’s the politicians of the time who failed!
Now we have much better ones who were able to even undertake the feat of passing the largest spending bill in history with “zero pork” in the words of our very own President. When have we ever had zero pork in the past? What an amazing time we live in.
Even if that were true, Jim — and I doubt it — is this to be your side’s new argument? Anything that used to be considered nuts, or wrong, but which has been done before by a Republican at any rank justifies the same thing done today by a Democrat?
I mean, jeez, there were Republicans who committed theft and perjury 40 years ago. So it would be OK if Team Obama resorted to that now, huh?
Where is the justification for cutting military development programs in order to pay for this porkulus plan? If the idea is that government spending is ‘stimulative’, wouldn’t military spending be ‘stimulative’ as well? Is it waste just because its bad nowadays to spend money on the military?
I would rather have the government spending my money developing weapons than politicians passing it out to their friends. Another case where Obama gets it both ways, cutting waste and spending to stimulating the economy. He’s just got everything
I don’t speak for “my side”, just for myself, and I thought it was odd for Rove of all people to criticize straw man arguments. Looking again at his article, I’m not even sure the statements in question even qualify as straw men.
I reject the view that . . . says government has no role in laying the foundation for our common prosperity.
It was Reagan who said that government was the problem. RNC chair Michael Steele recently said that no government had ever created a job. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that some espouse the view Obama cites.
regulations were gutted for the sake of a quick profit at the expense of a healthy market
Rove’s objection here is that Democrats gutted some of the regulations in question. So this isn’t a straw man at all, in fact it’s a criticism of both parties.
a philosophy that says every problem can be solved if only government would step out of the way; that if government were just dismantled, divvied up into tax breaks, and handed out to the wealthiest among us, it would somehow benefit us all. Such knee-jerk disdain for government — this constant rejection of any common endeavor — cannot rebuild our levees or our roads or our bridges.
The “if only the government would step out of the way” philosophy was seen in the GOP stimulus plan: 100% tax cuts that would mostly benefit the wealthy. I think we saw that “knee-jerk disdain for government” in Jindal’s slap at volcano monitoring and McCain’s at collecting grizzly DNA. If the GOP thinks it’s unfair to call them disdainful of government, then they should criticize government projects with an argument, not a sneer.
a set of folks who — I don’t doubt their sincerity — who just believe that we should do nothing
The GOP put forward exactly one stimulus proposal, and it was more of the Bush-style tax cuts. In terms of new ideas, or any ideas that were related to the current situation, they offered nothing.
Military spending is stimulative (see: WWII). The recession is the only reason to go forward with otherwise unneeded projects like the F-22. I wouldn’t expect major defense cutbacks until after the need for stimulus has passed.
I wouldn’t expect major defense cutbacks until after the need for stimulus has passed.
I’m expecting them, but I’ll agree with your timeline. I think we’ll find the half cut in deficit spending to come from DoD based on some early Obama Democratic primary speeches.
100% tax cuts that would mostly benefit the wealthy.
This has got to be about the stupidest line of argument I’ve seen from Democrats in 35 years.
Tell me, Jim, what does a poor man need more than anything else in the world? A basket of cash? A fish? Or does he need, more than anything else, a good job? Being taught, as the sayings goes, to fish?
And who provides the job, Jim? Unless you want the entire nation to work for the government — which makes no sense at all, of course, since the government doesn’t do anything, it merely regulates the doing of things by private enterprise — then a rich man has to provide that job.
And where does he get the money for the wages he pays, Jim? From whatever money he’s got left over after the government finishes looting his wallet. So if you want your poor sad person to have a good job, what you need to do is make sure some rich man who can offer the job has the money he needs to pay the wages.
You’re like a poor farmer saying: OMG! I am on short rations because the harvest failed this year. I’m so hungry! I know! I’ve got all this seed corn laid by to plant this fall — I’ll just eat that. Now I’m full.
We’ll say it slowly, so even Democrats can understand: you live in a modern capital-intensive economy. You like doing so, because it’s a lot better than a labor-intensive pure agricultural community, where most of you have to live in dirt-floored huts and work backbreaking jobs in the fields all day. “Capital” is another word for wealth. That is, you live in an economy which only works if there is accumulated wealth (“capital”) that can be used to start and grow complex technologicallly-complex businesses that require massive amounts of cash to get moving. The only people who can provide that capital are those who don’t need the money just to survive. Rich people. A man with money to start a business is, by definition, a man who doesn’t need to money just to pay his rent and buy macronic and cheese to eat.
The wealth of the rich is your national seed corn. It’s what your future prosperity hangs on. It’s what gets “planted” this year to reap a bountiful harvest next year. If you tax it away and distribute it as mere wages and income to people who are struggling to pay the mortgage and the cable bill, you are eating your seed corn. That may make some (small) sense in an emergency, but as a long-term governing philosophy, it is utter insanity, a quick path to economic ruin, as amply demonstrated by every single socialist society ever set up.
So Jim, if it’s a bit rich for Rove to name them, I’ll name a couple for you, Feingold and Feinstein. They both said we should wiretap Al Quaida and in the next breath said what the President was doing was illegal and this was in 2006. I take that as they disagree since the President didn’t think it was illegal. If you want to contort yourself trying to make that sound as if they don’t, help yourself.
Carl: high taxes do not imply economic ruin. We had 90+% marginal tax rates on the wealthy in the 50s — and we had growth rates and rising median wages that we can only dream about today. The five countries with the highest rates of taxation today (Denmark, Sweden, Belgium, France, Norway) all have higher per-capita GNP than the U.S. — are they on “a quick path to economic ruin”? That path sure seems to be taking a long time….
Bill: Bush was wiretapping people without a warrant. The FISA law said they needed a warrant, so what they were doing was illegal (which is why they later argued for retroactive immunity). Pointing out the illegality of Bush’s program doesn’t mean that any Democrat opposed wiretapping Al Queda members in a way that complied with the law.
Bush was wiretapping people without a warrant.
You’re using a non-standard definition of the word “wiretap.”
The FISA law said they needed a warrant
The FISA law also specified that not all data mining fell under the FISA law, and what didn’t fall under the FISA law didn’t need a warrant.
Carl: high taxes do not imply economic ruin. We had 90+% marginal tax rates on the wealthy in the 50s
Are you suggesting that what worked in the 1950s would work today? How far should we carry that?
To second what Jim said, if tax cuts were as stimulative to the economy as Rove thinks they are, the economy would be in great shape.
McGehee – I think what Jim was suggesting is that high taxes are not the end of the world, or even the end of wealth-building.
If we had economic growth at 90% going from 36% to 39% shouldn’t be the end of the world.
Yes they do, Jim. They are just not the only forces operating. You can certainly have very high top marginal rates briefly, after a long period of capital concentration, such as in the 1940s with all those damned “war profits”. You can eat a little bit seed corn, from time to time. Of course, let those brutal high marginal rates go on long enough, and things fall apart. That is, your 50s were followed by the noticeably weaker 60s and 70s. And following the massive tax cuts from Kennedy to Reagan, skipping over Johnson, Nixon and Obama I (Carter), you had in the late 80s and early 90s substantial economic growth.
Secondly, your per-capita GDP is not a very useful indicator of future prosperity, unless you are an idiot and believe that life is static, and the only people who will be (or can be) rich are those who are rich today. What you want to look for is GDP growth rates. Now, go look at your list of countries again and look at the GDP growth rates. Here they are for 2005:
Aside from the peculiarity that is Denmark, you see substantially weaker growth rates in your high-tax continental Eurostates, compared to the US.
If you’re interested in growth because, say, you would like the poor to become rich, or you’re just in a recession, then high tax rates are a killer.
To second what Jim said, if tax cuts were as stimulative to the economy as Rove thinks they are, the economy would be in great shape.
It was in great shape Chris. When’s the last serious recession? Can you even remember it (1982)? The period of economic growth we’ve lived through — near 30 straight years — is absolutely unprecedented in the history of the Republic, if not the entire Western world. And the major difference from the previous half century is — ding! — marginal tax rates. Coincidence? Maybe. But wouldn’t you like to be sure before you bet your retirement on it?
As for the fact that we have a downturn now — well, low marginal tax rates are not a complete solution to all the follies of men, you know. They can’t do a damn thing about stupid speculative bubbles, such as the dot-com bubble or the real estate bubble that underlies the present woes. Low tax rates can only allow people to generally get rich. They can’t prevent people from turning into economic lemmings and jumping off a cliff.
However, once people have turned into lemmings, jumped off the cliff, and have painfully re-learned lessons of thrift and caution their grandparents knew well (from having lived through recessions), low tax rates can allow them to pick up and get moving again as fast as possible. Your high tax rates mean that in addition to re-learning important basic economic lessons, people have to shoulder a monster unfair burden, in which those who learn the lessons fast enough must subsidize those who refuse to learn the lessons at all. Slows things down mightily.
Carl – I seem to recall a recession in the mid-90s, and one 2001-2003, which started before 9/11. I vaguely recall one at the end of Bush I’s term (1989) but I was set for a job (US Navy) so it didn’t affect me.
I am glad that you admit that tax cuts don’t heal all ills.
Again, the Democrats said you have to stop until you do it this way, Bush said no I don’t. There were reasons from both sides on why they thought they were right. The law at that time hadn’t been tested. One thing I didn’t mention was Rove was never the President. You can ding if you think he is creating strawmen but he wasn’t using them to address the nation as its leader and push for hunreds of billions of dollars in new spending.
Chris,
Go look at the income tax rate on a state level, the ad valorem taxes and sales taxes. I think you’ll find the rate on non federal income taxes have increased considerably since then so you’re really comparing apples and oranges.
Those high tax countries suck! Why would we do that to ourselves? Jim, Chris, Bueller, anyone?
Carl: Those European countries have had high tax rates for decades and yet they still have higher per capita GDP than we do. High tax rates are not incompatible with growth or prosperity.
Jim says:
The five countries with the highest rates of taxation today (Denmark, Sweden, Belgium, France, Norway) all have higher per-capita GNP than the U.S.
Not according to Wikipedia’s CIA data for GDP. France is lower.
Furthermore, if you used the more accurate GDP adjusted for PPP your list fails even more. The notable exception is Norway which is not afraid to drill in its artic.
I am glad that you admit that tax cuts don’t heal all ills.
No one claims that tax cuts (or tax rate cuts) heal all ills. That’s exactly the kind of mendacious straw man that this post was about.
Clearly you think absolutely everything Obama says is a straw man argument. This is simply not so. He says lots of things that aren’t refutations of straw men.
Clearly you think absolutely everything Obama says is a straw man argument. This is simply not so. He says lots of things that aren’t refutations of straw men.
Let me guess. The rest are non sequiturs?
I seem to recall a recession in the mid-90s, and one 2001-2003, which started before 9/11. I vaguely recall one at the end of Bush I’s term (1989)
1989 had a growth in nominal GDP (using current dollars) from the previous year of 7.5% (no year has had better growth since).
1995 the growth in GDP dropped to 4.6%, the slowest growth under Clinton.
2000 GDP grew 5.9%
2001 GDP grew 3.2%
2002 GDP grew 3.4%
2003 GDP grew 4.7%
2004 GDP grew 6.6%
2005 GDP grew 6.3%
2006 GDP grew 6.1%
2007 GDP grew 4.8%
2008 GDP grew 3.4%
Also note that 1989 was not the end of President George HW Bush’s administration, it was the start. His last year, 1992, GDP grew 5.7%.
Uncle Jim obviously do love his Massa State.
There is a saying in basketball, “keep a winning game plan – change a loosing one.” Kind of applies to life as well.
I submit our immediate past game plan (all tax cuts, all the time) didn’t seem to be winning.
I submit our immediate past game plan (all tax cuts, all the time)
And I submit that no matter how many times you repeat this delusion (I’ll do you the courtesy of not calling it a lie), it does not make it correspond to history or reality.
Ah yes, but what you FPOTP (“Failed Policies Of The Past”) troglodytes fail to understand is that self-contradiction is post-modern wisdom. There is no truth and falsehood, you see, nor black and white, nor us and them. These are outmoded, primitive, patriarchal concepts that hold down decent people only because they happen to be axe murderers or terrorists, and reject noble ideas merely because they happen to have never worked.
The wise slacker-generation post-modernist understands that it’s really not about finding any “truth,” or really even conveying information from here to there — it’s all about the wry and witty narrative, about the good story. And all good stories contain a strong dose of contradiction, dramatic tension.
It’s a bit rich for Rove to complain about straw men. Here’s Rove in 2006:
He didn’t name the “important Democrats” because there were none.
That doesn’t make the observation any less accurate, Jim. And it doesn’t change the fact that it’s Obama’s favourite tactic. He’s only been President for just over a month, and he’s already built himself quite the legion of straw men.
He didn’t name the “important Democrats”
The Nation did.
Of course, what I think Jim really meant wasn’t that Rove didn’t name Democrats, but that the Democrats, particularly Senator Russ Feingold, weren’t against wiretapping terrorist. They were just against the President circumventing the courts to obtain them easily. Senator Byrd, in his vote against Patriot Act renewal, stated his concern that some provisions removed necessary checks and balances.
I wonder if Jim agrees with Senator Byrd today in regards to the White House eliminating checks and balances.
“reject noble ideas merely because they happen to have never worked.”
You mean they were never implemented correctly, they would have worked, but it’s the politicians of the time who failed!
Now we have much better ones who were able to even undertake the feat of passing the largest spending bill in history with “zero pork” in the words of our very own President. When have we ever had zero pork in the past? What an amazing time we live in.
Even if that were true, Jim — and I doubt it — is this to be your side’s new argument? Anything that used to be considered nuts, or wrong, but which has been done before by a Republican at any rank justifies the same thing done today by a Democrat?
I mean, jeez, there were Republicans who committed theft and perjury 40 years ago. So it would be OK if Team Obama resorted to that now, huh?
Where is the justification for cutting military development programs in order to pay for this porkulus plan? If the idea is that government spending is ‘stimulative’, wouldn’t military spending be ‘stimulative’ as well? Is it waste just because its bad nowadays to spend money on the military?
I would rather have the government spending my money developing weapons than politicians passing it out to their friends. Another case where Obama gets it both ways, cutting waste and spending to stimulating the economy. He’s just got everything
I don’t speak for “my side”, just for myself, and I thought it was odd for Rove of all people to criticize straw man arguments. Looking again at his article, I’m not even sure the statements in question even qualify as straw men.
It was Reagan who said that government was the problem. RNC chair Michael Steele recently said that no government had ever created a job. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that some espouse the view Obama cites.
Rove’s objection here is that Democrats gutted some of the regulations in question. So this isn’t a straw man at all, in fact it’s a criticism of both parties.
The “if only the government would step out of the way” philosophy was seen in the GOP stimulus plan: 100% tax cuts that would mostly benefit the wealthy. I think we saw that “knee-jerk disdain for government” in Jindal’s slap at volcano monitoring and McCain’s at collecting grizzly DNA. If the GOP thinks it’s unfair to call them disdainful of government, then they should criticize government projects with an argument, not a sneer.
The GOP put forward exactly one stimulus proposal, and it was more of the Bush-style tax cuts. In terms of new ideas, or any ideas that were related to the current situation, they offered nothing.
Military spending is stimulative (see: WWII). The recession is the only reason to go forward with otherwise unneeded projects like the F-22. I wouldn’t expect major defense cutbacks until after the need for stimulus has passed.
I wouldn’t expect major defense cutbacks until after the need for stimulus has passed.
I’m expecting them, but I’ll agree with your timeline. I think we’ll find the half cut in deficit spending to come from DoD based on some early Obama Democratic primary speeches.
100% tax cuts that would mostly benefit the wealthy.
This has got to be about the stupidest line of argument I’ve seen from Democrats in 35 years.
Tell me, Jim, what does a poor man need more than anything else in the world? A basket of cash? A fish? Or does he need, more than anything else, a good job? Being taught, as the sayings goes, to fish?
And who provides the job, Jim? Unless you want the entire nation to work for the government — which makes no sense at all, of course, since the government doesn’t do anything, it merely regulates the doing of things by private enterprise — then a rich man has to provide that job.
And where does he get the money for the wages he pays, Jim? From whatever money he’s got left over after the government finishes looting his wallet. So if you want your poor sad person to have a good job, what you need to do is make sure some rich man who can offer the job has the money he needs to pay the wages.
You’re like a poor farmer saying: OMG! I am on short rations because the harvest failed this year. I’m so hungry! I know! I’ve got all this seed corn laid by to plant this fall — I’ll just eat that. Now I’m full.
We’ll say it slowly, so even Democrats can understand: you live in a modern capital-intensive economy. You like doing so, because it’s a lot better than a labor-intensive pure agricultural community, where most of you have to live in dirt-floored huts and work backbreaking jobs in the fields all day. “Capital” is another word for wealth. That is, you live in an economy which only works if there is accumulated wealth (“capital”) that can be used to start and grow complex technologicallly-complex businesses that require massive amounts of cash to get moving. The only people who can provide that capital are those who don’t need the money just to survive. Rich people. A man with money to start a business is, by definition, a man who doesn’t need to money just to pay his rent and buy macronic and cheese to eat.
The wealth of the rich is your national seed corn. It’s what your future prosperity hangs on. It’s what gets “planted” this year to reap a bountiful harvest next year. If you tax it away and distribute it as mere wages and income to people who are struggling to pay the mortgage and the cable bill, you are eating your seed corn. That may make some (small) sense in an emergency, but as a long-term governing philosophy, it is utter insanity, a quick path to economic ruin, as amply demonstrated by every single socialist society ever set up.
So Jim, if it’s a bit rich for Rove to name them, I’ll name a couple for you, Feingold and Feinstein. They both said we should wiretap Al Quaida and in the next breath said what the President was doing was illegal and this was in 2006. I take that as they disagree since the President didn’t think it was illegal. If you want to contort yourself trying to make that sound as if they don’t, help yourself.
Carl: high taxes do not imply economic ruin. We had 90+% marginal tax rates on the wealthy in the 50s — and we had growth rates and rising median wages that we can only dream about today. The five countries with the highest rates of taxation today (Denmark, Sweden, Belgium, France, Norway) all have higher per-capita GNP than the U.S. — are they on “a quick path to economic ruin”? That path sure seems to be taking a long time….
Bill: Bush was wiretapping people without a warrant. The FISA law said they needed a warrant, so what they were doing was illegal (which is why they later argued for retroactive immunity). Pointing out the illegality of Bush’s program doesn’t mean that any Democrat opposed wiretapping Al Queda members in a way that complied with the law.
You’re using a non-standard definition of the word “wiretap.”
The FISA law also specified that not all data mining fell under the FISA law, and what didn’t fall under the FISA law didn’t need a warrant.
Are you suggesting that what worked in the 1950s would work today? How far should we carry that?
To second what Jim said, if tax cuts were as stimulative to the economy as Rove thinks they are, the economy would be in great shape.
McGehee – I think what Jim was suggesting is that high taxes are not the end of the world, or even the end of wealth-building.
If we had economic growth at 90% going from 36% to 39% shouldn’t be the end of the world.
Yes they do, Jim. They are just not the only forces operating. You can certainly have very high top marginal rates briefly, after a long period of capital concentration, such as in the 1940s with all those damned “war profits”. You can eat a little bit seed corn, from time to time. Of course, let those brutal high marginal rates go on long enough, and things fall apart. That is, your 50s were followed by the noticeably weaker 60s and 70s. And following the massive tax cuts from Kennedy to Reagan, skipping over Johnson, Nixon and Obama I (Carter), you had in the late 80s and early 90s substantial economic growth.
Secondly, your per-capita GDP is not a very useful indicator of future prosperity, unless you are an idiot and believe that life is static, and the only people who will be (or can be) rich are those who are rich today. What you want to look for is GDP growth rates. Now, go look at your list of countries again and look at the GDP growth rates. Here they are for 2005:
Denmark: 3.36
Sweden: 2.70
Belgium: 1.54
France: 1.72
Norway: 2.49
United States:3.06
Aside from the peculiarity that is Denmark, you see substantially weaker growth rates in your high-tax continental Eurostates, compared to the US.
If you’re interested in growth because, say, you would like the poor to become rich, or you’re just in a recession, then high tax rates are a killer.
To second what Jim said, if tax cuts were as stimulative to the economy as Rove thinks they are, the economy would be in great shape.
It was in great shape Chris. When’s the last serious recession? Can you even remember it (1982)? The period of economic growth we’ve lived through — near 30 straight years — is absolutely unprecedented in the history of the Republic, if not the entire Western world. And the major difference from the previous half century is — ding! — marginal tax rates. Coincidence? Maybe. But wouldn’t you like to be sure before you bet your retirement on it?
As for the fact that we have a downturn now — well, low marginal tax rates are not a complete solution to all the follies of men, you know. They can’t do a damn thing about stupid speculative bubbles, such as the dot-com bubble or the real estate bubble that underlies the present woes. Low tax rates can only allow people to generally get rich. They can’t prevent people from turning into economic lemmings and jumping off a cliff.
However, once people have turned into lemmings, jumped off the cliff, and have painfully re-learned lessons of thrift and caution their grandparents knew well (from having lived through recessions), low tax rates can allow them to pick up and get moving again as fast as possible. Your high tax rates mean that in addition to re-learning important basic economic lessons, people have to shoulder a monster unfair burden, in which those who learn the lessons fast enough must subsidize those who refuse to learn the lessons at all. Slows things down mightily.
Carl – I seem to recall a recession in the mid-90s, and one 2001-2003, which started before 9/11. I vaguely recall one at the end of Bush I’s term (1989) but I was set for a job (US Navy) so it didn’t affect me.
I am glad that you admit that tax cuts don’t heal all ills.
Again, the Democrats said you have to stop until you do it this way, Bush said no I don’t. There were reasons from both sides on why they thought they were right. The law at that time hadn’t been tested. One thing I didn’t mention was Rove was never the President. You can ding if you think he is creating strawmen but he wasn’t using them to address the nation as its leader and push for hunreds of billions of dollars in new spending.
Chris,
Go look at the income tax rate on a state level, the ad valorem taxes and sales taxes. I think you’ll find the rate on non federal income taxes have increased considerably since then so you’re really comparing apples and oranges.
Carl, it’s even worse than that. Go here to look at the 5 year ave for Europe.
http://www.globalpropertyguide.com/Europe/Denmark/gdp-per-capita-growth-5-years
U.S is 3%
Those high tax countries suck! Why would we do that to ourselves? Jim, Chris, Bueller, anyone?
Carl: Those European countries have had high tax rates for decades and yet they still have higher per capita GDP than we do. High tax rates are not incompatible with growth or prosperity.
Jim says:
The five countries with the highest rates of taxation today (Denmark, Sweden, Belgium, France, Norway) all have higher per-capita GNP than the U.S.
Not according to Wikipedia’s CIA data for GDP. France is lower.
Furthermore, if you used the more accurate GDP adjusted for PPP your list fails even more. The notable exception is Norway which is not afraid to drill in its artic.
I am glad that you admit that tax cuts don’t heal all ills.
No one claims that tax cuts (or tax rate cuts) heal all ills. That’s exactly the kind of mendacious straw man that this post was about.
Clearly you think absolutely everything Obama says is a straw man argument. This is simply not so. He says lots of things that aren’t refutations of straw men.
Clearly you think absolutely everything Obama says is a straw man argument. This is simply not so. He says lots of things that aren’t refutations of straw men.
Let me guess. The rest are non sequiturs?
I seem to recall a recession in the mid-90s, and one 2001-2003, which started before 9/11. I vaguely recall one at the end of Bush I’s term (1989)
Using data from here:
1989 had a growth in nominal GDP (using current dollars) from the previous year of 7.5% (no year has had better growth since).
1995 the growth in GDP dropped to 4.6%, the slowest growth under Clinton.
2000 GDP grew 5.9%
2001 GDP grew 3.2%
2002 GDP grew 3.4%
2003 GDP grew 4.7%
2004 GDP grew 6.6%
2005 GDP grew 6.3%
2006 GDP grew 6.1%
2007 GDP grew 4.8%
2008 GDP grew 3.4%
Also note that 1989 was not the end of President George HW Bush’s administration, it was the start. His last year, 1992, GDP grew 5.7%.
Uncle Jim obviously do love his Massa State.
There is a saying in basketball, “keep a winning game plan – change a loosing one.” Kind of applies to life as well.
I submit our immediate past game plan (all tax cuts, all the time) didn’t seem to be winning.
I submit our immediate past game plan (all tax cuts, all the time)
And I submit that no matter how many times you repeat this delusion (I’ll do you the courtesy of not calling it a lie), it does not make it correspond to history or reality.