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Presidential Myths, Lies and Campaign Promises Along With Retail Cos. We Look To Short
The presidential elections are coming up again. The last 4 years went by very quickly, and as always, we are confronted with BS blown all over the mainstream media. This time (like last time) the focus is on the POTUS and the economy. I fear many lay persons and even some who should know better fail to realize that the president has very little willful control over the economy - at least to the upside. Now, it is possible for a president to wreck the economy. For instance, we had one not too long ago who took it upon himself to start several concurrent wars while cutting taxes at the apex of a cyclical economic peak (aka, bubble about to burst), but that rarely occurs, right?
Generally, the POTUS is either blamed or glorified for things that are largely out of his control. Prominent examples have been:
- Reagan, whose policies actually sucked but rode a cyclical bull to acclaim...
- Clinton, whose policies sucked less, but still rode a cyclical bull to acclaim.
- Carter, the poor bastard... Wrong place at the wrong stagflationary time.
- And last but not least, Obama - there was no way in hell anyone, regardless of who it was other than the almighty God/Buddha/Allah [fill in the blank] himself could have extricated the country from the mess that Bush contributed to.
To be fair, although I would like to say he made the mess, in all actuality he (as in George Bush Jr.) simply was in office when the bubble burst. His greatest crime (other than being the worst president this country has ever seen - and despite the fact that he was re-elected [or re-appointed if you followed that whole hanging chad thing]) was that he exacerbated the effects of the downfall by squandering our resource cushion in unnecessary wars and tax breaks and failed to invest in the entrepreneurial spirit of American small and medium sized businesses, where ALL of the big business (his constituency) actually came from.
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As an aside, see How Inferior American Education Caused The Credit/Real Estate/Sovereign Debt Bubbles and Why It's Preventing True Recovery for my views on education in America. This video tells a tale as well. Please take note of the comments in the video - here's a tell tale burb, "I'm sure Reggie is well aware why this video only has 3667 views, when it should easily be in the millions...........sad.........sad...sad...sad.....pray for your children"..
See also:
Is this a brother from another mother???
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My highly entrepreneurial and uber-cognitive 11 year old son (my older son is and artistic genius wrapped around a true scientist and my young daughter is a legitimate powerhouse and leader - yes, all three of my children are special and yes I am biased :-)) asked me to sit in on his homework assignment of critiquing the presidential candidate speeches. I explained to my boy that a tertiary (if not primary) labor of the POTUS is to pump BS to the masses. Jobs... Schmobs... As clearly articulated in BS At The BLS Leads To Profitable Short Opportunities As Hopium Smokers Get High Off Of Depreciated Dime Bags Of Manipulated Euphoria! Following up on the premise of that article is our next release in the follow of overpriced and over valued retailers. This time around, we get wet... Subscribers, download - Retailer_Final (801.03 kB 2012-09-11 01:30:21)
Now, back to the original premise - Guess what my 11 year old uncovered in the process...
Reggie Middleton on Obama vs Romney Acceptance Speeches
'Nuff said!
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Reggie, I loved this. I have glanced at your technical analyses and I have heard your 5 yo daughter reading a very adult letter. I would ask where you get the time to do such marvelous analysis and yet have the time to teach your daughter to read - but I know the answer. The answer is you work for yourself and schedule your time effectively - no boss to answer to when you get up from your computer, pull your daughter onto your lap and help her to read.
But, I think the attack on U.S. public education is a tad off the mark - but just a tad. My wife is a school teacher and you would not believe the stories she tells of the lack of discipline - no, not of the kids - their parents. As a reading specialist, she quite often has conversations with parents about why Sally can't read, asking questions like: How often do you sit and read with her? Surprisingly often, the answer is: Never, I don't have time for that! Yeah, they spend all their time tied to a job they hate because they never learned to lead rather than follow. So, I will agree with you that our public school system somewhat stifles independent thinking, creativity, and innovation - in part a response to NCLB, but we also need to work on parents and community leaders to stress the importance of education, not conformity.
My final comment is likely to be one with which you would disagree - cooperation is at least as powerful as competition. Both are useful and we should teach our children to discern the difference and how to succeed in both environments.
History of Buddha (Prince Siddhartha Gautama)
Old Narrative: Obama is a lightworker and will transform and improve America. NEW narrative: Nobody could have turned things around, but we're lucky to have Obama in these times.
Reggie - do you get your talking points direct from the White House, or by reading Kos?
Seriously dude - Reggie does a masterful job of describing how our current educational system, designed to create automatons is failing us and you're focusing in on the analysis his 11 yo son did in regard to the viewes of the political convention? Seriously?
GOP= American NAZI party
How about Clinton's lies/misrepresentation in Obama's latest ad.
http://confoundedinterest.wordpress.com/2012/09/11/clintons-housing-and-regulatory-record-can-the-fed-stimulate-housing-further/
The Five Stooges
Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Obama
Worst: GWB, for 9-11. Now we'll never, ever be rid of TSA and DHS, the modern Sturmabteilung and Gestapo.
Second worst: O'bomb-a. For being GWB on steroids.
In no particular order:
Wilson
Lincoln
LBJ
Clinton
Worst President (as in screwed the Nation:
1. Wilson
2. Wilson
3. Wilson
4. Nixon
You can blame Nixon and the Fed for most of the economic problems.
The problem with "Blame Bush" is that Obama was in the Senate when the wheels came off the bus. Obama stopped campaigning to return to Washington to vote for the TARP. Obama was also instrumental in the housing bubble, filing lawsuits to get mortgages for people on houses they could not afford.
While it may be unreasonable to expect anyone to fix the problem Obama inherited, he promised to cut the deficit in half. Instead, he has made thing much worse. He has accumated more debt in 4 years than Bush did in 8. There is no indication that anything is going to chane in the next 4 years. (japan has kept on going along this path for 20 years).
reggie should i short some more PEI here? i'm only down about 15% ...
Did you ever think, Reggie, that Obama got more youtube hits because Romney was watched live and those who Would Not view Obama's full speech live went to youtube to pick out the parts people are talking about? I can't watch Obama live for very long and I only view excerpts in youtube.
Obama has to be one of the dumbest! A smarter politician would have waited until the second term to
Pass Obamacare
Declare war on coal and energy
Increase regulations
The Spending is just completely out of control which is why I am buying PMs…..
Not nearly as dumb as running or supporting a liberal gun-grabbing insurance-mandating draft-dodging job-destroying Etch-a-Sketch from Wall Street against him.
Typical Obama homer, looks in the mirror and see the same lips and automatically checks the box on the Obama ballot.
Reggie is right in one aspect of his idiotic rant: The President is not the mover that the media gives him credit for nor is he the villain. Unfortunately the rest of the BS he spews is just that. January 3rd, 2007 was the day the Democrats took over the Senate and the Congress. On that day The DOW Jones closed at $12,621.77;The GDP for the previous quarter was 3.5%; Unemployment rate was 4.6%; We had SET A RECORD of 52 STRAIGHT MONTHS of JOB GROWTH!
Lowering taxes actually causes increased revenues as long as the taxes are in place long term and not threatened by idiots in congress or the worst President ever: The current occupant, who I believe will retire the trophy.
In order of precedence, the worst ever Before the current moron-in-chief:
J. (Jimmah) Carter
L. Johnson
R.M. (Tricky Dick) Nixon
Sweden lowered taxes from above 60% - on both Corporations and individuals - in 2008 at the start of this world wide collapse. The rate went to 26% on both. They collected more revenue as a result, got the Libertarian Government re-elected BUT - MOST Important - had the highest GDP growth in Europe in 2011. Higher than us, higher in Japan. Warren Harding took an economy he inherited after WWI that has 12.4% unemployment AND a GDP that had dropped -7% in 1921. By 1923, when he died, after cutting government spending by 25% and the top tax rate to 25%, unemployment was less that 3% and GDP was +7%. That's history not the histrionic crap you read out there. Japan, Euroland and Ben & Barry have embarked on the slow, endless stagnation approach that kept us in the 30's depression until the war started in 1940. You folks who like this appeoach and the mirages that appear as the economy slogs thru the muck can elect whomever you like but if Romney doesn't suit your fancy you can be sure that Obammy will continue the slow march to hell we are in now.
"January 3rd, 2007 was the day the Democrats took over the Senate" you must have missed the part that the housing bubble peaked in june 2006 months before the dems took control of anything. search zh for one of a million charts on the peak of the housing bubble
"Lowering taxes actually causes increased revenues" not as a % of gdp http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=200 revenue also almost doubled under clinton
Reggie
I only invest for my retirement, and I am pretty much a buy and hold investor, but 2 industries I see being in trouble are
Cellular - I just switched from Verizon to Walmart straight talk. I was paying Verizon $102 for a plan that didn’t include everything. I am now paying about $45-50 per month for unlimited everything. PS. My carrier via Walmart is still Verizon! LOL! Can you say commodity?
Garmin – I don’t even use my GPS anymore, I text addresses to my phone and use Google maps as my GPS.
Reggie outed as a complete and utter buffoon.
Short what and when?
That all we need to know. ;~}
Obama has doubled down on ever bad policy Bush implemented. Osama's dead, why are we still in Afghanistan? He got involved with Libya on his own and when it comes to Iran "all options are on the table.' He's a war monger. As for Carter, he did some stupid things as well. Remember, once Reagan was elected and took from the federal government the authority to say where gasoline would be shipped, the gas lines disappeared. HMO's where implemented under Carter, S&L reform was passed as well and just over a decade later the reform contributed to the S&L debacle. Then there was Carter’s contribution to the slow growing bubble in US real estate: Community Reinvestment Act. Those who are quick to be critical of one party, while making excuses for the other, are merely partisans in disguise. In many cases it’s a bad disguise. Shame on you, Reggie. Both parties share the blame for all the unnecessary problems this nation has been through and the suffering caused by US foreign policy as implemented by the US military and even that caused by Federal Reserve actions. I am highly disappointed in you. Clint had his chair speech, now you have this article. Neither of you will ever be trusted by me again, if that matters to you at all?
"The fact is that liberty, in any true sense, is a concept that lies quite beyond the reach of the inferior man's mind. He can imagine and even esteem, in his way, certain false forms of liberty - for example, the right to choose between two political mountebanks, and to yell for the more obviously dishonest - but the reality is incomprehensible to him. And no wonder, for genuine liberty demands of its votaries a quality he lacks completely, and that is courage. The man who loves it must be willing to fight for it; blood, said Jefferson, is its natural manure. More, he must be able to endure it - an even more arduous business. Liberty means self-reliance, it means resolution, it means the capacity for doing without." - H.L. Mencken
BTW, Reg. I didn't vote for Dubya. Hell, since eligible to vote for a prez (1980), I've never voted for a republican or democrat. But Dubya the worse? I seem to recall a fellow named Woodrow Wilson who was an explicit supporter of the Klan and eugenics. As far as being a war monger, at least Bush's wars weren't world wars, unlike the one Wilson got us in. Maybe you can share the metrics used to determine what rates as being "the worst"?
OBastard is worse than Dubya, we don't need the history books to find worse
OBumma promised peace but gave us Bush War Part II The Extended Version
OBastard has tripled Bush's debt. No President in global history has spent so much and achieved so little. OBastard will subsidise anything that moves, at least Bush baulked at propping up such crap as GM
And what Bush has done to begin tyranny on home soil as well as abroad OBumma in his jack-boots has increased the marching pace twofold
He's running on a ticket of "tomorrow" because his record is just diabolical
Thanks for the lowdown on GWB. You ever hear of 9/11? Now I can shitcan all your stuff, along with that of that other tool, George Washington.
One small quibble in an otherwise spot-on article.
Dubya was far from the worst president of all time. My "bottom five"
1. FDR
2. Lincoln
3. Wilson
4. LBJ
5. Teddy Roosevelt
Easily James Buchanan was the worst. did nothing, let the country drift to civil war, stayed drunk throughout his presidency, did not seek a re-election he would not have won.
from wikipedia:
historians continue to criticize Buchanan for his unwillingness or inability to act in the face of secession. Historians in both 2006 and 2009 voted his failure to deal with secession the worst presidential mistake ever made.[72] Historical rankings of United States Presidents, considering presidential achievements, leadership qualities, failures and faults, consistently place Buchanan among the least successful presidents.[73][74] In an academic poll of 47 British academics specialising in American history and politics in 2011 it was reported that he came last (40th). They "were asked to rate the performance of every president from 1789 to 2009 (excluding William Henry Harrison and James Garfield, who both died shortly after taking office) in five categories:vision/agenda-setting, domestic leadership, foreign policy leadership, moral authority and positive historical significance of their legacy".[75] James K. Polk confided to his diary: "Mr. Buchanan is an able man, but is in small matter without judgment and sometimes acts like an old maid."[76]
from http://www.11points.com/News-Politics/11_Drunkest_Presidents_in_US_History :
" Buchanan, basically, centered his presidential life around drinking.
He would get angry when the White House would only be stocked with small bottles of champagne. Every Sunday he'd go to a distillery to pick up a 10 GALLON jug of whiskey. He'd drink cognac... and up to two BOTTLES of other alcohol... every night."
he did however have the courage to be openly gay, also from wikipedia, quoting sociologist Jim Loewen:
"There can be no doubt that James Buchanan was gay, before, during, and after his four years in the White House. Moreover, the nation knew it, too – he was not far into the closet....Today, I know no historian who has studied the matter and thinks Buchanan was heterosexual."
And this is exactly why Buchanan was better than so many others. He knew he was worthless and stayed drunk. If only LBJ, Nixon, W, Obama, WW, FDR, and Lincoln had been so wise and inebriated!
You didn't write this, Reggie Middleton. And the success of your children is because of my policies, not yours.
- Barack Hussein Obama
Great article Reggie
couldn't agree more with both you and John Taylor Gatto's views of giving our children to "strangers" (the State) to raise
the State is un-reserved garbage at everything it does or touches. That includes education and as debt-slave student figures soar we're coming to another State specialty, a trainwreck
Ever heard of the inter-state highway system? Or Hoover Dam? Or the National Parks system? The Panama Canal? Etc., etc, etc.
SmoothCoolSmoke - yes i've heard of those projects, all 'BIG' aren't they?
Like everything Govt does it always has to be BIG to reflect the size of its ego.
Firstly i doubt the majority of those projects would have been done under a free market which would build lots of small. Secondly if a free market would have done something on the scale of the Hoover Dam it would come in somewhere between 1/3rd and 1/20th the price of Govts
the commercial brain works (drives all human progress), the political brain is a worthless peanut (bankrupt dead dud)
How much of total historic government spending do those cherry picked projects cost; I mean how many basis points? I was a DOJ executive lawyer for seven years. Of all I saw, about 60% waste. Money down a rat hole and lobby strategies for more central control.
gimee a break. because we all know there was no graft , cronyism , or insider politics assiciated with either the construction or the management of those projects , right?
government cannot , and will not , ever perform projects without drastic cost overruns and mismanagement. certainly government can point and say , "we did that". but , for every success you hold up as an example of how government gets things accomplished , i can give you 10 where they botched the job miserably. all at the taxpayers expense of course.
And that cronyism, graft, fraud, mismanagement, and failure come from where? Oh, that's right, the private sector business community whose ass people like zerogovt's heads are up.
"and failed to invest in the entrepreneurial spirit of American small and medium sized businesses, where ALL of the big business (his constituency) actually came from"
And where would the money have come from to make the so-called 'investment' Reggie? Why those same taxpayers! And what's government's track record in spending money in this regard? What's your proposed 'investment'? More $ to education? How has that worked out? So they can fund more SWAT teams and armored cars?
Maybe you can put your uber-bright children to task figuring out why your vaunted big 0 opposes real education reform such as vouchers, charter schools or breaking up the insidious teachers' unions!
Global capitalism practiced by ultra powerful corporations will force so many Americans to be entrepreneurs that many people will suffer forced realization of "getting a job" isn't the only way to live.
That, or global collapse of those same corporations due to the imbalance of power versus the 99%, who out number them.... well, 99 to 1. Sadly, only food shortages seem capable of forcing a global uprising out of the TV watchers.
Drivel
Reggie Middleton outs himself as a race-based voter!
Puh-leeze! Reggie outs himself as a bootlicking little Obama lapdog. What a lot of bullshit this is. Good grief, still blaming poor, weak, pathetic W for all of Obama's disasters ("And last but not least, Obama - there was no way in hell anyone, regardless of who it was other than the almighty God/Buddha/Allah [fill in the blank] himself could have extricated the country from the mess that Bush contributed to."). Has he never heard of "stimulus," "bailout," "Solyndra," "deficits," "debt," "debt ceiling"? Does he have any idea how much money Obama has managed to spend, with or without Congress along for the ride, in the last nearly 4 years? No one in his right mind would say that W was anything but a fool, but he was a rather small fool when compared with his successor.
As for Presidents impacting economics--Try Lincoln, TR, Wilson, FDR, LBJ, Nixon. . . Congress, of course, plays an important role, as does the Fed, but Presidents matter, and what Presidents do, matters. Obama has his disciples doing flips for him right in front of the throne. His media lapdogs dances and lick away. His court jesters laugh and tell him he's a brilliant genius. He is the messiah to about 50% of Americans who stand in line with their hands out. Tell me Obama does not influence our economy? Tell that to the $3T sitting on sidelines, waiting for him and his tyranny to depart in peace.
Will Romney do any better? Lord knows. I sure don't. I can tell you that if he wins, and if he stabs the Middle/Working Class in the back as so many Republicans before him have done, there will never again be a Republican elected to the office. Ever.
Yeah, you have to wonder if Reggie has read any or seen any news reports over the past four years? Hell, does he read ZeroHedge? Would Reggie’s have taken the same economic choices as Obama has? If so, then he has now cast much doubts on his economic beliefs. Obama has not only adopted the crony capitalistic model of his predecessors, he gave it a Chicago twist. Unbelievable someone who seemed to be an independent thinker bought into the charlatan that is Barrack Obama. I can only guess its racial tribalism. He's subtly suggested as much in past columns, this one seems to confirm my suspicions of his belief in the supremacy of the black race.
Reggie, do me a favor, stick to what you know and shut the hell up about things you know nothing of. Just a suggestion...
That would make for some rather short articles.
Well, we have to give Reggie's children some credit. After all, we actually do get some new content, rather than Reggie just quoting himself.
"the worst President [the U.S. have] ever seen"... one can argue about that one. There is pretty stiff competition. My personal pick - although obviously from a European perspective - is Woodrow Wilson.
Good pick-WW got the ball rolling.
With Martin van Buren a close second.
I agree Wilson was pretty grim, but the worst was disHonest Abe Lincoln.
Worst, from bottom:
Worst: Lincoln.
2. FDR.
3. Obama.
4. Wilson.
5. Nixon.
6. Adams.
7. Carter.
8. W.
9. HW.
10. Andrew Johnson/U.S. Grant
All others were relatively benign, or at least did considerably less damage than this rogue's gallery.
LBJ's gotta be in the top five
Squid: 100% right! I dropped him inadvertantly when renumbering. Just plug him into the 3 or 4 hole and slide everyone else down one. LBJ was pure, unadulterated, evil incarnate. Right up there with Lincoln, FDR, and Obama!