Americans don't trust or like ultra liberals Timothy Noah. You have no sense of the appropriate because you embrace everything that is inappropriate Noah.

Don't blame you because a hard core republican wrote some of them? Well sure his did. He was telling the truth about ultra liberals and you embraced this truth.

Still, I feel about it the same way I felt about the conservative movement in 2000, which was the ultimate reason that I voted for Bush back then. The conservatives had been whining, crying, bellyaching sooooooo much about the horrors and evils of the Clinton era that I thought, "Well if it means that much to them then why the hell not? Perhaps this nation could do with four years of being reset by conservatism. They certainly can't do the nation all that much harm in just one term" Of course no one could have predicted that 9-11-01 was going to occur nor that Bush would would this as an excuse to invade Iraq nor that most of the assholes today sucking off Obama would CHEER Bush on as he got us into an unnecessary war . . . but most of you fools did do that.

So there is a moral to the story; it does make a difference who the hell you put into office and when a shit load of extremists Left OR Right are panting to have the baby of a certain leader it's probably a damn dumb idea to put that fellow into office . . . because you never know when the equivalent of a 9-11-01 is going to happen again.

So here we have millions and millions of fanatics clamoring to make a love child with Barack Obama WITH the help of a massively democratically controlled legislative branch which in turn means a Hard Ultra Left version of the rubber stamp congress that caused so much trouble for this nation during Bush's terms and . . . nobody but a few farsighted, clear thinkers seemed to actually have learned a lesson regarding Bush.

Sheesh! Well, I learned MY lesson and I'm not going to vote for an extremist again and then hand him a legislative branch dominated by his own party!

So all the snotball things in the list that Timmothy Noah honestly worships? Just wait and watch much more of those come true as the steady state of this nation than most of you are really going to feel comfortable with in the long run.

Instead of learning a lesson you are fully intending to make the same mistake 180 degrees in the opposite direction. But a mistake is still a mistake even when the nation is being steered into the dumper by an ideologue on the oppostice extreme.

An extreme is what we need right now - we just had 8 years of extreme corporatism, of extreme bellicosity, of extreme deficits in diplomacy and care for our sick and our poor... of extreme vilification of the same people who have always made the U.S. great, the immigrants...

Its time to swing as hard as we can in the other direction, and become America again.

Wait wait wait, this is too rich...

You voted FOR BUSH, and that mistake taught you... to vote for McCain.

Comedy gold.

"Still, I feel about it the same way I felt about the conservative movement in 2000, which was the ultimate reason that I voted for Bush back then."

Hilarious!!! Coming from the "lifelong Democrat."

efraker:

An extreme is what we need right now - we just had 8 years of extreme corporatism, of extreme bellicosity, of extreme deficits in diplomacy and care for our sick and our poor... of extreme vilification of the same people who have always made the U.S. great, the immigrants...

Its time to swing as hard as we can in the other direction, and become America again.

Because two worngs make a right, and the opposite of one kind of stupid is a different kind of stupid?

Obama's whole campaign has been built around a rejection of exactly that sort of thinking and political culture. So I guess you're just hoping he's the liar and hypocrite the Republicans charge him with being? That everything McCain and Palin say about him is true?

TheyCallMeBruce:

Obama's whole campaign has been built around a rejection of exactly that sort of thinking and political culture. So I guess you're just hoping he's the liar and hypocrite the Republicans charge him with being? That everything McCain and Palin say about him is true?

I absolutely do hope Obama is hard-left. America has been moving right every election since Nixon's silent majority. I'm hoping for a liberal-progressive realignment.

I do not think there is anything particularly surprising about a politician dissembling during the campaign, either - and no, I don't hope that everything McCain and Palin say about him is true. Just the scandalous parts about him wanting to start a class war on the rich, stop bombing innocent civilians, and give us a socialized healthcare system where I don't have to read in the paper about indigent people dying of bronchitis or pneumonia pretty much every week in my town.

I absolutely do hope Obama is hard-left. America has been moving right every election since Nixon's silent majority. I'm hoping for a liberal-progressive realignment.

If Obama is a member of the loony left your "realignment" will be a conservative backlash.

...Just the scandalous parts about him wanting to start a class war on the rich...

You really have no clue why this would be a disaster? When this country starts punishing the rich for being rich we'll see a second great depression.

There are (by definition) 500 Fortune 500 CEOs. There are 55 million or so small business owners. Most of them aren't "rich"... but the most successful are. I think it's only about 2% that are in the upper two income tax brackets (I know, I should source this but it's not handy).

Problem is IMHO this tracks pretty well with the small business owners who are creating jobs. Put differently, although there are obvious exceptions, economic theory (and probably practice) holds that the "rich" are the most economically productive people this country has.

DBuss:

Put differently, although there are obvious exceptions, economic theory (and probably practice) holds that the "rich" are the most economically productive people this country has.

No offense, but have you ever spent any time in Europe? I'm a big fan of the Netherlands - the peak income tax rate there is 72%, with a peak corporate tax rate of 25.5%. There is also an onerous inheritance "death" tax. Taxes are massively higher there than in the U.S.

The United States has a nominal per-capita GDP of $43,594.

The Netherlands has a nominal per-capita GDP of $46,774.

They also have a higher standard of living, lower infant mortality rate, longer lifespans, and (for whatever its worth), higher calculated "quality of life".

Why is it that the Dutch can milk the rich successfully, but if Americans did it, it'd be a disaster?

efraker,

dbuss is a religious nut. Who but a religious nut would still believe in the "free" market after watching his 401k turn into cottage cheese, this week? Who but a religious nut would still believer Alan Greenspan is a great man and not a cretin/criminal, after all those assurances from AG that securitized debt was totally safe and actually good for the international economy?

Moreover, he believes that there's a "natural" conservative majority in America that will keep on electing reactionary bozos forever, unless they are UNFAIRLY saddled with the results of their own incompetence. He thinks a wave of conservative indignation will sweep the liberals out of office if they have the nerve to provide us with universal healthcare, or tax the rich, or both.

Not having access to actual numbers, he yanks "the fortune five hundred" out of his ass as if that proved something. Is there a home for the terminally silly where that kind of thing wins arguments?

Thanx, oxboggle (luv the name)

I seem to be 'Middle America' (middle age and unemployed at the moment) and would not for one second be indignant if the rich paid their fair share (as I have paid more than mine for many years). How does one drive their company to bankruptcy, achieve an $85B bailout from folk like me and escape with $500M for his incompetency. Would most of us be indignant if he had to pay (in more ways but not exclusive of the money he stole from us)?

I'm a big fan of the Netherlands...

Hmm... Interesting... the question then becomes, are they able to do this because of "soaking the rich" or in spite of it?

With two thirds of their GDP being from import/export I suspect the later... and I can think of historical examples which also tend to support that line of thought... but I don't know enough about their culture and economic system to judge.

Why is it that the Dutch can milk the rich successfully, but if Americans did it, it'd be a disaster?

Because small businesses in America tend to create new jobs, and I know a couple of small business owners. I live *much* better than they do, but on paper their income makes them *rich* but mine doesn't.

The difference is my income goes to me and my family while their income also has to support a business. The WSJ has claimed 75%(ish) of the so called rich fit that profile.

Know some Mom and Pop pizza place that expanded recently? Then you too probably know people who are "rich" enough to get "soaked". Their business probably wouldn't go under, but by the same light it also would find it hard to expand.

Oxboggle,

You appear to offer Righteous indignation, but that's a poor substitute for sound economic policy... and it was an absence of the later which lead to our current mess.

When the two biggest players (F & F) are backed up and protected by the government I don't see how we can call a market "free". This is especially true when they have a mandate to increase home ownership. This mess was in part a triumph of politics over economcis.

...a wave of conservative indignation will sweep the liberals out of office if they have the nerve to provide us with universal healthcare, or tax the rich, or both.

So far I haven't actually seen any *new* ideas from the current left, just tried and failed ones. Desiring things doesn't make them economically sensible.

The slogan of Universal Healthcare may win an election but actually living with an agency that has the Pentagon's thrift, the Post Office's efficiency, and IRS's mercy is unlikely to generate long term good will.

The government runs on a budget, it's going to need to pay serious big bucks for Social Security and the other entitlements pretty soon. Do we really want to fight Social Security for a hunk of the budget? You want a good way to reduce the amount of money being spent on health care, that's the way to do it. Now explain why underfunding health care is supposed to be a good thing?

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac didn't write mortgages. That government backup you deride was their job.

Why do you assume a national health program would necessarily be a cartoon of mismanagement? It would HAVE to be more efficient than the duplicative mess of insurance companies we have now.

Federal support for small business group insurance is one of those *new* ideas you claim to be unable to see.

Creating a huge drug benefit program while forbidding its managers to bargain with Big Pharma is just the kind of brilliant conservative management that characterizes those Pentagon programs you enjoy mocking. Changing that program to allow it to leverage the size of its pool in dealing with the drug lords will knock its costs way down. That's one little change; there are many others.

Your problem is you want it all written down on a three by five in card, just like Ronnie. So you end up thinking F&F created this mess, not a bunch of hedge fund operators poisoning the well of credit with toxic derivatives. Everybody has a "moral" story that explains our current state in terms of his own values and ideology.

The difference is, I'm right and you're wrong.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac didn't write mortgages. That government backup you deride was their job.

You do understand that their job was to write mortgages, right? And given that they're not in the same group as the Wall Street "Masters of the Universe", them falling flat on their face and going bust was an even bigger failure because excessive risk wasn't part of their job?

On that subject, people (ironically including McCain) have been predicting Fannie and Freddie's problems for years.

Why do you assume a national health program would necessarily be a cartoon of mismanagement?

The Iraq war, the financial mis-regulation, Hurricane Katrina... how many examples of this sort of thing do I have to see before I expect a cartoon of mismanagement?

As far as I can tell, the Government would bring to health care...

1) Inefficiencies of scale. We spend 20x more on health care than we do on the War.

2) Monopoly. When Enron screwed up they died, but the lights stayed on because there were other power companies. When the Gov fails (for example at Education), it just keeps plodding on.

3) Budgeting. Gov resources are strained and scarce and getting more so. When applied to Health Care that means there will be a lot of pressure to reduce funding, i.e. not pay for something.

4) Injection of politics into the process. Instead of you and your doctor making decisions, it will be you, your doctor, and some government bureaucrat.

At the moment it's possible to buy insurance policies that cover, say, abortion. What do you think Bush would have done if the gov had been paying for everything? Do you think he would have been good with the gov paying for abortions? Stem Cell treatments?

5) Inflexibility. A better cancer treatment comes along. The old treatments have supporters inside the system. Which treatment do you think the gov will pay for? Again, it won't be people voting with their money, it will be gov bureaucrats making these decisions, and that seriously slows down what happens.

The French tolerated AIDS inside their blood supply for much longer than they needed to because they wanted to wait for a French test to be invented. People do what's best for themselves, that includes bureaucrats and it's not like their spending their own money.

Federal support for small business group insurance is one of those *new* ideas you claim to be unable to see.

Throwing money at a problem doesn't count as a *new* idea. But if we're on this subject...

It's not a good idea for business to be supplying health care. We want to encourage the flow of labor, tying someone's HC to their job isn't that. Further, I don't see why GM is supposed to be good at HC, it's not their business.

Allowing insurance companies to sell their products across state lines is another seriously good idea.

Creating a huge drug benefit program while forbidding its managers to bargain with Big Pharma... Changing that program to allow it to leverage the size of its pool in dealing with the drug lords will knock its costs way down.

First of all, I'm not in favor of the drug benefit program.

Second of all, Price controls doesn't count as a "new" idea either. Nor does it count as a good one.

So you end up thinking F&F created this mess, not a bunch of hedge fund operators poisoning the well of credit with toxic derivatives.

Greed on Wall Street goes back well before this countries creation and is apparently part of the human condition. Yes, they had a fair chunk of responsibility in this... but so does the Gov. The bail out for every Wall Street company combined is 700 Billion, but taking over F&F gave us responsibility for over a Trillion. There is lots of blame to go around, F&F and the gov played no small part in this mess.

Everybody has a "moral" story that explains our current state in terms of his own values and ideology...The difference is, I'm right and you're wrong.

I could say the same. :)

However, do you like what our gov has been doing? The War, the Hurricane, the Financial mess? No? So obviously the solution is to give them control over Health Care too? Why do you think there is no way they'll mess that up?

Good talking with you.

gotsmartz:

I seem to be 'Middle America' (middle age and unemployed at the moment) and would not for one second be indignant if the rich paid their fair share (as I have paid more than mine for many years).

How do you define "fair share"? The rich pay most of the taxes as it is. You may feel you pay more than your fair share (and so do I!), but you're paying less than your proportional share, and so am I.

I guess the question boils down to: we already have a progressive tax system. Once you're there, how do you decide how steep the progression ought to be? Any number you pick is arbitrary, which means it's tough to say any of them is any more or less fair than any other. At that point, with everything equally fair, the question becomes not what is fair but what will have the best effect on the economy.

gotsmartz:

How does one drive their company to bankruptcy, achieve an $85B bailout from folk like me and escape with $500M for his incompetency. Would most of us be indignant if he had to pay (in more ways but not exclusive of the money he stole from us)?

I think you're missing DBuss' point. The people you're talking about deserve to pay more, but the people you're talking about are only a subset of the rich. Bill Gates and Ted Kennedy had nothing to do with this collapse - why should they have to pay any more (proportionally, not in absolute dollars) more for it than you or I do? And say you put a 75% tax on all income above $1M. That guy who fleeced the rest of us out of $500M still gets to keep $125M. Is that fair?

What I'm getting at is that if you want to make the people who created this mess pay for the cleanup and pay back what they got dishonestly, tax policy is a poor tool to use. And holding all rich people accountable for the crimes of some rich people isn't much different from holding all poor people accountable for the crimes of some poor people.

I would absolutely support the justice department going after the money made by people in the financial industry running the economy into the ground. As many have pointed out, that would be a drop in the bucket compared to the losses they caused, but in addition to being justice it's important to send their successors a message that behavior like that will not be tolerated and will have severe consequences.