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On March 22 2022 23:36 gobbledydook wrote:Show nested quote +On March 22 2022 23:04 KwarK wrote:On March 22 2022 14:31 gobbledydook wrote:Taelshin has raised two points which he feels have been poorly handled by Biden: war and inflation. War: By all measures the Afghanistan retreat was a complete disaster and we can hardly forget the scenes of desperate Afghans falling off planes to their death trying to escape Kabul. It is quite disingenuous to blame Trump - it was under Biden's leadership that the retreat was planned and carried out and if he thought it wouldn't work he had the right and the duty to change course. Inflation: It is not just the Republicans blaming Biden. Rattner, who worked for Obama, also pointed out how it is not supply chain issues, but rather general overstimulus that has caused the high inflation. Source from thehill.com Its also quite ridiculous to claim that spending three trillion dollars won't increase inflation - it may be argued that it is justified spending, but it definitely is not free and definitely will push up prices. As an aside I think the Democrats are being dishonest when they claim their spending bill is 3 trillion. They're deliberately funding everything for one or two years, and pushing the start dates way back to 2028 or something, while obviously expecting future Congress members to vote to continue the funding. This is just dishonest accounting: it's fine if you think that you need to fund all these priorities about climate change and education and stuff like that but then make your case about how much that will actually cost per year, how that compares to other spending, what benefit that would provide and so on. Would you like a reminder that the Trump era tax cuts (which were accompanied by large spending increases) represented the greatest increase in government borrowing since Bush? There’s functionally very little difference between collecting $100, spending $120 on shit, and then giving the people you collected $100 from $50 back and collecting $50 then spending $120 on shit. In both cases you end up down $70. In both cases the taxpayers paid $50. Trump is not an ideological conservative. He doesn’t believe in fiscal responsibility (or any other kind of responsibility). He’s a populist and someone told him people like both high government spending and large tax cuts. The Democrats are, and always have been, the party of fiscal responsibility because they want to tax and spend and they get held accountable by the Republicans. The Republicans have always been the party of fiscal irresponsibility because they want to do tax cuts while increasing spending and the Democrats don’t really hold them accountable because everyone likes the spending. 1. Tax cuts and entitlement increases are different, because they represent different philosophies about government. The left believes that the government is best placed to fairly provide services to citizens whereas the right believes that the government is prone to wasting money and people should pay less tax and decide what they want to do with that money instead. No one has been able to prove which is better which is why there are two parties on the opposite sides of the argument. 2. It's true that the last time the budget was balanced it was under Bill Clinton, a Democrat. Still I'd say the democrats of today are not the Bill Clinton democrats. They have moved further to the left. 3. My point about the democrats using a misleading accounting trick to obfuscate the true cost of their proposals still stands. If they were honest they'd be able to say how much it costs per year.
Id argue a lot of the Democrats today are literally Bill Clinton Democrats given the average age of Congress
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Northern Ireland27352 Posts
On March 22 2022 11:46 Doc.Rivers wrote:
Well he did provide examples for his strongly held opinion, even if in a separate post. Not sure there is any meaningful distinction between his post and the status quo in this thread and in political argument generally.
See below, people are discussing the pros and cons of the Biden administration in various domains.
Or people can not do that, if they particularly want to martyr. There seems to be this weird conception by folks who pop in briefly in such a manner that this thread is full of myopic Biden lovers who ‘can’t handle the truth mannn’ when any cursory reading of it, especially during the Dem primaries would show that to be woefully off base.
On the Biden tenure, I shall defer on economics as a particular area of weakness of mine.
People have short memories so I don’t think being a largely competent administration over COVID will carry all that much weight coming the midterms. The Afghanistan fuckups may, screwups tend to be remembered longer than outright successes or general competence.
Not being Trump is a nice change of pace, and will be of huge political relevance if Trump runs again down the line, but for now it’s a rather low bar, one that’s already been hurdled and expectations are higher.
Biden’s problem from where I am sitting is there’s not a huge amount of failures, there’s also a conspicuous lack of real successes.
Really any kind of tangible, semi-permanent big policy victory that that admin and the wider Dems can bring up and go ‘hey we did this’.
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On March 22 2022 14:31 gobbledydook wrote:Taelshin has raised two points which he feels have been poorly handled by Biden: war and inflation. War: By all measures the Afghanistan retreat was a complete disaster and we can hardly forget the scenes of desperate Afghans falling off planes to their death trying to escape Kabul. It is quite disingenuous to blame Trump - it was under Biden's leadership that the retreat was planned and carried out and if he thought it wouldn't work he had the right and the duty to change course. Inflation: It is not just the Republicans blaming Biden. Rattner, who worked for Obama, also pointed out how it is not supply chain issues, but rather general overstimulus that has caused the high inflation. Source from thehill.com Its also quite ridiculous to claim that spending three trillion dollars won't increase inflation - it may be argued that it is justified spending, but it definitely is not free and definitely will push up prices. As an aside I think the Democrats are being dishonest when they claim their spending bill is 3 trillion. They're deliberately funding everything for one or two years, and pushing the start dates way back to 2028 or something, while obviously expecting future Congress members to vote to continue the funding. This is just dishonest accounting: it's fine if you think that you need to fund all these priorities about climate change and education and stuff like that but then make your case about how much that will actually cost per year, how that compares to other spending, what benefit that would provide and so on.
Seeing how Trump left Syria, I don't think Trump would do any better. I'm not sure if we can assign blame to Trump, but he is the one that initiated that deal with the Taliban. I think 90% of that was inevitable, because if we left a moment earlier, the United States would have "caused" the fall of the Afghani government. This was 20 years of lies and mess from both parties. It was always going to be a disaster.
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Syria is definitely worse than Afghanistan and Afghanistan can best be described as a forced error. Nothing would have made what came next in Afghanistan any better than what we got with biden. The government we spent so much money on was rotten to the core and left instantly. The only options were to back out completely like biden did or reinvade and try to nation build for another 20 years and 3 trillion this time.
Syria and the Iraq withdrawal had us airpower support Iranian militias and the largest damage to global culture we have seen from maybe the soviet union or nazi Germany? Then trump abandoned the Kurdish that were critical in stabilizing the situation and ruined the last partner in the region we had any sort of good will with.
The most you can blame Biden for was going through with a treaty the United States signed which last I checked was supposed to be a good thing.
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Biden's handling of Afghanistan is the only thing I've fully approved of so far. I haven't seen him as nearly as effective of a leader compared to Trump otherwise.
Trump was clearly a total shitbag, but he was an extremely effective leader. The American right wing has a unified and rejuvenated identity. While I think that identity sucks, the republican party knows exactly what it wants and Trump basically crystallized their world view.
On the other hand, when is Biden ever really weighing in on anything? He feels like an office worker more than a leader.
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On March 23 2022 00:04 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 23 2022 00:00 KwarK wrote:On March 22 2022 23:36 gobbledydook wrote:On March 22 2022 23:04 KwarK wrote:On March 22 2022 14:31 gobbledydook wrote:Taelshin has raised two points which he feels have been poorly handled by Biden: war and inflation. War: By all measures the Afghanistan retreat was a complete disaster and we can hardly forget the scenes of desperate Afghans falling off planes to their death trying to escape Kabul. It is quite disingenuous to blame Trump - it was under Biden's leadership that the retreat was planned and carried out and if he thought it wouldn't work he had the right and the duty to change course. Inflation: It is not just the Republicans blaming Biden. Rattner, who worked for Obama, also pointed out how it is not supply chain issues, but rather general overstimulus that has caused the high inflation. Source from thehill.com Its also quite ridiculous to claim that spending three trillion dollars won't increase inflation - it may be argued that it is justified spending, but it definitely is not free and definitely will push up prices. As an aside I think the Democrats are being dishonest when they claim their spending bill is 3 trillion. They're deliberately funding everything for one or two years, and pushing the start dates way back to 2028 or something, while obviously expecting future Congress members to vote to continue the funding. This is just dishonest accounting: it's fine if you think that you need to fund all these priorities about climate change and education and stuff like that but then make your case about how much that will actually cost per year, how that compares to other spending, what benefit that would provide and so on. Would you like a reminder that the Trump era tax cuts (which were accompanied by large spending increases) represented the greatest increase in government borrowing since Bush? There’s functionally very little difference between collecting $100, spending $120 on shit, and then giving the people you collected $100 from $50 back and collecting $50 then spending $120 on shit. In both cases you end up down $70. In both cases the taxpayers paid $50. Trump is not an ideological conservative. He doesn’t believe in fiscal responsibility (or any other kind of responsibility). He’s a populist and someone told him people like both high government spending and large tax cuts. The Democrats are, and always have been, the party of fiscal responsibility because they want to tax and spend and they get held accountable by the Republicans. The Republicans have always been the party of fiscal irresponsibility because they want to do tax cuts while increasing spending and the Democrats don’t really hold them accountable because everyone likes the spending. 1. Tax cuts and entitlement increases are different, because they represent different philosophies about government. The left believes that the government is best placed to fairly provide services to citizens whereas the right believes that the government is prone to wasting money and people should pay less tax and decide what they want to do with that money instead. No one has been able to prove which is better which is why there are two parties on the opposite sides of the argument. 2. It's true that the last time the budget was balanced it was under Bill Clinton, a Democrat. Still I'd say the democrats of today are not the Bill Clinton democrats. They have moved further to the left. 3. My point about the democrats using a misleading accounting trick to obfuscate the true cost of their proposals still stands. If they were honest they'd be able to say how much it costs per year. In response to your 1, your specific issue was with stimulus, the direct payments made to taxpayers. Taking less from taxpayers = refund check from the gov. Stimulus = check from the gov. The stimulus was done through the IRS because they’re the ones with the capability to mail everyone checks because they’re already doing it. It was done through a series of tax credits which were prepaid. I’m not just saying stimulus is functionally identical to a tax cut, I’m saying it was literally a tax cut. The monthly payments to families with kids is an IRS enhanced child tax credit with estimated payments made monthly. The three rounds of stimulus were a prepaid tax cut. 2. Citation needed. Hillary ran on no tax increases and Biden is letting the ridiculous Trump cuts stand. These are not radical tax and spend leftists. The Democrats are, and probably always will be, a centre right party. At least until the old guard retires or dies off. Which unfortunately will be too late for a lot of people.
Guess what, old people both have more money to get taxed, and more time to worry about politics.
That has been true forever and will continue to be true, and that is why the old people always seem to be more conservative and right wing.
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On March 23 2022 10:17 gobbledydook wrote:Show nested quote +On March 23 2022 00:04 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:On March 23 2022 00:00 KwarK wrote:On March 22 2022 23:36 gobbledydook wrote:On March 22 2022 23:04 KwarK wrote:On March 22 2022 14:31 gobbledydook wrote:Taelshin has raised two points which he feels have been poorly handled by Biden: war and inflation. War: By all measures the Afghanistan retreat was a complete disaster and we can hardly forget the scenes of desperate Afghans falling off planes to their death trying to escape Kabul. It is quite disingenuous to blame Trump - it was under Biden's leadership that the retreat was planned and carried out and if he thought it wouldn't work he had the right and the duty to change course. Inflation: It is not just the Republicans blaming Biden. Rattner, who worked for Obama, also pointed out how it is not supply chain issues, but rather general overstimulus that has caused the high inflation. Source from thehill.com Its also quite ridiculous to claim that spending three trillion dollars won't increase inflation - it may be argued that it is justified spending, but it definitely is not free and definitely will push up prices. As an aside I think the Democrats are being dishonest when they claim their spending bill is 3 trillion. They're deliberately funding everything for one or two years, and pushing the start dates way back to 2028 or something, while obviously expecting future Congress members to vote to continue the funding. This is just dishonest accounting: it's fine if you think that you need to fund all these priorities about climate change and education and stuff like that but then make your case about how much that will actually cost per year, how that compares to other spending, what benefit that would provide and so on. Would you like a reminder that the Trump era tax cuts (which were accompanied by large spending increases) represented the greatest increase in government borrowing since Bush? There’s functionally very little difference between collecting $100, spending $120 on shit, and then giving the people you collected $100 from $50 back and collecting $50 then spending $120 on shit. In both cases you end up down $70. In both cases the taxpayers paid $50. Trump is not an ideological conservative. He doesn’t believe in fiscal responsibility (or any other kind of responsibility). He’s a populist and someone told him people like both high government spending and large tax cuts. The Democrats are, and always have been, the party of fiscal responsibility because they want to tax and spend and they get held accountable by the Republicans. The Republicans have always been the party of fiscal irresponsibility because they want to do tax cuts while increasing spending and the Democrats don’t really hold them accountable because everyone likes the spending. 1. Tax cuts and entitlement increases are different, because they represent different philosophies about government. The left believes that the government is best placed to fairly provide services to citizens whereas the right believes that the government is prone to wasting money and people should pay less tax and decide what they want to do with that money instead. No one has been able to prove which is better which is why there are two parties on the opposite sides of the argument. 2. It's true that the last time the budget was balanced it was under Bill Clinton, a Democrat. Still I'd say the democrats of today are not the Bill Clinton democrats. They have moved further to the left. 3. My point about the democrats using a misleading accounting trick to obfuscate the true cost of their proposals still stands. If they were honest they'd be able to say how much it costs per year. In response to your 1, your specific issue was with stimulus, the direct payments made to taxpayers. Taking less from taxpayers = refund check from the gov. Stimulus = check from the gov. The stimulus was done through the IRS because they’re the ones with the capability to mail everyone checks because they’re already doing it. It was done through a series of tax credits which were prepaid. I’m not just saying stimulus is functionally identical to a tax cut, I’m saying it was literally a tax cut. The monthly payments to families with kids is an IRS enhanced child tax credit with estimated payments made monthly. The three rounds of stimulus were a prepaid tax cut. 2. Citation needed. Hillary ran on no tax increases and Biden is letting the ridiculous Trump cuts stand. These are not radical tax and spend leftists. The Democrats are, and probably always will be, a centre right party. At least until the old guard retires or dies off. Which unfortunately will be too late for a lot of people. Guess what, old people both have more money to get taxed, and more time to worry about politics. That has been true forever and will continue to be true, and that is why the old people always seem to be more conservative and right wing.
Not sure what this has to do with my reply to Kwark but cool story bro.
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On March 22 2022 02:39 lestye wrote:
I don’t think that has to do with Putin being scared of Trump. Trump was doing more damage to NATO than Putin could ever hope for. Not to mention Trump was hostile to zalinskyy
Bit late here but I'm not sure it's accurate to say that Trump did damage to NATO. To the contrary he (unlike other presidents) successfully induced other NATO members to increase their defense spending. That's a concrete boost to NATO.
Even if it was true that trump was damaging NATO and hostile to Zelenskyy, those would have both been strong incentives for Putin to invade Ukraine during trumps term. But that didn't happen even though Putin had every reason to do it. Seems to me that it's reasonable to infer that trump is the reason putin did not invade Ukraine during the years 2017-2020.
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On March 23 2022 09:28 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On March 23 2022 09:26 Mohdoo wrote:
Biden's handling of Afghanistan is the only thing I've fully approved of so far. I haven't seen him as nearly as effective of a leader compared to Trump otherwise.
Trump was clearly a total shitbag, but he was an extremely effective leader. The American right wing has a unified and rejuvenated identity. While I think that identity sucks, the republican party knows exactly what it wants and Trump basically crystallized their world view.
On the other hand, when is Biden ever really weighing in on anything? He feels like an office worker more than a leader. Your definition of effective leader and mine are very very different. Trump made America more fractured, his job was to lead thr US, he was horrid.
The US is not unified and the US will never be unified. The civil war was never settled and we continue to exist as 2 separate, co-existing cultures. The idea that some president will come along and unify the nation is just not a real thing. The only thing a president can realistically do is rally their side. Trump did that. Biden is not unifying his side. Biden is totally failing to unite democrats and give them a cohesive identity. I see the fundamental purpose of a US president to unify their party and give it an identity.
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Biden has done an excellent job of repaying the favors of Clinton allies who got the short end of the stick due to the Trump intermission in 2016. The administration is clearly filled to the brim with the Obama-era people that Clinton herself would have promoted to said roles. Far as I'm concerned that was his main objective for the party that advanced him, and Biden fulfilled that role to the letter.
Obviously his approval rating is about as bad as Trump's own and he doesn't even have the benefit of a hardcore fanbase. That fully lukewarm level of support has and will continue to cost him, and the infrastructure bill will likely be the first and last real piece of meaningful domestic legislation of this entire presidency.
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On March 23 2022 11:42 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On March 23 2022 11:16 Mohdoo wrote:On March 23 2022 09:28 JimmiC wrote:On March 23 2022 09:26 Mohdoo wrote:
Biden's handling of Afghanistan is the only thing I've fully approved of so far. I haven't seen him as nearly as effective of a leader compared to Trump otherwise.
Trump was clearly a total shitbag, but he was an extremely effective leader. The American right wing has a unified and rejuvenated identity. While I think that identity sucks, the republican party knows exactly what it wants and Trump basically crystallized their world view.
On the other hand, when is Biden ever really weighing in on anything? He feels like an office worker more than a leader. Your definition of effective leader and mine are very very different. Trump made America more fractured, his job was to lead thr US, he was horrid. The US is not unified and the US will never be unified. The civil war was never settled and we continue to exist as 2 separate, co-existing cultures. The idea that some president will come along and unify the nation is just not a real thing. The only thing a president can realistically do is rally their side. Trump did that. Biden is not unifying his side. Biden is totally failing to unite democrats and give them a cohesive identity. I see the fundamental purpose of a US president to unify their party and give it an identity. Good old american exceptialism. Trump did rally the otherside enough to win someone you all seem to hate in Joe Biden. So even by your odd defintion he did poorly. I mean think of what a large and diverse group of people voted for Biden, and many would argue, Trump did that.
What about this is American exceptionalism?
The president is the party’s figurehead, they should be unifying and leading their party and helping to dictate and or communicate their parties goals and priorities as well as how to achieve those goals and priorities.
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And I always thought the president was the countries figure head.
But party before country, you are right.
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On March 23 2022 15:51 mahrgell wrote:
And I always thought the president was the countries figure head.
But party before country, you are right.
Same for me. I guess you never stop learning.
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Norway28892 Posts
It does remind me of this John Oliver clip where he's interviewing an American and an Australian politician and he's asking them what their goal as a politician is, and while the Australian goes 'making society a better place', the American one just instinctively answers 'getting reelected by his or her constituency'.
+ Show Spoiler +
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You can't make society a better place if you don't get re-elected, I guess. The American politician was just too honest.
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There's a lot of ways to make society a better place besides being a politician. But since our political system is so blatantly "pay to play", it's not surprising that idealism quickly withers and dies there.
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On March 23 2022 15:51 mahrgell wrote:
And I always thought the president was the countries figure head.
But party before country, you are right.
They are. And they are pushing their party's agenda as the country's figurehead. The idea that the President is the figurehead of the US and the idea that the President will try and further the goals of the party they belong to aren't mutually exclusive.
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EPT
