Footage Of The Protests in Tehran, Iran.

Nor will you ever.

I'm sorry that you're offended, but as long as you make patently unqualified statements as you have through this entire thread, people will respond to them.

Apparently it didn't sink in that the Grandfather of American foreign policy, Henry Kissinger said quite clearly that he had done the right thing in this situation.

Henry Kissinger is someone all sides here will agree has a far better understanding of situations like this than you possibly could.

I am somewhat dismayed that all of this has flown right over your head.

But that's your problem, not mine.

What bothers me about Obama is that he tries to be all things to all people. He can't stand to TAKE A STAND on anything. He tries to appear neutral on nearly everything. But there is a point at which remaining neutral means a nation sacrifices its principles. Obama passes that point on a regular basis.

There is good and evil in the world. The world is not black and white, but it is not as gray as Obama would make it seem. The theocratic system of government in Iran is inherently evil. It suppresses its own people, who are starting to tire of it.

From the Washington Post website.

In the meantime, here is a statement from Henry Kissinger:

KISSINGER: Well, you know, I was a McCain supporter and -- but I think the president has handled this well. Anything that the United States says that puts us totally behind one of the contenders, behind Mousavi, would be a handicap for that person. And I think it's the proper position to take that the people of Iran have to make that decision.

When you were backed into a corner on that, you side-stepped the issue, and turned this into a debate on the Federal Budget deficit.

When you were backed into a corner on THAT, you side-stepped, and turned it into a debate on Economics.

Within the last hour, the White House has released a statement from the President on the current situation there. As soon as a transcript is available online I will link to it here.

Maddog, davymid, urbanlegend, tdawgg71, and myself each have tried to explain the flaws, mistakes, and outright lies in what you've said here.

I don't know about the others, but tdawgg and myself have both obviously studied economics in college. Me, on a graduate level, and if tdawgg hasn't, then he SHOULD because he knows what he's talking about.

To no avail.

So for you to say that you're open to changing your mind is suspect, if you respond to facts given to you by five adults who understand economics with the aforementioned outdated, discredited information linked from Ultra Conservative websites in the last few weeks before the election.

That in itself should be a red flag to you. I find it amusing that you continue to present that type of spun information as factual.

You have moved beyond being stubborn into being obstinate.

It makes absolutely no difference what any of us says to you, you respond with outdated links that have already been discredited, or, like in your most recent response, come out of left field with something totally unrelated, for example ACORN.

And that comes as no surprise to me that you would drag ACORN up from the depths, since that was another tool that the Ultra-Cons attempted to use against Obama during his campaign and failed miserably.

And not only did you dredge up ACORN of all things, you AGAIN linked to an Ultra-Conservative website that is clearly Anti-Obama. You can tell the sole purpose of that website is to smear Obama and Constitutional Moderates just by looking at the front page!

You haven't linked to a single REPUTABLE source.

I could link you to 100 different websites that say Bush is an alien shape-shifter.

Please, if I'm using discredited arguments, by all means DISCREDIT THEM. Tell me why they are wrong instead of dismissing them! I'd love to know. I do care about being right. My opinions are not set in stone. If you can present new information to me that I didn't know about before, I'm open to changing my mind. So, by all means, please discredit my opinions if you can.

We got past it, and had an intelligent discussion.

You, on the other hand continue to offer nothing except tired, obsolete talking points, most of which you gleaned from heavily-biased, politically connected, and therefore unreliable websites.

You still haven't offered anything that someone else hasn't already said, and been discredited.

The fact that you brought up ACORN of all things was amusing, but a) further proves that you can't be taken seriously, and b)shows that your dislike of President Obama colors your thinking in EVERYTHING. It's a very clear sign of a lack of maturity.

Your responses do however, show that Ultra Con smoke & mirrors are effective at distracting the uneducated.

So yes, the banks were FORCED to lower credit standards and give out high risk (subprime) loans, leading to the high number of defaults and the resulting freeze-up of the credit market, leading to the very recession we find ourselves in today.

Why do you keep assuming I can't think for myself and that I'm only regurgitating my parents' views? Simply because it says 13-17 next to my name? You know nothing about my parents. You are only assuming things to try to discredit my arguments.

The Heritage numbers were from a Washington Post article. Numbers are numbers. Heritage didn't even have to spin them. They speak for themselves. Why don't you try evaluating information based on its substance and not the website or person it comes from?

Bush warned about Fannie and Freddie many times and Democrats in Congress ignored him: http://nicedeb.wordpress.com/2008/09/21/...

No harm, no foul tdawgg, the only problem here is mrwnt. Regardless of how many different ways the basic facts are explained to him he'll still refuse to accept them as the truth.

I still am shaking my head and can't believe that he presented links to the National Review and Heritage Foundation websites as economic gospel.

He'd do well to read Milton Friedman. Friedman was the kung-fu master of free-market economic theory, but he won't. It would most likely be beyond his comprehension anyway. On the plus side, if mrwnt's goal is to work as an economist, he's already shown he wouldn't survive past the 2nd semester in a 3rd rate program.

Investment by government gives income, supposedly resulting in increased spending in the economy as a whole, which SHOULD stimulate more production and investment leading to more income and spending and so on. The initial injection of capital will supposedly get the ball rolling, supposedly leading to an increase in the overall economy as the end result of the original investment by the government.

It doesn't always work that way.

People used to theorize that wars stimulate an economy in a Keynesian sense.

What is happening in our economy right now it a clear indication that it's not always the case.

Milton Friedman was a GENIUS. That goes without saying. I don't have to YouTube him, I've read everything the man has written. If I had to make a comparison, I'm much more Milton Friedman than Naomi Klein, but I'm also not going to just take whatever the talking heads give me in a seven second sound bite on the nightly news.

The biggest problem that I see here is Average Joe's inability to see the big picture, and his complacency, which leads him to believe that the business world has his best interests at heart.

tdawgg: For you to refer to my point as "specious" is insulting.

I'm guessing that since you see that my avatar is me in a military uniform, you're going to assume that I have no idea what I'm talking about.

For the record, yes, I am a soldier.

But I happen to be an educated soldier. I have Bachelor's Degrees in Computer Science and Business, and in 1993 I received my M.B.A. (emphasis: Economics) from Trinity College at the University of Dublin. I suggest that you go back and read my other posts (which indicate that I do indeed have a grasp on the situation) before stepping in here and suggesting that I am a "conspiracy theorist" with an "unsound mind".

That was insulting, and unnecessarily pompous of you. Considering that you yourself seem to be capable of an INTELLIGENT discussion of economics, I am VERY offended by what you have implied here.