so how many jobs do you expect per month from a potential romney administration, colony boy?
Greece colapse is pretty much a given during his first year, so you wont be able to duck behind that excuse when i remind you of this in 2 years

Keep in mind until McCain screwed up he was considered a safe reliable politician with huge amount of campaign experience and he would have never made a big mistake.

And arguably Palin wasnt even a big mistake anyway, they knew they were rolling the dice but they also couldnt go safe for veep and expect to beat the Obama-Biden ticket.

The funny thing is Romney hasnt ran anything like a perfect campaign. He is dropping gaffs, they are failing to control the message, he is flip flopping on topics within mere hours and he still cant connect to the people with the worst part of that is just how wooden he is when he tries. If the economy wasnt so bad he would have a single digit percent chance of winning and he is exhibiting all the symptoms of a meltdown waiting to happen as he says the wrong thing at the wrong time.

Just examples off the top of my head I can easily google up:

This is not a guy who is comfortable connecting with normal people and he is doing a terrible job covering it up. I dont know how you can think it is impossible he does something really really dumb. The measure isnt even how bad it is, but how much it is covered. If the chocolate donut one was caught on tape and it really started getting picked up by late night comedians and perhaps went viral an otherwise dumb but whatever comment could cost him as he has to fight fires on it diverting the message he is trying to deliver and making it clear he isnt the guy you can have a beer with.

And not in a misquote forced gaff "the private sector is doing fine" kinda way either.

He might make the big mistake or he might not. What's more likely is he runs a flat uninspiring campaign and ultimately just has to hope the economy seriously tanks.

First, lol misquote. It was the dumbest thing said in this election cycle by a long shot. Those Romney gaffes were minor in comparison. I don't think it is impossible he will make a major mistake just unlikely.

I think the bar should be set at "generic Republican". If "generic Republican" would be doing better than you are, then your candidacy has been a big bag of fail.

When they start running attack ads against "generic republican" you make have a point.

Here are some more. Gosh elections in the us are fun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1NB...e_gdata_player

I don't think it was a gaffe on Obama's part. I watched the remark live. At the time I got the impression that Obama really believes that bigger government/more government spending is the solution to our economic woes.

At work I often ask my boss(a progressive) that if more government/spending stokes the economy, why not employ everyone in the USA as a park ranger? How would that work out for us? My boss isn't so dumb as to not realize that if everyone were employed with the government it would be a disaster. Still he fails to reckognize that there is some optimal level of Government/Government spending and exceeding that optimal level only hurts the economy. He is of the false mindset that if the economy isn't fine the government needs to spend more. He doesn't realize that it does no good to prime the pump if the well is dry.

That's basically how the New Deal worked, and it's definitely how WWII pulled us out of the Depression for good. Not saying we should do that now, but it's not like your "disaster" scenario is what happened in the past.



FWIW: How would people react to replacing welfare and unemployment with a guaranteed govt job at minimum wage doing whatever the hell needed to be done that day?
(as in, anyone who shows up gets put to work and gets paid; anyone who doesn't show up doesn't get ****)

You are correct, wars can solve our economic woes. All we have to do is destroy the production capacity of the rest of the world and they will have no choice but to buy our products. If we destroy the production capacity of every other country you can rest assured we will have full employment in this country.

I hope you realize Obama could have saved the auto industry by bombing the auto plants in Japan, Korea, Germany, Mexico, and India. World Wars are awesome for economic growth as long as you destroy everyone else while coming out relatively unscathed.

It depends where the money comes from. It doesn't help us to borrow money from foreigners to pay for welfare.

Thanks for that insight into the critical thinking powers of a typical conservative.

I think we need to define mistake. Hasn't Romney been running for public office for like 20 years now with only one win on his record? I'd say he's failing at getting elected.

Uh, he's only run in three prior elections (MA Senate 94, MA Gov 02, Rep Pres 08). The first was against Ted Kennedy, the third he got second in a crowded field (that was, you know, for a Presidential nomination).

Yeah, he's been trying to get into public office since 94. Only 18 years, my bad.

It doesn't matter because welfare and unemployment payments are already being made regardless if the money is coming from taxes or borrowing from China.

Actually showing up for a job, whether it is trivial or not is a fundamental skill to moving up the employment ladder.

I realize people might piss and moan about it, but it is analogous to weaning an equine foal at 6 or so months of age from their mother. They scream and piss (literally) and moan for about 12 hours til they bend down and eat some grass. They find out it tastes pretty good and is actually better for them than sucking on the mare's teat interminably.

That's not how it happened. We were at full employment during the war based almost entirely on domestic demand and govt spending (no one overseas was importing much of anything other than military supplies that our own govt was paying for).

We were at full employment because of real demand for war time goods and conscription. High employment continued after the war because we destroyed everyone else otherwise it would have just been a short term flash in the pan. The war fundamentally changed the world economy to our benefit.

The government could have prolonged the financial lives of Chrysler and GM by purchasing thier cars and dumping them in the ocean. However when the government stops purchasing those cars what happens to Chrysler and GM? They still go bankrupt. Government spending doesn't do anything to correct what is fundamentally wrong with the business model or the economy.

Government spending has adverse effects. In order to spend money the government has to get money from somewhere. They can print it but that has the effect of making everyones money worth less. They can tax it but that has the effect of curtailing peoples purchasing power. They can borrow it, but that has the effect of increasing borrowing cost to everyone.

and he's spent the majority of that time pacifying the base of the party, just to get the nominations. Here he is today, the theoretical holder of enough delegates to the convention that will nominate the GOP side, and he is still having to placate the base.

RMoney has been trumpeted as a core business man who could restore the country, but government is not a business. The only large organization that has been able to manage their affairs as a business has been the mafia. And contrary to this board full of anarchists, the American government does not operate in that manner.

If I go to Harbor Freight and buy a $200 chop saw made in China, the Harbor Freight company will send some of that money back to China to replace its inventory. Say it is a $100 bill. What will the Chinese do with their $100? Well they can wipe their ass with it, and that would be just fine with us because it would mean we traded a square of toliet paper for a chop saw. Of course the Chinese are rational people and wouldn't be that foolish.

China can do other things with that $100. They could buy something from us. Say a bushel of grain. Well that is fine with us because our farmers can produce more grain then our nation can consume. Were it not for export some of our farmers would be out of a job. China can also take that $100 and buy a good manufactured in the US. Again, this is good for us because it keeps the american factory and factory worker productive.

China can also loan that money back to us, but doing that does nothing to help the farmer or the factory worker.

Now we control what choices are available to the chinese. We can offer a manufactured good for sale or not. We can offer to borrow the money back or not. If we want China to buy our goods all we have to do is make that thier only choice.

Think of it this way. The farmer and the factory worker are in competition with the United States government for that $100 china has. Buy borrowing that money to pay for welfare all we are really doing is creating an environment where more welfare is required.

Employing everyone would be a massively dumb idea. It's not a linear relationship where if adding 500,000 government jobs is a benefit, then 200,000,000 must be a super benefit. Jobs programs like that should be used to prime demand when the private sector is slow and then go away once demand is healthy again. The current recession is caused by lack of demand because everyone is paying down debt too much.

The worlds biggest debtor is certainly not.

He's talking about consumer demand.

This appears to be a myth. The US economy boomed post WWII because of domestic demand. US exports did not grow much after WWII and actually fell in many years even as GDP soared.

Now, the Marshall plan and other loans may have helped the US for a time. We were essentially loaning money to the Europeans so they could buy our stuff. Government intervention ftw?

What is going to make demand healthy again? The problem with these jobs programs is that they don't do anything to address what is fundamentally wrong. You suggest the current recession(were not really in a recession) is caused by everyone paying down too much debt. How does a jobs program stop people from paying down debt?