A. We have been running counter-cyclical deficits. You can say what you want about the "shell game", which I btw don't agree with as a characterization, in the mid to late 90's, but compare that to the deficits run post 9/11. There's a marked difference. Compare George W. Bush deficits of the mid 2000's to what Obama has done. When the economy tanked, deficits grew, not stayed the same or shrunk.

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/include/us_deficit_100.png

I completely agree with you we have failed to run surpluses when the economy has been prospering. That is absolutely the case, but you definitely see swelling of deficits in response to recessions in the chart above. That's a Keynesian idea, even if it is shared with the monetarists.

B. Yeah, I'm sure. Granted, LOL @ Ballmer from time to time.

D. Individuals may be skeptical of the FDIC right now, but we're speaking of the influence systemically of the FDIC. This past financial crisis was all about a credit crisis. Part of why the recession occurred occurred was an eroding of available credit due to pervasive fear and mistrust, a lot among banking institutions of each other. The last thing we needed was a run on the banks, and that was very largely avoided. The FDIC was a huge reason for that. Had there been, more banks would have gone under, and banks still surviving would have been even more irrationally tight on lending. That would have been absolutely disastrous. There's little doubt in my mind we would have seen 20% unemployment.

>> ^bmacs27:

A. Lol at counter-cyclic budget deficits. I know they played that whole shell game with social security in the 90s, but other than that, I don't think we've really been running many counter-cyclic Keynesian surpluses. The other thing to remember is that monetarism is a derivative of Keynesian theory, so it isn't surprising that they have some overlapping prescriptions. I guess I would push my argument further by stating that Greenspan is broadly considered a monetarist, and he pretty much ran the economy over that interval. Teh maestro.
B. Heh, you sure about that? "I LOVE this COMPANY!!!!!!!"
C. I think we pretty much agree here without getting to wonkish.
D. My GF is in ING. It's now capital one, so she's likely leaving it. Pretty much I wish your average bank was much smaller than they are today. Also, I wouldn't be so confident in that FDIC insurance. The FDIC itself is in some dire straights. Also, they just moved all that bad Merrill paper into FDIC insured subsidiaries of BoA so that they could borrow against the deposits at better short term rates to support it.

A. Lol at counter-cyclic budget deficits. I know they played that whole shell game with social security in the 90s, but other than that, I don't think we've really been running many counter-cyclic Keynesian surpluses. The other thing to remember is that monetarism is a derivative of Keynesian theory, so it isn't surprising that they have some overlapping prescriptions. I guess I would push my argument further by stating that Greenspan is broadly considered a monetarist, and he pretty much ran the economy over that interval. Teh maestro.

B. Heh, you sure about that? "I LOVE this COMPANY!!!!!!!"

C. I think we pretty much agree here without getting to wonkish.

D. My GF is in ING. It's now capital one, so she's likely leaving it. Pretty much I wish your average bank was much smaller than they are today. Also, I wouldn't be so confident in that FDIC insurance. The FDIC itself is in some dire straights. Also, they just moved all that bad Merrill paper into FDIC insured subsidiaries of BoA so that they could borrow against the deposits at better short term rates to support it.

A. Overly simplistic, and you're confusing to some degree what is Keynesian. A central tenant of Keynesian economics is counter-cyclical budget deficits. When there's a recession, the government should run deficits, and the larger the recession, the larger the corresponding deficit. That's been a non-stop, although admittedly abused, government policy since the Depression. Also, Keynesian economics had components in it for monetary policy as well. Keynes advocated for lower interest rates during times of recession along with increasing the monetary supply. Yes, he did believe that during more severe recessions that monetary measures would not be enough, but he nevertheless advocated for the various monetary policies. These align up with most recessions as far as what the gov't did from the Great Depression on. Just because Keynesian policies disappointed during the 1970's, the ideas were not altogether abandoned ever since. The simple fact of the matter is aside from 2007, there hadn't been a particularly severe recession since the 1970s, so it's reasonable to assume that direct employment wasn't deemed necessary, not that it was seen as bad policy in all cases.

B. It happened to me by the hand of Microsoft. I'm pretty sure they didn't have flunky MBAs. ;-)

C. There are a lot of similar issues involved. My point was only that you can't just tie requirements to it, and that's that. There are a huge myriad of issues that would come hand in hand with stipulations to unemployment. Your idea is still something I'd be onboard with if those devils in the details were addressed. I do see as an example that some people become unemployed because of structural changes to the economy that causes their jobs to never come back. As a case in point, textile factory workers who lose their jobs due to offshoring are suddenly in a position where market forces have no remedy. They lack the skills to get jobs in areas of growth such as more in depth computer skills, and likely lack the financial resources to get the education and training to get said skills because they're unemployed. This is a perfect example in my opinion where the market and free trade fail from time to time, and some force, likely the gov't, needs to step in for the good of everyone. These people would benefit from retraining, so they can get a good job, business owners benefit from increasing numbers of workers who can do the jobs they're needing people to do, and it becomes a win win situation.

D. The last time we tried no deposit insurance, it failed miserably. Banks lent money for people to buy goods and services they couldn't afford, and stocks on the margin. People stuck their money in banks anyway. The only difference is when fear hit the market after the crash, a lot of people, many irrationally, pulled their money from banks, causing a collapse in the banking system, which tanked the entire economy even further.

People lack the time and/or motivation to stay informed on all kinds of issues from local politics, to PTA meetings. I don't see how they could begin to assess what loans their banks were making as far as riskiness. And the typical American when it comes to finances? Yikes! Next to no savings, can't understand how much they should be regularly investing, etc. And it's not just the stupid people. Most Americans don't even know what a mutual fund actually is. How could they possibly make intelligent decisions about the riskiness of their banks' portfolios? I consider myself smarter than the average bear, but even I'd be paralyzed with fear selecting a bank based what little info I could find of their portfolios. Instead, I make sure they're FDIC insured, because that in and of itself entails objective benchmarks to even get that insurance.

And honestly, I don't see many people making decisions about their banks based on rates alone. As a case in point, very few people I know put money in online high yield savings accounts instead of the local credit union, bank, or large megabank, despite the fact that in most cases online savings account providers such as ING Direct pay 2-3 times the interest. I don't believe that's what caused the madness in the banking industry at all. At the very least, there's a massive list of causes well above FDIC insurance, and even if FDIC insurance did play a role in causing the crisis, it also served well in preventing runs on the banks in general that would have compounded the crisis further.

>> ^bmacs27:

@heropsycho
A. Because we've been leaning on monetary policy as our intervention of choice. Direct employment has been called socialism for 30 years. That doesn't suggest a dominant Keynesian ideology. Really it's been this mix of monetarism and supply-side economics which morphed into some mutilated crony-capitalism.
B. I suppose it could happen, but it would take a rough business climate, or some flunky MBAs. In that situation I'd try to increase my business (i.e. make $200,000).
C. That's why we have food stamps. It isn't a perfect solution, but the kid starves if her folks spend the whole check on smokes too. Vices aren't the kind of "demand side" stimulus I'd like to see (one flaw in the Keynesian argument given the current living conditions of the American poor).
D. I really do believe that if the FDIC didn't exist, "the market" would not have allowed deposits to be leveraged by banks investing in exotic financial instruments. Like you said, even the bankers didn't know what the hell they were doing! Without the FDIC people would very quickly ask, "what the hell you doin' with my money?" Rather, since their money is backed by the government they ask, "what sorts of rates are you offering?" It's that pressure from the distorted marketplace that pushed banks into more and more leverage to stay competitive. Those rates were realized by making massively leveraged bets that were only possible by hedging with exotic instruments. Once upon a time people knew their banker. I think that's the best FDIC there could be. There might be some legal patchwork of the Glass-Steagall flavor that might make it work, but chasing down all the unintended consequences would be a challenge. Certainly figuring out how to unwind all the securitized mortgages that already exist makes that sort of policy direction seemingly prohibitive.
F-. Dude, Peter Schiff is a quack.

>> ^quantumushroom:

You know even those numbers are lies, NR. For chrissakes, the liars switched from "jobs created" to "lives touched" late last year.

Hey, you're the one that put that article forward, not me.

I think it's impossible to actually track specific jobs created by the stimulus. You can make estimates based on theory, but that's not really evidence, either for or against.

What's a bit easier to measure is the overall employment trend. You'll love that these are Nancy Pelosi's charts, but they're based on BLS statistics (what the whole economic world uses as the source for data on employment, BTW).

Here's the chart of the recession through to May's jobs report (June's report will probably come out this week). The stimulus bill was passed in February of 2009. The trend changed immediately, with the job losses slowing, and then turning into gains.

>> ^quantumushroom:
Government jobs are not real jobs as they do not reflect market needs.

That's my point, the stimulus wasn't about creating "government" jobs, it was an attempt to reverse the unemployment trend in the private sector. Right now the biggest drag on the jobs reports coming out is job losses in the public sector.

Here's a chart showing the last year in the ongoing march of Obama's supposed socialist revival. Private sector jobs up, public sector jobs down.

>> ^quantumushroom:
Here's a RADICAL idea: let people keep more of their own money, across the board.

I know it was another thread, but that idea's been tried. Hell, it's still being done to a greater degree than it's been done since well before I was born. That idea has clearly and unambiguously been tried, and has utterly failed to produce anything like what Republicans from Reagan forward have claimed it would.

>> ^quantumushroom:
And lay off Herb Hoover, moonbats, he was an unwilling or ignorant ally of yours.
wiki:
<long quote about things FDR said on the campaign trail>

A couple paragraphs above that, you find a description of Hoover's actual policies:

Calls for greater government assistance increased as the U.S. economy continued to decline. Hoover rejected direct federal relief payments to individuals, as he believed that a dole would be addictive, and reduce the incentive to work. He was also a firm believer in balanced budgets, and was unwilling to run a budget deficit to fund welfare programs.[45] However, Hoover did pursue many policies in an attempt to pull the country out of depression. In 1929, Hoover authorized the Mexican Repatriation program to combat rampant unemployment, reduce the burden on municipal aid services, and remove people seen as usurpers of American jobs. The program was largely a forced migration of approximately 500,000 Mexicans and Mexican Americans to Mexico, and continued until 1937. In June 1930, over the objection of many economists, Congress approved and Hoover signed into law the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. The legislation raised tariffs on thousands of imported items. The intent of the Act was to encourage the purchase of American-made products by increasing the cost of imported goods, while raising revenue for the federal government and protecting farmers. However, economic depression now spread through much of the world, and other nations increased tariffs on American-made goods in retaliation, reducing international trade, and worsening the Depression.[46]

In 1931, Hoover issued the Hoover Moratorium, calling for a one-year halt in reparation payments by Germany to France and in the payment of Allied war debts to the United States. The plan was met with much opposition, especially from France, who saw significant losses to Germany during World War I. The Moratorium did little to ease economic declines. As the moratorium neared its expiration the following year, an attempt to find a permanent solution was made at the Lausanne Conference of 1932. A working compromise was never established, and by the start of World War II, reparations payments had stopped completely.[47][48] Hoover in 1931 urged the major banks in the country to form a consortium known as the National Credit Corporation (NCC).[49] The NCC was an example of Hoover's belief in volunteerism as a mechanism in aiding the economy. Hoover encouraged NCC member banks to provide loans to smaller banks to prevent them from collapsing. The banks within the NCC were often reluctant to provide loans, usually requiring banks to provide their largest assets as collateral. It quickly became apparent that the NCC would be incapable of fixing the problems it was designed to solve, and it was replaced by the Reconstruction Finance Corporation.

That all sounds very familiar to me as modern-day Republican policy proposals -- eschew direct assistance to the unemployed, try to boost employment by deporting Mexicans, attempt to defer interest payments on foreign debts, and ask banks to put in place their own policies to fix their own shortcomings rather than resort to regulation, and stick to preserving the gold standard at all costs. The only thing out of place is tariffs, but I've seen those mentioned from the conservative rank and file in discussions about what our response to China's ascendance should be.

In the election year of 1932, with unemployment at 25% and with people throwing things at his motorcade everywhere he went, he did start engaging in a little attempt at mortgage loan stabilization and fiscal stimulus, and they did seem to make a positive impact, but were too little too late, but they weren't policies that were the centerpiece of his administration, they were things he tried to do out of desperation.

It's also quite true that FDR in 1932 ran on a platform that included promises to balance the budget, but that's because it'd been the Democratic that had always been scolds on that topic up to that point. Besides, FDR was no student of Keynes; General Theory wasn't even published until 1936. I don't really know where the ideas for FDR's New Deal came from. I'm guessing just simple populism, and maybe some Keynesian influence amongst his economic advisers.

I'm so done with Obama. The Republicans just keep beating him down. How can he possibly think he will win the next election when every deal he makes portrays him as weak and the Repugs as strong. Rather than letting the Republicans explain why they rejected the unemployed masses and gave the middle class a tax hike. He's going to let them claim how they were trying to balance the budget, cut taxes, AND... that Obama made the biggest budget deficit of all time. What a joke. Go Wikileaks!

Ahh, Netrunner you have clarified that it does indeed seem that my knowledge is quite an antiquatedly incorrect thought process. Well the statistics from the New York Times definitely seems to make more sense of it all, and no I don't think we should abandon paved roads.

>> ^NetRunner:

>> ^aimpoint:
There is something that deeply disturbs me about this
There are 2 issues that have been brought up, Social Security and Extending the Bush Tax Cuts
This video implies a guilt by association by associating the Social Security problems with the Bush Tax Cuts. The Bush Tax Cuts is an easy stab at the Republicans, but the video is tying it together with Social Security to imply something more sinister like a "Rich stealing from the poor" scenario.
Umm, it's not guilt by association. If the topic you want to discuss is the deficit, the right says "cut Social Security and Medicare" while the left says "let the Bush tax cuts expire" to which the right says "taxes can't be raised, even if the tax cuts we passed exploded the deficit, not Social Security!"
That literally is a sinister plot to steal from the poor and give it to the rich. Cut taxes on the rich, and create a huge budget deficit, and then propose fixing the budget problems by cutting benefits to the lower and middle classes.
>> ^aimpoint:
The problem with Social Security is that people live longer, not something that was taken into account when it was first passed.
Wrong and wrong.

>> ^aimpoint:
Putting more money into it creates a situation where a larger share of money per paycheck will be required keep another program at status quo. Essentially its an added tax with No Benefit, say for if its not payed then money will be needed from other programs so if you don't pay up someone is gonna lose something.
The price of asphalt has doubled in recent years. Taxes will likely have to go up to continue maintaining roads. That's not an added tax with "no benefit", that's the cost of something that people depend on going up.
Perhaps you're in the camp that thinks we should abandon paved roads?
>> ^aimpoint:
The other situation involves Taking more money from Elsewhere and putting it into social security,
Like marinara said, not until 2037 would this be required. The social security trust fund has plenty of money in it, and social security is still running a net surplus, without changing anything.
Eliminating the cap on the payroll tax essentially fixes the entire projected budget shortfall -- the trust fund might run out just short of the end of the 21st century, assuming our projections about the economy 80+ years in the future are anywhere near correct (and that's a huge assumption).
>> ^aimpoint:
But the effectiveness of working 70 year-olds is unknown to me.

This is really the key issue with raising retirement ages into the 70's. Talking with people I work with, most of them find that headhunters and recruiters stop approaching them the second they hit 50. I kinda can't imagine what kinds of hoops someone would have to jump through to get a new job at 68 or so.
Back when people kept the same job for their entire working lifetime, maybe raising the retirement age made sense, especially with real honest to god company pensions still being around. Nowadays, companies treat their employees as disposable, and it's simply expected that people will change jobs every couple of years or so.
I'm kinda afraid of what the job market will look like when I hit 50, I can't even imagine having to compete against 30 year-olds for jobs when I'm nearly 70.

>> ^aimpoint:

There is something that deeply disturbs me about this
There are 2 issues that have been brought up, Social Security and Extending the Bush Tax Cuts
This video implies a guilt by association by associating the Social Security problems with the Bush Tax Cuts. The Bush Tax Cuts is an easy stab at the Republicans, but the video is tying it together with Social Security to imply something more sinister like a "Rich stealing from the poor" scenario.

Umm, it's not guilt by association. If the topic you want to discuss is the deficit, the right says "cut Social Security and Medicare" while the left says "let the Bush tax cuts expire" to which the right says "taxes can't be raised, even if the tax cuts we passed exploded the deficit, not Social Security!"

That literally is a sinister plot to steal from the poor and give it to the rich. Cut taxes on the rich, and create a huge budget deficit, and then propose fixing the budget problems by cutting benefits to the lower and middle classes.

>> ^aimpoint:
The problem with Social Security is that people live longer, not something that was taken into account when it was first passed.

Wrong and wrong.


>> ^aimpoint:

Putting more money into it creates a situation where a larger share of money per paycheck will be required keep another program at status quo. Essentially its an added tax with No Benefit, say for if its not payed then money will be needed from other programs so if you don't pay up someone is gonna lose something.

The price of asphalt has doubled in recent years. Taxes will likely have to go up to continue maintaining roads. That's not an added tax with "no benefit", that's the cost of something that people depend on going up.

Perhaps you're in the camp that thinks we should abandon paved roads?

>> ^aimpoint:

The other situation involves Taking more money from Elsewhere and putting it into social security,

Like marinara said, not until 2037 would this be required. The social security trust fund has plenty of money in it, and social security is still running a net surplus, without changing anything.

Eliminating the cap on the payroll tax essentially fixes the entire projected budget shortfall -- the trust fund might run out just short of the end of the 21st century, assuming our projections about the economy 80+ years in the future are anywhere near correct (and that's a huge assumption).

>> ^aimpoint:
But the effectiveness of working 70 year-olds is unknown to me.


This is really the key issue with raising retirement ages into the 70's. Talking with people I work with, most of them find that headhunters and recruiters stop approaching them the second they hit 50. I kinda can't imagine what kinds of hoops someone would have to jump through to get a new job at 68 or so.

Back when people kept the same job for their entire working lifetime, maybe raising the retirement age made sense, especially with real honest to god company pensions still being around. Nowadays, companies treat their employees as disposable, and it's simply expected that people will change jobs every couple of years or so.

I'm kinda afraid of what the job market will look like when I hit 50, I can't even imagine having to compete against 30 year-olds for jobs when I'm nearly 70.

>> ^RedSky:

>> ^Yogi:
I know that leaving wouldn't be a perfect option however it's still the only option. Many many more people will die if we stay. We went through the same thing in Vietnam when people thought we should stay, it's wrong and we shouldn't. Although there will probably be some horrific deaths, there will be thousands more if we stay. We must leave.
To be honest, I'm beginning to think more and more that it's your mess, and your responsibility to fix it. Going into Afghanistan was just as ridiculous as going into Iraq. What were the odds that a slow, advancing military force was going to seriously disrupt a fluid cross-national terrorist organisation, let alone catch a single terrorist in its dragnet? Yes, the Taliban openly sponsored Al Qaeda but this doesn't change the fact there is no shortage of decrepit states and governments to which terrorist organisations can relocate like Somalia. It was obvious that if going in the objective was to topple a government, nation building would follow.
Yes, the US has a massive budget deficit and is in no position to fund wars, but equally I don't think you can morally justify bailing and seeing the people who trusted in your willingness to establish a semblance of a functioning state with human rights be rounded up and executed. Biden's plan of leaving a limited force to target terrorist activities will simply not be enough to prevent this. While the kind of parliamentary/ presidential democracy they're going for really has little chance of working because of the lack of pan-national trust and how dependant the political system is on patronage, I think a more decentralised model has a chance, and that's really what I think they should be aiming for.


I disagree, I don't believe it was ridiculous or a mistake. I believe it was instituting a war of aggression which is considered the greatest international crime under the Nuremburg principles. So what happens when someone commits a War of Aggression against someone else? Do we call for them to stay and clean up the mess? No that's ridiculous because asking a population to accept the rule of those who caused them to be in this predicament is laughable. We wouldn't force the Nazi's to stay in Poland and clean up their mess...they have to leave and pay them reparations.

Which is I think the best thing we can do, leave and let possibly the UN or Red Crescent work with Afganistan trying to figure it out while paying reparations. And invading army isn't required to clean up their mess when their presence is what's causing the mess.

>> ^Yogi:

I know that leaving wouldn't be a perfect option however it's still the only option. Many many more people will die if we stay. We went through the same thing in Vietnam when people thought we should stay, it's wrong and we shouldn't. Although there will probably be some horrific deaths, there will be thousands more if we stay. We must leave.

To be honest, I'm beginning to think more and more that it's your mess, and your responsibility to fix it. Going into Afghanistan was just as ridiculous as going into Iraq. What were the odds that a slow, advancing military force was going to seriously disrupt a fluid cross-national terrorist organisation, let alone catch a single terrorist in its dragnet? Yes, the Taliban openly sponsored Al Qaeda but this doesn't change the fact there is no shortage of decrepit states and governments to which terrorist organisations can relocate like Somalia. It was obvious that if going in the objective was to topple a government, nation building would follow.

Yes, the US has a massive budget deficit and is in no position to fund wars, but equally I don't think you can morally justify bailing and seeing the people who trusted in your willingness to establish a semblance of a functioning state with human rights be rounded up and executed. Biden's plan of leaving a limited force to target terrorist activities will simply not be enough to prevent this. While the kind of parliamentary/ presidential democracy they're going for really has little chance of working because of the lack of pan-national trust and how dependant the political system is on patronage, I think a more decentralised model has a chance, and that's really what I think they should be aiming for.

>> ^Psychologic:

Even if we stop all domestic oil use, there's still a huge economic incentive to produce more oil and sell it on the world market. Increased tax revenue is hard to give up for those who care about budget deficits.

Which is why liberals want to stop all current production of oil as soon as possible, and leave it in the ground while its value appreciates, and the costs and risks of extracting it decrease.

Ideally the end scenario would be that when we started drilling again, we'd nationalize the oil (as in, we'd get all the proceeds from the sale, not some multinational corporation), and sell it to people who're wanting to use it for industrial processes (like making polymers) rather than burning it.

It'd be an awesome way to pay down the debt I'm sure we'll still have.

Even if we stop all domestic oil use, there's still a huge economic incentive to produce more oil and sell it on the world market. Increased tax revenue is hard to give up for those who care about budget deficits.

Of course there's the environmental side too. We may be able to prevent future spills, but using oil products for fuel still produces greenhouse gases whether it's burned by us or someone else.

yeah republicans don't have a philosophical leg to stand on.

not that there's any real difference between democratic party and republican.
but Republicans are on my nerves talking about
1. can't hold civilian trials for terrorists
2. budget deficit
3. bush's tax cuts
4. start over on the health care bill coz they didn't get enough lobby money when the democrats had a supermajority

both parties are out of touch with people, and in touch with their campaign donors.

also i wanna pimp this awesome program on the decline of newspapers:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/bob-edwards-weekend/id268584710

^ God damn, you're a lying piece of shit.

Reagan more than tripled the deficit:

"The policies were derided by some as "Trickle-down economics,"[18] due to the significant cuts in the upper tax brackets. There was a massive increase in Cold War related defense spending that caused large budget deficits...."
(source)

"Technically, the GOP only controlled the Senate and the White House after the 1980 election, but de facto, they had an alliance with the Boll Weevil House Democrats, led by then-Democrat Phil Gramm, who rammed through tax and spending cuts in alliance with the GOP. Only with the 1982 election did real Democrats gain enough seats to regain operational control of the House. In response to that loss of control by the GOP-Boll Weevil alliance, Phil Gramm resigned from Congress in 1983 and became a Republican, running for Congress, then the Senate.
(source)

You're an evil little shit, whoever you are, and I hope you get what's coming to you.

Here are the assertions Beck ascribed to "liberals":

1. If you're against health care you hate the poor.
   
2. If you oppose their "climate change bill", you hate the planet, or are flat-earth moon landing denier.
   
3. If you oppose illegal immigration you're anti-hispanic.
   
4. If you oppose the stimulus, it's just because Obama is black.
   
5. If you oppose Obama's budget deficits, you must have been okay with Bush's (and are a hypocrite).
   
6. If you "support the troops", you're a warmonger.
   
7. If you attend a tea party, you're crazy.
   
8. If you "support traditional marriage", you're a homophobe.
   
9. If you oppose abortion, you're against women.
   
10. If you oppose the fairness doctrine, you hate diversity.
    
11. If you oppose "strong-arm" unions, you're against the workers.
    

He then characterizes the sum total of all those arguments to be a form of discriminatory hate speech.

As someone who spends a lot of time wallowing in liberal swill, let me correct Beck's assertions:

1. If you're against universal health care, you don't care if the poor live or die.
   
2. If you refuse to believe that human activity has been changing the climate in ways that will cause humankind harm, you are a flat-earth moon landing denier.
   
3. If your only solution to illegal immigration is to engage in massive police action against those who've immigrated illegally, you're anti-hispanic, anti-muslim, and generally a bigoted xenophobic moron who doesn't believe in individual human rights.
   
4. If you oppose the stimulus, it's because you are either a) a moron who thinks government spending can't help a sagging economy, or b) a partisan who's more interested in scoring political points than helping the country.
   
5. If you're going to go out into the streets and protest deficits in 2009, you should have been doing it ever since Bush's tax cuts turned a budget surplus into a deficit. Also, there should have been a large contingent of the so-called conservative base against continuing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan because of the cost. But there wasn't, so there are lots of people who only believe in keeping spending in check when it's a Democratic administration doing the spending, and that destroys your credibility on the subject. (Shorter alternative: The left protests spending tax money to kill people, while the right protests spending tax money to save people.)
   
6. If you think the only way to "support the troops" is to keep them in harm's way indefinitely without clear goals, then you're a warmonger, and definitely not supporting the troops!
   
7. Most of the people attending the tea parties were crazy, or crazy-tolerant. A lot of people were protesting against conspiracy theories (e.g. death panels). A lot of people were threatening violence. A lot of people were using racial imagery or language. No one seemed to mind their presence at the rally, or asked them to leave. If there were reasonable people there, they let the crazies usurp their message, and that reflects poorly on them.
   
8. If you oppose civil unions with equal legal benefits for gay couples, you're a homophobe. (As an aside, if Beck's objecting to being called a homophobe, it's more proof we've already won this fight, since even the right believes that word has a negative connotation that they're uncomfortable with)
   
9. If you support criminalizing abortion, you fundamentally don't trust women to be able to make important decisions about their health and life, and that's sexist.
   
10. We're pretty divided about the fairness doctrine, actually. Our smear against opposition to it would be about conservative elites wanting to preserve their for-profit propaganda enterprises though, not about "diversity".
    
11. If you oppose making it easier for workers unionize (which is what the Employee Free Choice Act would do), you're against the workers.
    

If "liberals" are to be demonized for what they say, let's at least start with what they're actually saying.

I would also point out that the language I used is often more harsh than what any real Democratic representative would use in public. The Republican party leadership has no problem talking about death panels, birth certificates, baby-murder, yelling "You lie!" at the president in a formal address, or any other extremist language.

Alan Grayson came dangerously close to saying #1, and everyone was completely shocked that a Democratic freshman congressman would say such a thing.

Has it occurred to him that some people may actually oppose it on principled reasons rather than simply being corrupt as he paints them? That they might be worried about the growing budget deficit and may rightly believe that while a public option for health care may universalise coverage, it in itself won't address the equally serious issue of escalating cost? Or that mandating compulsory provision of health care is expected to see firms pass on the additional operating costs inequitably to low income earners? Or that Obama has declined to consider a provision that ends the tax preference on insurance plans to large employers with powerful union groups which acts as a market distortion and could raise some $250 billion in additional revenues? Taxing the rich to pay the public option may well be both plausible and fair but if such a partisan bill gets pushed through, there will be continuous pressure for Republicans to overturn it. It's great that at the moment with Democratic majorities in both the House and the Senate that they would have no chance at doing this, but what if the plan simply gets scrapped when the tides do turn?

Even at the very least, has he considered that many of the especially Democratic congress representatives who oppose this could have been elected in right leaning districts, in which it was necessary to make some concessions to the traditional democrat platform to become elected, and that as a result they are required to both fulfil their promises and ultimately represent a more conservative constituency?

He's right though that politically they may be screwed either way. If Obama does fail at passing reform, blame will lie with the majority Democratic representatives in both the lower and upper house who clearly had a great deal of leeway in crafting the bill. They may just be better off ensuring that some reform does pass, as that will benefit Obama politically, who's popularity when it comes down to it was what allowed many of them to be elected in contested districts in the first place.