Puterbac News Network and Political Discussion Thread

[Big Orange Junky]

The R conservative base is not nearly as large as conservatives want to think it is. The idea that the R's odds of winning increase greatly by electing as far to the right a candidate as possible is delusional.

By all means, nominate a candidate who will scream about banning nearly all abortion, deporting all the damn illegals, and how we need to end govt. entitlements. See how popular those measures are with the general public instead of some super conservative House district in the South.

If that is true, then why does every serious analysis of 2012 say that Romney lost because so few of those angry gun toting religious redneck white male registered REPUBLICANS didn't bather to show up and vote for him? It's not like the Mittster, the RINO mushy moderate that he is, got many crossover votes because of his RINO mushy moderation. All those voters you mention who are pro-abortion, pro-illegal alien, pro-government entitlement, etc. already had a candidate. His name was Barack Obama, and they voted for him in droves. Duh. Who else would voters like that they vote for?

That is the flaw in the argument that the R's would do so much better if they would just become pro-abortion, pro-illegal alien, pro-gun control, anti-energy, and pro-big government entitlement. Like George Will (peace be upon him) once said: give the voter a choice between a Democrat and a Democrat, and they will vote for the Democrat every time.

A GOP candidate that is convincingly conservative would at least turn out his own party's base. That is a ridiculously low standard that neither Romney or McCain managed to achieve.

That's gonna leave a mark

[Professor Tiger]

That is the flaw in the argument that the R's would do so much better if they would just become pro-abortion, pro-illegal alien, pro-gun control, anti-energy, and pro-big government entitlement.

Come to think of it, Willard WAS all those things that liberals say the GOP should be. He was adamantly pro-abortion (before he conveniently wasn't), zealously pro-gun control (before he suddenly wasn't) and pro-big government entitlement (as the proud father of Romneycare and not-so-proud grandfather of Obamacare). Willard would have been the PERFECT Democrat nominee 10 years ago.

[Toemeesleather]

1935....record low "high temp" for Atlanta was 74......2013 new record low "high temp".....66.

[Professor Tiger]

There must be an international climate change conference at the Philips Center.

[bluetick]

Call me crazy, but didn't dubya squeek into office (with the help of the scotus) as a uniter. Er...uniterer. Someone who unites. And a compassionate conservative. Laissez fair wrt abortion and illegal immigration And he eschewed the notion that we should be policeman-of-the-world...well, for awhile.

Algore can only fantasize what could have been if dubya had campaigned as a teapartier.

[Professor Tiger]

W wasn't exactly laissez faire on abortion:

[youtube]50c2kgvojCs[/youtube]

But he was on illegal immigration.

And we can also fantasize how badly Algore would have been blown out in 2000 if he had been honest about his environmentalist wacko beliefs.

[Owlman]

It's not like the Mittster, the RINO mushy moderate that he is, got many crossover votes because of his RINO mushy moderation

Mitt Romney ran as a moderate??

[Johnette's Daddy]

A GOP candidate that is convincingly conservative would at least turn out his own party's base.

That's the Big Lie that the Anti-abortion/pro-gun/send-the-illegals-back-to-Mexico wing of the GOP (AKA "Bubba Vote") has fallen for since 1968: y'all AREN'T the Party's base. The GOP never gave a crap about y'all until the Goldwater smackdown of 1954.

The GOP's base is the super-rich Eastern Elites, Robber Barons and members of the 400 families, as it has been since the end of the Civil War.

Where the Eastern Elites and Bubbas meet is in one area:

1) Small Government (to stop regulating business for the Elites and to stop regulating racism for the Bubbas).

On every other issue - particularly on the ones important to Bubbas - the Elites could care less. Proof?

*Abortion - GOP has had absolute control of the WH/SCOTUS/Congress for the majority of the past 30 years. The best they've been able to do is roll the issue back to the states in (except for NC) places no one give a hoot about, anyway.

*Immigration - every single Republican in a real leadership post is soft on immigration.

*Gun control - greatest straw man issue out there, given that the only national lobby trying to push gun control is law enforcement. BUT . . .

*Death penalty - in the 39 states that have or had the death penalty between 1977-2010, only 1,320 of 7,397 people sentenced to death have been executed. Virginia is the only state where a majority of those sentenced to death were executed in that time period (sorry, Texas).

*Tax cuts - even under Reagan and Bush, only the Elites received a substantial rate cut.

*School vouchers - doggone it, still no subsidy if you don't want your kids sitting next to mud people in class.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

All the "Bubbas" have ever meant to the GOP power structure is votes that don't carry any obligation. What're the Bubbas going to do? Vote for Nigbama? Hardly.

[youtube]mn4daYJzyls[/youtube]

[Dr. Strangelove]

The R conservative base is not nearly as large as conservatives want to think it is. The idea that the R's odds of winning increase greatly by electing as far to the right a candidate as possible is delusional.

By all means, nominate a candidate who will scream about banning nearly all abortion, deporting all the damn illegals, and how we need to end govt. entitlements. See how popular those measures are with the general public instead of some super conservative House district in the South.

If that is true, then why does every serious analysis of 2012 say that Romney lost because so few of those angry gun toting religious redneck white male registered REPUBLICANS didn't bather to show up and vote for him? It's not like the Mittster, the RINO mushy moderate that he is, got many crossover votes because of his RINO mushy moderation. All those voters you mention who are pro-abortion, pro-illegal alien, pro-government entitlement, etc. already had a candidate. His name was Barack Obama, and they voted for him in droves. Duh. Who else would voters like that they vote for?

That is the flaw in the argument that the R's would do so much better if they would just become pro-abortion, pro-illegal alien, pro-gun control, anti-energy, and pro-big government entitlement. Like George Will (peace be upon him) once said: give the voter a choice between a Democrat and a Democrat, and they will vote for the Democrat every time.

A GOP candidate that is convincingly conservative would at least turn out his own party's base. That is a ridiculously low standard that neither Romney or McCain managed to achieve.

Do you think Romney ran to the LEFT of McCain? I sure as hell don't. He had conservative wunderkind Paul Ryan on the ticket. Yet he did even worse in terms of the absolute vote. Hispanics voted for him in smaller numbers. Women voted for him in smaller numbers.

Name me all the far right conservative Republicans who have gotten elected President since the Depression? Eisenhower, Nixon, and Ford (not elected) would be considered far left radicals today. The tea party would've sought to destroy these guys in a primary. Neither Bush was a far-right conservative. That only leaves Reagan, and while he was certainly conservative, his policies didn't go nearly as far as the Tea Party advocates. And the demographics of the country are significantly different from 1980.

So tell me again how the party needs as extreme a candidate as possible and there's this big pool of extremely conservative voters out there who refuse to vote until the day comes that the R's nominate Ted Cruz for President. And that he's a sure winner when they do.

The R's best chance is having voters tire or get disgusted with the Democrats enough for the middle ground to consider voting Republican this time. But the alternative can't be a Michael Savage/Rush Limbaugh/Sarah Palin type.

[Dr. Strangelove]

But hey, it very much pleases me that every time the R's lose the Presidency, they become ever more convinced that it's not because their policies are unpopular, it's because they didn't articulate them well enough. By all means, double down on them and find a guy who screams and looks insanely angry. Someone who truly represents the R base

[AlabamAlum]

I still find it funny that people think we have two separate and distinct political factions in the US. We don't. We have one party with two different names and slightly different campaign rhetoric.

[10ac]

EFZ.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Over 10,000 people flee Syria into Iraq in a single day

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-23745201

[Dr. Strangelove]

Glenn Greenwald's gay partner detained and interrogated for nine hours at Heathrow Airport under the Terrorism Law....really? This is how we're going to try and intimidate him now?

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/a ... d-heathrow

[sardis]

Maybe he enjoyed the "search" too much...

[Professor Tiger]

JD, I agree with you insofar that wealthy East coasters are the original - and probably still predominant GOP constituency. The social conservatives never existed in the GOP until the 80's. There are a lot more Bubba's out there than Thurston Howell III's. So when the social conservatives (or Bubba's as you put it) signed on by the millions, the R Party suddenly started winning elections. They took the House for the first time since the Depression, for example.

But I also think that the Bubba's are about done with the R's. I know I am. The plutocrats that really run the GOP are fairly contemptuous of the social conservatives - almost as much as liberal Democrats. Social conservatives are getting the hint from our betters and aren't voting for the nominees that were picked on the greens of Augusta National anymore.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Andrew Sullivan on the abuse of the UK govt in detaining Greenwald's partner on the "suspicion" of terrorism

http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2013/08/ ... ald-right/

In this respect, I can say this to David Cameron. Thank you for clearing the air on these matters of surveillance. You have now demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt that these anti-terror provisions are capable of rank abuse. Unless some other facts emerge, there is really no difference in kind between you and Vladimir Putin. You have used police powers granted for anti-terrorism and deployed them to target and intimidate journalists deemed enemies of the state.

You have proven that these laws can be hideously abused. Which means they must be repealed. You have broken the trust that enables any such legislation to survive in a democracy. By so doing, you have attacked British democracy itself. What on earth do you have to say for yourself? And were you, in any way, encouraged by the US administration to do such a thing?

[Dr. Strangelove]

CIA officially acknowledges that it was behind the '53 coup in Iran that reinstalled the Shah. This has been pretty much known and admitted by various people over the years, but this is the first time the CIA has admitted its guiding role.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2 ... irans_coup

[10ac]

http://www.infowars.com/senior-time-rep ... s-assange/

Greenwald

[Toemeesleather]

One of the signature themes of the Obama administration is that the American dream is under attack due to "income disparity." The words divide the country into haves and have-nots, suggesting a national condition that needs to be corrected—presumably by "progressive" taxation as a mechanism for income redistribution. The American dream has traditionally been one of individual success that is rewarded and admired. But we are now urged to become a zero-sum society in which those achieving the American dream are envied and even resented.

The American dream is not politically affiliated. The last time it was alive and well was the period from Ronald Reagan's second term in office through Bill Clinton's second term in office. In those 16 years, we enjoyed continuous low taxes, low government spending and economic prosperity.

Since 2000, the economy has staggered under the record government spending and deficits of two presidents, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. The result of that spending spree has been lower real wages and higher and more-persistent unemployment. The Federal Reserve has pushed interest rates to near-zero, and, for the first time ever in the U.S., that Depression-era medicine has not worked—a scary situation reminiscent of Japan's decade-plus economic demise.

According to the latest 2012 IRS income-tax data, the top 1% of American taxpayers earned 20% of all income and paid 36% of all taxes. The top 5% earned 36% of all income and paid 58% of all taxes. Will even higher taxes help the economy? My experience in Silicon Valley tells me that high and so-called progressive taxes are a major cause of the country's current economic problems, not the solution.

In Silicon Valley, the rich commonly reinvest their wealth close to home. For example, I have reinvested most of my net worth in 8.5% of the shares of my own company.

Since its 1982 founding, Cypress Semiconductor has been a net creator of jobs and wealth. We have returned $2.2 billion more to the economy through stock buybacks, share dividends and spinouts than we have taken out in total lifetime investments. That figure doesn't count the $4 billion in wages the company has paid or the taxes paid on those wages. Currently, my investment helps maintain 3,479 permanent, high-paying jobs with good health-care benefits that are now threatened by more taxes.

A couple of years ago, I decided to invest in my hometown of Oshkosh, Wis., by building a $1.2 million lakefront restaurant. That restaurant now permanently employs 65 people at an investment of $18,000 per job, a figure consistent with U.S. small businesses. If progressive taxation in the name of "fairness" had taken my "extra" $1.2 million and spent it on a government stimulus program, would 65 jobs have been created?

According to recent Congressional Budget Office statistics on the Obama administration's 2009 stimulus program, each job created has cost between $500,000 and $4 million. Thus, my $1.2 million, taxed and respent on a government project of uncertain duration, would have created about one job, possibly two, and not the 65 sustainable jobs that my private investment did.

On the other end of the capital-intensity scale, Cypress Semiconductor required huge investments to create jobs in its chip-manufacturing plants. Between 1983 and 2003, those investments totaled $797 million and led to the creation of 4,033 jobs at an investment of $198,000 per job created. Thus, my own experience on the cost of job creation ranges from $18,000 to $198,000 per job, compared with $500,000 to $4 million per job created by the Obama stimulus program.

This data squares with the broad numbers showing that private investment is more efficient than government spending in creating jobs. In other words: Every dollar that is taxed away from private investment and spent by government produces fewer jobs than the jobs destroyed by the loss of private investment.

Yet the politics of envy, promoted most notably by President Obama himself, continuously stokes the idea that the wealthy are not paying their "fair share." This injured sense of unjust rewards was summed up on a radio show I heard the other day, when a caller said of the rich: "How much more do they need?"

How much more do I need? How many more jobs do you want?

Even European socialist democracies are starting to understand that tax-and-spend policies kill jobs. For example, both Italy and Spain have repealed their incentive programs for solar energy (along with their "green jobs") because the countries have calculated that for every job created by government investment in green energy, somewhere between 4.8 jobs (Italy) and 2.2 jobs (Spain) are lost because of the reciprocal cuts in private investment. I am aware of these figures because from 2002-11 I was a major investor in and chairman of SunPower, the world's second-largest solar-energy company, also based in Silicon Valley.

Silicon Valley is today's brightest example of the traditional American dream still at work. The investments for most startup companies must come from individuals who can wait 10 years to get a return on investment. Only very wealthy Americans can afford that.

Like many Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, I have reinvested in the next generation of entrepreneurs, in my case via the Sequoia Fund and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, two venture-capital firms that gave me a shot at the American dream. I also serve as a board member of their portfolio companies.

Does anybody really believe that moving investment decisions from Silicon Valley to Washington by raising taxes on venture capitalists and their investors would make Silicon Valley more productive? Consider the Solyndra debacle: It was obvious to most of us here that the solar-energy company had zero chance of survival. That's why the company had to be government-funded near the end; no real investors were willing to step up.

During the 2012 presidential campaign, President Obama insulted America's entrepreneurs by telling them: "You didn't build that." Progressive taxation is just another tool used by government to take over an ever-larger part of the U.S. economy. The horrible irony is that the government keeps telling the very people whose jobs it destroys that if we only tax the rich more, everything will be better.