Is there any measurable way the country does better with Republican presidents?

[Mina]

If I am not mistaken, Republican administrations lead in crimes committed by administration figures while in office.

They blow the Democrats out of the water on that.

Would that count?

Yes, credit where due.

[Mina]

You include COVID as it's just a normal part of the POTUS 4 years.

One can, of course, do "special pleading" for any era. Like I could say Obama would do even better if the first half of his presidency hadn't been seized up by the aftermath of the financial meltdown, or the Carter era would have been better if not for the oil crisis, etc. So, rather than trying to adjust each era by some gut-level feeling about the scope of the challenges faced, I simply measure each straight and compare.

[Doc Dutch]

That "Captain of the ship" wording is interesting, because when you were talking about Congress holding the purse strings, I was thinking of a specific historical example of the president effectively forcing Congress's hand. Teddy Roosevelt wanted to make a display of US military power by taking a Navy armada on a tour of global ports. Congress didn't want to pay, but the budget had enough to get them half-way around the world. So he just sailed them half way around the world and Congress had to finance getting them back.

I'm not sure how apocryphal that is, but it's something I learned in school when we were dealing with Teddy Roosevelt's aggressive use of presidential power. And I think it does point to just how much the president really can act as the captain of the ship. And as I argued above, you can really see the results of that if you compare the Reagan and Clinton eras. If Congress mattered as much as the president, you'd expect those eras to be pretty similar in terms of policy, since once had mostly a Democratic Congress and Republican President, and the other vice versa. But they weren't actually similar at all. In the Reagan years we got huge military spending growth, in the Clinton era military budgets shrunk as a share of overall spending. Under Reagan we got radical upper-class tax cuts. Under Clinton, taxes on the rich rose. And so on. The bully pulpit really does allow a president to bully Congress to a pretty great extent.

Things like that work once. Besides paying for them to get back, what else did Congress do to prevent another such stunt?

Our main problem in the US for the past three decades has been an increasingly dysfunctional Congress. They won't talk nor compromise except in rare circumstances. The Russian attack on Ukraine is a surprising example of bipartisan action by Congress. I expect we'll see another bipartisan act after the WSEs murder a bunch of Americans either this summer or the summer of 2024. Let's hope that action puts our nation back onto a more sensible course.

[Mina]

Republicans have a better record of NOT calling everyone who disagrees with them domestic terrorists.

Do they?

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...-b1835341.html

[Blackwater Lunchbreak]

Do they?

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...-b1835341.html

yes.

[Mina]

Things like that work once. Besides paying for them to get back, what else did Congress do to prevent another such stunt?

Our main problem in the US for the past three decades has been an increasingly dysfunctional Congress. They won't talk nor compromise except in rare circumstances. The Russian attack on Ukraine is a surprising example of bipartisan action by Congress. I expect we'll see another bipartisan act after the WSEs murder a bunch of Americans either this summer or the summer of 2024. Let's hope that action puts our nation back onto a more sensible course.

WSE?

[Matt Dillon]

False.

True. Partisan shitheads in the House wasted Americans' time and money and denied their constituents representation with that farce of a circus.

Every one of the Congress involved in the last 3 "impeachments" should have to pay back their salaries for every day there was "impeachment" out of their own pockets.

Also the money they spent on lunch getting catered in for all those days.

[Doc Dutch]

WSE?

White Supremacist Extremists. It's what many far Right JPP members claim to be...if they can only leave their retirement facilities to do something about it. LOL

https://www.dhs.gov/publication/refe...ist-extremists
US Violent White Supremacist Extremists
Violent White Supremacist Extremists (WSE) are defined as individuals who seek, wholly or in part, through unlawful acts of force or violence, to support their belief in the intellectual and moral superiority of the white race over other races. The mere advocacy of political or social positions, political activism, use of strong rhetoric, or generalized philosophic embrace of violent tactics may be constitutionally protected activities.

[Blackwater Lunchbreak]

I'm happy to look at any measurable indicator you name. However, you bring up inflation and that was already specifically calculated, in two different ways, in the top post.

Taxes, I suppose, it a quantifiable comparison we could make. However, I don't recognize taxes as inherently good or bad. They just move money from one pile to another, so the key question is how well that money gets spent in either pile. If, for example, you cut taxes and as a result the private sector spends money less productively than it was being spent in the public sector, and the GDP growth rate falls, that's bad. If, instead they spend it more productively and GDP growth rates rise, that's good.

Still, there are other ones I can think of that aren't economic. I spoke to teen birth rates, already, above. Murder rates and incarceration rates are also good indicators to look into. Maybe infant mortality rates?

no taxation is not just moving money from one pile to another.

your amoral financial industry way of viewing the world is why central planners are reviled throughout history, and why their regimes always fail.

[Earl]

https://www.1911addicts.com/cdn-cgi/...aa-png.995785/

[Mina]

no taxation is not just moving money from one pile to another.

What makes you think that? It's simply a decision about whether a particular dollar figure goes to one entity (generally a person or corporation) or another entity (typically a government).

your amoral financial industry way of viewing the world is why central planners are reviled throughout history, and why their regimes always fail.

Taxes exist in all modern societies, not just one with central economic planning. Even the most libertarian of societies believe there are particular functions that can best be handled by the government, and those need to be funded.

[Blackwater Lunchbreak]

Agreed. Worse, IMO, they're both working hard to put party over country.

lol.

no. it's only dems working to destroy the country. they don't believe in the founding, the founding fathers, the constitution, or the concept of what a nation is. in short, it's the globalist retardation syndrome.

what planet are you on, captain dumbass?

[Earl]

https://i.imgflip.com/5967yx.jpg

[Blackwater Lunchbreak]

What makes you think that? It's simply a decision about whether a particular dollar figure goes to one entity (generally a person or corporation) or another entity (typically a government).



Taxes exist in all modern societies, not just one with central economic planning. Even the most libertarian of societies believe there are particular functions that can best be handled by the government, and those need to be funded.

It's not simply that decision you reference.

The fact you cannot see it is your problem.

you're a central planner totalitarian diseased individual.

[T. A. Gardner]

This board is interesting, in that a number of the right-wingers here have completely given up on the idea of even attempting to engage with fact-based arguments. Instead, they simply name a fallacy and hope that ends the discussion and we can return to free-form venting of emotions, in lieu of discussions that reference actual evidence.

A McNamara fallacy is one where you rely entirely on selected quantification to argue your position



For example, let's say you point out the unemployment rate using the current U-30 model. That is, it is measured by counting how many people are actively looking for a job but don't have one in the last 30 days. You ignore the employment rate being lower than it was say three months ago. That is, there are fewer people working and few people looking for work. That doesn't equate to a better outcome necessarily.

I don't "simply name a fallacy" like some others do. I'm willing and able to explain why I pointed one out, like I'm doing here.

You are making a McNamara fallacy. You have cherry picked a few common statistical measures and proclaimed that Democrat presidents do better. Yet, history records most of those same Democrat presidents did miserably in office, as Biden is doing.
Which is a better measure of how things are going? The U-30 unemployment rate, or the opinion of nearly 80% of Americans that the economy is headed in the wrong direction? I'll take the latter over the former. Thus, even as you tout Biden's low unemployment, Rome is burning and Biden's failing.