November election(Obama referendum)

And how does the Tea-Party affect the Republicans.

No mid term election is EVER solely a referendum on the President. Ever.

...and we know this from virtually every pre-election and exit poll for the last 50 midterms which specifically asks voters if the President is a reason they voting for or against a particular party.

Best thing that can happen for Obama is that the Democrats lose both houses, then he can blame the Republicans for any grid lock and lack of success between now and 2012 when he campaigns again for President. As in marriage a lose is a win.

brilliant.

bulimic.

Question for anyone: does Riversider put any thought whatsoever into his/her posts? Puerile waste of time.

Nationally, this election is surely a referendum on Obama and the Democrat leadership in Congress.

What a useless comment. It is well known that the incumbent President's party always does poorly in off-year elections and the primary driver is the economic situation. The voters are not smart enough to realize that Bush is to blame for the current state of the economy, so they lash out at the available target. This is 1994 all over again. The voters will vote into office a wave of incompetent Republicans, who have no idea how to govern or any inclination to do so, and they will suffer the consequences in 2012 when the Democrats win the WH again. The only question is who the Bob Dole of 2012 will be. I say Mitt Romney.

midtowner- thanks for more unintelligent partisan drivel from a far left liberal. Maybe at some point you will have something useful to say.

You make a good point LIC. Clearly there are good and bad candidates across both parties, but if we as a State or Country want to get past this, then it starts with the general voting public saying enough to the partisan non-sense. I'm certain that not an insignificant number of votes will merely walk into the voting booth and go all blue or all red and never think what the candidate offers. And the result of this is the clowns we currently have up in Albay. Was it that long ago, when we all saw the childish scene with Republicans and Democrats locking each other out of the legislature and holding dueling votes?

LICComment: Your comment -- which is nothing more than a personal attack on someone you don't even know -- certainly isn't "useful." In fact, it says nothing at all. At least Riversider (despite all the typos) had something to say, even if I disagree with most of it. You, on the other hand, have nothing to say, so you launch into a partisan attack (which, actually, is exactly what your buddy Riversider is complaining about). You both need to work on that ole sense of irony!

Oooh...someone likes the smell of their own farts!

midtowner- I didn't personally attack at all. I commented on the content of your post, which was nothing but regurgitated liberal talking points. In my opinion, your post was unintelligent and inaccurate.

This election is a referendum on the policies of Obama and the Democratic leadership in Congress. The country will give a clear message that it disagrees with those policies. I also think this election will in a lesser form be a repudiation of the leftward shift of Republicans during the Bush years. I believe this is all a good thing, because the liberal policies advance by Obama and Congress the past year and a half are harmful to the long-term future of America.

"Best thing that can happen for Obama is that the Democrats lose both houses, then he can blame the Republicans for any grid lock and lack of success between now and 2012 when he campaigns again for President. As in marriage a lose is a win."

Best thing that can happen to obama is that he resign tomorrow and returns to academia. He and his crew of marxists can sit around the faculty lounge and debate and plot the destruction of America.

LICComment -- "A repudiation of the leftward shift of Republicans during the Bush years"? That is one of the most incredible (as in unbelievable) statements I have seen in quite a while. Almost no rationale observer would agree with that statement; it is pure claptrap, probably uttered by Rush, Glenn Beck or some other room temperature IQ commentator. What liberal policies are you talking about? A watered-down healthcare bill? Everything else has been a continuation of the Bush presidency. Obama and his crew should be scolded for not breaking enough with the prior administration; calling them "liberal" is a misnomer.

julialg -- If you think Obama is a "marxist," you haven't been paying attention because he is actually as centrist as Bill Clinton (perhaps more so). Reflexively calling your opponent a "communist" (or a "fascist," for that matter) isn't political discourse; it is attaching a label to someone because you don't have anything worthwhile to say. McCarthyism adds nothing.

Oh, MidtownerEast. You're right. I forgot. In your circles obama is right of center. I have to know my audience better, so sorry.

No problem; apology accepted.

I think he is more like a thug. Ya know, in the chavez model.

I hear you; I can't stand those people from other countries.

No i love people from other countries. ( Just not the thug 'leaders') . The criminals that don't believe in individual rights and private property like obama.

Sorry, I have a rule against debating with people who are off their meds. I'll let you foam at the mouth in peace.

"isn't political discourse; it is attaching a label to someone because you don't have anything worthwhile to say. McCarthyism adds "nothing.
"Sorry, I have a rule against debating with people who are off their meds. I'll let you foam at the mouth in peace."

Typical leftist. Anyone who doesn't agree with you is stupid a moron a teabagger or a lunatic.

I didn't call you stupid, a moron or a teabagger; you did. I did, however, question your sanity because of your statement that Obama is a "criminal" that doesn't believe in individual rights and private property. That's just crazy talk, without any proof. If that were the case, we'd be living on collective farms or be in jail as in Stalinist Russia. You know in your heart of hearts that you don't believe any of that. You are just stuck without an argument, so you attack. Typical of someone who has no ideas and nothing to say. If I wanted to be a "typical leftist," I would call you a "fascist" to match your overheated rhetoric. But I won't because that is an overstatement and I don't have any proof of it. However, your blathering about Obama being a thug or a criminal does call your psychological state into question.

"It is well known that the incumbent President's party always does poorly in off-year elections and the primary driver is the economic situation"

This doesn't make any sense at all.

If the president always does poorly and its because of the economy, this would require the economy to always be poor.

Methinks someone is just making excuses for what is about to happen.

What a useless comment. It is well known that the incumbent President's party always does poorly in off-year elections and the primary driver is the economic situation. The voters are not smart enough to realize that Bush is to blame for the current state of the economy, so they lash out at the available target. This is 1994 all over again. The voters will vote into office a wave of incompetent Republicans, who have no idea how to govern or any inclination to do so, and they will suffer the consequences in 2012 when the Democrats win the WH again. The only question is who the Bob Dole of 2012 will be. I say Mitt Romney."

Again, typical elitist leftist comments. The voters are "not smart enough" "its all bush's fault" "they lash out"etc,etc....We should just have really really intelligent people(you) to just tell everyone how to live and what to do. We NEED people like you to control the masses. And, for the record, I do believe in my "heart of hearts" that obama would want to have power and control over people if he could.

oh julia the ugly one.

you don't have a heart.

you're a robot.

Well, I do think its a referendum on the Democratic Party overall.... problem is, Obama hasn't shown any independence from them and their failures.

It is a referendum, but not for the reason everyone tinks. The left is angry Obama for not championing their agenda, and the right believes Obama is too left of center. The truth is the majority of the country is not right or left.

The truth is on social issues the country is and always has been slightly left of center but on fiscal issues that would change to slightly right of center. This doesn't mean there aren't extremes at both ends.

It was a mistake after Obama got elected for the Democratic leadership to assume the country had shifted as much to the left as they thought. They even ignored their own blue dog democrats.

I can see the potential for the Republican leadership to make the exact same mistake, and confusing the country's desire for fiscal conservatism for a change in social values.

Somewhereelse -- When I said the primary driver is the economy, I meant that it generally (with some exceptions) dictates how the incumbent will do. So, my comment does not assume the economy is doing poorly; it assumes that the economy, above all else, determines how the sitting party will fare. It is not an excuse; it is an explanation. The real issue is who is to blame for the poor economy and that is obviously where many disagree. Kind of amazing that I had to explain that to you.

the real issue is who you are and why you are all over the place.

I generally agree with Riversider on the description of the electorate (more left, socially, and more conservative, fiscally), but I disagree that the Democratic leadership made a wrong assumption about a leftward shift. Healthcare isn't a left or right issue; it is a basic right. To the extent it has to be labelled, I see it as more of a social issue than a fiscal one (although, of course, it has fiscal ramifications). I would draw an analogy to Social Security; it was reviled in its day as encroaching socialism, but now it is seen (appropriately) as an entrenched right and a "social" issue rather than a strictly fiscal one. I also agree with Riversider -- twice in one comment(!) -- that the Republicans will wrongly view their upcoming electoral success with a "mandate" on social issues. It will be 1994 and Contract with America, Part II.

of course you agree with riversider.

Also, one other explanation of "the referendum". Bill Clinton said a while ago, "It's the economy stupid", and more than any other factor people hold the current people accountable. They associated the in-guy with the problem. Good example was that George H Bush was voted out because of the bad economy, even though it was already improving at the time of the election.

"Healthcare isn't a left or right issue; it is a basic right" Who pays for the right? I see it as more of a social issue than a fiscal one (although, of course, it has fiscal ramifications). Of, course.

And I'm sure you consider yourself a moderate.

Julialg -- You make so little sense I'll just ignore you, except to say that I am not a moderate in ant sense of the word. Immoderate, for clarity.

Columbia County -- For clarity, I only agree with a small part of what Riversider says and those limited statements on the electorate seem to be fairly conventional views; I fundamentally disagree with his/her claim that the Democrats wrongly counted on a leftward shift. To the contrary, the Democrats lacked the will to do what was right for the economy and have stupidly continued the economic policies of Bush.

for clarity.

who were you before 9 AM today?

For clarity, Healthcare isn't a right, nor is social security of housing or food stamps. Anything that somebody else's hard work provides is not a right. Liberty is a right,the pursuit of happiness is a right, to be left alone from people like midtownerleft is a right.

Midtown, the guys in charge of economic policy are very much the guys who were previously in charge.
Bernanke is a Greenpsan protege.
Summers and Geithern worked for Bob Rubin

Perhaps it's not reasonable to expect radically different policies from the old team, since they would have to first admit the old policies were wrong.

Julia -- Happy to leave you alone if you don't post stupid stuff, but the liberty, pursuit of happiness and "don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes" lines you quote above aren't intelligent commentary. It's just dogma to make you feel better about being selfish and angry. If you don't believe in the social contract, you can opt out but don't expect roads, police protection, fire fighters, etc. Your world view went out sometime just before the French Revolution. And what exactly is "social security of housing" and how can I get it?

where is the clarity in who you are and where you appeared from?

I'll start with the "appeared from" because that is easier. According to my parents, I was born. If you want deeper, I can't get that philosophical.

I am not falling for the "who am I" question because I like the anonymity of the board. But I hope you aren't implying that I am Riversider because I partially agreed with him/her. Good Lord, no. I would suspect that he/she and I wouldn't agree on much of anything, but I don't believe in slamming everything someone says because I don't agree with them generally and probably wouldn't like them. That would me -- a flaming liberal -- as bad as they are. If their only retort is that I am a liberal (the julialg approach), that doesn't faze me because I don't understand why that is a slur and being called a "conservative" is some badge of honor.

Essentially, I don't get the tone of your questions because it sounds like we might be on the same side. But if this is a board where only a few get to comment, I won't bother anymore and I'll move on.

Only people who follow columbiacounty's rules are permitted.

Health care and social security have to be paid for somehow. The view that the only means to providing affordable, effective health care is through government control is, in my opinion, an incorrect one.

Social security is both a fiscal and social issue. I believe a society should take care of those who cannot take care of themselves. That being said, many 62-65 year olds have the means to take care of themselves, and many retirees have considerable means to take care of themselves. Better indexing of benefits, means-testing benefits, and raising the retirement age for those not now close to retirement. These fiscal measures can ensure the ability to provide the social benefits, without substantial harm to the overall economy. Liberals generally would disagree and seek to give away the most and raise taxes.

"julia -- Happy to leave you alone if you don't post stupid stuff," I vote to put midtownerleft in charge. He/she should decide what posts are worthy and what posts are stupid. Due to his superior intelligence and unequaled experience, midtownerleft ought to be the new streeteasy posting czar.

Okay, thanks. Or are you being sarcastic? I can't tell.

why don't you follow your own suggestion and move on?

Oh, and by the way, julialg, your last post has been deemed by me to be unworthy.

" I won't bother anymore and I'll move on"

OK...get going.

So many "trolls" to choose from. Beetlejuice's head must be spinning up in Columbia County. Who is it? Is it another Riversider? Matt? Buyer? Rachel? David? Carol? Erich? Alison? Mutumbo? Sideline? Eddie Wilson? Carl Paladino?

Columbia County -- Dude, what's your problem?

Also, midtownerleft, please czar, can you increase my food ration for the month? And is it okay to read books that aren't on the official progressive web site?

note above. you are.

Columbia County -- Ok, I will; have fun in anger management class. I heard you get to go to a Yankees game at the end.

julialg -- Stupid and unfunny is no way to go through life.

Hitler was a socialist.

midtownerleft... Read and learn... Get your head out of the progressive handbook.

The nasty little secret they don't want you to know!

THE OMINOUS PARALLELS, by Leonard Peikoff...

A Veritas News Service Book Review - "A magnificent work... it should be required reading for all Americans. This book reveals socialisms nasty little secret." William Cooper

Excerpt from Chapter One.

The Nazis were not a tribe of prehistoric savages. Their crimes were the official, legal acts and policies of modern Germany -- an educated, industrialized, CIVILIZED Western European nation, a nation renowned throughout the world for the luster of its intellectual and cultural achievements. By reason of its long line of famous artists and thinkers, Germany has been called "the land of poets and philosophers."

But its education offered the country no protection against the Sergeant Molls in its ranks. The German university students were among the earliest groups to back Hitler. The intellectuals were among his regime's most ardent supporters. Professors with distinguished academic credentials, eager to pronounce their benediction on the Fuhrer's cause, put their scholarship to work full time; they turned out a library of admiring volumes, adorned with obscure allusions and learned references.

The Nazis did not gain power against the country's wishes. In this respect there was no gulf between the intellectuals and the people. The Nazi party was elected to office by the freely cast ballots of millions of German voters, including men on every social, economic, and educational level. In the national election of July 1932, the Nazis obtained 37% of the vote and a plurality of seats in the Reichstag. On January 30, 1933, in full accordance with the country's legal and constitutional principles, Hitler was appointed Chancellor. Five weeks later, in the last (and semi-free) election of the pre-totalitarian period, the Nazis obtained 17 million votes, 44% of the total.

The voters were aware of the Nazi ideology. Nazi literature, including statements of the Nazi plans for the future, papered the country during the last years of the Weimar Republic. "Mein Kampf" alone sold more than 200,000 copies between 1925 and 1932. The essence of the political system which Hitler intended to establish in Germany was clear.

In 1933, when Hitler did establish the system he had promised, he did not find it necessary to forbid foreign travel. Until World War II, those Germans who wished to flee the country could do so. The overwhelming majority did not. They were satisfied to remain.

The system which Hitler established -- the social reality which so many Germans were so eager to embrace or so willing to endure -- the politics which began in a theory and ended in Auschwitz -- was: the "total state". The term, from which the adjective "totalitarian" derives, was coined by Hitler's mentor, Mussolini.

The state must have absolute power over every man and over every sphere of human activity, the Nazis declared. "The authority of the Fuhrer is not limited by checks and controls, by special autonomous bodies or individual rights, but it is free and independent, all-inclusive and unlimited," said Ernst Huber, an official party spokesman, in 1933.

"The concept of personal liberties of the individual as opposed to the authority of the state had to disappear; it is not to be reconciled with the principle of the nationalistic Reich," said Huber to a country which listened, and nodded. "There are no personal liberties of the individual which fall outside of the realm of the state and which must be respected by the state... The constitution of the nationalistic Reich is therefore not based upon a system of inborn and inalienable rights of the individual."

If the term "statism" designates concentration of power in the state at the expense of individual liberty, then Nazism in politics was a form of statism. In principle, it did not represent a new approach to government; it was a continuation of the political absolutism -- the absolute monarchies, the oligarchies, the theocracies, the random tyrannies -- which has characterized most of human history.

In degree, however, the total state does differ from its predecessors: it represents statism pressed to its limits, in theory and in practice, devouring the last remnants of the individual. Although previous dictators (and many today; e.g., in Latin America) often preached the unlimited power of the state, they were on the whole unable to enforce such power. As a rule, citizens of such countries had a kind of partial "freedom", not a freedom-on-principle, but at least a freedom-by-default.

Even the latter was effectively absent in Nazi Germany. The efficiency of the government in dominating its subjects, the all-encompassing character of its coercion, the complete mass regimentation on a scale involving millions of men -- and, one might add, the enormity of the slaughter, the planned, systematic mass slaughter, in peacetime, initiated by a government against its own citizens -- these are the insignia of twentieth-century totalitarianism (Nazi AND communist), which are without parallel in recorded history. In the totalitarian regimes, as the Germans found out after only a few months of Hitler's rule, every detail of life is prescribed, or proscribed. There is no longer any distinction between private matters and public matters. "There are to be no more private Germans," said Friedrich Sieburg, a Nazi writer; "each is to attain significance only by his service to the state, and to find complete self-fulfillment in his service." "The only person who is still a private individual in Germany," boasted Robert Ley, a member of the Nazi hierarchy, after several years of Nazi rule, "is somebody who is asleep."

In place of the despised "private individuals," the Germans heard daily or hourly about a different kind of entity, a supreme entity, whose will, it was said, is what determines the course and actions of the state: the nation, the whole, the GROUP. Over and over, the Germans heard the idea that underlies the advocacy of omnipotent government, the idea that totalitarians of every kind stress as the justification of their total states: COLLECTIVISM.

Collectivism is the theory that the group (the collective) has primacy over the individual. Collectivism holds that, in human affairs, the collective -- society, the community, the nation, the proletariat, the race, etc. -- is THE UNIT OF REALITY AND THE STANDARD OF VALUE. On this view, the individual has reality only as part of the group, and value only insofar as he serves it; on his own he has no political rights; he is to be sacrificed for the group whenever it -- or its representative, the state -- deems this desirable.

Fascism, said one of its leading spokesmen, Alfredo Rocco, stresses:

...the necessity, for which the older doctrines make little allowance, of sacrifice, even up to the total immolation of individuals, on behalf of society... For Liberalism (i.e., individualism), the individual is the end and society the means; nor is it conceivable that the individual, considered in the dignity of an ultimate finality, be lowered to mere instrumentality. For Fascism, society is the end, individuals the means, and its whole life consists in using individuals as instruments for its social ends.

"The higher interests involved in the life of the whole," said Hitler in a 1933 speech, "must here set the limits and lay down the duties of the interests of the individual." Men, echoed the Nazis, have to "realize that the State is more important than the individual, that individuals must be willing and ready to sacrifice themselves for Nation and Fuhrer." The people, said the Nazis, "form a true organism," a "living unity", whose cells are individual persons. In reality, therefore -- appearances to the contrary notwithstanding -- there is no such thing as an "isolated individual" or an autonomous man.

Just as the individual is to be regarded merely as a fragment of the group, the Nazis said, so his possessions are to be regarded as a fragment of the group's wealth.

"Private property" as conceived under the liberalistic economy order was a reversal of the true concept of property [wrote Huber]. This "private property" represented the right of the individual to manage and to speculate with inherited or acquired property as he pleased, without regard for the general interests... German socialism had to overcome this "private", that is, unrestrained and irresponsible view of property. All property is common property. The owner is bound by the people and the Reich to the responsible management of his goods. His legal position is only justified when he satisfies this responsibility to the community.

Contrary to the Marxists, the Nazis did not advocate public ownership of the means of production. They did demand that the government oversee and run the nation's economy. The issue of legal ownership, they explained, is secondary; what counts is the issue of CONTROL. Private citizens, therefore, may continue to hold titles to property -- so long as the state reserves to itself the unqualified right to regulate the use of their property.

If "ownership" means the right to determine the use and disposal of material goods, then Nazism endowed the state with every real prerogative of ownership. What the individual retained was merely a formal deed, a content-less deed, which conferred no rights on its holder. Under communism, there is collective ownership of property DEJURE. Under Nazism, there is the same collective ownership DE FACTO.

During the Hitler years -- in order to finance the party's programs, including the war expenditures -- every social group in Germany was mercilessly exploited and drained. White-collar salaries and the earnings of small businessmen were deliberately held down by government controls, freezes, taxes. Big business was bled by taxes and "special contributions" of every kind, and strangled by the bureaucracy. At the same time the income of the farmers was held down, and there was a desperate flight to the cities -- where the middle class, especially the small tradesmen, were soon in desperate straits, and where the workers were forced to labor at low wages for increasingly longer hours (up to 60 or more per week).

But the Nazis defended their policies, and the country did not rebel; it accepted the Nazi argument. Selfish individuals may be unhappy, the Nazis said, but what we have established in Germany is the ideal system, SOCIALISM. In its Nazi usage this term is not restricted to a theory of economics; it is to be understood in a fundamental sense. "Socialism" for the Nazis denotes the principle of collectivism as such and its corollary, statism -- in every field of human action, including but not limited to economics.

"To be a socialist", says Goebbels, "is to submit the I to the thou; socialism is sacrificing the individual to the whole."

By this definition, the Nazis practiced what they preached. They practiced it at home and then abroad. No one can claim that they did not sacrifice enough individuals.

Excerpted from Chapter 1 of THE OMINOUS PARALLELS, by Leonard Peikoff... most probably the most important book written in modern times. Buy it... read it... study it.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

She left.

http://jonjayray.tripod.com/hitler.html

Read and learn my progressive friend.

Who cares if Hitler was a socialist. That was never the point.
He was a mad-man bent on world domination and exterminating entire peoples.

Oh julia

You are so hopelessly

Clueless

And humorless

Frustrating?

Just you riversider

Just you

"Who cares if Hitler was a socialist. That was never the point"

The point is collectivism ends in the gulag or concentration camps.

I don't agree. Israel started out as a socialist experiment. For proof just look at the kibutzim

Not on a state level. When society doesn't value the individual, the prision camp is not far behind.

Hi River!
Hi julialg!

champagne tomorrow nite!!

Not really.
I'm not terribly excited about most of the candidates, with the sole exception of Harry Wilson
who might help NY out of its fiscal problems. But if a few Republicans means Pelosi's gone, then we're a little better off.
I think the bigger problem for our country lies in the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury.

There are some really exciting races nationwide. Nothing can be taken for granted.

The country has spoken and they are not happy with the Obama economy. And rightfully so. It has been a remarkable disappointment thus far. President Obama’s biggest mistakes were often highlighted by me in real time:

* He should have chosen to bailout Main Street over Wall Street.
* He never should have appointed Geithner or Summers. They were merely attempts to rehash the Clinton economic team and unfortunately, due to his ignorance of the economic environment, President Obama had no idea that these men played a significant role in causing the crisis.
* He absolutely never should have reappointed Ben Bernanke. Mr. Bernanke has rehashed all of Alan Greenspan’s “flawed” policies and has chosen to focus on the banking sector at every twist and turn of this crisis.
* He should have saved his health care plan for term two and focused on helping Americans get the jobs they so badly needed.
* He should have dropped the hammer on Wall Street with harsh regulation. We have become a nation by the banks and for the banks and the de-regulation of the 90′s is largely to blame. We need to end the financialization of this country and get back to 3-6-3 banking as opposed to relying on our bankers to generate economic growth while also mis-allocating resources.
* He has had every opportunity to become the champion of Main Street. Instead, he appears no different than his many predecessors who have been slaves to bank lobbyists.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/this-election-has-1937-written-all-over-it-2010-11#ixzz14D994ohh