Summations Only

Nobody said it was the only reason, but I can't see how you can argue that it doesn't contribute. Evidence shows that McCain had the national equivalent of a "home-state advantage" just by being white. http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/...-are-we-ask-googleThe birther stuff? The "taking America back"? That's racism.

I don't think that, and I did not say or imply that.I do see racism as a substantial part of the "birther" nonsense, and that is a significant portion of Obama's opposition.

What gets lost in these blank and white debates over who is at fault is that the right answer is probably that they ALL are at fault.The repeal of depression era regulations that created the bubble in Bush's term was actually passed at the end of the Clinton administration. A democratic signature on bills crafted by republicans for the express purpose of allowing the recklessness that happened.Bush though, was well on board with all of this. He presided over weak and lazy regulators and allowed them to perpetuate the revolving door of WallStreet execs who become regulators and vice-versa.I am a big Obama fan but I will be 100% honest when I say this is a place where I totally think he has failed. His support of the CFPB is a small step in the right direction but he basically has been just as accomodating. Nearly his entire economic team are the same kind of guys who believe that a strong financial sector = a strong economy. They just have a (D) after their name instead of an (R) and so are less ideologically opposed to regulation.The only bright spot has been the rise of Elizabeth Warren and her "wing" of the Democratic party. Obama can probably legitimatly be credited for that.So was it Bush's fault? Yes. But like many true things, reality is more complicated and he certainly isn't the SOLE person at fault.Cutting taxes while we are at war is also just plain stupid....REALLY REALLY stupid.

It seems to me the country has become so polarized it is ineffectual.I feel the GOP has entrenched themselves so far right they can not concede one iota. Even with a Democratic majority in both houses and a Democratic president almost nothing got done. Health care just barely passed and was whittled away to a crap bill. (better than nothing.)
I cant stand the Democratic wusses and
am starting to fu^%$# hate the GOP and all it stands for.I will vote for Obama simply because he seems like he actually does care about this country.

But cutting taxes when you can borrow money at a negative interest rate is really smart. Why impoverish your population when there's money to be had for free?The more I learn about it, the more I think that the moral case for taxation really is best avoided, since it leads you in all the wrong directions. The practical case for taxation makes sense because the government spends money. The diminishing marginal utility of money is a bulletproof justification for progressive tax rates that disproportionately target the well-off. Since what you tax, you also discourage, it makes sense to have consumption taxes on things we have public policy reasons to desire that people consume less of.Expenditures, I think, should reflect some moral reasoning. War is an expenditure and it should either be justified or avoided. But it doesn't matter how you pay for expenditures except that you pay for them in the way that causes the least harm. When negative interest rates are available to the government, government borrowing is how the government should pay for its expenditures. Whether that's during a time of war or a time of peace is completely irrelevant.

I agree mostly.I don't recall how low interest rates were in 2002 for this particular circumstance.The problem is that the tax cuts created a structural deficit situation and then the war on top of that made it worse.I hear what you are saying which that the notion of the-sky-is-falling when we are in debt is wrong. My problem is that Bush was asking the nation to make sacrafices while at the same time was handing out piles of cash and it setup a combined fiscal-political situation that is strangling us today.

I think I hate democratic wusses more. Its easy to hate people like Paul Ryan, devotee of Ayan Rand who is very explicit about how he wants to screw over his fellow man. It is much more infuriating when democrats don't speak up like they should.It is unfortunate that some of the best champions for progressivism were swept away in 2010 like Russ Feingold and Alan Grayson. They stood on principle and we let them down by not showing up. We need more people like them so that we have some damn solidarity in congress.We can start to make up for things by getting Elizabeth Warren into the Senate and Grayson back his seat in the house. Obama win or loose, it is a 4 year issue (not to diminish it too much). Warren in the Senate could be a firebrand for decades and it could be a stepping stone on the way to the first woman president.

Negative interest rate?

Does the president's gender matter?

Yes, a negative interest rate. Did you have a question?

The question mark should have been a dead giveaway. Perhaps you could clarify what it is you mean by a 'negative interest rate'.

It's a loan where the interest rate is a negative number instead of a positive one.I don't see how my meaning is particularly unclear. You'll have to ask a more specific question, I guess.

You've asked a series of questions each of which seems to suggest that one poster or the other is an idiot.If you go back and read Jazzns post, it is pretty clear that he is proposing that a specific woman, namely Elizabeth Warren, might become president.

No. That was just my way of expressing support for Elizabeth Warren.Can I ask why you tend to pick out the most innocuous things from my posts that don't relate whatsoever to the main point I was making?

You support her because she's female? You made a point of her being a woman, something anyone could have figured out just by looking at her name. On top of this you mentioned that she would be the first female president, another point hardly missed by anyone aware of the fact that she's a female.When people state the obvious, it's usually to give it emphasis, to draw the audience's attention toward the subject.Unless I've misinterpreted something, I suppose my question still stands: why does the president's gender matter?