Michele Bachmann:

[Chuck_G]

Why does Michele Bachmann think we should cut spending? To grow business, to cut the deficit, the usual. But also because God told her we should, via last week's East Coast earthquake and Hurricane Irene. The St. Petersburg Times' Adam C. Smith reports that the presidential candidate told a Sarasota, Florida crowd this weekend, "I don't know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We've had an earthquake; we've had a hurricane. He said, 'Are you going to start listening to me here?' Listen to the American people because the American people are roaring right now. They know government is on a morbid obesity diet and we've got to rein in the spending."

Questions for debate:

1. Is god really worried about government spending in the U.S. and responsible for hurricanes and earthquakes to provoke fear?

2. Do you think she really believes this or it is just an appeal to the christian far right?

[East of Eden]

You are incorrect. I addressed Frank's statement and have not ignored it at all.

He is welcome to his opinion, but saying making the prediction was dumb is not evidence that your characterization of the Administration's claim is correct, nor is it even evidence that he agrees the analysis was incorrect or that the policy is wrong.

I don't see that Frank ever said the prediction was wrong. You have provided no evidence that he did not think the caveats excused the wrong outcome.

Think about this logically for a minute - if the caveats were a legitimate 'out', why would he call the prediction 'dumb'?

In my opinion, he was wrong to call it dumb, but that is irrelevant, as Frank's opinion does not affect the facts in the report.

Following your logic, if I find one Republican politician who thought a statement of Reagan's or a policy of Reagan's was dumb, then we should have that one statement trump what Reagan actually said or what his policy actually was. Isn't that a bit silly?

Not really, Reagan wasn't perfect, if Republicans criticized something he did the party needs to listen. I'll nominate a dumb thing he did: Sandra Day O'Connor on the SCOTUS.

Is Obama beyond criticism?

I don't expect you to include the whole report, but I do expect you to accurately portray what the Administration said. As has been shown, a couple of paragraphs do nicely.

My claim stands. You did not include the conditions in the report or even a summary of them. Thus you have mischaracterized the claim. Suggesting this is somehow too hard or not necessary to support your claim is a dodge.

Nonsense, you are bringing up a point separate to my original one. You may think my point was not fair, but in no way was my statement not true.

The "so what" is the whole point. If the conditions were not present, then you would be correct. The Administration would have made what I have been refering to as an unconditional claim that something would happen, and that something did not happen, so they would have been wrong.

The presence of the conditions means you are wrong.

No, it means Obama was wrong, either in the data or policy. You pick. You act like ALL economists agreed the Obama plan was the way to go, and it was a big surprise that it didn't work. Any conservative could have told you it was a non-starter.

I'll ask agian. Yes or no.


Are these claims the same?




A: "If the car was going 50 mph, then the skid will be 100 feet."


B: "The skid will be 100 feet."

Yes or no.

You're skewing the issue by attaching numerical conditions, when there were none in the Obama report. Just a vague uncertainty clause. It's called CYA.

A better analogy would by 'These brakes will stop the car'. The recession hasn't been stopped. At this point in Reagan's term it was stopped.

[nursebenjamin]

Question: Why should I give a rat’s ass as to what Barney Frank says? I’ve already stated that I believe that Frank was wrong and why.

Because Frank also recognized a prediction was made, and didn't happen, and he's one of you (liberal, not gay).

I believe that project planning (including situation analysis, problem identification, definition of the goal, etc…) is better than being completely ignorant of the possible outcomes of policies that we’re implementing, even if the initial assessment turns out to be wrong.

Although this often happens with government planning, what bothers me is it's failure, not that there was a projection.

You seem most upset with the fact that the Obama administration bothered to analyzed their policy and set a goal . However, this is exactly what an effective leader should have done, even if that analysis comes with large error bars. The people who are making a big deal out of this “unemployment under 8%� quote mine are dishonest political hacks. These people are biased and dishonest to a level that makes them irrelevant to the conversation that we should be having over how to put Americans back to work. It’s impossible to have an intelligent conversation with someone that quote mines and isn't concerned about reality.

Your description of Barney Frank as a biased, dishonest hack is noted.

Who? What economists? What specifically did these economists say? Why no attempt to even substantiate this claim?

You didn't ask. You seriously think no economists were against the plan? Here's a liberal saying it didn't work, if Obama even ever had a plan to begin with. It was mostly a payoff to his political allies, IMHO.

http://www.gop.com/index.php/briefing/c ... had_a_plan

This addresses the phoney 'jobs saved' canard:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124451592762396883.html

Do you realize that this is an unfair comparison? Your 1,100,000 number is the summation of how many months? 36? You are comparing the summation of 30+ months with a cherry picked figure from last August. This is a bit dishonest, don’t you think? And do you mind substantiating that 1,100,000 number as well?

Not cherrypicked at all, by this time in Reagan's first term 1,100,000 jobs were being created, on the way to 17,000,000 (not counting 'jobs saved', /sarcasm off). From a WSJ article within the last month that I read. This is from last fall, but you get the idea:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 24906.html

You’ve admitted that this whole “keeping unemployment under 8%� business is a quote mine of the original 2009 report. There’s really nothing further to discuss on this I feel.

However, wouldn’t it be prudent to discuss how the country responded to the recession of the early 1980’s. Specifically how the recession of 1982 was ended by Military Keynesianism paid for by deficit spending and corporate income tax increases.

If Keynesianism economics and tax increases were good enough for Reagan, then why do conservatives oppose such measures now?

P.S. I agree with everything that Jeffrey Sachs says in the link you provided, but nothing that you posted substantiates the claim that the 2009 Stimulus package had a negative effect on the economy.

[micatala]

You are incorrect. I addressed Frank's statement and have not ignored it at all.

He is welcome to his opinion, but saying making the prediction was dumb is not evidence that your characterization of the Administration's claim is correct, nor is it even evidence that he agrees the analysis was incorrect or that the policy is wrong.

I don't see that Frank ever said the prediction was wrong. You have provided no evidence that he did not think the caveats excused the wrong outcome.

Think about this logically for a minute - if the caveats were a legitimate 'out', why would he call the prediction 'dumb'?

I already addressed this.

This goes way back to page 5 of this thread, where you posted a link to an article quoting Frank. Frank's opinion is not the same as what is written in the report.

I responded shortly after that with this.

Sorry, this does not really provide evidence for your claim, in particular the context of the projection.

Barney Frank says making the projection was "dumb." He does not say exactly what the projection was or why he thinks it was dumb. He probably thinks it was a mistake to go on record with a specific figure given the inherent problems in making such a projetion in a volatile environment.

So, try again. Get me the statement stating the projection referred to by Frank with the context.

Here is the quote from the article

“President Obama, whom I greatly admire … when the economic recovery bill — we’re supposed to call it the ‘recovery bill,’ not the ’stimulus’ bill; that’s what the focus groups tell us — he predicted or his aides predicted at the time that if it passed, unemployment would get under 8 percent,� Frank said Tuesday evening during an appearance on the Fox Business Network. “That was a dumb thing to do.�

Does Frank say the analysis was incorrect.

No.

Does he say the stimulus did not work.

No he doesn't.

You have been mischaracterizing Frank's quote. It does not provide evidence of your claim. Period.


Yet, shortly after my response, you said

Again, Barney Frank got the gist of my argument.

Please show me where frank says that the report with the 8% unemployment figure was wrong in its analysis. Where does Frank say he thinks the Stimulus did not work?


And again, even if you could do these things, that is irrelevant to the original claim you made. Frank's statements whatever they were do not provide any evidence as to what the Administration actually said.


I said pretty much this way back in Post #74.

And no, you are mischaracterizing what Frank said. There is nothing in that quote to say the stimulus did not work or was a bad idea. The only implication made in what you supplied is that it was a mistake to make the projection.

There is no reasonable way to conclude Frank agrees with your opinion of the stimulus based on that quote. If you want to prove me wrong, provide some additional context to the Frank quote that shows otherwise.

You then let it rest until Post #152 where you make the same false assertion about what Frank said as if it had not already been debunked.


After a bit more I said the following

Here, I might actually agree with you. It may have been politically wiser not to make the predictions even with the extensive caveats. However, unlike the Republicans, Obama's Administration was trying to give at least the best predictions they could based on the best data they had. This was partly done to maintain as much confidence as possible in the economy given the grave problems we were facing at the time. They also were making the best case they could for the stimulus package.


Would it not have been irresponsible not to provide the data and the analysis in as accurate a way as possible? Should the Administration have taken the estimated job losses at face value and ignored the uncertainties in the data?

I also answered your question in Post #183.

Probably because he knew the Republican politicians would mischaracterize the statement by leaving out the context in an attempt to make political hay.

The fact that you continue to bring this quote up even after it has been explained you have totally mischaracterized it and been shown it is irrelevant and been given an explanation why he may have made it strongly indicates you know your whole argument is without merit.



I will answer the rest of your post later.

[East of Eden]

Question: Why should I give a rat’s ass as to what Barney Frank says? I’ve already stated that I believe that Frank was wrong and why.

Because Frank also recognized a prediction was made, and didn't happen, and he's one of you (liberal, not gay).

I believe that project planning (including situation analysis, problem identification, definition of the goal, etc…) is better than being completely ignorant of the possible outcomes of policies that we’re implementing, even if the initial assessment turns out to be wrong.

Although this often happens with government planning, what bothers me is it's failure, not that there was a projection.

You seem most upset with the fact that the Obama administration bothered to analyzed their policy and set a goal . However, this is exactly what an effective leader should have done, even if that analysis comes with large error bars. The people who are making a big deal out of this “unemployment under 8%� quote mine are dishonest political hacks. These people are biased and dishonest to a level that makes them irrelevant to the conversation that we should be having over how to put Americans back to work. It’s impossible to have an intelligent conversation with someone that quote mines and isn't concerned about reality.

Your description of Barney Frank as a biased, dishonest hack is noted.

Who? What economists? What specifically did these economists say? Why no attempt to even substantiate this claim?

You didn't ask. You seriously think no economists were against the plan? Here's a liberal saying it didn't work, if Obama even ever had a plan to begin with. It was mostly a payoff to his political allies, IMHO.

http://www.gop.com/index.php/briefing/c ... had_a_plan

This addresses the phoney 'jobs saved' canard:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124451592762396883.html

Do you realize that this is an unfair comparison? Your 1,100,000 number is the summation of how many months? 36? You are comparing the summation of 30+ months with a cherry picked figure from last August. This is a bit dishonest, don’t you think? And do you mind substantiating that 1,100,000 number as well?

Not cherrypicked at all, by this time in Reagan's first term 1,100,000 jobs were being created, on the way to 17,000,000 (not counting 'jobs saved', /sarcasm off). From a WSJ article within the last month that I read. This is from last fall, but you get the idea:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 24906.html

You’ve admitted that this whole “keeping unemployment under 8%� business is a quote mine of the original 2009 report. There’s really nothing further to discuss on this I feel.

I admitted to no such thing, the prediction was well-known and I suspect many supported Obama's plan due to that call. I don't know why Obama thinks his numbers are any better with the latest 'jobs' bill he wants.

However, wouldn’t it be prudent to discuss how the country responded to the recession of the early 1980’s. Specifically how the recession of 1982 was ended by Military Keynesianism paid for by deficit spending and corporate income tax increases.

If Keynesianism economics and tax increases were good enough for Reagan, then why do conservatives oppose such measures now?

The military build up was to win the cold war, not to get out of the recession. For that, Reagan cut the top bracket from 70% to 28%, and tax receipts doubled. That isn't supposed to happen, at least if you're a liberal.

[micatala]

In my opinion, he was wrong to call it dumb, but that is irrelevant, as Frank's opinion does not affect the facts in the report.

Following your logic, if I find one Republican politician who thought a statement of Reagan's or a policy of Reagan's was dumb, then we should have that one statement trump what Reagan actually said or what his policy actually was. Isn't that a bit silly?

Not really, Reagan wasn't perfect, if Republicans criticized something he did the party needs to listen. I'll nominate a dumb thing he did: Sandra Day O'Connor on the SCOTUS.

I think we agree, then, that President's aren't perfect and that criticism of a President, even from their own party, is no measure, or at least not a very good measure, of the Presdident's policies or actions. I hope we here no more about Frank, then.

Is Obama beyond criticism?

I certainly have never said this or even implied it. No President is beyond criticism. I have already said it is appropriate to hold President's accountable for their statements and their actions.

The problem is you have been attempting to hold the Administration accountable for a statement which they did not make.

I don't expect you to include the whole report, but I do expect you to accurately portray what the Administration said. As has been shown, a couple of paragraphs do nicely.

My claim stands. You did not include the conditions in the report or even a summary of them. Thus you have mischaracterized the claim. Suggesting this is somehow too hard or not necessary to support your claim is a dodge.

Nonsense, you are bringing up a point separate to my original one. You may think my point was not fair, but in no way was my statement not true.

I have only been addressing the same claim that you yourself made. I have quoted it for you several times. I have addressed just that claim, the one you made in this thread. I am not bringing up separate points, you are, it seems in an attempt to avoid retracting your original false claim.


I have shown with ample evidence from the only document that anyone has pointed to from the Administration that the claim you made about what the Administration said is simply not true. You don't get to replace "If A then B" with "B" and then pretend that B being false makes "If A then B" false. It doesn't.

The "so what" is the whole point. If the conditions were not present, then you would be correct. The Administration would have made what I have been refering to as an unconditional claim that something would happen, and that something did not happen, so they would have been wrong.

The presence of the conditions means you are wrong.

No, it means Obama was wrong, either in the data or policy. You pick. You act like ALL economists agreed the Obama plan was the way to go, and it was a big surprise that it didn't work. Any conservative could have told you it was a non-starter.

You complain that I have been addressing another claim than the one you made, but here you are now defending a claim other than the one you made. You claimed that Obama said that if the stimulus was passed, unemployment would stay under 8%. I have been addressing primarily that claim.

I brought up the fact that your claim was false because it did not accurately state what Obama said because it did not include the conditions and data made as part of the unemployment projection. It is YOU who are now changing the claim to address the conditions that I (and nursebenjamin) pointed out were a part of the report.

I will allow that the data that was a part of the report was incorrect, but that does not make your claim correct. In addition, as has been pointed out, that data was not even from the Obama Administration but was from the consensus of government economists at the time during the Bush Administration.

So you are triply wrong in that you first ignore that those conditions were there, and continue to ignore that the projection was made contingent on that data, and you then want to blame the Obama Administration for the fact that the estimates being made at that time on job losses were low when in fact those estimates were made by the Bush Administration.


How many more errors you can put into a short argument I am not sure.


Whether the stimulus was a good idea or not or whether it worked or not is not the same as whether Obama promised "unemployment would not go over 8% with the stimulus."


You are again dodging and diverting and avoiding the fact that your original claim about what the Administration siad is false.

I'll ask agian. Yes or no.


Are these claims the same?




A: "If the car was going 50 mph, then the skid will be 100 feet."


B: "The skid will be 100 feet."

Yes or no.

You're skewing the issue by attaching numerical conditions, when there were none in the Obama report. Just a vague uncertainty clause. It's called CYA.

Let the record show East of Eden has again dodged the issue and avoided answering.

Let the record also show East of Eden has accused me of skewing the report. That is ironic when, of the two of us, I have done extensive quoting of the report and he has pulled out one sentence and portrayed that one sentence as the essence of what the Administration said. I am not the one doing the skewing here.




Let the record also show that these conditions were in the report and they have been repeatedly pointed out in detail. What East of Eden says here is another false claim about the report and he has added a false claim about what I have provided in this thread. The CYA comment is also unwarranted, given nursebenjamin's explanation for why such caveats come with these kinds of projections.







Here are just some of the numerical conditions in the report.

First, the likely scale of employment loss is extremely large. The U.S. economy has already lost nearly 2.6 million jobs since the business cycle peak in December 2007. In the absence of stimulus, the economy could lose another 3 to 4 million more. Thus, we are working to counter a potential total job loss of at least 5 million. As Figure 1 shows, even with the large prototypical package, the unemployment rate in 2010Q4 is predicted to be approximately 7.0%, which is well below the
approximately 8.8% that would result in the absence of a plan.

Thus, it is incorrect to say they were no numerical conditions in the report. In fact, here are some more.

Over the past year, as the overall unemployment rate has risen by 2.3 percentage points, the number of workers working part-time for economic reasons has risen by 3.4 million. This is a main reason why the underemployment rate rose to 13.5% in December compared to 8.7% a year earlier.6 We estimate that our program will cause the unemployment rate to be about 1.8 points lower in 2010Q4 than it otherwise would have been. If the same relationship between movements in overall
unemployment and movements in workers working part-time for economic reasons holds for the effects of the recovery package, the program will allow about 1.8/2.3 times 3.4 million, or 2.7 million, workers to move from part time to full time. It will reduce the underemployment rate by more than three percentage points compared to its level in the absence of the recovery package.

Can East of Eden show that someone at the time had better numbers than these on which to base this report? If not, it is fallacious to blame the Obama Administration for the fact these are not correct, and doubly fallacious to fault projections based on these assumptions for not panning out.

If you want to show "If A then B" is a false statement, you HAVE to show that A is true and B is false. That is simple elementary logic.

If A ends up being false, then the statements "If A then B" cannot be shown to be false, period, regardless of whethe B is true or not.




Here is a description of the general caveats that were made with the report. These are right up front on page 2.

It should be understood that all of the estimates presented in this memo are subject to significant margins of error. There is the obvious uncertainty that comes from modeling a hypothetical package rather than the final legislation passed by the Congress. But, there is the more fundamental uncertainty that comes with any estimate of the effects of a program. Our estimates of economic relationships and rules of thumb are derived from historical experience and so will not apply exactly
in any given episode. Furthermore, the uncertainty is surely higher than normal now because the current recession is unusual both in its fundamental causes and its severity.

Again, at first East of Eden denied such conditions were present, and later has attempted to dismiss them as irrelevant or "weasley." Whether or not they are "weasley" does not change that the 8% projection was made under these conditions. Thus, for East of Eden to portray the claim as having been made without these conditions is not an accurate portrayal. It is also not accurate to say that the Administration "broke a promise" or even that they should be faulted in the analysis that came up with the projection. That can only be done by going through the analysis in more detail.



The one sentence sound bites provided by East of Eden do not, by any stretch of the imagination, do that.

A better analogy would by 'These brakes will stop the car'. The recession hasn't been stopped. At this point in Reagan's term it was stopped.

I have asked several times for you to say wether the following are the same.

A: If the car is going 50 mph, the brakes will stop the car.

B: The brakes will stop the car.


You have not given a direct answer.

I have also shown with ample evidence, contrary to your entirely unsubstantiated assertions, that the statement the Administration made was an A statement, not a B statement.



Denying reality does not absolve you from your obligation to either support your claim or retract it.

You don't get to substitute other claims or provide evidence for other claims and then pretend it supports your original claim.


So now you bring up yet another claim about the recession, and not only is this irrelevant to your original claim, but it is also false. The recession has ended. In fact, GDP has now gone past pre-recession levels.

Comparisons with Reagan can be made, but they are not relevant to the original claim made by East of Eden.









I really don't understand why you don't retract the original claim. You seem to want to go on to make other arguments anyway, and I have already said I am willing to address those other arguments, but not until you retract your original claim. If you don't retract it, you will continue to be presented with challenges for evidence and corrections to your diversions. Why not just get that all out of the way?

[East of Eden]

I think we agree, then, that President's aren't perfect and that criticism of a President, even from their own party, is no measure, or at least not a very good measure, of the Presdident's policies or actions. I hope we here no more about Frank, then.

Only until you admit a prediction was made that wasn't fulfilled.

I certainly have never said this or even implied it. No President is beyond criticism. I have already said it is appropriate to hold President's accountable for their statements and their actions.

The problem is you have been attempting to hold the Administration accountable for a statement which they did not make.

No I'm not, and I see little evidence you want to hold the Obama administration accountable.

I have only been addressing the same claim that you yourself made. I have quoted it for you several times. I have addressed just that claim, the one you made in this thread. I am not bringing up separate points, you are, it seems in an attempt to avoid retracting your original false claim.

Sorry, no false claim to retract. How many times do I have to say it. The fact there was a CYA paragraph saying the data might be wrong is a separate issue. Again, if a manager predicts a World Series victory before the season and it doesn't happen, can he get off by saying he didn't know the SS would get injured? Yes or no. Whether the failure was from bad policy or bad data is irrelevant.

You complain that I have been addressing another claim than the one you made, but here you are now defending a claim other than the one you made. You claimed that Obama said that if the stimulus was passed, unemployment would stay under 8%. I have been addressing primarily that claim.

I brought up the fact that your claim was false because it did not accurately state what Obama said because it did not include the conditions and data made as part of the unemployment projection. It is YOU who are now changing the claim to address the conditions that I (and nursebenjamin) pointed out were a part of the report.

I will allow that the data that was a part of the report was incorrect, but that does not make your claim correct. In addition, as has been pointed out, that data was not even from the Obama Administration but was from the consensus of government economists at the time during the Bush Administration.

LOL, I was wondering when you were going to blame Bush.

So you are triply wrong in that you first ignore that those conditions were there, and continue to ignore that the projection was made contingent on that data, and you then want to blame the Obama Administration for the fact that the estimates being made at that time on job losses were low when in fact those estimates were made by the Bush Administration.


How many more errors you can put into a short argument I am not sure.

You haven't come up with one yet.

Whether the stimulus was a good idea or not or whether it worked or not is not the same as whether Obama promised "unemployment would not go over 8% with the stimulus."

His people did.

You are again dodging and diverting and avoiding the fact that your original claim about what the Administration siad is false.

It's called telling the truth, not dodging.

Let the record show East of Eden has again dodged the issue and avoided answering.

Let the record also show East of Eden has accused me of skewing the report. That is ironic when, of the two of us, I have done extensive quoting of the report and he has pulled out one sentence and portrayed that one sentence as the essence of what the Administration said. I am not the one doing the skewing here.

Let the record also show that these conditions were in the report and they have been repeatedly pointed out in detail. What East of Eden says here is another false claim about the report and he has added a false claim about what I have provided in this thread. The CYA comment is also unwarranted, given nursebenjamin's explanation for why such caveats come with these kinds of projections.

CYAs are common with government. 'Let the record show......'? Is anybody still following this nonsense besides us?

="from the Job Impact Report on the American Recovery Act"]
First, the likely scale of employment loss is extremely large. The U.S. economy has already lost nearly 2.6 million jobs since the business cycle peak in December 2007. In the absence of stimulus, the economy could lose another 3 to 4 million more.

Nonsense, and pure speculation.

Thus, we are working to counter a potential total job loss of at least 5 million. As Figure 1 shows, even with the large prototypical package, the unemployment rate in 2010Q4 is predicted to be approximately 7.0%, which is well below the
approximately 8.8% that would result in the absence of a plan.

Thus, it is incorrect to say they were no numerical conditions in the report. In fact, here are some more.

OK, I stand corrected, another area Obama's people were wrong. Or is that Bush's fault? Again, why should we think his projections are more correct this time around?

Can East of Eden show that someone at the time had better numbers than these on which to base this report?

Can you show any president has better numbers to work with?

If not, it is fallacious to blame the Obama Administration for the fact these are not correct, and doubly fallacious to fault projections based on these assumptions for not panning out.

If you want to show "If A then B" is a false statement, you HAVE to show that A is true and B is false. That is simple elementary logic.

If A ends up being false, then the statements "If A then B" cannot be shown to be false, period, regardless of whethe B is true or not.

If my memory serves me, they didn't sell it as 'if our numbers are right then unemployment won't go over 8%', it was stated if the stimulous is passed it won't go over 8%. I guess we were supposed to read the fine print in an 80-page document.

Again, at first East of Eden denied such conditions were present, and later has attempted to dismiss them as irrelevant or "weasley." Whether or not they are "weasley" does not change that the 8% projection was made under these conditions. Thus, for East of Eden to portray the claim as having been made without these conditions is not an accurate portrayal.

I am not now saying that, I am saying that paragraph is a side issue. How many times do I have to explain that?

It is also not accurate to say that the Administration "broke a promise" or even that they should be faulted in the analysis that came up with the projection.

If they didn't break a promise, then did they fulfill a promise?

Denying reality does not absolve you from your obligation to either support your claim or retract it.

The claim has been backed up, numerous times. A prediction was made that didn't happen. You hear about it in media political discussions quite frequently, what do you know they don't?

So now you bring up yet another claim about the recession, and not only is this irrelevant to your original claim,

So what, I'm free to bring up anything I want here rather than beating a dead horse.

The recession has ended. In fact, GDP has now gone past pre-recession levels.

Tell it to the unemployed. 80% of American reject that:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/2 ... 74188.html

I really don't understand why you don't retract the original claim. You seem to want to go on to make other arguments anyway, and I have already said I am willing to address those other arguments, but not until you retract your original claim. If you don't retract it, you will continue to be presented with challenges for evidence and corrections to your diversions. Why not just get that all out of the way?

Because you are wrong. I don't care what you continue to say, I have no obligation to play along with this charade.

Here's another interesting fact about the failed stimulous - In the Department of Energy alone, representing just 4% of the stimulous, over 100 criminal investigations were filed in relation to handling the money. Wonder what the total tally will be.

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=47282


Here's another interesting measurement, the U-6 rate (underemployment) was 13.9% when Obama took office, in March of this year it was at 19.9%. What is that if not failure?

[micatala]

I think we agree, then, that President's aren't perfect and that criticism of a President, even from their own party, is no measure, or at least not a very good measure, of the Presdident's policies or actions. I hope we here no more about Frank, then.

Only until you admit a prediction was made that wasn't fulfilled.

Well, I just thought perhaps this was an area we could agree on. If you are saying a Republican congressman's statements don't change reality for Reagan, then I am not sure why you would portray a Democratic congressman's statements any differently.



I challenge you to show evidence that I ignored your claims about Frank as you said.

I challenge you to show that Frank's quote agrees with your position as you claimed.

Evidence or retraction.


Saying making the prediction was dumb is not the same as saying the stimulus was bad policy or that the Obama Administration's assertions on unemployment were not true.

If you want to show "If A then B" is a false statement, you HAVE to show that A is true and B is false. That is simple elementary logic.

If A ends up being false, then the statements "If A then B" cannot be shown to be false, period, regardless of whethe B is true or not.

If my memory serves me, they didn't sell it as 'if our numbers are right then unemployment won't go over 8%', it was stated if the stimulous is passed it won't go over 8%. I guess we were supposed to read the fine print in an 80-page document.

There is no need to trust your memory. You've been presented with what the report says, and you continue to misrepresent it. You didn't even have to look in the fine print. Everything was right there staring you in the face.

And besides, the document we have been refering only had 14 pages.


In addition, you earlier claimed the 8% unemployment was common knowledge as well as several other things. You seem to think "common knowledge" doesn't have to be reiterated and that the Administration should be held accountable for common knowledge.

Except of course when it disagrees with your position. Then it is a whole 'nother story. As I have shown, the common knowledge of the day on unemployment was that it was bad, but the reality was a lot worse than "common knowledge" was aware of. Some of the common knowledge was right there in the report.

Some of it I provided earlier, and you ignored it.





Do you or do you not understand that

"If A occurs, then B occurs"

is different than

"B occurs"?



If you continue to go into wild diversionary gyrations to avoid answering this question, you will continue to be challenged with it.

I certainly have never said this or even implied it. No President is beyond criticism. I have already said it is appropriate to hold President's accountable for their statements and their actions.

The problem is you have been attempting to hold the Administration accountable for a statement which they did not make.

No I'm not, and I see little evidence you want to hold the Obama administration accountable.

I challenge you to show that I have ever said the President is beyond criticism.

That is your implication and it is a groundless accusation. Now you go onto to avoid addressing its falseness by making another groundless accusation.

I have only been addressing the same claim that you yourself made. I have quoted it for you several times. I have addressed just that claim, the one you made in this thread. I am not bringing up separate points, you are, it seems in an attempt to avoid retracting your original false claim.

Sorry, no false claim to retract. How many times do I have to say it.

Your claim is false.

You said "The Administration said B would happen" and since B did not happen, you said they made a false prediction.


The Administration did not say "B would happen" all by itself. They said "based on the informatoin we have and the following assumptions, we think B will happen"


These are not the same thing no matter how many times you say there are or no matter how many times you dismiss the conditions that were part of the original claim.


If you continue to take this totally illogical position, you will continue to be challenged, it's that simple.

The fact there was a CYA paragraph saying the data might be wrong is a separate issue.

I know that is what you would like to be true, but it is not. When someone says "If A then B" you don't get to say "A is a separate issue."



That is just illogical.





It's like saying to your wife "If you cheat on me, I will divorce you" and then saying "I am going to divorce you even though you didn't cheat on me" with the excuse that "Cheating on me is a separate issue."

Again, if a manager predicts a World Series victory before the season and it doesn't happen, can he get off by saying he didn't know the SS would get injured? Yes or no. Whether the failure was from bad policy or bad data is irrelevant.

If he guaranteed a victory flat out with no conditions or caveats, then he is accountable. I have already said that. I have already said that if the report did not include or was not based on conditions, you would be right.

But you are wrong because the conditions are there.

If the manager said "Provided we stay healthy, we will win the world series" and then the SS gets injured, then basic logic dictates that the conditional statement is null and void and there is nothing to be held accountable for.




WHen you stop portraying "If A then B" as the same as "B" then you might have a leg to stand on in your argument. You have been confusing these two with your claim and you are even doing it with your analogies.

You complain that I have been addressing another claim than the one you made, but here you are now defending a claim other than the one you made. You claimed that Obama said that if the stimulus was passed, unemployment would stay under 8%. I have been addressing primarily that claim.

I brought up the fact that your claim was false because it did not accurately state what Obama said because it did not include the conditions and data made as part of the unemployment projection. It is YOU who are now changing the claim to address the conditions that I (and nursebenjamin) pointed out were a part of the report.

I will allow that the data that was a part of the report was incorrect, but that does not make your claim correct. In addition, as has been pointed out, that data was not even from the Obama Administration but was from the consensus of government economists at the time during the Bush Administration.

LOL, I was wondering when you were going to blame Bush.

Another incredibly lame dodge.


Where do you think the Administration got the figures that were in that report??? Can you find some other source for those? Who was running the government agencies that provided economic statistics in December 2008 and January 2009?


And I did not blame Bush for any "errors." I am merely pointing out the ridiculousness of you blaming Obama by pointing out that his Administration wasn't running the government until late in January of 2009.

You are again dodging and diverting and avoiding the fact that your original claim about what the Administration siad is false.

It's called telling the truth, not dodging.

Portraying "IF A then B" as saying the same thing as "B" is not telling the truth.

Let the record show East of Eden has again dodged the issue and avoided answering.

Let the record also show East of Eden has accused me of skewing the report. That is ironic when, of the two of us, I have done extensive quoting of the report and he has pulled out one sentence and portrayed that one sentence as the essence of what the Administration said. I am not the one doing the skewing here.

Let the record also show that these conditions were in the report and they have been repeatedly pointed out in detail. What East of Eden says here is another false claim about the report and he has added a false claim about what I have provided in this thread. The CYA comment is also unwarranted, given nursebenjamin's explanation for why such caveats come with these kinds of projections.

CYAs are common with government. 'Let the record show......'? Is anybody still following this nonsense besides us?

Whether CYA's are common or not does not negate the fact that the conditions were part of the statement, nor that you are the one skewing the report by ignoring and mischaracterizing almost all of it, nor that I have provided ample evidence to support my position on the Administration's claims while, in fact, East of Eden only provided one sentence, nor that very good reasons for having the conditions that East of Eden pejoratively and inappropriately labels a CYA have been provided.

This is as yet another dodge.

="from the Job Impact Report on the American Recovery Act"]
First, the likely scale of employment loss is extremely large. The U.S. economy has already lost nearly 2.6 million jobs since the business cycle peak in December 2007. In the absence of stimulus, the economy could lose another 3 to 4 million more.

Nonsense, and pure speculation.

If this is nonsense and pure speculation, then so are all your claims regarding Obama making the economy worse. You cited a statistic that there were no jobs created last August. If what I have above is "nonsense and pure speculation" then so is what you have stated. Where do you think that 2.6 million number quoted in the report came from? Where do you think the unemployment estimates being made during 2008 and into 2009 came from?

I will grant that numbers projected into the future are just that, projections. But you are dismissing numbers which were estimates of the unemployment at the time and in the preceding months as "nonsense and pure speculation."

Thus, we are working to counter a potential total job loss of at least 5 million. As Figure 1 shows, even with the large prototypical package, the unemployment rate in 2010Q4 is predicted to be approximately 7.0%, which is well below the
approximately 8.8% that would result in the absence of a plan.

Thus, it is incorrect to say they were no numerical conditions in the report. In fact, here are some more.

OK, I stand corrected, another area Obama's people were wrong. Or is that Bush's fault?

Whoever developed the data estimates are responsible for them. The Bureau of Labor Statistics typically handles a lot of that. I don't expect that Obama's BLS people are probably any better or worse than Bush's people. In fact, a lot of those people are probably the same at the lower levels. I never faulted Bush for any shortcomings in the data, I only pointed out that the data you are criticizing and blaming Obama for were likely largley developed under the Bush Administration.

I am happy you accept there were numerical conditions in the report. I reject that this was an area Obama's people were wrong since, as far as I know, those numbers were not generated by his people.

I'm not blaming Bush's people either. Those estimates were the best available at the time. You are the only one I see here who seems to be obsessed with blame.

Again, why should we think his projections are more correct this time around?

This is an ironic question given you have yet to show any real problems with the Obama's projections form the first time around.

Can East of Eden show that someone at the time had better numbers than these on which to base this report?

Can you show any president has better numbers to work with?

You are dodging the question. If you think the Obama Administration erred in their numbers and that they should have done better or known better, then that implies somebody else had better numbers or could have found better numbers. Who are these people?

If Obama did have the best number's available at the time, then how on earth can he be faulted for basing a projection on those numbers? This is not a question that involves the policy, it is only a question on the conditions on which the policy was based.

Again, at first East of Eden denied such conditions were present, and later has attempted to dismiss them as irrelevant or "weasley." Whether or not they are "weasley" does not change that the 8% projection was made under these conditions. Thus, for East of Eden to portray the claim as having been made without these conditions is not an accurate portrayal.

I am not now saying that, I am saying that paragraph is a side issue. How many times do I have to explain that?

See my analogy above. It is simply logically fallacious to say the hypothesis in a conditional statement is a "side issue."


Consider Reagan. Reagan promised a balanced budget and didn't produce one. Now, I don't think he made this a conditional promise. But let's say he said,
"If the congress will agree to my policies, we will have a balanced budget."
Then suppose the congress did not agree with his policies, and then we did not get a balanced budget.

Following your logic, the fact that the congress did not go along is a "side issue" and we can blame Reagan for the budget not being balanced.


How on earth does that make any sense?

It is also not accurate to say that the Administration "broke a promise" or even that they should be faulted in the analysis that came up with the projection.

If they didn't break a promise, then did they fulfill a promise?

Neither. Again, the only way to show "If A then B" is false is to show A is true and B is false. The only way to show that a conditional promise like this has been met is to show that A is true and B is true.

If A is false, all bets are off. There is no longer a promise to either break or fulfill.


If I say "If you give me $20, then I will mow your lawn" and you don't give me $20, then I am neither breaking or fulfilling a promise whether or not I mow your lawn. If I mow the lawn, it is because I simply wanted to do it even though I was not obligated to.


So, as far as the 8% claim, since the conditions were not fulfilled, the conditional statement is essentially null and void. This means the promise was neither fulfilled nor broken. That is the nature of a conditional statement.



Now, if you are willing to retract the 8% claim, we could go onto other claims where we could actually measure the Administration's performance.


I'll even give you an example. The report includes estimates of how many jobs would be created based on the stimulus spending. While the effect of the spending on the unemployment rate is dependent on the pre-exisitng unemployment rate and the current rate of job loss, the number of jobs created or saved would not be, at least if one assumes that the number of dollars per job created is not affected by those other factors.


As an analogy, if my tub has a hole in it, and water is leaking out, and I try to maintain the total amount of water in the tub or increase it by pouring water in, then the level of water going into the future is dependent on both the rate of leakage and the rate of pouring.

However, unless the rate of leakage is affected by the pouring, the difference in water levels between what would have happened with the pouring versus what would have happened without the pouring does not depend on the rate of leakage. If I pour in 10 gallons per minute for two minutes, there will be a difference of 20 gallons. The total number of gallons after the pouring might be 100 or it might be 80 or it might be 60, depending on the rate of leakage, but there will be 20 more gallons than there would have been otherwise.


The amount of water is the unemployment rate and so is depending on the leakage rate and how much had already leaked out when you started pouring. The fallacy of your 8% claim is that you don't take into account that the Administrations projection was based on numbers on the amount of water that had already leaked out and the current rate of leakage that were too low.


However, the difference between the pouring scenario and the no pouring scenario could be considered not dependent on those things. Thus, I would say it is fair to consider whether the Administration's estimates of how many jobs would be added or saved panned out, at least up to any other factors that can be shown to have an effect on that number.

I believe it is the case that, while the best data we have (CBO, your previous criticisms of the CBO notwithstanding) is that 1 or 2 million or maybe more were added, the number added is probably short of what the Administration estimated based on the spending. I think we should look at that and I am certainly willing to consider data on the point.



What I am not willing to do is let the fallacious "broken 8% promise" claim stand unchallenged. A lot of the criticism of the stimulus has been based on this false claim. I am more than willing to consider criticisms of the stimulus, but not if they are based on fallacious claims like this one.

Denying reality does not absolve you from your obligation to either support your claim or retract it.

The claim has been backed up, numerous times. A prediction was made that didn't happen. You hear about it in media political discussions quite frequently, what do you know they don't?

I think I have addressed this. I know critics of the Administration like to misrepresent the claim and make political hay out of it. I would point out you ALSO hear in the media exactly what I have been saying; that the critics are wrong for exactly the reasons I have pointed out. Consider your claim had been labeled as "mostly false" by, as I recall, Politifact.

So now you bring up yet another claim about the recession, and not only is this irrelevant to your original claim,

So what, I'm free to bring up anything I want here rather than beating a dead horse.

I agree you can bring up anything you want. But bringing up those other things does not absolve you of justifying previous claims, nor are these other things relevant to supporting that claim. If you bring up other things in response to challenges to an unsupported claim, it is fair to say you are dodging.

The recession has ended. In fact, GDP has now gone past pre-recession levels.

Tell it to the unemployed. 80% of American reject that:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/2 ... 74188.html

Argumentum Ad populum fallacy.

I am not saying things are good. I am saying that using the usual definition of recession, the recession ended quite some months ago. The problem was this was by far the worst recession since the 1930's. Much larger job losses. Much larger loss of GDP. And we had the housing and financial crises on top of the recession.

I am saying things are getting better, and that they could have been a lot worse. As I have pointed out before, the CBO has estimated unemployment could easily have gone to 11% or 12% without the stimulus. We could have gone down 10 or 11 or 12 million jobs instead of almost 9 million.

Here's another interesting measurement, the U-6 rate (underemployment) was 13.9% when Obama took office, in March of this year it was at 19.9%. What is that if not failure?

We can address this after you address the problems with your original claim.

I will note that, of the almost 9 million jobs lost during the recession, probably more than half (I can check on that) were lost before Obama took office. In addition, even though he worked hard to get the recovery package passed quickly, that policy took time to unfold and so the job losses for at least several months can in no way be laid to his blame. Given the whole recession was not his fault, one could say none of the job losses are his fault either.



I would say we could compare his policy to others that might have been enacted and, at least hypothetically, compare there relative effectiveness.

[East of Eden]

Well, I just thought perhaps this was an area we could agree on. If you are saying a Republican congressman's statements don't change reality for Reagan, then I am not sure why you would portray a Democratic congressman's statements any differently.

The GOP statement could describe reality for Reagan, just as Frank's statement describes the reality that a prediction was made, which in Frank's opinion was 'dumb'. Again, if Obama gets an out due to the caveats, why would Frank even say that?

I challenge you to show evidence that I ignored your claims about Frank as you said.

OK, you have discussed Frank, I reject your reasoning on that as well as the prediction point you make.

I challenge you to show that Frank's quote agrees with your position as you claimed.

Evidence or retraction.

See above, again.

Saying making the prediction was dumb is not the same as saying the stimulus was bad policy or that the Obama Administration's assertions on unemployment were not true.

Straw man, I'm not saying it was, although it is an honest assessment the plan wasn't a success, hence the 'dumb'. We are discussing the prediction.

There is no need to trust your memory. You've been presented with what the report says, and you continue to misrepresent it. You didn't even have to look in the fine print. Everything was right there staring you in the face.

Back at you, a prediction was made that didn't happen.

In addition, you earlier claimed the 8% unemployment was common knowledge as well as several other things. You seem to think "common knowledge" doesn't have to be reiterated and that the Administration should be held accountable for common knowledge.

Except of course when it disagrees with your position. Then it is a whole 'nother story. As I have shown, the common knowledge of the day on unemployment was that it was bad, but the reality was a lot worse than "common knowledge" was aware of. Some of the common knowledge was right there in the report.

Not sure what you're saying here, but it does show the a common result of government planning.

Do you or do you not understand that

"If A occurs, then B occurs"

is different than

"B occurs"?

As I said the emphasis on this end of the prediction is way more heavy into the caveats than the original promise. If Obama's people were that unsure of the conditions, they had no business issuing a prediction that influenced people to support the plan.

If you continue to go into wild diversionary gyrations to avoid answering this question,

Back at you.

you will continue to be challenged with it.

And you and your thread hi-jack will be talking to yourself.

I challenge you to show that I have ever said the President is beyond criticism.

Straw man, I never said you did, I said I see little evidence you are open to criticizing Obama. Note your extreme defense on this shaky point.

That is your implication and it is a groundless accusation. Now you go onto to avoid addressing its falseness by making another groundless accusation.

Nonsense.

Your claim is false.

No it isn't. Are we just going to go back and forth like this the next ten pages?

If you continue to take this totally illogical position, you will continue to be challenged, it's that simple.

Knock yourself out, you'll be playing by yourself here. Anybody can make a challenge, making a valid point is another thing.

I know that is what you would like to be true, but it is not. When someone says "If A then B" you don't get to say "A is a separate issue."

It wasn't sold that way, as I said before, the caveats are a LOT more prominent on the back end to save face. If it was sold as you imply it is, a lot less people would have put any stock in it. Why do you think Obama's current 'jobs' proposal isn't being taken seriously?

If he guaranteed a victory flat out with no conditions or caveats, then he is accountable. I have already said that. I have already said that if the report did not include or was not based on conditions, you would be right.

But you are wrong because the conditions are there.

If the manager said "Provided we stay healthy, we will win the world series" and then the SS gets injured, then basic logic dictates that the conditional statement is null and void and there is nothing to be held accountable for.

Perhaps to a minor degree, but all teams have injuries. A manager who repeatedly said that and didn't come through would be fired. Obama himself said something to the effect that if he didn't turn things around in three years he either wouldn't be reelected or wouldn't deserve to be reelected. He never said only if his year 1 info. was totally accurate.

Another incredibly lame dodge.

No, you are trying to blame Bush, right out of the Obama talking points.

Where do you think the Administration got the figures that were in that report??? Can you find some other source for those? Who was running the government agencies that provided economic statistics in December 2008 and January 2009?

Exactly, all presidents use the same methods to get figures. I thought with all that 'change' Obama was going to fix everything. You can blame Bush, and I can point out this whole mess to begin with originated with the crackpot idea of giving home loans to unqualified people. Remember the so-called 'loan gap'?

Whether CYA's are common or not does not negate the fact that the conditions were part of the statement, nor that you are the one skewing the report by ignoring and mischaracterizing almost all of it, nor that I have provided ample evidence to support my position on the Administration's claims while, in fact, East of Eden only provided one sentence,

You mean the one about the predicted results? Wasn't that kind of the whole point of the report, or was the whole point that they didn't know if the numbers were right?

If this is nonsense and pure speculation, then so are all your claims regarding Obama making the economy worse. You cited a statistic that there were no jobs created last August. If what I have above is "nonsense and pure speculation" then so is what you have stated.

Baloney, zero jobs we can measure, unlike the novel phoney 'jobs saved' guesses.

Whoever developed the data estimates are responsible for them. The Bureau of Labor Statistics typically handles a lot of that. I don't expect that Obama's BLS people are probably any better or worse than Bush's people. In fact, a lot of those people are probably the same at the lower levels. I never faulted Bush for any shortcomings in the data, I only pointed out that the data you are criticizing and blaming Obama for were likely largley developed under the Bush Administration.

The big elephant in the room is the double standard. You and others excuse Obama due to faulty numbers, I don't recall the MSM making that case for Bush's economy, which BTW was far better than Obama's. An economy in X condition under a Republican will always be exageratedly bad with the MSM, and exageratedly good with a Democratic POTUS. Note the torrent of bad economic news the last three years has always been called 'surprising' by the MSM.

If you think the Obama Administration erred in their numbers and that they should have done better or known better, then that implies somebody else had better numbers or could have found better numbers. Who are these people?

If Obama did have the best number's available at the time, then how on earth can he be faulted for basing a projection on those numbers?

My point exactly, his numbers were the same as any other president has to work with, so there is an even playing field and we need to judge the policy by the results. Obama = bad results.

Consider Reagan. Reagan promised a balanced budget and didn't produce one. Now, I don't think he made this a conditional promise. But let's say he said,
"If the congress will agree to my policies, we will have a balanced budget."
Then suppose the congress did not agree with his policies, and then we did not get a balanced budget.

Following your logic, the fact that the congress did not go along is a "side issue" and we can blame Reagan for the budget not being balanced.

And if you said Reagan promised a balanced budget and it didn't happen, that would be a true statement. We can argue about why it didn't happen, but the statement is true.

Neither. Again, the only way to show "If A then B" is false is to show A is true and B is false. The only way to show that a conditional promise like this has been met is to show that A is true and B is true.

LOL. Good luck running on that platform.

What I am not willing to do is let the fallacious "broken 8% promise" claim stand unchallenged. A lot of the criticism of the stimulus has been based on this false claim. I am more than willing to consider criticisms of the stimulus, but not if they are based on fallacious claims like this one.

The 'fallacious claim' was that unemployment wouldn't go over 8% with the plan.

I think I have addressed this. I know critics of the Administration like to misrepresent the claim and make political hay out of it.

And defenders of the Administration want to excuse the prediction, I understand that.

I would point out you ALSO hear in the media exactly what I have been saying; that the critics are wrong for exactly the reasons I have pointed out. Consider your claim had been labeled as "mostly false" by, as I recall, Politifact.

Politifact is a laughable biased source just like Media Matters. From Wikipedia:

"PolitiFact.com has faced assertions among some politically conservative commentators that it is politically biased in its declarations of truth and untruth. For example, Taranto of the Wall Street Journal called PolitiFact.com "less seeker of truth than servant of power"[4], while a Wall Street Journal editorial wrote that PolitiFact is "part of a larger journalistic trend that seeks to recast all political debates as matters of lies, misinformation and 'facts,' rather than differences of world view or principles." [Boy, do we see that on this thread, same playbook.] In The American Spectator, conservative analyst Matthew Vadum, citing several of PolitiFact.com's analyses, called their content "political opinion masquerading as high-minded investigative journalism."[10]

In October 2009, PolitiFact.com fact-checked a skit on the sketch comedy television show Saturday Night Live that showed President Obama stating that he had not accomplished anything thus far;[11] PolitiFact's appraisal was then reported on CNN. Wall Street Journal writer James Taranto called the fact-checking "a bizarre exercise", and added, "PolitiFact does not appear to have done the same for past "SNL" sketches spoofing Republican politicians like George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Sarah Palin... It's as if CNN and the St. Petersburg Times are trying to reinforce the impression that they are in the tank for Obama.".[12]

In February 2010, PolitiFact.com rated President Obama's statement that the Recovery Act had saved or created 2 million jobs in the United States as "half true", stating that the real figure was 1 million according to several independent studies.[13] Economist Brian Riedl of the conservative Heritage Foundation responded that such a statement "belongs in an opinion editorial - not a fact check", since "there is no way to determine how the economy would have performed without a stimulus."[14]

I agree you can bring up anything you want. But bringing up those other things does not absolve you of justifying previous claims, nor are these other things relevant to supporting that claim. If you bring up other things in response to challenges to an unsupported claim, it is fair to say you are dodging.

No it isn't, the claim has been supported. You originally made up a challenge when you asked me to give a prediction without caveats, which I never made. Have you switched gears now?

I never mentioned the caveats. You can argue that was unfair, but the claim stands. To say anything else is pure spin.

Argumentum Ad populum fallacy.

It will matter come election day.

I am not saying things are good. I am saying that using the usual definition of recession, the recession ended quite some months ago. The problem was this was by far the worst recession since the 1930's.

Nonsense, Reagan had to deal with very high inflation and interest rates.

And we had the housing and financial crises on top of the recession.

The manufactured housing crisis was the cause of the recession.

I am saying things are getting better, and that they could have been a lot worse. As I have pointed out before, the CBO has estimated unemployment could easily have gone to 11% or 12% without the stimulus. We could have gone down 10 or 11 or 12 million jobs instead of almost 9 million.

And others have speculated we would have been out of this had we taken Reagan's approach, rather than the tax and spend failed one of Obama. Reagan is a relevant issue here, had we taken his approach we would have gotten his result.

We can address this after you address the problems with your original claim.

It's been done.

I will note that, of the almost 9 million jobs lost during the recession, probably more than half (I can check on that) were lost before Obama took office. In addition, even though he worked hard to get the recovery package passed quickly, that policy took time to unfold and so the job losses for at least several months can in no way be laid to his blame. Given the whole recession was not his fault, one could say none of the job losses are his fault either.

Just, wow.........I think I really am wasting my time here.

I would say we could compare his policy to others that might have been enacted and, at least hypothetically, compare there relative effectiveness.

It's been done:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 24906.html

[Wyvern]

If Keynesianism economics and tax increases were good enough for Reagan, then why do conservatives oppose such measures now?

The military build up was to win the cold war, not to get out of the recession. For that, Reagan cut the top bracket from 70% to 28%, and tax receipts doubled. That isn't supposed to happen, at least if you're a liberal.

By that same logic the military build up by FDR was to win WW2 and played no part in pulling us out of the great depression.

And others have speculated we would have been out of this had we taken Reagan's approach, rather than the tax and spend failed one of Obama. Reagan is a relevant issue here, had we taken his approach we would have gotten his result.

Strange thing is that Reagan took the very approach you deride Obama for. Sure Reagan is responsible for one of the largest tax cuts in history but then he followed it up with one of the largest tax hikes in history as well. How exactly does Reagans massive military buildup not qualify as government spending?

[East of Eden]

If Keynesianism economics and tax increases were good enough for Reagan, then why do conservatives oppose such measures now?

The military build up was to win the cold war, not to get out of the recession. For that, Reagan cut the top bracket from 70% to 28%, and tax receipts doubled. That isn't supposed to happen, at least if you're a liberal.

By that same logic the military build up by FDR was to win WW2 and played no part in pulling us out of the great depression.

You think that was why we fought WWII? That and Reagan winning the Cold War were necessary, Obama's plan was not. What pulled us out of the depression was the post war GOP Congress undoing much of FDR's damage.

Sure Reagan is responsible for one of the largest tax cuts in history but then he followed it up with one of the largest tax hikes in history as well. How exactly does Reagans massive military buildup not qualify as government spending?

You think that's why Reagan's recovery was successful?