The Gingrich File

Discussion in 'Politics' started by Tiassa, Jun 9, 2011.

  1. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    Tax cuts, of course

    They won't have to. Remember, if you cut taxes, revenues increase. Republicans say so, so it must be true.

    Right?
     
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  3. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Why assume he doesn't want to cut SS or medicare?
     
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  5. Ivan Seeking Registered Senior Member

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    Crazy Newt is emerging again.

    A funny quote that Wolf Blitzer just ran with the author present:
    "He [Newt] is the devil in a red dress; a temptress who would lead the Republicans to ruin." - Alex Castellanos, Republican media consultant
     
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  7. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    Right, let's just get rid of taxes altogether. Government should be rolling in tax revenues then.

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    It really is amazing that people believe this stuff. It doesn't speak well for the human animal.
     
  8. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    Given all their claims that they didn't want to kill Social Security and Medicare after the Ryan budget, one has to assume they don't want to cut those programs if you take them at their word.

    We know they are against anything that makes healthcare more efficient and less expensive.
     
  9. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    It is sort of an interesting situation with the Republican Party these days. You have the traditional Republican as represented by Romney - the good olde boy cronies. And then you have the Any Body But Romney (75% of the party) who are flat out misinformed, emotionally driven/addicted and crazy.

    Traditional Republicans thought they could control the crazy elements in the party and use them to their advantage. But recent history has shown that is clearly not the case. What is interesting to me is that when I listen to talk radio these days, they are dumping dirt bombs on Gingrich as fast at they they can talk. But the bottom line is there is a majority of the party that has been spoon fed crazy talk for decades. And now they are about to bite the hand that has been feeding them. I love it.

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  10. Pandaemoni Valued Senior Member

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    More reason for me to reject Newt. I lament the fact that the U.S. no longer has a manned space program, but I have to admit that it is a governmental "luxury" program, like government funding for the arts, and that in times like these we need to scale back on non-essentials.

    There's no doubt where the money would come from, though. We'd borrow it. Taxes might well be reduced under Newt's leadership, and the only way to make up the difference is cutting programs (which is politically hard to do, ever) or borrowing money (which is politically easy to do).

    The good news is that if Newt gets the nomination, I fully expect Obama will be reelected, because Newt is "eccentric", and he can't hide that for the next 10 months.
     
  11. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Funding the arts is a cheap jobs program, it's especially necessary now. During the depression the government funded many artists.
     
  12. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    Yes we do. We just don't have a manned space launch vehicle operational right now. Heck, we're close to operating commercial, civilian manned space flights.
     
  13. Ivan Seeking Registered Senior Member

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    I agree completely.

    With the understanding that I idolized Reagan, I think the good old boys and the tea partiers have an even deeper problem. It seems clear to me that the Republican economic platform has failed fundamentally. Ayn Rand -> Greenspan -> Reagan -> US fiscal policy for the last 30 years and the basis for the Republican economic platform today.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Greenspan

    It seems to me that the real achilles heel here in practice, the reason we couldn't allow market discipline to run its course, is the problem of "too big to fail". While free markets probably still work, we can't afford to live with the market corrections! In order to prevent another global calamity like the one that we've just seen, financial markets must be strictly regulated. This completely undermines the foundational argument that governemnt just gets in the way. In fact, if left to run amok, we now know that free markets can destroy the global economy. That pretty much cinches the argument for me. I still believe in the principle of free markets, but it is clear that markets cannot be completely free. Less regulation is not always better, and market discipline is unreliable.
     
  14. Pandaemoni Valued Senior Member

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    Not having any impact on the Depression itself, though (since the New Deal as a whole did little to end that).

    Funding the arts is really just giving a subsidy to one person. It creates one permanent job for the artist being paid, but there is little potential for that one job to blossom into multiple new jobs, in the long term).

    If jobs are the goal, you are better off not funding an artist who will use the money to support himself (and may hire perhaps an assistant or two), but funding a business that has at least a chance of using that money to grow, thereby generating the initial jobs when the money is received and additional jobs over time as the business grows.

    Funding the arts as a form of job program is a poor investment, in that regard. If you were going to use that model, then why not just give checks to everyone not otherwise employed? If it is because the art itself enhances the society through people's enjoyment of it, then that would be a limiting factor. In that case though, you could still subsidize people who play multiplayer Modern Warfare 3 all day, since they create enjoyment for other players of the game. You could also subsidize people who stay home and work on video game programming, novels, poems, painting, etc., but there is no reason to select "artists" as the sole recipients of that sort of largess.

    Indeed, "internet forum poster" would be a great career, if I could just get the government to pay me for it. Think of all the jobs that would be created. How many posters are there in the U.S.? Each of us, through our posts, creates value for the site users as a whole. In fact, there's no reason to assume that a novelist creates "art" but a poster does not.
     
  15. Pandaemoni Valued Senior Member

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    Point taken.
     
  16. The Esotericist Getting the message to Garcia Valued Senior Member

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  17. Syzygys As a mother, I am telling you Valued Senior Member

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    Newt is not even a real Gingrich. He was born : Newton Leroy McPherson

    Leeeeeerooooooy!!!!

    "Why do people take such an instant dislike to me?" asked Gingrich, to whom Bob Dole replied "Because it saves them time."
     
  18. Syzygys As a mother, I am telling you Valued Senior Member

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    This asshole really promised a completely useless Moon-base? Yay, way to waste money and scientific researches....
     
  19. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    Newt is still leading amongst Republicans

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    Go Newt Go!!!
     
  20. Bells Staff Member

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    It was electioneering at its worst or finest, depending on which way you look at it. Florida, near NASA, and telling the people that by the end of his second year in office, that there will be a permanent base on the moon "and it will be American!!".. queue cheers from crowd..

    Realistically he was pulling it out of his backside.

    But it sure sounded pretty.
     
  21. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    Yeah, establishment Republicans and Republican media are dumping on Newt at every opportunity.
     
  22. The Esotericist Getting the message to Garcia Valued Senior Member

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    The reason that the U.S. stopped using money for a wasteful space program is b/c it already has a covert manned space program. The hidden technologies it has from the civilian sector make the redundancy of using 20th century technology in the 21st century a colossal waste of taxpayer money, and a huge unnecessary risk to astronauts if they aren't going to use the state of the art technology in space craft design.

    But they can't use the state of the art in space craft design yet, b/c they aren't prepared to. . . erm, how shall we say? Let the cat out of the bag to the wider public yet? But most intelligent, well read people who have done their research already know what is going on. Why is the U.S. trying to extradite a British citizen?
     
  23. Pandaemoni Valued Senior Member

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    If you mean Gary McKinnon, the answer is "because he committed a crime (by hacking defense computers mere days after 9/11)". He was indicted by a grand jury of private citizens, and you can read the indictment online. (http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/cyberlaw/usmck1102njind.html) Seems like a good reason to extradict him, even if all he found what the Pentagon's lunch menus. If they wanted to take action secretly, surely they could have done a better job.

    Interesting bit of trivia: Chris Christie (now governor of NJ) was the U.S. Attorney on this at the time.

    Feel free to start a thread posting evidence for this manned secret space program (using what launch vehicle?) somewhere else. (I'd suggest the "Conspiracies" forum.)
     
    Last edited: Jan 29, 2012

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