shmessy

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"They (Patriots) may be the greatest team ever" - Chris Mortenson, January 18, 2005 on espn.com

Patters

The weak dollar really sucks. The last time I was in England, the cheapest meal (and I mean cheap--a cruddy sandwich and cup of soup in a styrofoam cup) cost $25 for two and ride on the subway (privatized under Blair) toa nearby suburb cost $7.

Now, countries like China are moving towards greater diversification of their currency investments, which I think will lead to higher interest rates, and the weaker dollar is putting more and more pressure on foreign companies to raise prices here, resulting in inflation (at a rate even the government with its fraudulent calculation methods can't hide).

patsfan13

Too much government spending as a % of GDP, solution, reduce government spending as a % of GDP.


Oh yeah, develop muke energy, start drilling our own oil (Gulf and Anwar & Utah tar sands, coal out west ect), build some refineries (none built for over 30 years), this would dramatically our balance of trade deficits.

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"Some guys play in all-star games, some guys don't. I don't know who picks all those all-star teams. In all honesty, I don't know who picks the combine, for that matter," Belichick said. "How does (Miami-Ohio offensive lineman Brandon) Brooks not get invited to the combine? How did Vollmer not get invited to the combine? I don't know. We can't really worry about that. We just have to try to evaluate them the best we can."

Fogbuster

I've seen the value of the dollar cut almost in half here in Lithuania, since I arrived 11 years ago. Where once the local currency was pegged to the dollar, it is now pegged to the Euro, and we all know how that has risen against the dollar. Life goes on.

Nonetheless, the weak dollar is the only thing that keeps millions upon millions of jobs in America. American goods cannot compete very well in a world being undersold at every turn when ridiculously cheap Chinese goods are everywhere. You take dirt cheap Chinese labor (average worker makes $50 to 100 a month), coupled with the poorest safety and health conditions for those Chinese workers, and there is no way American workers can compete for the world market. Even the high-tech industries, traditionally ruled by American companies -- corporations, almost all -- are now feeling the Chinese (and other nations) nipping at the heels. (IBM personal computers/laptops are now "Lenovo", a Chinese company.)

A cheap dollar is what makes U.S. goods attractive and what keeps the economy afloat. It's what is keeping U.S. firms in business and people employed. If the dollar were to suddenly rise, you'd see millions of jobs disappear over night. Nobody wants to see that.



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Real World

Let them raise prices so people buy American. That's not a problem for us, that's a benefit. China is going to have serious problems in about 10 years, when their population reaches a critical age demographic, and they begin to loose working age people. If you want to see what inflation is like, watch what happens in China in the years after 2015.

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"The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him."
Leo Tolstoy, 1897

Patters

We need to keep the economy in balance, something Clinton did effectively. The cheap dollar certainly has its benefits to the country, but at the same time more and more of our country is being bought up by foreigners. For instance, one of the reasons that real estate prices have held their own in places like NYC is because foreigners are buying it. Americans can't compete even at home. In addition, the dollar was quite strong under Clinton and we still competed very effectively.

Fogbuster

Clinton wasn't fighting a war. In fact, it is BECAUSE Clinton ignored national security issues so flagrantly, a gross dereliction of duty as bad as having sex with an intern in the Oval Office, that America has been burdened so much with the cost of this war, now about 1.5 Trillion. If Clinton had just kept the watch on duty, allowed the CIA and FBI to do their jobs (checking to see why foreign nationals were learning how to fly planes but not how to LAND them, instead of getting all cranked up with burning down religious zealots at Waco and taking children from American relatives and sending them back to Castro's Cuba), then the American economy today would be MUCH stronger than it was under Clinton.

Tax cuts and a national security re-investment worked for Reagan, reviving a moribund U.S. economy under a brain-dead Jimmy Cahter, and they would work again. But because of Clinton's gross dereliction, we are now all paying the price.

America would disappear as the world leader if the Clinton's ever got back into the White House.


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Patters

You have to believe that since your world view is apparently built on it. The fact is Clinton did far more for national security than Bush. We lose people every day under Bush, Iran and North Korea are both on the way to becoming nuclear powers, and even during his first 8 months he did nothing to fight threats to our homeland.

Yep, that's the Christian way. Let's separate kids from their dads in the name of politics. And, why didn't Bush do anything during his first 8 months? I think both Clinton and Bush acted according to the available intelligence which had kept the country safe for many many years.

Deficit spending worked for brain dead (literally, practically) Reagan and the economy actually started to improve during Carter's last year. That said, Reagan, like Clinton, did what he was supposed to do, kept the country in good shape (by many measures) during his term.

The fact is historically, the economy has done better under Democrats since 1900, so you don't even have history on your side:

http://www.slate.com/default.aspx?id=2071929

America has been disappearing as a world leader since Bush showed the world that Al Qaeda could attack us during the watch of a "tough Republican," that we can't find Osama, that we can't win in Iraq, and that we can't stop Iran or N. Korea from going nuke. Bush is a weakling (relative to other presidents). I knew that the moment he hid out and the nation cowered on 9/11 when he refused to order Air Force 1 back to DC. Republican presidents: bad for the economy, bad for security.

Fogbuster

My "world view" does not make the facts. Facts make facts. And the fact is that because Bill and Hillary Clinton both abhor the military and all things related with national security, they utterly and totally FAILED to get Osama bin Laden and the other radical Islamists when they had the chance. Those are FACTS, not my "world view".

The FACT that the Clintons allowed foreign nationals -- people from nations where KNOWN anti-Western radicals were growing in number daily (Saudi Arabia, for one) -- to enter the U.S., attend commercial flight school to learn how to fly jumbo passenger jets but NEVER finished their courses on HOW TO LAND, and then slip off into the night speaks unequivocally to the FACT that the Clintons are completely AWOL on the issue of national security. It was the CLINTONS who gave the U.S. 9/11, no one else.


So Bill Clinton tried to lure Elian Gonzalez father from Cuba to join his son in America ???? I mean, Elian's mother only gave her life to escape from that hell hole of communist dictatorship, that's all. Might have been worth a try for Clinton to try to bring in the father, but Clinton didn't even lift a finger. Instead he caved like a sand castle at high tide. Might not count for much in your book, but it does in mine.


Started to "improve" in Carter's years!!! You must be too young to remember the odd/even days when people could buy gas; the four hour waits (and longer) to get five or ten gallons. You forgot/never knew the 18% inflation rate. Economists had to invent a new term, "stagflation", where the economy was going down the tank while inflation was hitting historical all-time highs.


"Slate", now there's a non-biased source.

Yes, the economy under the Dems has often heated up ... because the Dems discovered how to BORROW MONEY by the BOATLOAD, and then stick the next generation with the tab. FDR did some good things with the public works projects, etc, but he left a debt that is still being paid off.




I know it breaks the hearts of many liberals to admit that things are turning around in Iraq, but thems the facts. At the rate it's going, they will be a fully functioning democratic republic in less than ten years, with a middle class of well-educated and very capable young people ready, willing, and able to lead Iraq into a new future. It's happening, as even CNN and the BBC have to admit, even as some in their employ are trying hard to ignore it.

Patters, since you chose to lead off by laying my statements all on my "world view", I'm going to say in return that the real reason you back liberal Dems over more conservative Repubs is because you are scared to death that a more conservative value system is gaining greater and greater momentum, as it begins to replace the off-the-wall "world view" of the free-sex and homosex movement to which you have chosen to adhere. There can be no doubt that a Dem candidate -- ANY Dem candidate, from Hillary to Edwards to even Obama -- will be FAR MORE beholden to the liberal wing of the electorate, the wing that condones or even favors same-sex marriage and those kinds of things, than any of the Repub candidates, including Rudy Giulliani. You are down on conservatives and Repubs because you want to continue your personal lifestyle, not because of Iraq, military spending or food programs for the poor. You pick on conservatives and Repubs because they are a danger to what you want to do in your PERSONAL LIFE. And putting your personal individualistic life above the public good is where you are gravely mistaken.



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QuiGon

Of course, Gisele's probably the only Brazilian eschewing the American dollar... all the rest of them are breaking the door down to get in here for our free money, health care, education, etc...