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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (428988)	10/21/2008 7:57:16 PM
From: steve harris	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1583867

newsmax.com Seems spin is the only defense Obama has.

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (428988)	10/21/2008 8:13:43 PM
From: muzosi	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1583867

actually my only x86 holding right now is intc but at least i don't work for intel. if you're lucky enough to have any options they must have completely drowned by now.

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (428988)	10/22/2008 6:16:06 AM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 1583867

Why the economy fares much better under Democrats By Larry M. Bartels Larry M. Bartels Tue Oct 21, 4:00 am ET Princeton, N.J. – John McCain is a maverick and Barack Obama is a postpartisan problem-solver. But you wouldn't know it by looking at their economic plans. Both candidates' proposals faithfully reflect the traditional economic priorities of their respective parties. That makes the track records of past Democratic and Republican administrations a very useful benchmark for assessing how the economy might perform under a President McCain or a President Obama. The bottom line: During the past 60 years, Democrats have presided over much less unemployment and much more robust income growth. The $52.5 billion plan Senator McCain announced last week includes $36 billion in tax breaks for senior citizens withdrawing funds from retirement accounts and $10 billion for a reduction in the capital gains tax. Those are perks for investors, most of whom are relatively affluent. (McCain is also proposing a two-year suspension of taxes on unemployment benefits, but that's a fraction of the plan's cost.) He also favors broader tax cuts for businesses and wants to extend President Bush's massive tax cuts indefinitely, even for people earning more than $250,000 per year. McCain's proposals reflect the traditional Republican emphasis on cutting taxes for businesses and wealthy people in hopes of stimulating investment – "trickle down" economics, as it came to be called during Ronald Reagan's administration. But will proposals of this sort really "stop and reverse the rise of unemployment" and "create millions of new jobs" as McCain has claimed? The historical record suggests not. President Bush's multitrillion-dollar tax cuts, which were strongly tilted toward the rich, could not prevent (and may even have contributed to) significant job losses. On the other hand, when Bill Clinton raised taxes on affluent people to balance the federal budget (while significantly expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit for working poor people), unemployment declined substantially. Under Clinton's watch, 22 million jobs were created. Prefer a broader historical comparison? In the past three decades, since the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries oil price shocks of the mid-1970s and the Republican turn toward "supply side" economics, the average unemployment rate under Republican presidents has been 6.7 percent – substantially higher than the 5.5 percent average under Democratic presidents. (The official unemployment rate takes no account of people who have given up looking for work or taken substantial pay cuts to stay in the labor force.) Over an even broader time period, since the late 1940s, unemployment has averaged 4.8 percent under Democratic presidents but 6.3 percent – almost one-third higher – under Republican presidents. Lower unemployment under Democratic presidents has contributed substantially to the real incomes of middle-class and working poor families. Job losses hurt everyone – not just those without work. In fact, every percentage point of unemployment has the effect of reducing middle-class income growth by about $300 per family per year. And the effects are long term, unlike the temporary boost in income from a stimulus check. Compounded over an eight-year period, a persistent one-point difference in unemployment is worth about $10,000 to a middle-class family. The dollar values are smaller for working poor families, but in relative terms their incomes are even more sensitive to unemployment. In contrast, income growth for affluent people is much more sensitive to inflation, which has been a perennial target of Republican economic policies. Although McCain portrays Senator Obama as a "job killing" tax-and-spend liberal, the new $60 billion plan Obama unveiled last week also has a tax break as its centerpiece – a tax break specifically tailored to create jobs by offering employers a $3,000 tax credit for each new hire over the next two years. Obama's proposal would also extend unemployment benefits by 13 weeks for those who remain jobless, as well as match McCain's in suspending taxes on unemployment benefits. Obama's new proposal complements $115 billion in economic stimulus measures he had already announced, including $65 billion in direct rebates to taxpayers and $50 billion to help states jump-start spending on infrastructure projects. All of this is squarely in the tradition of Democratic presidents since John F. Kennedy, who have relied on public spending and tax breaks for working people to stimulate consumption and employment during economic downturns. These and other policies have produced not only lower unemployment under Democratic presidents but also more economic output and income growth. In fact, over the past 60 years, the real incomes of middle-income families have grown about twice as fast under Democratic presidents as they have under Republican presidents. The partisan difference is even greater for working poor families, whose real incomes have grown six times as fast under Democratic presidents as they have under Republican presidents. Of course, past performance is no guarantee of what will happen when the next president takes office. However, given the striking fidelity of both presidential candidates to their parties' traditional economic priorities, the profound impact of partisan politics on the economic fortunes of American families over more than half a century ought to weigh heavily in the minds of voters. • Larry M. Bartels directs the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics in Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He is the author of "Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age."

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (428988)	10/22/2008 9:05:39 AM
From: Road Walker	Respond to of 1583867

Ten, you want to hold $400 for a election bet? You would have to give your address to 2 people by PM or private email.

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (428988)	10/22/2008 9:42:17 AM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1583867

is that the logic you apply when designing chips? Says the AMDroid whose stock is worth almost as much as a gallon of gas ... Can we keep stock flaming off this thread? Its OT. ;-)

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (428988)	10/22/2008 11:07:56 AM
From: bentway	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1583867

Expert: McCain campaign hoping to appeal to 'latent racism' 10/21/2008 @ 8:51 am rawstory.com Filed by David Edwards and Muriel Kane MSNBC's Rachel Maddow found it hilarious on Monday that the McCain-Palin campaign is now accusing Barack Obama of being a socialist, but she also suggested that there may be "a method to this madness," in the form of an attempt to whip up racism and resentment of the poor. Sarah Palin recently stated, "Taking more from ... a small business owner, or from a hard-working family and then redistributing that money according to a politician's priorities, there are hints of socialism in there." John McCain similarly charged in a radio address last Sunday that "Barack Obama's tax plan would convert the IRS into a giant welfare agency, redistributing massive amounts of wealth." "'Welfare'? Where'd that come from?" asked Maddow, calling it "the great racially-divisve codeword from the 80's and 90's -- that has no bearing whatsoever on Barack Obama's tax policies." Maddow suggested, however, that the use of words like "socialism" and "welfare" may indicate the McCain campaign is attempting to evoke the "Bradley effect" -- the possibly mythical idea that black candidates poll higher than their actual support because racist Democrats are ashamed to admit they're not willing to vote for their own party's candidate. Maddow then turned to Melissa Harris-Lacewell. a Princeton professor of politics and African-American Studies with whom she has previously discussed the Bradley effect, and asked if that might be the intention. "I don't think that that's what's going on," Harris-Lacewell replied cautiously. However, she stated emphatically, "I do think that John McCain and Sarah Palin are clearly, as a context of their campaign, trying to use race as a wedge issue." "That's what 'welfare' is as a code word," she continued. "It's not quite the same thing as trying to induce a Bradley effect, but it is hoping that there is enough latent racism left in the system that they can use that to defeat Barack Obama." Black officials have recently been expressing dismay at what they see as appeals to racism by the McCain-Palin campaign. Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer recently defended McCain from these charges, saying that "he has been scrupulous in eschewing the race card" and calling it "Orwellian for him to be now so widely vilified as a stoker of racism." In the same column, Krauthammer mocked Rachel Maddow's suggestion that Republican attacks on ACORN represent an "unstated appeal to racial prejudice." Lacewell-Harris, hwoever, did not see an appeal to racism as likely to succeed, because Obama currently enjoys broad-based support and great popularity among voters in all categories. "I think it's maybe a little bit unfair to think of white Americans as all being represented by the folks that are showing up at the Palin rallies," she stated. Lacewell-Harris also found the attacks on redistribution odd, considering that the Republicans have been redistributing wealth upward from the middle class to the wealthiest Americans for the last eight years. "It's just a very strange thing," she stated, "to watch a very wealthy candidate sort of laugh about the idea of sharing, you know, a few of his seven houses with the rest of the country." This video is from MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show, broadcast October 20, 2008.