Joe Biden told Larry King last night, "I am very optimistic about -- about Iraq. I mean, this could be one of the great achievements of this administration. You're going to see 90,000 American troops come marching home by the end of the summer. You're going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government." Is he serious? Bush does all the heavy lifting and takes all the slings and arrow, then Obama counts it as his great achievement. As I remember it, both Biden and Obama vehemently opposed and criticized the so-called surge, which obviously was what finally put down the so-called insurgency. But never mind the truth, if Joe says it's Obama's great achievement, then it will certainly go down in history as Obama's great achievement. PU!
9 comments:
if he has to take the blame for a recession that started in December 2007, he might as well take credit for us leaving Iraq. :)
Tom, not meaning to knit-pick here, but Obama is not being blamed for the recession; he's being blamed for not doing what the federal government could do to end it (i.e. reduce taxes, especially on businesses and capital gains). He is also not taking credit for leaving Iraq; he's taking credit for victory in Iraq (i.e. leaving Iraq secure with a stable government).
Dave, Perhaps you're not blaming him, but it does seem the republicans in congress seem to be wanting to rewrite history as to this recession.
They seem to think the world began on Jan. 20, 2009. Seems to me during his state of the union he talked about reducing taxes, giving tax credits and all that kinda stuff to small businesses and the minority party just sat on their hands.
I was watching Fox this morning and some guy was saying that giving companies a payroll tax holiday for new hires would not hire one person. I have news for him. For over a year Honeywell has frozen hiring new employees from the outside; i.e. internal hirings/transfers only. They have over 88 jobs posted on their web site last time I looked. Give them a break on payroll taxes, that outside freeze will end. I kind of doubt Honeywell is the the only company that froze hiring on the outside. Also, look in the stim bill. Businesses got plenty of tax breaks in that. It was not all given to the middle class.
It should be obvious by now that these tax holidays and rebate checks don't work. They're like putting band-aids on a bleeder. What we need is permanent decreases in tax rates. Businesses need to be able to calculate what their costs are going to be down the road. They cannot make significant hiring decisions based on the fact that they're getting a tax holiday. Holidays inevitably come to an end. Kennedy understood this as did Reagan. In both cases, lowering tax rates worked.
Businesses need a customer base and right now people are not spending money, altho that has improved somewhat. Businesses also need a line of credit at a fair interest rate to help them make payroll. Right now the "big banks" seem unwilling to make those lines of credit available. community type banks only have so much money available. Remember 56% all of banking assets are owned by the top 4 banks. I agree that maybe small businesses will not react to tax holidays, but I guarantee corporations like Honeywell will. By the way, they know what their tax rates are. I have not heard of any talk in jacking up corporate tax rates, only the top individual income tax from 36 to 39.6 percent.
I know you will not be happy until the tax rates are at zero percent, but I think it is safe to assume that since the republican controlled government from 2001 thru 2006 did not do that, it will never be done. Know argument that when Reagan reduced the top rates by 50% that helped, but so did the fed finally reducing interest rates, and let's not forget that Reagan did wind up raising taxes 7 times later on during his presidency. Even the gipper was a realist.
PS I still think my taxes went up under Reagan simply because so many deductions were taken away or limited.
Tom, you say, "I know you will not be happy until the tax rates are at zero percent." This is absurd. I am not opposed to the people paying for the cost of government. What I'm against is being forced to pay confiscatory rates that suck exorbitant amounts of capital out of the private sector. Of course, the underlying cause of this is Big Government taking on all kinds of tasks and projects that it was never authorized to do by the Constitution. I have no objection, however, to paying the costs of defending the citizens against all enemies, foreign and domestic. I believe that if the federal government would stick with that and allow the people and their respective states to do the rest, we would all be much better off.
I will let you gentlemen argue the merits of the specific position. What strikes me is that there are two men who are the biggest clowns to have ever risen to the office of vice-president. Really ridiculous figures. Those figures are Algore and Joe Biden. These people should not be taken seriously by anyone. They are on the level of cartoon-character clownishness. That any self-respecting American would connect his hopes or aspirations with either of these idiots is truly a sad thing indeed. And I am understating this considerably.
by the way, to get back on subject, Biden will have to eat his words after we do pull out our troops and all the thugs reappear with weapons in hand ready to have their civil war/coup and the Kurds want their own state and Iran exerts even more influence over Iraq than they do now.
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