Story Of Obama

Discussion in 'Politics' started by Yannis, Mar 22, 2012.

  1. Different circumstances but the same polls that had Obama winning months before the 2008 election currently have Obama beating Romney months before the election.Different circumstances but voters still choose Obama over the republican
     
    #451     Jul 31, 2012
  2. Yannis

    Yannis

    New Additions to the Democrat Party Platform
    from IMAO


    The Democrats are going to reportedly add gay marriage to their party platform. But that’s not the only new addition. Here are some others:
    * Foodstamps are way better than jobs.
    * The part about free exercise of religion in the First Amendment should be replaced with free contraception.
    * It is wrong to be rich unless you’re a rich person who constantly goes on about how wrong being rich is.
    * If your skin color is past a certain shade of brown, it should be illegal to vote Republican.
    * The deficit is an imaginary concept and should be ignored.
    * We need to take those arrogant business creators who think they built stuff down a peg or two.
    * Obamacare is so great there’s no reason to ever mention it again.
    * Budgets are fascist.
    * 8% unemployment is really good and whoever claims it’s ever been lower is a liar.
    * We’re only a few more taxes on the rich away from a booming economy.
    * We love those… um… automated bullet firing devices — what are they called? Oh yeah: guns. So stop saying we want to take them away.
    * Eating a dog doesn’t make you a sociopath.
    * Gay divorce.

    :) :) :)
     
    #452     Jul 31, 2012
  3. Yannis

    Yannis

  4. Yannis

    Yannis

    Yes, Culture Does Matter
    by Michael D. Tanner


    It is always tricky to traverse the minefield of Middle East politics, and Mitt Romney appears to have stirred up more than a little controversy with his recent remarks about Israeli and Palestinian economies.

    Romney pointed out that GDP per capita in Israel is $21,000, compared with $10,000 in the Palestinian Authority, and suggested that a difference in “culture” between the two countries might be partially responsible for the disparity. The Palestinians were predictably upset, and much of the media said Romney had committed a damaging gaffe. Yet, considered apart from concerns over offending Middle Eastern sensibilities, Romney’s remarks are not only accurate, they reflect a much larger truth that matters not just in the Middle East but in this upcoming election.

    First, it should be noted that Romney actually got the numbers wrong: Israel’s per capita GDP is much higher, $31,282, and the Palestinian Authority’s much lower, just $1,600. No doubt the Palestinian economy has suffered as a result of Israeli security policies. Limitations on Palestinian property rights, continued Israeli control over land and water, and restrictions on both imports and exports have harmed Palestinian economic development. By some estimates, as much as 60 percent of Palestinian territory is off limits to economic development. Romney should have taken this into account.

    Yet, how then to account for Jordan, where GDP per capita is just $5,900, or Egypt, where it is only $6,500? Israel can hardly be blamed for a lack of economic growth in those countries. In fact, no Arab nation without substantial oil wealth has a GDP per capita greater than half that of Israel.

    Perhaps Romney could have used a better term than “culture” to describe the combination of attitudes toward markets, the role of government, the welfare state, inequality, and institutions that underpin a nation’s economy, but nit-picking about terminology shouldn’t eclipse the larger truth: If a nation hopes to prosper, it must foster a culture conducive to prosperity.

    In fact, Israel itself had to change in order to spur economic growth, abandoning the old socialist solidarity of the kibbutz for a political culture that encourages entrepreneurship, investment, and risk-taking. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has cut taxes, reduced government spending, reformed pensions, and begun privatizing state-owned companies, including El Al (Israel’s national airline) parts of its electric company, and its major banks. The “new Israel,” Netanyahu has said, is based on “free enterprise, privatization, open capital markets, an end to cartels, lower taxes, [and] deregulation.”

    The result has been the transformation of Israel into a hub for technological entrepreneurship. From 1993 to today, real GDP has increased fourfold, and real GDP per capita has risen 250 percent.

    The Palestinian Authority has not undertaken similar reforms. Government spending continues to consume an inordinate amount of GDP. Taxes, while widely evaded, are high. Both foreign investment and domestic business remain subject to a byzantine and often corrupt regulatory regime. The Authority’s old-fashioned pay-as-you-go public pension program is accumulating enormous future liabilities. Crony capitalism is the norm rather than the exception. As a result, the Palestinian Authority’s economic growth has been nearly nonexistent.

    If the Palestinians want to follow the Israeli model for economic growth, then they too will have to reduce taxes, regulations, and the burden of government. They will have to foster a culture of entrepreneurship and success. They will have to realize that the politics and policies of resentment and envy do not create a single job, start a single business, or add a single dinar of wealth.

    This is true outside of the Middle East, as well. Is there any doubt that Europe’s welfare-state culture and the entitlement attitude that drive the high taxes and bloated governments of countries such as Greece and Spain are at least partially responsible for their problems?

    Governor Romney hardly needed to go halfway around the world to demonstrate this. He could just have looked at two neighboring U.S. states, Virginia and Maryland, to see a similar dynamic. Maryland has one of the most aggressively tax-and-spend legislatures in the country. The state ranks 42nd out of 50 in terms of business environment. Its tax burden is the nation’s twelfth-highest. Virginia, ranked 26th for business climate, is far from the most pro-business state, but it is much better than Maryland. Thirty-three states have higher taxes than Virginia does.

    As a result, Virginia’s unemployment rate is just 5.7 percent, while Maryland’s is 6.9 percent. Virginia just announced a state-budget surplus. Maryland continues to wrestle with a massive budget deficit. And, after Maryland passed a new “millionaires’ tax,” 31,000 residents moved out of the state, many of them to Virginia. One might consider Virginia to be Israel and Maryland to be Palestine (without the border checkpoints). That is why President Obama’s view of America’s culture, at least when it comes to economics, is so troubling. His recent remarks concerning whether business owners built their businesses on their own, even when taken in context, reflect a belief that individual initiative, intelligence, and hard work have far less to do with success than good luck. The successful are simply winners of “life’s lottery.” It is, therefore, government’s job to rectify the inequity of capricious fortune by redistributing the wealth.

    President Obama would make our culture more like the cultures of Europe. If that were to happen, we wouldn’t just be a “fundamentally transformed” nation, we would be a far less prosperous one.

    Don’t call it a gaffe. Governor Romney was right. Political and economic culture really does matter.
     
    #454     Aug 2, 2012
  5. Yannis

    Yannis

  6. #456     Aug 2, 2012
  7. Yannis

    Yannis

    Numbers are still slightly for BO, we'll see.
     
    #457     Aug 2, 2012
  8. Fair enough.

    Come on, you're a smart guy from what I've read the last couple of months. I don't expect everyone to make a stupid bet on Romney, nor do I really think your side really want Romney to win.

    I have noticed that you have gone out of your way to post your ill advised hatred of our President. He is not any of the things you have posted, those caricatures of the real Obama. Why so much vitriol? You don't really believe all that nonsense, or do you?
     
    #458     Aug 2, 2012
  9. Yannis

    Yannis

    Romney is an extremely accomplished, capable man who can lead this country to her best days yet. BO is none of those - his tenure has been a disaster and because of that he's using our money to buy votes. We need real change.
     
    #459     Aug 3, 2012
  10. Hatred of Odumbo is hardly ill-advised. You obviously can't see him for what he is, so nothing you have to say will be of value to any freedom loving American. ON IGNORE!
     
    #460     Aug 3, 2012