text:
He's gotten more done in three years than any president in decades. Too bad the American public still thinks he hasn't accomplished anything.
In addition to resolving the immediate crisis, the administration tried to insure against a repeat of it by issuing a plan to expand federal regulation of the financial markets, a plan that ultimately became the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, otherwise known as Dodd-Frank. The new law, which passed with almost no GOP votes, has been scathingly criticized since it first appeared in the House— by conservatives for being a big-government power grab and by liberals and various academic experts for being too weak.
But as Michael Konczal of the Roosevelt Institute explains, the new law parallels and expands upon the great achievements of New Deal financial regulation. Much as the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 mandated transparency in the securities markets and created the SEC to punish fraud, Dodd-Frank creates a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to do the same for everything from mortgages to credit cards. The Securities Exchange Act forced stock trading onto exchanges and mandated that traders have sufficient collateral. Similarly, Dodd-Frank pushes financial derivatives into clearinghouses and exchanges. The 1933 Glass-Steagall Act forced the separation of commercial banks from the more speculative activities of investment banks. The new so-called Volcker Rule in Dodd-Frank limits the ability of banks to trade securities for the firm's own profit. Glass-Steagall also created the FDIC to monitor commercial banks and take them over if they get into financial trouble. Dodd-Frank gives the FDIC "resolution authority" over the "too big to fail" financial behemoths so that they too can be monitored and taken over if necessary.
At each stage as Dodd-Frank has moved through the legislative process, from House to Senate and now to the agency level for implementation, liberals have sounded the alarm that the insufficiently stringent law was liable to get progressively weaker as industry lobbyists jam it full of caveats and exemptions. Yet while the law does now include its fair share of loopholes (especially in the Volcker Rule), what's surprising is that the measure has in general gotten tougher, not weaker, over time—often at the behest of lawmakers who wanted stronger measures than did Geithner. The Senate adopted the Collins amendment—a set of rules drafted by Sheila Bair's FDIC that imposes tough capital requirements on banks, bank holding companies, and systemically risky nonbank financial institutions like hedge funds, limiting their ability to make the kind of highly leveraged and risky trades between each other that contributed mightily to the financial crisis. Thanks in part to the prodding of Gary Gensler, the Obama-appointed chair of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, the language on regulating derivatives got much stronger in the Senate version of the bill, and since then the CFTC has written a reasonably strong and comprehensive set of rules and regulations to implement the law.
Washington narratives tend to get set early and resist new anomalous facts. So it is with the financial crisis. The initial take was that Dodd-Frank is weak tea and Obama caved to Wall Street. This view has persisted despite accumulating evidence to the contrary. Confidence Men", Ron Suskind's scathing critique of the administration's handling of the financial crisis, opens with Obama in a Rose Garden address making clear that he would not be nominating Elizabeth Warren to head the CFPB. The anecdote is meant to encapsulate the administration's general political spinelessness. Today, the CFPB is headed by the widely admired Richard Cordray, placed there in a nervy recess appointment by Obama, and Elizabeth Warren is leading the polls in her race to win back Ted Kennedy's Massachusetts Senate seat from the Republicans—hardly a bad outcome for the cause of financial justice.
True, the largest banks are now bigger than they were before the crises thanks to emergency mergers engineered by the Bush administration. But as Obama's former economic adviser Austan Goolsbee told journalist Michael Hirsh, "The most dangerous failures—Bear Stearns, Lehman—were not even close to the biggest. You could have broken the largest financial institutions into, literally, five pieces and each of them would still have been bigger than Bear Stearns. The main danger to the economy was interconnection, not raw size." With the capital requirements of the Collins amendment, the Volcker Rule, and the forcing of derivatives into clearinghouses, Dodd-Frank goes a long way toward dealing with the "interconnection" problem. The law's "resolution authority" also gives regulators the ability to spot overly risky behavior by big banks early and to shut them down if they get into trouble. And the behemoths now have higher capital requirements than do smaller banks, another hedge against risk and an incentive for business to move from the former to the latter.
True, the bank executives on whose watch the crisis happened got lavish bonuses on their way out the door, and the bonuses continued to flow even as the sector was getting bailed out by Uncle Sam—a dispiriting and infuriating phenomenon to many Americans, liberal and conservative. Yet it's also true that bank shareholders were forced to take a "haircut," since the new private investment that flowed into banks thanks to Geithner's recapitalization plan greatly diluted the value of their stock. That has provided at least some market discipline to counteract the "moral hazard" dilemma of government bailouts sending the signal that there is no penalty for recklessness. More importantly, by reducing banks' ability to leverage capital and make risky trades with other people's money, Dodd-Frank threatens the honeypot of the huge profits that have been the source of all that outsized compensation. And as a fallback, the law gives government the power to rewrite bank executive compensation packages if those packages are seen as incentivizing overly risky behavior—a power regulators have already begun to exercise. Finally, after years of pussyfooting around, the administration, prodded by aggressive state attorneys general, has finally launched a major push to investigate and prosecute possible criminal misconduct in the financial collapse.
How, then, will historians judge Obama's handling of the financial crisis? That's hard to say definitively because so much depends on follow through—specifically, on whether Obama has a chance to follow through by winning a second term. (If he isn't reelected, the Republicans have vowed to gut Dodd-Frank.) Will the rules that regulators are now writing to implement Dodd-Frank be tough and smart enough? Will they be enforced? Will federal prosecutors bring some bankers to justice? Can the toxic assets still on banks' books be disposed of without causing another banking collapse?
I'll have some of Whatever you're drinkingUnless it's Kool Aid
Near Greaness ???
I think you mean Incompetence
Have not read every word, so take comment with a grain of salt. Regarding not using the 14th Amendment which Paul still believes was a good option, I have a question and there may be an answer. Is there not reason to believe that the GOP would have attempted to impeach the president? If so, a downgrade of our credit rating would likely have happened given the emphasis on disfunction between the parties and the legislative and executive branches cited by Standard and Poors as factor in downgrade Also wouldn't the backlash from right wing media been fierce and disabling and Obama labeled a dictator ot worse?
Agree strongly that difficulty to toot own horn by Pres. Obama and Democratic leaders/spokespeople regarding accomplishments has been a serious problem especially in the face of the right wing fabrication machine and the obvious racism contained in the fabrications and, in fact, in the very existence of the Tea Party. Would there even have been a Tea Party if Sec Clinton had been elected and run the Executive Branch as Barack Obama has done?
When someone can easily reject a list of another's accomplishments, there is an active denial of reality that has its basis in the personal/political. It's a sad time in America when some of us refuse to give our fellow citizens credit because we don't "like" them or "like" the political party with which they are affiliated. If this had been the case for the majority of our nation's history, we'd still be British subjects.
Share with us why you believe President Obama is incompetent? Maybe millions of people need to be enlightened by you.
Is there, perhaps, a way to force members of Obama's Campaign staff to read this post and the accompanying list of 50 top accomplishments? It's not that they don't know about this stuff. It's that they don't seem to understand, as you do, how significant a list of achievements it truly is, especially in the face of Republican hostility to Obama's every single policy initiative over the last three years.
Your list isn't even complete. The START treaty included $100 Billion in funds to upgrade the remaining nuclear arsenal. Obama took the occasion of his undeserved Nobel Peace Prize to give one of his best speeches in which he lectured European leaders on the dangers of pacifism and the uses of measured, considered force, almost certainly paving the way for the brilliant "lead-from-behind" strategy that liberated Lybia.
When was the last time a President was given the authority by Congress to spend $700 Billion on a domestic program (TARP) and wound up successfully executing it while spending virtually none of the funds in the appropropriation?
The Obama record, it seems to me, is more a result of his tough-minded approach to problem solving than a reflection of his political philosophy, which may be one reason he's been called everyting from a Socialist by the Right to a Sell-Out by the Left. These political animals are simply looking in the wrong place for an explanation of what makes Obama tick.
There is the trailer for the upcoming documentary about the accomplishments of President Obama and his administration over the last 3+ years.
"The Road We've Traveled". Chipsticks, over at The Obama Diary has it on her web site. He it is on YouTube:
Share with us why you believe President Obama is incompetent? Maybe millions of people need to be enlightened by you....
Obama had LARGE Democratic MAJORITIES in the House and Senate.....
And the Big banks got off free and unregulated
He produced a MOUSE of an economic recovery package
a half hearted Health Care package .....
AND HE DIDN'T SELL IT !!!Obama Didn't LEAD
He is a self promoter, nothing moreI wish I'd stuck with John Edwards
And it's probably too much to ask, but he WON'T stand up to Israel
After his election the Israelis bombed the HELL out of Gaza
Not a peep from Obama
Now, he's gonna start a war with IranDoes THAT answer your question ???
Agree strongly that difficulty to toot own horn by Pres. Obama and Democratic leaders/spokespeople regarding accomplishments has been a serious problem especially in the face of the right wing fabrication machine and the obvious racism contained in the fabrications and, in fact, in the very existence of the Tea Party. Would there even have been a Tea Party if Sec Clinton had been elected and run the Executive Branch as Barack Obama has done?
Of course. The conservative media was demonizing her the past 20 years the same way it was demonizing Barack Obama for the past 5.
I think this comment typifies how some progressives see conservative disgust for Obama as primarily racism dressed up in policy disagreement. Such progressives are barking up the wrong tree. Ultimately such confusion obscures our message to centrists who disagree with the TP policies but do not consider the TP primarily founded on racism.
They use the excuse that he doesn't do anything because they don't want to admit that the reason they don't like him is becuse he is black!
Obama 2012
"And games tend to be mastered by those who love them; think LBJ and Clinton." Yes, and no. First, an emphatic yes to LBJ's ability to play the game. He's probably the best legislative strategist to ever occupy the White House, and maybe the best who ever will. (Of course, it also helps that LBJ took office after his predecessor was murdered on the streets of Dallas, which did give him a wind at his back as he tried to enact the "martyred" President's agenda, as did the fact that Goldwater's far right campaign helped elect a lot of Dems to the Congress that passed Voting Rights and Medicare/Medicaid.)
Did Clinton seem to enjoy playing the game? Yes, emphatically, at least in hindsight, in the rosy, faded memories of his re-election and the fact that he left the country on a sounder fiscal footing than when he found it. But, what did Clinton accomplish with his love of the game? Not health reform - but the guy who hates the game passed it. Not stumbling into DADT, which feckless Obama managed to undo through a patient strategy that not only got it repealed, but also pretty much assured that this is an accomplishment that won't be undone.
In fact, in contrast to Obama, Clinton only managed to pass one major bill - the tax increase and budget reform - with no Repub votes, and then he lost Congress and could only enact things the Repubs were more than happy to go along with, and far less liberal than anything Obama has done or proposed to do. Defense of Marriage and welfare reform are not exactly the things liberals would wish for from a supposedly progressive president. In addition, if we're going to blame Obama's midterm shellacking on his lack of skill, then Clinton's midterm results seem even worse, since the economy was in much better shape in 1994 than in 2010, and the Dems were defending fewer seats. Obama racked up a huge number of his 50 accomplishments (more than Clinton enacted in eight years) before his mid-term shellacking, nearly all of them with no, or negligible Repub votes. In addition, Obama passed health reform, New Start, several hundred billion dollars of additional stimulus after losing the House. It's hard to imagine that this does not indicate some pretty impressive skills.
Now, I'm not knocking Clinton - if he could run again, I'd vote for him in 2016 (and I'll gladly vote for Hillary too). But still, the fact that Obama has a list of accomplishments that far exceed Clinton's - and Truman's, JFK's and Carter's, too - would seem to indicate that he's actually got a lot of chops and knows how to get things done. And if you want to hear some good speeches - well, first, did you see him at the UAW? I fearlessly predict that by the time the election rolls around, you will have heard at least ten speeches that make the hair on the back of you neck stand up.
The Wall Street Scandal was the biggest Rip Off in modern historyBut, under our 'Near Great' President, NOT ONE WALL STREET Executive Has been INDICTED
Maybe he didn't want to bother the 'Job Creators'The Wall Street banks are back, probably as profitable as ever while fight any regulation of themselves
Our 'Near Great' President Bailed out Wall Street
He just forgot about mortgage holdersMr. President, You're doin' a heckuva job !!
13,000,000 unemployed, millions of small business DESTROYED
40,000,000 on food stamps
$15,400,000,000,000.00+ national debt
Your job or OweBama. You decide.
Hey, last week I "accomplished" smearing feces all over the walls of my living room.
The Month before I "accomplished" getting fired, losing the company several large accounts, and getting arrested for several crimes.
So to say I haven't "accomplished much" in these two months is clearly untrue. I've accomplished a lot.. just like Obama.
Look at all the damage I've done. weird that some liars would say my accomplishments aren't of significance or value... people who truly respect my new artistic style or were competitors of the company I worked for would agree I've accomplished a great deal as well.
Much as you're in love with Obama's accomplishments. He bent the health Care cost curve (upwards) and has kept us within a few tenths of a percent of the 25+ year low Employment-Population ration published by the BLS for quite some time (at least until now) avoiding the job recovery we've seen after every recession since WW2 by this time in a recession cycle.
Maybe you're impressed by his work... I'd say smearing feces on a living room wall is more beneficial to the nation as a whole.
Property as yet has not been declared theft.
Not a single banker's head has been seen on a pike.
And Van Jones still isn't a cabinet secretary.
Obama sold us out!
I think this is a record that substantially accomplishes what I expected from reading "The Audacity of Hope", while staving off unexpected economic collapse and the distractions of the "Arab Spring". Heading off Israel and Iran from mutual suicide is a bit more difficult, but at least the new leader of N.Korea is interested in feeding his people. The Israelis polled do not want to go to war with Iran. I wish Eric Holder had some control over the U.S. Attorneys so that they would follow the announced policies.
The most since L.B.J. , and look where THAT has gotten us , more kids living in poverty because the 'father' whoever his is is not stepping up , so , we all pay for these children .
He had those large majorities for only a short time. Another falsehood being pushed by the right.
If nothing else, this hilariously amateurish piece confirms one thing: fawning Obama worship among some segments of the press is here to stay, facts on the ground notwithstanding. In just glancing over the list of alleged accomplishments:
Bush negotiated the withdrawal of troops from Iraq; it would have happened had the Boy Wonder never been born.
According to Zogby and Pew, The One is in fact less popular in the Arab world than was Bush.
"Told Mubarak to Go" -- This is just idiotic beyond words. So now feckless exhortations count as accomplishments?
Oh, and "Avoided Scandal" is simply precious. Operation Fast and Furious anyone?
The list goes on and on.
Honestly, was this put together by a bunch of love-sick undergraduates? Is it meant to be a joke?
He has accomplished a lot - none of it good.
So empi, "He had those large majorities for only a short time" but it's also "Another falsehood being pushed by the right" that he had large majorities?
Washington apparently doesn't understand how politics works for people. Just because a bunch of spoiled, out of touch old coots in DC can manage to take months to years just to argue over what fancy legalese will be included in hundreds of pages of crap most of which isn't even related or inter-connected in any way, is full of pork, and that none of them reads much less enforces, and then passes it on to the President for signature does NOT equal "accomplishment." Maybe to them it does. Maybe they can use it to advance their political careers, or their income....but here's how it works for us, the People:
If my daily life isn't much different/improved from before he took office (or heaven forbid, has grown worse).... you, the politicians have accomplished nothing! Moreover, when you lie to us and make promises you don't intend to keep after elected, we don't give very favorable job performance reviews. Like a lot of bosses out there, we focus on what you need to improve and not what we pay you to do right anyway.
From my perspective, it appears that there isn't much difference between Bush and Obama but in some very dangerous ways, Obama is worse. Bush at least told you he was taking your rights away even if he lied about "why." Obama tries to pretend he hasn't done anything of the sort when the rights he has sacrificed go far beyond anything the prior village idiot did under Cheney's thumb. So pardon me if we just don't see the long list of "accomplishments" that all the politicos are patting themselves on the back for allegedly having done.
Thank you, Obama, for keeping your poise and sanity while the brainwashed FAUX-noise sheeple wallowing in ignorance, try to thwart every good thing you attempt to do for 99% of us. Thank you, Paul Glastris for giving the illustrious right, holier-than-thou, pocket puppets a chance to swallow the truth and actually digest it. You tried. Somehow I think you're wasting your time on the sorry peabrains. Obama's accomplishments attained in spite of the ridiculous bs he confronted every step of the way is utterly amazing. The naysayers are just jealous or racist.
I will agree that Obama has accomplished many things that will have lasting positives effects but I am concerned by the difficulty he had negotiating with the Republicans over...well, everything...but most notably the debt ceiling.
If a simple thing like that was so much trouble how much confidence can we have that he will do any better negotiating with Ahmadinejad or Netanyahu, neither of whom acts in any better faith than the republicans do. -
FriscoSF, at least you make an effort at cogent argument. ertdfg just plays with feces.
I read your post and wanted to discuss the following:
Correction 1: The mortgage payers are being compensated, as well as the persons incidentally damaged by the housing collapse. NPR discussed it. It�s called the Home Affordable Refinance Program, or HARP, and was started in 2009.
Correction 2: The Big banks did not get off free and unregulated. Obama-appointed New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has been working on this very complex and integrated case with other AG's for several years, culminating in a large settlement to be paid to your first correction: the mortgage payers.
Addendum: He produced a MOUSE of an economic recovery package a half hearted Health Care package .....AND HE DIDN'T SELL IT but look, they both are working.
That Obama doesn't lead or is a self-promoter is too opinion based to even be discussed.Correction 3: Obama does not want to start a war with Iran. Why would you even put that kind of trash out there under your name?
I sense what your stance is on Israel but do you understand just how dangerous Israel is? I believe our president does. He's dealing with a biblically-backed nation that is running amok. On one side of the coin half our own nation will back Israel no matter what she does or who she bombs. The other side of the coin is the rather nasty Iranian leadership Israel herself wants to wipe out, and those not-so-innocent Gaza Palestinians, who, should you remember, are Hamas ruled and were lobbing missiles into Israeli communities from Gaza (not offering excuses, just facts). I agree with you that the Israel�s reactions are getting more and more intense. I don't agree with you that Obama did nothing. Israel is THE hot button issue in the US and no matter what stand any US president presents, it's wrong to someone.
You really didn't answer Sabreen60's question with much substance. Granted, the man isn't perfect, but what kind of miracles are you expecting in the current climate. That he can do anything at all to uplift our economy with the forces against him is worth his continued support. Because there ain't nuthing any better coming up the 2012 pike. Perhaps if you could temper your pessimism by putting some stock in the improving economic news and listening to the stock markets, maybe watch the corporate profit margin increases; in addition to whatever other news sources you watch that aid your current point of view.
I don't believe Obama is perfect, but he's a frickin' peach compared to what could be in the White House.
Have a good one....
I thought this was a story from the Onion News Network.
Literally the funniest thing I;ve read in a while.
It's so sarcastic.
leticia olalia morales of 15501 pasadena ave #h tustin ca 92780 submitted fake documents and 5000 dollars to a person name sandman at the US embassy in manila. she also submitted fake employment records to obtain a work visa. Her husband carlos b. morales also submitted fake documents (land titles and bank statements) to obtain a tourist visa. Her son carlo iii also used such and helped 2 other people to obtain a US tourist visa.
This was the most hyped presidency in American history
and thus far the most disappointing.Please don't ever use
the words great and Obama in the same sentence,because
not even liberals will buy this lie. -
When a majority of the people in the country think you're a failed President, and when your major achievement is disliked by a majority of the people, and when your policies concerning energy are opposed by a majority of the people then your accomplishments are considered ACCOMPLISHMENTS only by those who share your political philosophy. Obama is a failed President and will be used by future Presidents as a model for failure avoidance.
What a joke. Hey Paul, instead of measuring your man crush's record on "sheer tonnage" of legislation, why don't you just stop and observe all THE NEGATIVE EFFECTS of all that impressive tonnage has had on people's lives.
Let's start with the stimulus. 1.2 TRILLION in liberal pet project spending has gotten us exactly DCK. Unemployment is still bet 8-9%, the economy has grown by about 1-2%' (with population increase it has to grow by about 4 just to keep up and break even), we have 16 trillion in debt, which keeps us powerless against the Chinese, and stagnates economic expansion.
How about Obamacare. All the promises were BS of course. We were supposed to insure 33 million new people (for free), quality of care was supposed to IMPROVE, costs were supposed to go GO DOWN, AND not one dime was supposed to be added to the deficit. YEAH RIGHT, AND YOU FOOLS IN THE MEDIA BOUGHT IT. I and everyone I know has had their premiums INCREASE, and the stupid law is UNCONSTITUTIONAL.
I Could go on and on. The country is in decline and the great uniter, Bock Obamo has made DC more partisan than ever... WITH FULL CONTROL OF THE ENTIRE GOVT PLUS CONGRESS FOR TWO YEARS.
Average Annual Debt Increase by President:
Reagan...............$219 Billion
GHW Bush.............$376 Billion
Clinton........ ....$192 Billion
GW Bush.............$612 Billion
Obama...............$1536 BillionSource: US Treasury, The Debt to the Penny and Who owes it
Obama: On Jan 20, 2012, the federal debt was $15,236,271,879,792 according to the US Treasury website. On Jan 20, 2009, the federal debt was $10,626,877,048,913. The difference is $4,609,394,830,879. Divide by 3 years gives the average annual increase under Obama as $1536 billion.
GW Bush: On Jan 20, 2001, the federal debt was $5,727,776,738,304 according to the US Treasury website. On Jan 20, 2009, the federal debt was $10,626,877,048,913. The difference is $4,899,100,316,609. Divide by 8 years gives the average annual increase under GW Bush as $612 billion.
*The federal debt accounts for all spending including war costs such as President Obama's $33 Billion off-budget spending for Afghanistan surge.
Obama achieved a great deal in a very short amount of time!
In less than a year he managed to alienate all of America's long term allies and gained no new friends.
ObamaCare, sky-high gas prices, the 850 billion dollar stimulus etc.
It's in fact quite easy to come up with at least 80 reasons why Obama shouldn't be reelected.
So how come 52% failed to recognize Obama's huge number of achievements?
BTW - the captcha device is set far to high making very difficult to read both words.
You gotta lay off the crack pipe. I suggesdt you hop on your un icorn and fly back to Fantasyland. You might hurt yourself here in the realm of reality.
As someone who covers climate policy and renewable energy for a living, I have been flabbergasted by his accomplishments in switching us to a clean energy economy.
He used the EPA to close down coal plants, even without being able to get any greenhouse gas reducing climate policy through congress, and used the BLM to open public lands and start getting solar and wind on them, quadrupling the renewable energy on public lands, to replace the huge number of coal plants shuttered.
He used the DOE to invest another $30 billion in clean energy, both startups and R&D and the results have been staggering, like propelling the U.S. to world leadership (from 8%) of global advanced batty tech, that will bring down the cost of EVs (to replace fossil fueled driving with EVs that get greener as the grid gets greener) by 2015 by a third.
He rolled out a very high lease payment schedule for solar on public land that will create a constituency for more solar, at the expense of fossil fuels because they will stock up the treasury faster. So many many clever moves, and with a clear aim, "to slow the rising seas..." it sounds corny, but he is clearly focused on moving us to a clean powered future.
Unfortunately for the country Obama has accomplished a great deal. Every socialistic agenda he wanted he shoved down our throats. The poll question doesn't give people the chance to say he did a lot....but I disagree with every single bit of it. Try polling that. Sorry left wing media...Obama, his idealogy and his policies, though many....are a dismal failure and bankrupting this country. Thank God we have an election coming soon.
Perhaps differently from
Those who regurgitate fox news
In their commentary,
I have been reading much
Presidential history lately,
Particularly the post-civil war
Reconstruction Presidents
And other pre-Wilsonians.I believe the European historians
Are right (and why wouldn't they
Have the better view, from a
Non-partisan distance?).#44 will go down as top-ten.
If others are so sure he is not
That good, perhaps they should
Revisit Hoover and Harding
(I know some nice wikipedia
Articles they can start with).
It is true that President Obama has accomplished a tremendous number of things. Unfortunately, about 95% of them (I will be generous here, I think it is more like 99.9%) are awful.
it isn't that he has not acomplished anything. it is just the majority of americans never wanted his liberal "acomplishments". he has done nothing to help this the majority in this country. the only thing he ever cared about is being re-elected.
I've been straining to imagine for whom you might be writing this delusional nonesense. I conclude that you are trying to impress yourself. I mean... Obamacare is such an unwieldy abomination that we should all pray that the Supremes put it out of its misery, while the Auto bailout was great for GM overseas but unlikely to mean squat here in the US, and the stimulous was nothing but a Democrat party payoff that balooned the national debt. When you top it all off with the fact that our national economy is being strangled by overregulation it's hard not to see this adminstration as far far worse than that of Jimmy Carter.
Random responses to the comments: he's incompetent because he passed the largest social program which he neither read nor wrote in the middle of the greatest financial crisis in decades. He's a human rights abomination by changing "capture and interrogate" to capture and kill even if you are an American citizen and he ordered unmanned drone missiles launched into civilian areas. He is a corrupt politician who is bankrupting our government while rewarding billions of dollars to his contributors. This is a limited, charming, not-to-bright man (Where are those SAT, LSAT scores?) who is tremendously dangerous and blithely unaware of it. Eric Holder, well, who has the time to discuss this monstrosity? The constitution seems like "greek" to him
He�s gotten less done in three years than any president in decades. Too bad Paul Glastris still thinks he has accomplished anything.
You are welcome to call Obama the greatest thing that happened to the world since the Plato, but please, I beg you, don't destroy Mt. Rushmore.
Dan, I suggest a reality check for you. One of the primary goals that of those who elected Obama was health care reform. You might even check the polls back when it was being debated in Congress because most people wanted the bill to go further. Alas, the right wing media and lobbyists have done their job of muddying the water. Polls now reflect that people who are against the program don't even understand what is in it and what is not.
He will be reviled by history as one of the worst Presidents ever, certainly the worst since Jimmy Carter, who is widely recognized as the worst in a century, and he may yet surpass JC's record of erroneous economic policies, erratic and misbegotten foreign policies, and profound failures as an executive and leader.
like millions of Americans, I will wander into the polling place this november and pull the lever that says "republican." I do not care who the republicans run, whether it be men or women of good stature, comic book heros, or farm animals. I have grown weary of the class warfare that the community activist and his friends practice, the fact there are serious structural issues within the country that are being worked on by academics and other "people of no consequence," and that the news media has covered up the overall incompetence of the president and his coterie. Since BP, Barack Obama has shown himself to be nothing more than a spoiled brat in an empty suit.
Obama great? He's repeated the mistakes made by both Carter and Johnson. The reality that we all face is that ALL the politicians -- of all political stripes -- for the last 50 years have wanted to give the public everything that it wanted. Without a bill. Our current situation isn't all Obama's fault, except in the sense that he has been in Washington. Over the course of the last 3+ years we've spent an additional $4 trillion dollars that we don't have. And we're at about the same place as we were in 2008. 8%+ unemployment, stagflation type growth, a devalued dollar. That doesn't count the additional debt that's off the books. The Fed's balance sheet is bulging at $4 trillion that it was never designed to carry. We have at least $50 trillion of unfunded liabilities in Social Security and Medicare. We have several more trillion in Student loan debt and unfunded Public pensions. We are broke, but we've got people fighting to maintain automatic 8% growth of government. That's like trying to open additional holes in the Titanic. And at the moment, Obama is the captain.
Guess what, the voters do not measure greatness by how many radical legislations a President shoved down their throats or how many radical Islamist regimes he ushered to power.
Obama is worst President America ever had, bar none.
Pity the poor rube's, they just don't understand they're in the presence.of greatness? The man is an arrogant sob, and every move he makes is nakedly partisan and wastes huge chunks of ourmoney. Those deliberate delays in implementation of his policies are because once people realize how badly they've been screwed it will be too late to stop him. Keep drinking that kool-ade.
You folks are delusional if you think Conservatives are against Obama because he's black. We are concerned over where his Hopie Changie crap is leading the country. But, I guess in your minds it is ok to vote FOR him because he's black. That's not racism at all.
Facts are facts. Both parties bear the responsibility for where we are as a country today. Both parties have fostered this idea that dependency is good, big government can solve all the ills of society. The problem is, as government continues to grow and solve more and more ills, our economy gets worse and worse and political strife grows and grows. Think there's a relationship between our growing federal government and the reduction in our freedoms and economic distresses??
Oh, and greatness? Really?
It's been a VERY long time since I have seen a President worthy of the word. Most are just managing our decline or adding to it as Mr. Obama has done. Just throwing legislation over the wall and passing it so we can find out what is in it isn't leadership.
Well, given the comments above that aren't based on reality, let alone an original opinion, just parroted ones, I can see now why we have the wildly insane America we have today.
To talk like this about the man who IS pulling us out of the deep black hole the GOP put us in is just disgusting. I agree he isn't "great", but all folks are doing is jumping on the anti-Obama bandwagon the Republicans are pulling around for us, and spewing THEIR empty talking points.
Compared to Bush and his cronies, Walker and his cronies, Mitt and his rich buddies, Obama is a decent president working to enact people-oriented goals like health care, not corporation/profit/Citizens United/kill unions/deregulate everything garbage the GOP works to enact every chance they get to lower our living wages, deny our benefits, and let the American Dream waste away for the majority of Americans, but not for the 1%. Funny how none of you bother pointing that out. Are we all in this just to Save Mitt's Rich Friends? Great bumper sticker. Not so great domestic policy.
We're traipsing down the road where a religious fanatic or a semi-cult member could soon be infiltrating our government and the resulting hell will be the voters fault. Voters. Because you refuse to see what we have, let alone compare it to what's coming down that road.
So "wander in" and vote for "whatever Republican". That's informed voting in America for ya. I'd feel sorry for all of you in the aftermath, if you weren't dragging sensible people like me with you.
Obama is on top of a 30 story building engulfed in flames with a nun. Obama pushes her off the top of the building, and Paul Glastris, the author, would be writing about how Obama saved the nun from being burned alive, and further lamenting the lack of accolades for his Herculean efforts.
Obama borrowed trillions to spend on non-wealth producing activities that would create long-term self-sustaining jobs, but instead spent it on union labor teachers et al.
Instead of aiding the Libyan rebels on day one, he waited for a month allowing Libyan forces to use Jets, Tanks and Artillery to obiterate thousands of Libyans, and by so doing guaranteed a protracted 6 month civil war destroying much of the countries infra-structure, wealth, and of course, more Libyans.
Instead of loaning money to a successful business model, like Ford, to buy out the loser, like Chrysler, through bankruptcy, Obama forced losses on investors, handed wealth to the Unions, put the taxpayer on the hook for billions and called that a Win?
Instead of building nuclear power plants that can produce gas for our cars (using current technology that can take CO2 and HC out of the atmosphere and put it back into gas) at $1.50 a gallon, Obama gave $579 million in taxpayer money to his buddy Kaiser for Solyndra, which failed.
Billions still going down the drain at Fannie & Freddie.
Trillions more in expenses in Obamacare, if it survives the Supreme Court.
And even his ballyhoo'd tax cut of the payroll tax is stupid, since it pushes Social Security into bankruptcy sooner than ever!
The list of his utter failure goes on and on with nearly every thing he does.
Dear Author, Obama has done quite enough for me thank you, he can't leave soon enough if we as a nation is to survive.
One does not have to wander far amongst the electorate to discover the discord between Obama and the voter...Looks to me the only group of people who like Obama failed policies is the MSM...who have soooo much on the line for supporting him in 2008.
Pure unadulterated bullshit by glastris! Barry is a phony and people are starting to come around to thinking that Nov. might be a good time to take out the trash!
"Health care reform. The takeover and turnaround of the auto industry. The biggest economic stimulus in history.
Yeah, well, Benito Mussolini got a lot done in Italy too. He made the trains run on time.
Health care reform. You mean that insanely expensive exercise in socialised, second-rate, medicine that's already caused a 20 percent increase in insurance rates and that was crammed down the throats of Americans who didn't want it and of whom a majority want it repealed? Great accomplishment, that.
The near-nationalisation of the auto industry that cheated investors of billions of dollars in order to pay off unions. Another great accomplishment.
The biggest economic stimulus in history that wasted a trillion dollars of taxpayer money for very little purpose other than to grow the size and burden of government to a level never before inflicted on the American people and which, incidentally, was a great payoff to public service unions, Yet another great accomplishment.
And so on.
Obama's major "accomplishments" have been to bring the country close to economic ruin and to bring class warfare very nearly to point of mutually assured destruction. The word "accomplished" in the question "Would you say he has accomplished a great deal during that time, a good amount, not very much, or little or nothing?� carries with it a positive implication, and America, by its response has utterly rejected that implication. Obama has done much, most of it destructive to the American economy and to American society, but "accomplished" little--the short history of the Obama Administration is a catalogue of one expensive disaster after another.
Wow, the teatards are out in full force here.
I love the smell of conservative pants-pissing in the morning. Smells like ... victory.
Good luck with whatever loser you wind up nominating, folks. Get ready for four more years.
My problem is that I don't think he hasn't done anything. My issue is that I believe all of his major accomplishments have been BAD for this country. HE is trying to grow government into all aspects of our lives eliminating personal choices and freedoms. At same time is growing everyone's dependency on government that will in long run be death of private business and innovation. He would grow us into a European style socialist government that when looked at closely is mostly failing and drowning under debt.
The writer says: "It is often said that there are no right or wrong answers in opinion polling, but in this case, there is an empirically right answer�one chosen by only 12 percent of the poll�s respondents. The answer is that Obama has accomplished �a great deal.�
Mr. Glastris, YOUR assertion Obama has accomplished a great deal is merely an opinion. It's interesting to note you point out only 12% of those polled agreed with you. I would recommend you stumble back into the rubber room.
There is an old saying: "Are you going to believe your lying eyes or what I am telling you?" Obama once talked about the Audacity of Hope. This column could be entitled, "The Audacity of Faith," because faith is the only explanation for someone believing what this guy has written. By any measure one wishes to use, Obama is the worst president in this country's history. If you are stupid enough to vote for him again, be advised, if he wins re-election (highly unlikely!), you will suffer just as horribly as the rest of us. Only on the partisan Left can a guy be lauded for increasing the nation's debt more than $5 Trillion in less than 3 years, after it took 234 years to get to $10 trillion. Last night, this president actually lobbied Democrat Senators to vote AGAINST the Keystone Pipeline. Do you understand the impact of that act? For crying out loud, even Bill Clinton publicly opposed Obama's decision. Partisanship is one thing, but downright stupidity, while certainly permitted, should NOT be made so public.
This is going to be a close election. American people voted for BUSH, TWICE. One can't underestimate the stupidity of the American Public.
I am going to spend time and money to re-elect President Obama...can't afford not to.
From the perspective of an outsider President Obama has been impressive, doubly so given intransigence of the opposing party which seemed determined to sink it's own country rather than give in to the man they so ludicrously call 'the socialist'. Someone mentioned he had alienated his allies. I fail to see how he has done that. He is immensely popular around the Western World. Those who oppose him just refuse to give any consideration to his achievements. I bet not one of the negative commentators actually read this article in full. Most probably didn't even go beyond page 1.
Man so many are just living in fantasy land. Greatness? At what? Taking vacations? Playing golf? Throwing parties? Race baiting? Turning us into a socialist country? But then again you so called media want a socialist country with you all at the top with the politicians and rich and just tell us dumb hillbillies how to live our lives right? You so called press are useless. You are just another arm of the Leftist Demorat party.
Wow, who linked to this? Glenn Beck's website? I haven't seen this much stupidity since the Tea Party rallies.
It must be amazing to live in a world in which the deficit is Obama's fault, health care will increase the deficit, the economy has gotten worse, Obama has alienated all our allies around the world, and all the other insane BS these people believe.
What color is the sun on your planet?
The reason most people think Obama has accomplished little is that the things he has accomplished have been disasters. Making every citizen a guinea pig in his stupid health care experiment is the most prominent one. His relentless attacks on business have resulted in a crappy economy and huge job losses. So maybe the pollsters should ask a different question: "Have all the things Obama has accomplished made things better in the USA?"
Greatness? At what? Taking vacations?
Nope, Dubya still holds the record for that, by far.
Turning us into a socialist country?
You really should ask a grownup to explain "socialism" to you. Hint: reviving Wall Street and putting health care reform in the hands of insurance companies ain't it.
You so called press are useless. You are just another arm of the Leftist Demorat party.
And you know this because you heard it on Fox, right?
His relentless attacks on business have resulted in a crappy economy and huge job losses.
The economy, by any measure, has vastly improved on his watch. Dow Jones. NYSE. GDP. Monthly job losses/gains. Take your pick, there is not a single economic metric by which you can say things have gotten worse.
You people are freaking insane.
Incomplete greatness of Obama ? The Presidency is the first full time job the lazy socialist ideologue has ever held.Not surprisingly,his record is appalling.In foreign policy.On public debt.On unemployment and there are still people actually musing about his greatness ? Hilarious
He has done so much. Obama 2012!
I don't understand those to praise BO effusively. It's either delusional or low IQ.
BO is the worst president ever and has only prolonged the recession.
Barrack Obama is in over his head and out of his depth. He is a failure. The only thing he stimulated was employment in Washington, otherwise he made things worse.
The Presidency is the first full time job the lazy socialist ideologue has ever held.
Aside from being a community organizer, a con law professor at U of Chicago Law School, a state senator, and a U.S. senator, yes, this is his first job.
Not surprisingly,his record is appalling.In foreign policy.
Yeah, toppling Qaddafi without risking the life of a single soldier, ending the war in Iraq, drawing down Afghanistan, taking our three times as many al-Qaeda leaders as the Bush admin ever did, and, oh yeah, putting a bullet in Bin Laden's brain. The only way you could find that record "appalling" is if you're rooting for the terrorists.
On public debt.
Right, because after the Bush administration put two massive tax cuts, two giant wars, and the biggest entitlement program since the Great Society onto the national credit card, Obama has enacted a health care reform plan that the CBO says will save us a trillion.
On unemployment and there are still people actually musing about his greatness ?
He took office when the economy was hemmorhaging jobs at the rate of 800,000 a month lost, turned it around, and now we've had 23 straight months of job gains. The entire Bush presidency saw 1.1 million net jobs, while Obama's overseen -- in three years -- a gain of 3.3 million.
Yeah, he's horrible. Almost as bad as your math.
BO is the worst president ever and has only prolonged the recession.
You people are adorable.
Say what you will, I think it's great that your mental institution has the internet now.
Best laugh I've had in a while... LOL
This is your brain on DRUGS!!!!!
Looks like the illusionary utopian effects of all of that HOPIUM Paul smoked in 2008 in still clouding his judgement. Thanks for the laugh Paul!
Obama is the worst president in my long lifetime... worst than Carter, and that is going some.
The Tea Party RULES... vote conservative 2012..
So many comments from conservatives, and virtually no effort to address the substance of the article itself.
Why? They can't. The cold hard facts aren't on their side, so all they have is the delusional rantings about socialism and whatever other stupid nonsense they've been spoonfed by their masters at Fox News.
Good doggies. Bark like you've been taught. Roll over, play brain dead.
"When a tyrant rules, the people suffer" A paraphrase of course... but you get my drift.
We need a true leader, not a community organizer.
Here are the latest economic reports:
Please, conservatives, look at those numbers, charts and graphs and explain to me how Obama "made things worse" with the economy.
The Dow is back over 13,000, we've had the best string of GDP growth in over a decade, nearly two years straight of monthly job gains, and unemployment is now lower than it was when Obama took office as the economy was bleeding out.
BRANDON...... The cold hard facts are on the price of gas since Your Guy was elected, and the number of unemployed people.
Please...........................you don't have the cold hard facts, you are in denial.
"We need a true leader, not a community organizer. "
Because it worked out so well with Bush the Businessman, right?
The question being asked these days: Will the high price of gas hurt the recovering economy??? What recovery?? Have you been to the grocery lately...food prices rising due to the high price of gas!!!!!!!!!!!
So true. If only conservatives looked at numbers. We are doing great! Together, we see at least another 4 years of fantastic economic growth if Obama is POTUS again in 2012. We'll all win. -
Now Brandon, is that anyway to address somebody who is probably paying for YOUR mortgage?
As for your stats you're touting, always remember what Mark Twain said, "in life there are lies, damn lies, then there are statistics." And trust me, as a lifelong Chicagoan, nobody and I mean NOBODY can create, manipulate, distort and fabricate statistics like the the Chicago machine can, and Obama is just another machine politician.
Hope and change from a Chicago Politician??? LOL, you bought that line I didnt.
The cold hard facts are on the price of gas since Your Guy was elected, and the number of unemployed people.
That's the best you've got? Seriously?
The price of gas still isn't as high as it ever got under Bush ($4.12/gl in the summer of 2008), but even if it does, are you dumb enough to believe the president controls the price of gas? Really?
The number of unemployed people? Here's a convenient chart for you. Please explain to us all how what we've seen under Obama is worse than what we saw under Bush.
Now Brandon, is that anyway to address somebody who is probably paying for YOUR mortgage?
What an effective argument. You have absolutely no argument on the numbers, so .... I must be poor, or living in someone's basement, right?
I pay my own mortgage. And I live in a Blue State, which means that my tax money is, in all likelihood, going to the Red State welfare queens out there.
You think I live on your dime? Nope. Odds are that you live on MY dime. And you're still an ass about it.
It's not how much he's accomplished. It's how much GOOD he's accomplished. Many (most?) Americans think his accomplishments are taking the country in the wrong direction. So, he's been very busy doing harm to the country and its citizens. If you want to recognize him, give him the government equivalent of a Razzie, not Mt. Rushmore.
Hope and change from a Chicago Politician??? LOL, you bought that line I didnt.
Can you all make up your mind? Either Obama is a radical Marzist gay Islamomexican who has radically destroyed everything in this country, or he's a lazy guy who hasn't accomplished a thing. It really can't be both. Unless, you know, you're an idiot.
"Please explain to us all how what we've seen under Obama is worse than what we saw under Bush."
Let's ask Nancy Pelosi. -
This thread may break the world record for right-wing insanity. Don't let those pesky facts get in the way of a good hating, folks. Have at it!
TR, I know I probably can't even come close to debating such a scholarly fellow as yourself, but it was my understanding that most of the states in major financial trouble are of the Blue variety...see New York, California and my deadbeat state Illinois, but facts are just dumb are'nt they?
As for my living on your dime, I would say guess again, as a first generation American born of LEGAL immigrant parents who WORKED my tail off to attend, pay for and graduate from Law School I can say my tax bill would probably make your eyes pop out of that brilliant head of yours. But seeing that i am probably in the top 1% earners in this country I am probably the enemy to you regardless of the fact that I work 50 hour weeks and earn every dime I make.
excellent analysis! when objective and thoughtful review is done, without stupid partisanship, the truth sees the light.
"""Please explain to us all how what we've seen under Obama is worse than what we saw under Bush."
Let's ask Nancy Pelosi."
What? What does that even mean? Have you right-wingers become so wrapped up in the protective cocoon of Fox and Rush that you don't even know how to communicate with people who haven't drank the Konservative Kool-Aid?
"Let's ask Nancy Pelosi"? From what she's said about both men, I'm pretty sure she'd say Obama has made some vast improvements over C-Plus Augustus.
--This thread may break the world record for right-wing insanity. Don't let those pesky facts get in the way of a good hating, folks. Have at it!--
I don't understand the hate myself, Jack.
"Not only has spending risen faster than GDP or revenues over the years; a particular kind of spending has led the charge. Let�s divide all federal spending into three broad categories. One is national defense. The second, the welfare state, includes Social Security; other income-support programs, such as disability insurance and unemployment compensation; Medicare; other health programs, such as Medicaid and the Children�s Health Insurance Program; and all programs in education, job training, and social services. I call the third �housekeeping,� meaning everything else that the federal government does: federal courts, prisons, prosecutors, and the FBI; Amtrak and air-traffic control; national parks and the EPA; embassies and consulates; veterans� programs; NASA; and so on.
Here�s the scorecard. Spending on national defense, adjusted for inflation and population, was 42 percent higher in 2008 than in 1965, while housekeeping outlays were 76 percent higher (see the chart below). Both, in other words, grew far less rapidly than the economy or federal revenues�both of which, remember, were about 150 percent higher in 2008 than in 1965. But welfare-state expenditures were 583 percent higher. In fact, the welfare state became the core of the federal government, growing from 26 percent of federal outlays in 1965 to 61 percent in 2008."
TR, I know I probably can't even come close to debating such a scholarly fellow as yourself, but it was my understanding that most of the states in major financial trouble are of the Blue variety...see New York, California and my deadbeat state Illinois, but facts are just dumb are'nt they?
Your understanding is wrong. At the federal level, blue states fund red states, and at the state level, both kinds are in trouble. Unless you think Nebraska, Mississippi, Texas, Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota etc. are all "blue states"?
Oh and also dumb? Spelling it "are'nt."
But seeing that i am probably in the top 1% earners in this country I am probably the enemy to you regardless of the fact that I work 50 hour weeks and earn every dime I make.
Oh, big talk on the internet! You're clearly a major player at your law firm, as you sit here trolling an internet thread.
Top Ten reasons Obama is a failure as a president-add your own to the list:
1. Highest sustained unemplyment rate since the
2. Most debt accumulated by one president in U.S. history.
3.Passage of a health care overhaul using legislative bribes and payoffs to congressmen, against the will of the majority.May be unconstitional.
4. Escalated the war in Afghanistan,while cricizing Bush for doing the same thing in Iraq.
5. Paid off unions instead of protecting bondholders and citizens rights in auto bail-outs. Billions still not paid back.
6. More foreclosures than ever three years into his term.
7. Waste of tens of billion of dollars paying off donors in failed green energy ventures(like Solyndra).
8. Getting American law enforcement officers killed by stupid gun walking schemes like "fast and furious".
9.Largest increase in government spending in history accompanied by more new government regulations in history.
10. No leadership in debt reduction talks-rejecting his own commissions findings(Erskine-Bowles). Presided over a Senate that hasn't produced a budget in three years and has done nothing to require one.Finally according to most public opinion polls he is the most polarizing president in U.S. history. Promised "hope and change" and has brough division and despair.
Instead of "The Incomplete Greatness of Barack Obama", maybe a better article would be the "The Great Incompleteness of Barack Obama"
To those of you who continually wonder why Obama and his staff don't "toot their own horn", the obvious answer to me is that they recognize the majority of Americans feel his accomplishments are a negative to the country, not a positive. Therefore, the Obama campaign doesn't want to open wounds wherein the majority of the populace will become more angry regarding his "accomplishments"
You confuse accomplishment with activity. Yes, he's been active but to describe something as an accomplishment implies that it has positive intrinsic value. Yes, he's been active, but are the results really "accomplishments?"
I think you can easily summarize what the majority of us believe fairly easily. He's done little FOR us but lots TO us.
Nancy back in 2006:
"The President has the worst jobs record since the Great Depression, and the economy is slowing due to the housing slump. The budget and trade deficits as well as public debt levels have all climbed to record levels," Pelosi said.Nothing says a bad jobs record like 4.4% unemployment!
--U.S. Unemployment Up in February
Underemployment is 19.1%, up from 18.7% in JanuaryPRINCETON, NJ -- U.S. unemployment, as measured by Gallup without seasonal adjustment, increased to 9.1% in February from 8.6% in January and 8.5% in December.
With respect to the two "signature" pieces of legislation - the PPACA and the Dodd-Frank Act - most of the heavy lifting was done by the members of Congress. On the PPACA Reid and Pelosi were far more the architects of the substance of that bill and far more responsible for its passage than the President. On Dodd-Frank, the name itself speaks to who was responsible for crafting the law.
The jury is still out on the GM bailout. Only about half of the taxpayers investment has been returned and we've just been informed that production of the Volt is being suspended for 5 weeks. Will another shoe drop? What happens if the dollar rises and foreign cars become relatively cheaper. It's far too early to crow about this as a success as there are many other questions one could pose about the long term viability of the company.
Count me in with Alan Brinkley, David Greenberg, and Allen Guelzo.
You are kidding right? Except 'health reform' that Americans want anyone would have accomplished what Obama did. Even Sarah Palin. What don't you understand?
Sadly, like many other rightwing loons here, you don't understand Obama's accomplishments. We'd be on the street without his help. -
Ex law firm TR, after practicing at a major firm for 4+ years I realized I didnt really like and/or trust lawyers (most of them were unabashed liberals), so I did something that you probably despise.......I started a small business!!! Yes boo me now, I came from a blue collar family of extremely meager means and through desire, dedication and determination I became succesfull, how dare I? As stated earlier, my yearly tax bill would knock you over, but then again, you are most likely one of those jealous dopes who thinks I dont pay enough.
As for my earlier mispelling, my bad...........English wasnt my first language.
You people in the Collective can crow abot OB all day because yall made him the teflon President. Passing legislation is more red tape.
OB is and always has been an empty suit reading a script from a teleprompter.
This country is great in spite of OB and the clowns, not because of them.
Where is my free condoms. They prevent unwnanted preganncy and protect women's health by preventing the spread of STDs.
Free Condoms for ALL.
The Obama administration should be sued on sexual discrimination charges.
You liberals keep talking about "pesky little facts," that make Obama seem great. Well, here are some more pesky little facts about Obama.
1. Federal debt has increased by 43% from $10.6 trillion to $15 trillion.
2. Americans living in poverty have increased by 16% from 39.8 million to 46.2 million.
3. Total unemployment (U6) has increased by 68% from 13.7 million to 23 million.
4. Price of gasoline has increased by 80% from $1.86/gal to $3.35/gal (As of December 2011-Much higher now)
5. Americans on food stamps have increased 42% from 31.8 million to 45.2 million
6. Home foreclosures per year have increased by 34% from 850,000 to 1,140,000
7. Total bankruptcy filings per year have increased by 42% from 1,117,641 to 1,593,081.
8. Median Household incomes has declined by 4% from $50,939 to $48,950
9. Median value of existing homes has declined by 17% from $197,233 to $162,500.
10. US dollar compared to foreign currencies has declined by 8.7%. [US dollar index of 85.9 in Jan 2009 to 78.5 in Dec 2011.]
11. US dollar compared to gold has declined 105%. [ $855/ounce to $1750/ounce]
12. US credit rating downgraded by S&P for first time
Read them and weep, gullible liberals. -
Face it. Bigger government is not a desirable thing to many Americans. Liberals haven't made the case, and government hasn't earned the right to be given more control.
The problem for liberals is that they are trying to sell very worthwhile ideas that will be delivered by a large and wasteful bureaucracy that very often falls short. They also have little regard for the boundaries that exists between the individual the state and the federal govt.
If liberals were really concerned about the needs of Americans, they would move to clean up the federal govt., which is the biggest obstacle they face.
Whew, the author must come from a parallel universe or he was writing from a locked-down facility for the politically insane to post such an hallucenogenic assessment of one of the most destructive, devisive & incompetent presidents in the history of our great Republic. We all know that the Democrats smell defeat at the hands of this disaster of a president & are trying to dictate a false narrative through their lap-dog media cohorts, but this is scary in terms of its near-total detachment from reality. As the gas prices keep rising & BO keeps whining about "green energy" the electorate is beginning to grasp how his extreme ideology has crippled Obama's ability to do the right thing for the country NOW.
An action is only considered an "accomplishment" if people believe it has actually achieved something desirable. If it is perceived as something harmful, few considered it an "accomplishment."
"If liberals were really concerned about the needs of Americans, they would move to clean up the federal govt., which is the biggest obstacle they face."
And send their children to public schools.
Getting more done is the measure of greatness? That would depend, greatly, on WHAT 'more' is done, wouldn't it?
Another shill for Obama. Who really wrote this? Media Matters? As a conservative, I take issue with your condescending tone that the GOP and conservatives are just too plain stoopid to see or appreciate the greatness of King Hussein's accomplishments. No, that ability is only reserved for like-minded elitists.
KH will go down as the worst president in history. November cannot come soon enough.
Bill Peterson:
Absolutely. What does Obama's inability to get anything through Congress say about his negotiating and leadership skills? If the president cannot even handle a bunch of recalcitrant republicans, how in heck's name is he capable of dealing with the world's worst players?
And it's not as though tough, stubborn republicans didn't exist before Obama became president. Are we to believe that they were created in a "big bang" moment when he took office? That no other democratic president had a difficult Congress to deal with?
I can't believe how many democrats are willing to buy into the notion that President Obama is not responsible for his ineffectual dealings with Congress. If you have to make so many excuses for the guy, should he really get another term?
The great list of great Obama accomplishments is so great that it includes as the number one great, great thing...the Healthcare legislation that 1) Americans overwhelmingly rejected at the time, have rejected overwhelmingly continuously since, have organized in groups all over the country in an unprecedented fashion to oppose, elected more than enough congresspeople to end the Democrat House majority in a loss greater than that for either party since 1938 largely as a result of the great, great Obama accomplishment, the great Obama accomplishment in healthcare is so great that the Obama administration has granted thousands of waivers so that companies and unions can avoid having it apply to them, the Obamacare hasn't gone into action (dysfunction) yet but will be collecting taxes for it for a few years before it goes into effect so that we won't really get an idea of what it is costing and the Sec. of Health and Human Services, as opposed to inhuman services says, after the President and her promising that the great, great Obamacare would save money for the budget, said in a Senate hearing that she really didn't know what the effect of the great, great Obamacare would be on the budget. And that's just his first great accomplishment. I don't know why anyone who stuck their country people with a despised government takeover of their healthcare would not give the man credit for a giant screw up when all they really want is to have a job and pay for their continued existence and he doesn't give a damn about that. Mount Rushmore for sure. if you are insane.
Good bye and good riddance Oblamer in chief. What a pathetic excuse for a leader.
I hope leaving these comments is making the conservatives feel better about themselves. Because when Obama gets re-elected in a landslide this fall, that's going to hurt like hell.
"I can't believe how many democrats are willing to buy into the notion that President Obama is not responsible for his ineffectual dealings with Congress."
Yes, when the Republican leader in the Senate says his top goal is to make Obama a one-term president, and then gets his group to use the filibuster more in one session of Congress than it had been used in the previous forty years combined ... that's definitely Obama's fault.
It really must be amazing to be a Republican, and getting to believe so many things that are demonstrably untrue.
"I hope leaving these comments is making the conservatives feel better about themselves"
It should, because all they're doing is driving up the ad revenue for this website. Thanks for paying the bills here!
Brian R. on March 09, 2012 11:46 AM:
Nothing says that like 97-0.
As a conservative, I take issue with your condescending tone that the GOP and conservatives are just too plain stoopid to see or appreciate the greatness of King Hussein's accomplishments.
And yet, by your comment here with the "King Hussein" idiocy, you've just proven to everyone that conservatives really are just too stupid. Thanks for dropping by and clearing that up for us!
"Nothing says that like 97-0."
Sorry, what?
"Are we to believe that they were created in a "big bang" moment when he took office? That no other democratic president had a difficult Congress to deal with? "
Actually, yes, you are to believe that. Because it is absolutely true. The 111th Senate set an all-time record for filibusters and obstruction in general. The difficulty that Congress has posed is literally unprecedented.
Which might be why the Republicans in Congress have an approval rating that's about 30 points lower than the president.
BLS job stats out today - 8.3% unemployment. Gallop says the unemployment rate is 9.1%, the white house says 8.3%... the BLS method of calculating job stats has changed since Obama came into office to make him look better. Al hunt is the only political commentator on Bloomberg and he is a dem hack. I beleive Gallop. Obama must go in 2012!
"Sorry, what?"
Glad you didn't hear a thing...
Read through a lot of the right-wing trolls we have today, and it's nice to see that all they have is impotent rage and fact-free whining. What a bunch of loons.
Brian R.:
"I can't believe how many democrats are willing to buy into the notion that President Obama is not responsible for his ineffectual dealings with Congress."
Yes, when the Republican leader in the Senate says his top goal is to make Obama a one-term president, ...
When the president is seen as being capable of expanding government at the rate at which he did, any responsible republican would be remiss to not make it a point to end his presidency. What do you think the mid-term elections were about? They were an effort to stop him, too.There is good reason for republicans wanting to end his presidency at one term. And it is the same reason why Obama's poll numbers are stuck below 50% and his "accomplishments" are so hard to sell.
And you are either naive or dishonest to claim that a republican's desire to limit the opposing party's candidate to one term is somehow unique to Obama's presidency. I suppose we are also to believe that Obama hasn't been working on his re-election since he took office?
"Glad you didn't hear a thing..."
Probably because you didn't say a thing.
Typical conservative. Bitch, moan, accuse ... just do anything but address the facts, because the facts don't fit with the lies you've swallowed like a good little dittohead, do they?
And you are either naive or dishonest to claim that a republican's desire to limit the opposing party's candidate to one term is somehow unique to Obama's presidency.
It is. Democrats worked with Bush to pass No Child Left Behind, Medicare Part D, the faith-based initiative and many other accomplishments. Republicans just say no to everything, even when Obama embraces things that were their ideas in the first place, like cap-and-trade (a product of the Heritage Foundation and the GHW Bush White House).
This is unprecedented obstruction. Look at that graph of filibusters and tell me how it isn't?
"Probably because you didn't say a thing.
Typical conservative. Bitch, moan, accuse ... just do anything but address the facts, because the facts don't fit with the lies you've swallowed like a good little dittohead, do they?"
I'm a more quiet Senator. If you want more talk, give Dodd a call. He can be heard Countrywide.
"Are we to believe that they were created in a "big bang" moment when he took office? That no other democratic president had a difficult Congress to deal with? "
Actually, yes, you are to believe that. Because it is absolutely true.
And Obama's actions and negotiating style have nothing to do with this? It's laughable that you consider Obama an innocent victim of republicans.Where is Obama's responsibility for this gridlock?
"the BLS method of calculating job stats has changed since Obama came into office to make him look better."
No, they haven't. Stop listening to Fox, it only makes you dumber.
Excellent contribution Marc.......now go back to your crayons and play doh.
Brian R. on March 09, 2012 12:00 PM:
Like I said before, they simply don't understand, do they?
And Obama's actions and negotiating style have nothing to do with this? It's laughable that you consider Obama an innocent victim of republicans.
His negotiating style? You mean when he asked Rep. Sen. Judd Gregg to join his cabinet, and Gregg said yes before saying he couldn't work with a Dem? Or when he put health care in the hands of a bipartisan group of senators who then worked out a compromise that they later denounced as "too extreme"? Or offered Republicans 4-to-1 cuts in their favor in a deficit deal that they rejected because it wasn't 4-to-0?
If you think Obama's the bad guy in all this, you're insane.
Brian R.:
Republicans just say no to everything,...
"They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back." The words of a truly ineffective leader, if I can even call him that.
Mr. Gastris has apparently gone around the bend,over the cliff,is out to lunch,is 52 cards short of a deck and ,well my point is obvious. If you support Obama ,you support ascendancy of Washington and the reduction of the role of the individual. To you Obama supporters ,do you really want federal bureaucrats taking an ever increasing role in your life or do you want the freedom to follow your own course, relying on the federal government for very limited purposes. Do you cherish the Constitution or is it just an impediment to government becoming Mommy?. Everything this president has done was intended to protect union jobs or increase the role of government. He has largely ignored the unemployed and has even gone so far as to lie about the numbers in order to enhance his re-election prospects.Almost 2 million of your fellow citizens have been excluded from the equation because the White House knows that the truth cannot be told without endangering the president's chances.Think of your families. We all have Fathers,Mothers and friends who cannot find work. Think of them when you are talking about the alleged accomplishments of the least caring man to occupy the White House in several generations.
Is this satire? Some sort of parody? This guy is brain-fried
Are you kidding ? The "great things" that he has done is to create a country with entitlement levels that will surely bankrupt us. He has created an environment of envy. Imagine an America where we don't believe in any self-made men. No, in this brave new world we aren't anyone, because we owe it all to the government. This world view has only led to tyranny
"If you think Obama's the bad guy in all this, you're insane."
That's the kind of people we are dealing with, TR.
His negotiating style? You mean when he asked Rep. Sen. Judd Gregg to join his cabinet, and Gregg said yes before saying he couldn't work with a Dem? Or when he put health care in the hands of a bipartisan group of senators who then worked out a compromise that they later denounced as "too extreme"? Or offered Republicans 4-to-1 cuts in their favor in a deficit deal that they rejected because it wasn't 4-to-0?
His inner circle is insular, and he rarely ventures outside it. Even his own party members in Congress complain they have little contact with him.As I recall, there were many republican proposals that were completely ignored. Calling attention to the few that didn't go the president's way provides an incomplete picture of those negotiations.
If you want to see his "negotiating" skills at work, examine his dealings with the Catholic Bishops. He listened to their objections. Ignored them. Then came up with a "solution" that didn't completely address their concerns and declared it "acceptable" to everyone, even though he never consulted the Catholic Bishops on it.
And if you want to understand the republicans' reaction to Obama's "negotiating" style, watch the Catholic Bishops, who refuse to back down.
"And if you want to understand the republicans' reaction to Obama's "negotiating" style, watch the Catholic Bishops, who refuse to back down."
Nah, I'll watch the head of the Catholic Hospital Association, who said they're perfectly fine with the compromise.
But please, don't let me stop you from keeping this issue alive. Try to call a few more women "sluts" while you're at it. That'll definitely be a winner in the fall election.
"The [Complete Marxist Madness] of Obama"
Maybe the Catholic bishops should listen to their own people:
About 58% of American Catholics "believe that employers should be required to provide their employees with health care plans that cover contraception," the survey showed. That was higher than the percentage of white mainline Protestants (50%) and white evangelicals (38%) who believe that. The Catholic Church officially forbids contraception use, but 98% of Catholic women who have been sexually active have used birth control.
When someone in power imposes his will amongst unwilling participants, though it CAN be called an accomplishment, most see it as tyranny.
The survey question was "Would you say he has accomplished a great deal during that time, a good amount, not very much, or little or nothing?�
This is a very poorly worded question. "Accomplished", "great deal", and "good amount" all have a positive connotation. Applied to a specific subject, I view Obamacare as a disaster, not a positive accomplishment, a bad deal, and a horrible amount of damage to our country.
"And if you want to understand the republicans' reaction to Obama's "negotiating" style, watch the Catholic Bishops, who refuse to back down."
Nah, I'll watch the head of the Catholic Hospital Association, who said they're perfectly fine with the compromise.
You are free to pick and choose what you will watch and ignore. And to use slurs, like "slut", when you run out of arguments. -
That'll definitely be a winner in the fall election.
Just drag that $100 bill through a trailer park and you'll be surprised. -
LLF on March 09, 2012 12:39 PM
RE: ObamaCare
All you need is a waiver.
Brian R.:
Maybe the Catholic bishops should listen to their own people:
If you know anything about the Catholic Church, you would realize that it is not a democracy. People don't get to decide on the tenets of the Church. Opinion surveys are irrelevant. -
So Brian R. if "Democrats worked with Bush to pass No Child Left Behind, Medicare Part D" why don't they step up and take responsibility for it when those programs are criticized? I want to thank you for acknowledging that the Democrat party is at least partially responsible for the budget deficits of the Bush years and for NCLB.
"f you know anything about the Catholic Church, you would realize that it is not a democracy. People don't get to decide on the tenets of the Church. "
I'm a lifelong Catholic, educated in parochial schools, with one uncle a priest and an aunt a nun. So yeah, I know the Church.
Lay people don't get to decide the tenets of the Church, but we do often ignore them. See: birth control, the death penalty, the war in Iraq, etc etc.
The Church isn't being forced to do anything here. Its insurers are, and they don't have any legitimate religious complaints, period.
And frankly, I and my fellow parishioners pay taxes -- the Church doesn't. When it comes to spending those taxes, the government should be listening to us, not them.
It depends on what the word "accomplish" means. If one means turning the Republic into a welfare state, destroying private enterprise, confiscating the privat health care system, bankrupting the government, undermining every cultural and moral assumption of Western Civilization, encouraging the murder of unborn babies, diluting the native-born population, weakening our traditional alliances, foisting the homosexual political agenda on every aspect of American life, and attacking freedom of Christian conscience, then I suppose the author has a point.
Terrific Article.
I especially found the article impressive regarding the Affordable Health Care Act and Financial Reform Act. These two landmark pieces of legislation as well as whether President Obama is re-elected to serve a second-term will determine his long-standing stature and overall greatness.
As for creating room on Mt. Rushmore for President Obama; perhaps, when the time is ripe to carve out space for FDR, the future architect might carve two presidential heads for the price of one.
Dependence. Simple.
When an article is as long and convoluted as this one, means one thing...words acquire new meanings in this Administration.
For example "greatness" = expansive (as in government expansion into everything "private sector").
47 million americans now DEPEND upon some form of government subsistence. Add to this expanding class another 10,000 daily entrants. Just below this lower class of americans are those truly "down-and-outers." And just below these are unnumbered soup kitchen, informal food stamp recipients, WICS and Section 8'ers.
Gone are America's entreprenuers.This is Mr. Obama's electorate. Don't create jobs, but depend upon government. Add to this federal, state and municipal employees receiving regal salaries, bonuses and pensions ALL on tax payers dimes.
This is Soviet-style governance and this is now defined as "greatness?" OH! No more American Excelence, now it's America's "Greatness." God Bless America. She's on life support.
Wow, I am absolutely astounded by the complete and utter bullshit that can be seen in all these oh-so-intelligent conservative comments. Way to analyze an article that uses actual research with a bunch of trite nonsense fed to you by Faux News. You truly make me sad for the human race.
I wonder which right-wing radio host or Fox personality commanded their minions to come comment on an article they didn't read and wouldn't approach fairly if they did.
"I wonder which right-wing radio host or Fox personality commanded their minions to come comment on an article they didn't read and wouldn't approach fairly if they did."
Faux News is run by the rich.
Messup, you blathering idiot, did it ever occur to you that maybe people are "dependent" upon government assistance because the economy went into a recession because of 8 years of Republican mis-rule and exploitation by our greedy financial sector? Have you ever heard of cause and effect or do you just really not give a sh#t?
Obama has tried again and again to actually create jobs through government spending, but is always blocked by the damn yahoos YOU elected to be oh so concerned about the deficit. The deficit that didn't matter, apparently, during Bush's presidency. No, instead you loonies are pushing austerity measures that work oh so well in Europe these days. For the love of christ, pull your head out of your ass.
I love how conservatives can denounce an article they clearly haven't read.
Who needs to weigh the facts themselves when they've already been told what to believe, right?
I wonder which right-wing radio host or Fox personality commanded their minions to come comment on an article they didn't read and wouldn't approach fairly if they did.
And I wonder how idiotic people can be to claim that every conservative gets his thoughts from FoxNews. What a tired and ignorant claim. -
I'm a lifelong Catholic, educated in parochial schools, with one uncle a priest and an aunt a nun. So yeah, I know the Church.
Obviously not well enough to expect the Bishops to change their position based upon a poll of Catholics.Do you know how much the Catholic Church spends on providing health care?
What you have is an opinion. Don't confuse it with knowledge of the Catholic Church.
And I wonder how idiotic people can be to claim that every conservative gets his thoughts from FoxNews. What a tired and ignorant claim.
Well, in fairness, I wouldn't call them "thoughts," really.
Obviously not well enough to expect the Bishops to change their position based upon a poll of Catholics.
I don't give two shits about the Bishops, frankly. They need to worry less about this, and do more to address the pedophilia scandal that has shattered many of our faith in their leadership abilities. This isn't helping.
Messup, you blathering idiot, did it ever occur to you that maybe people are "dependent" upon government assistance because the economy went into a recession because of 8 years of Republican mis-rule and exploitation by our greedy financial sector? Have you ever heard of cause and effect or do you just really not give a sh#t?
If you were serious about learning the causes of this financial collapse, you would know that the conditions for this financial meltdown were set up long before the "8 years of Republican mis-rule".Banks were allowed onto the field. Underwriting rules were loosened. Big money was spent lobbying. Regulators were thwarted. And democrats were at the center of many of these activities.
I don't give two shits about the Bishops, frankly. They need to worry less about this, and do more to address the pedophilia scandal that has shattered many of our faith in their leadership abilities. This isn't helping.
They are separate issues. The latter was absolutely disgusting and a disaster, I agree, but that doesn't change the insurance mandate issue.
Way to misinterpret. All poodles are dogs, but not all dogs are poodles. The less intellectual conservatives that like to comment on these things tend to get their talking points from one place. Right wing radio was also mentioned, so not just Fox News. Both account for a very large market segment, but feel free to argue that these opinions are only coming from readers of the WSJ or The Corner.
"And democrats were at the center of many of these activities."
Obama, Dodd and Corzine don't count. Especially Obama.
Catholic parishioners want birth control coverage. Catholic hospitals are fine with the compromise the president struck.
Catholic bishops don't like it? Fine, objection noted. No one cares.
Those 8 years - the unfunded wars, the tax cut, the deregulation - did very little to help. I don't disagree that politicians on both sides were often at fault. That's a nuanced understanding that can be appreciated and debated at length. The narrative that the bad economic conditions in 2008 and after were Obama's fault is the problem. The narrative that "socialist" policies caused the economic problems when in reality and excess of Capitalism was to blame is also a problem.
Catholic parishioners want birth control coverage. Catholic hospitals are fine with the compromise the president struck.
Catholic bishops don't like it? Fine, objection noted. No one cares.
Boy, are you dense. It matters not what anybody thinks or who else cares. There's a little issue of rights. I won't even go into the difference between a federal mandate and a state mandate. -
Here is the problem. It is not that he has not done anything. It is that many people like me disagree vehemently with what he has done and how he has done it. Getting a bunch of bills passed and implementing a bunch of policies that the American people disagree with is not an accomplishment it is a sign of pig-headed socialist arrogance.
If you do not think that the majority of the American people disagreed with what Obama was doing in his first two years in office, then why did the American people put in place a House of Representatives in 2010 that promised to stop his agenda in its tracks and reverse whatever parts of his agenda it could.
To be specific, my personal problems with his agenda are:
- I disagree with raising Federal spending to 24% of GDP. 20% would be more like it with none of the reductions coming out of defense or homeland security.
- I disagree strongly with the entire premise of ObamaCare. The government needs to be less involved in our healthcare, not more involved. The bill is an affront to our freedoms, and is also an economic disaster that will wreck devastation upon our small businesses. I personally run a small business that will never hire its 50th employee due solely to ObamaCare
- I disagree strongly with the notion that we should tax success, and that somehow the country is better off if we take money from successful people and businesses and give it to the government to waste.
- I disagree strongly with the idea that the government can "stimulate" the economy by borrowing money from one set of people and handing it out to another set of people. The entire $860B stimulus package was a waste for this reason, and our kids are going to be stuck with the interest bill forever.
In short there is nothing that Obama has done except ordering the killing of Bin Ladin that I agree with. Since I disagree with every one of his other accomplishments and want every one of them undone I will be devoting all of my political energies to seeing him removed from office in November of this year. I do not care who the alternative candidate is. Nothing could possibly be worse than four more years of pig-headed arrogant socialism.
Obama's accomplishments do not serve the American people but only his self-serving ideology. He had zip credentials for the presidency, and unfortunately, he's failed to learn on the job. A lackluster IL State Senator and a one-third-of-a-term U.S. Senator has no business becoming CEO of this nation. ObamaCare is a disaster waiting to happen. It will not only blow out the federal budget (if the Democratic Senate ever passes one) but also blow out personal budgets, particularly those of young people who will be expected to pay large premiums in support of their elders' medical coverage. Dodd-Frank was passed as fill-in-the-blank legislation and is still being written by bureaucrats. To date, informed opinion states that Dodd-Frank just adds burdensome regulations while doing nothing to stop another economic disaster. Won't even get into the multitude of new EPA regulations, the Boeing fiasco, and the Solyndra and other green bankruptcies.
What I find most appalling about Obama and his consort is that they have no consciences or compassion. They take million-dollar plus vacations, party, and play while 25 million Americans are unemployed/underemployed and 46 million Americans are on food stamps.
Hey, conservatives: try looking up what "socialism" means. You look pretty dense describing a centrist president who's rescued Wall Street and ignored nationalizing health care in favor of empowering the insurance companies as a "socialist."
"The narrative that "socialist" policies caused the economic problems when in reality and excess of Capitalism was to blame is also a problem."
An excellent point. Too much excess of Capitalism.
Duly noted.
I believe the frustration with Obama stems from his inability to articulate more than simple, relatively minor steps, when most people know the problems require much deeper and broader ones. Americans are waiting for someone to step up with a big plan, not for someone to put $50 in their pockets. He appears to be tinkering when we need something more.
His biggest solutions are behind him. They (stimulus, health care) were big and controversial. Now, when it comes to fixing the economy, he's throwing out "proposals" that people know won't be implemented and/or are too small.
My own opinion is that Obama is an ineffective leader on legislation. What we see today is the best he's got without Pelosi and Reid doing all his heavy lifting. Further, his view begins and ends with the federal government. Venture out, say, into the world of business and the global economy, and he's lost. Hiding behind Buffett does not cut it.
Venture out, say, into the world of business and the global economy, and he's lost.
That must be why corporate America is witnessing record profits, why the Dow Jones has gone up 40% on his watch, and why we've had the best string of quarterly GDP growth in over a decade.
If he's lost, he sure shouldn't ask Republicans for directions.
"That must be why corporate America is witnessing record profits, why the Dow Jones has gone up 40% on his watch, and why we've had the best string of quarterly GDP growth in over a decade."
We've got to keep pointing this out, TR! Keep up the good work.
"In terms os sheer tonnage." We didn't want more leftist policies or the Democrats would still hold the house and they kept the Senate only because the candidates put forth to challege were totally inept and unprepared. We need new leaders before we are buried under the tonnage of this debt he's leaving behind. To quote the Queen, "let's move."
Let's hope that President Romney can unravel some of those "accomplishments".
It's easy to see that the author has his own blinders on the virtue of getting "the banks on their feet at essentially zero cost to government." Please recall that Fannie, Freddie, and the Fed (which are not considered parts of the government) own a great deal of the bad debt from the crisis, in the forms of foreclosed homes and monetized debts, respectively. This lipstick cosmetology on the pig of the financial crisis, largely resulting from mortgage excesses caused by the Community Reinvestment Act, and multiplied by their derivatives, although costing "the government" little in the short run, will cost all of the taxpayers whose incomes fund the government in the long run. In the best possible scenario, this course of action would be called "kicking the can down the road," letting future generations make difficult decisions on unpopular cuts and pay for the excesses between now and then. At worst, it could lead to Weimar- or Banana-Republic sorts of inflationary issues, especially if government deficits are continually allowed to grow through presently unfunded government entitlement mandates (see Obamacare, one "great achievement," according to the author) and historically-proven economic slowdowns prompted by attempts to increase taxes to fund such mandates.
Of course, if many voters realize what is actually happening , the administration can always buy votes with bank-customer and investor money by forcing banks to renegotiate failing mortgages in the election year so that the mortgages will fail after the election. Oh, Obama has already done that. -
Mount Rushmore?? You can't be serious. Here's more fitting tribute:
US Currency by President:
One Dollar Bill...............George Washington
Five Dollar Bill..............Abe Lincoln
Ten Dollar Bill...............Alexander Hamilton
Fifty Dollar Bill.............Ulysses S Grant
Hundred Dollar Bill........Benjamin Franklin
Food Stamp....................Barack Obama
Paul, you sir are a complete moron if you believe this President is anything but a hack.
The writer seems to confuse naming legislation and intentions with actual achievement. Saying that a Wall Street act is "reform" does not mean that it is reform. The principal causes, Fannie and Freddie, weren't even mentioned, much less reformed. The multitude of regualtory agencies that did nothing, largely because they were busy supporting destruction of credit standards for mortgages, were "reformed" by giving them more powers. This is all political rhetoric rather than any true achievementy by Obama and the Democrats.
You lost me at "Health Care Reform". This administration did not "reform" health care.
Reform: To put into a new and improved form or condition; to restore to a former good state, or bring from bad to good.
There is no rational argument that would categorize "Obamacare" as reform. The author's use of this propaganda belies his willingness to engage in the magical thinking of the left and discredits his opinion on all topics political.
This article is part of a concerted effort to hold Obama's support from eroding that is sure to come as the truth about Obama is exposed by Breitbart.com. It's going to get ugly. I predict Obama will only win two states, New York and California. As long as it remains a minority it's nice to see that delusional people can relate to one another.
I think maybe the poll results were skewed.............. when folks respond "not much" in the way of accomplishment, what they meant was NOT MUCH THAT MAKES ANY SENSE OR IS GOOD FOR THIS COUNTRY.
"sheer legislative tonnage" - Just a note to those who applaud this sort of thing. In the future, because citizens are burdened under this "tonnage," a president who you strongly disagree with, say, a Republican, may use this legislative tonnage to hammer you over the head.
A smaller gov't decreases the odds you'll have an oppressive or tyrannical gov't. More laws, more bureaucrats, more taxes means less freedom, less creativity and spontaneity, and less money that allows such an environment.
It truly is so sad, how so many are so ungrateful for all the President Obama has wanted to do for them.
I'm thankful that President Obama has been so open and honest in how he has conducted all his fine work, too.
President Obama has gathered the finest of experts, from respected universities all over, to plan and talk about how they have helped us so much too.
Oh . . . excuse me, my special combination of booze and meds is wearing down now, so I have to go re-load . . .
Excellent satire!
He's the Marxist Chauncey Gardner.
My greatest disappointment with Obama is that he never debated the political right on their own terms. He allowed them to frame the issues and he responded to their frame. He never articulated his own frame and demanded that the political right respond to him.
He negotiated everything and reduced its impact. This is true with his handling of the healthcare debate, the banks and Wall Street, our pointless, costly, and destructive wars, to Israel, and most especially the budget and taxing the rich. Whenever the head of the Israel government shows up, the whole country stands up and salutes, no matter what atrocities they have committed. Obana has never challenged this.
The one time he debated the Republican Congress, he won. But that was the first and last time he did that.
Numerous analysts comment that Obama does not have a conflict gene. How can that be said of an American political leader? Most of Obama's supporters feel disappointed or frustrated. He hasn't provided the kind of fighting leadership that we expected. We certainly didn't expect a continuation of George W. Bush's policies
"TR on March 09, 2012 9:11 AM:
Wow, the teatards are out in full force here.
I love the smell of conservative pants-pissing in the morning. Smells like ... victory.
Good luck with whatever loser you wind up nominating, folks. Get ready for four more years."TR speaks truth, folks. I think a quote from the inestmiable frank zappa's early-80s opus, Joe's Garage, is appropriately applied to teatard republibot conservatroids everywhere (bring the band on down behind me boys):
"weenie weenie weenie"
A lot of really strong points in this article. Obama will hopefully be our next president. And his accomplishments will be even greater.
Ron Paul is an idiot. Romney is a used car salesman. Santorum believes the bible more so than science.
It should be a piece of cake, but the intelligence of the average American is sadly too low to understand what is in this article.
Keep up the good work
Cost of "Stimulus" Bill: $787 Billion
Jobs "Created:" 500 Thousand to 3.3 MillionCost per job "Created:" $1,572,000 to $262,000
To compete with private-sector wage structures, these numbers mean that the jobs "created" would have been, on average, Executive VP's down to Senior Engineers. Does anyone think that all those jobs "created" were such jobs? Printed or taxed, the money, if spent or invested in the private sector, would certainly have "created" more jobs.
Yet the author denies that the stimulus was ineffective.
Reform: To put into a new and improved form or condition; to restore to a former good state, or bring from bad to good.
So a system that reduces waste, reduces the deficit by a trillion dollars over ten years, extends coverage to 32 million Americans who used to go without, takes the cost of emergency room health care off the backs of the rest of us, forbids insurers from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions or placing annual or lifetime caps on benefits ... that's reform, right?
Please, do us Democrats a favor and go out there campaigning against "ObamaCare" this fall. Tell young people they'll be kicked off their parents' plans, tell people with chronic diseases they won't be able to find coverage anymore. Go on. Get busy.
Most respondents, when surveyed regarding achievements, expect a benefit to come alongside what is accomplished. Mr. Glastris knows this and ignores it. Strictly defined, one can claim something accomplished merely by shoving, uh, passing legislation, throwing money away/around, and abusing power to co-opt private industry. However, the public response has emphatically declared (as Glastris acknowledges) they find no benefit here. It has accomplished nothing, or worse.
Marc on March 09, 2012 2:48 PM:
Wow! Almost as good as public schools are after all the money spent.
Yet the author denies that the stimulus was ineffective.
All the major independent economic observers, public and private, agree that the stimulus made an important impact. The CBO, Moody's, IHS Global, Macroeconomic Advisers ... all of them.
Even the American Enterprise Institute agreed, noting that it made a significant impact on GDP in 2009 and 2010.
Wow! Almost as good as public schools are after all the money spent.
Yes! Please be sure to attack the public schools, too. There's no way that would alienate voters either. Go for it!
Enjoy the summer, people. You're not going to like November.
I think you have confused quantity with quality here. If you just asked people has the president done a load of stuff. Most would say "yes" as long as you don't care what kind of stuff was in the load. In this case it would be a load of crap.
Mr. Glastris, thank you for such a clearly written account of our president's accomplishments. Your essay will serve to reflect to most Americans how historical this moment is for all of us with such a great leader as President Obama.
I am surprised that you did not hit upon the most obvious reason why some Americans cannot appreciate the president.
If is as if we did not at all come from a background of violent racism toward blacks.
Surely, this experience remains in a powerful, hidden way.
But we have come a long way. And I am proud to stand with most of my fellow Americans to recognize the great leadership from a black president.
I urge many of you to read Reinhold Niebuhr's "Children of Light and the Children of Darkness." It's helping me to understand and appreciate some of the president's humanism.
Here's hope that we forget the faked debt crisis. No one's coming to our nation's door asking for money. They didn't come to Germany's door when Germany said 'no more'. We need to realize this.
As B. Mahler said, our President's first term assuaged the white side of his birth.
Now, ladies and gentlemen
= with his practically being already re-elected
for the second term -
the human black side.(Where he will finally put his foot now on the oil speculators -
this includes all of you waiting for the money to come in.)I think we should realize what we truly have and immediately begin changing the rules so that President Obama, like Roosevelt, can have third and fourth terms.
Just kidding. I mean no offense.
I stand with all of you who stand with our president and again thank you Mr. Glastris for clarity.
This article is part of a concerted effort to hold Obama's support from eroding that is sure to come as the truth about Obama is exposed by Breitbart.com. It's going to get ugly.
You mean that scary video they showed of him speaking out for the tenuring of women at Harvard Law School when they had no tenured women on the faculty? And when he hugged that other scary black man? Ooooo, so scary!
There's something ugly here, for sure. It's what passes for conservative thought these days.
"Yes! Please be sure to attack the public schools, too. There's no way that would alienate voters either. Go for it!"
I hear they are good, but I've never been to one. I asked Malia about them too, but she only passed them in the car...
lol, passing bills people do not like is not accomplishing anything.
Last I checked, 6 in 10 want the healthcare law repealed.
a majority thinks the stimulus was like flushing money down the toilet with no real hard beneficial to the longterm health of the economy.
Almost the same amount said it did more bad than good.
Dodd/Frank and Obamacare stopped the recovery dead in its tracks.. These two bills alone attach a massive dead weight to the ankle of small business and small banks who then froze up their lending.
All these bills have had such disasterous results on the economy. What I find amusing is the left thinks people should be happy about going backwards and blames everyones reluctance in supporting this failed president with the same interest they did in 2008 when he was an unknown quantity.
The mask is off, its pretty clear that Obama is intentionally and deliberately putting the jackboot on the neck of the economy.
Yikes! Paul; what a devoted slobbering tribute to the "Transformational" "DearLeader" Obama!
If you were female no doubt you would have spontaneously ovulated upon composing such a loving tribute...
Gag me with a spoon.
No one thinks Obama has not accomplished anything. Most think he has accomplished too many bad things.
I initially thought that the article was satire and really enjoying it and then it became painfully obvious the writer was serious.
obama considers it an accomplishment when he adds more people on food stamps or welfare, or adds another taxpayer supported public sector job - federal debt: 15,000,000,000,000 and counting
As others have pointed out, it's not how much you accomplish so much as what you accomplish. Much of what Glastris crows about - "Health care reform. The takeover and turnaround of the auto industry. The biggest economic stimulus in history" etc. - either is not bragging-rights material (ObamaCare) or misrepresents the situation (the auto industry would have turned around without Washington's help, though it would have meant the UAW taking a bigger hit then they did).
We have three branches of government each with their separate powers granted under the Constitution. It takes both Congress and the President to make legislation provided that that legislation passes Constitutional muster with the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, the various comments seem to imply the belief that President Obama is some sort of dictator with absolute power to change everything--and that he has failed. I do not know if this reflects an ignorance of how our government is structured and how it works, or whether it is a reflection of American need for immediate action and gratification. Romney says he knows how to fix things and so does Santorum. But, all candidates say that. Would they actually say that they don't know how to fix things? OK, without trying to cast aspersions, you become President of the USA, you inherit the following: fighting two wars costing a Billion dollars or more per day; the economy is in tatters thanks to the biggest drop in the market since the Great Depression; multi-billion dollar corporations are failing; and the American public has elected you to help fix it. This is not a TV movie or novel where a solution is found in 90 minutes or in a few days. Fast-forward on President Obama. One war is ended, the other ending; the market is back (near 13,000), employment is growing (unemployment at 8.4%, over 250,000 jobs added recently and millions since he took office), confidence is being restored, and the President's approval rating has grown past 50%. Either you believe that he has had nothing to do with this and that it is entirely the Republicans and chance that have brought us this far, or you could give credit to our President for having steered us out of those nightmares that existed in January of 2009. I believe that he has done a creditable job and should be applauded. However, I believe that the Republican party has done its best to trash this man in order to make their candidates and their ideas appear to be much better and greater. I am an independent voter and my vote goes for our President, Barack Obama. Don't change horses in mid-stream and stay the course (sound familiar?). In closing, I do not understand how any American woman, who is cognizant of the struggle that women have faced for equality in just these past 90 years since achieving the vote, could vote for a party that seeks to suppress women's rights at every opportunity and who support, not religious freedom, but religious intolerance of science, and other human rights at every turn. The Republican party has devolved into a bastion of limiting not only our government but also limiting the rights of all our citizens. I cannot vote for such an unamerican agenda.
reminds me of when I heard how ronald reagan defeated the evil empire and set america on the road to prosperity. reagan and obama: the bookends of delusion and ruin.
Oh Pllllluuuuuueeeeeeezzzzzzzeee!!!
This writer is on some Hard Crack !!!!
Hope & Change = Dope & Deranged !!!
Last I checked, 6 in 10 want the healthcare law repealed.
Wrong. Only 47% want it repealed.
When you poll people on the actual details of the plan, the support is even higher. The more people know about the details, the more they like it.
It's the exact opposite with the GOP. The more people know Romney, the less they like him. The more people know about the details of the Ryan budget, the less they like it.
No wonder conservatives rely on lies so much. The facts don't help.
A detailed, eight-page article full of facts and figures, and the conservative response amounts to "nyah nyah I can't hear you."
Well, thanks for dropping by and helping pay the author with ad revenue from all the page hits.
And, of course, for providing the regular readers here with some tremendous laughs. I haven't laughed this much in a long time.
Be sure to remove all sharp objects from your house in November. You're going to be depressed as hell.
This author is either very drunk or just not very bright. When people say that Obama has not accomplished very much it's because what he has done is so extremely unpopular. Obamacare continues to be a thorn in his side as people oppose it 54-42%. And that number has remained steady. Several states have had ballot issues and in each case, Obamacare lost. In Ohio, it lost in all 88 counties. Guess what the republican candidate is going to run ads on in Ohio.
The stimulus has proven to be a disaster, the magnitude depends on your party, but economists on both sides of the aisle have declared it a failure. And the democrat running the CBO has said in testimony in front of congress that the debt from the stimulus will be a drag on the economy for over 10 years.
The finance reform bill was a failure also. It favors big banks while badly hurting small community banks that small businesses depend on. It also does nothing to prevent banks from taking huge gambles, in fact it actually makes it worse since it guarantees big banks can borrow money at almost zero interest.It reminds me of the old good news bad news bromide. The good news is that my sister prepared more food in a day than Rachel Ray. The bad news is no one likes peanut butter and musturd sandwiches on moldy bread. I guess next week you can tell us about her greatness.
TR. you must be employed by the DNC. since you have the time to try and refute any reply that doesn't follow YOUR leftwing liberal mindset. what a pathetic fool.
Here's what the job front has looked like over the past four years.
Please, dear conservatives, explain to us simple liberals how this chart shows that Obama has "made things worse" as you keep insisting.
TR. you must be employed by the DNC. since you have the time to try and refute any reply that doesn't follow YOUR leftwing liberal mindset.
By "leftwing liberal mindset," do you mean "indisputable economic data"?
Because claiming I work for the DNC (ha!) doesn't change any of these facts. You can rant, you can rave, you can lie, you can smear, you can defame all you want -- and the facts don't change.
I guess facts have a liberal bias.
Marc on March 09, 2012 4:32 PM:
Do people read that on the bus too?
Does the main stream media really think that with rising gas and food prices that they can sell Obama when people feel that in their pocket. The main stream media can try to sell the u3 unemployment but americans feel the true u6 figures. The main stream media helps obama advance his wedge issues such as contraception to try to take the voters mind off his record. As George Stephanopolus's debate questions proved the media / obama colusion when he asked Mitt Romney if he though states had the right to outlaw contraception as an attempt to set up republicans for the upcoming planned controversy. With Obama its all bravado from the media but people dont feel any of his accomplishments in their lives. I would go as far to say that i did not see bin ladens body and hate the way obama placated the muslim world with the handeling of his supposed Death . So i am skeptical if it was actually real and not another Obama PR stunt.
To keep it civil, let's all just agree that Obama is an incompetent clown who is in over his head.
That's reason enough, without attacking his motives, to kick him out office. -
Two things: he's been amazingly inept at communicating what he HAS done, hence the polling answers, and he was amazingly naive and slow to respond when the GOP/TP stifled or slowedd his legislation. For the latter alone, he deserves a B-, C+ rating for his term so far. I support the man and will vote for him again. But he's been a disappointment.
Greatness \= Quantity of accomplishments
Ha, ha, ha. Obama, greatness.... This is brilliant. I love witty satire.
If anyone figures out anything Obama did, let me know. The country is a shambles now because of Obama and his leftwing friends in Congress.
And when was the last time Obama was at work?
That must be why corporate America is witnessing record profits, why the Dow Jones has gone up 40% on his watch, and why we've had the best string of quarterly GDP growth in over a decade.
And why they are not investing it here.
" Sweeping new regulations of Wall Street. A tough new set of consumer protections on the credit card industry" This didn't happen. If it did, show us where. Wall street is doing almost exactly what they were doing before the crash, almost NOONE has been indicted even though there are crimes that could be prosecuted. He didn't put Warren in the consumer protection job so that won't amount to much in the end. Now I'll have to hold my nose while I vote for him again. If there was any sort of reasonable alternative, I'd dump Obama in a second.
LOL! When I saw the "Incomplete Greatness of Obama' I thought for sure Mr Glastris was using sarcasm to write an article pointing out the total failure of the Obama Presidency. Much to my surprise everyone hasn't run out of Kool-Aide. There are still those that think "Obama is the one we've been waiting for" and no doubt "The planet under his Presidency is still "going to cool and the seas start to recede"! Just in his second term apparently not his first. What has Obama accomplished into his 4th year? Well the most massive wasted corrupt stimulous in all of history that gave us insanity like Solyndra and Enery1. The auto industry bailout that cost tens of billions of dollars and gave us Government Motors and the failed silly Chevy Volt! The corrupt Cornhusker Kickback and Florida Gatorade used to buy the votes needed to shove Obamacare down our unwilling throats. The first ever downgrade in our nation AAA credit rating. Record long term UNEMPLOYMENT, the slowest recovery since the great depression, and UNEMPLOYMENT still at 8.3%. A record number of people on foodstamps, and a record increase in the poverty rate. And Obama has accomplished all of that with the most most massive corrupt spending spree in all of history giving us far more debt in 4 years than Bush ran up in 8. Obama has given us nation destroying levels of debt with nothing to show for it, certainly not shovel ready projects and infrastruture improvements. Not to mention an insane war on the Catholic Church and Christianity. As for Obama's foreign policy of bows, apology, and appeasement? He's the most hostile President to Israel in our nation's history, the Middle East is in Chaos, Iran is about to get a nuclear weapon, and the Chinese and Russians can't believe their luck in getting Obama. Obama is the worst failure of Presidential Leadership in our nations history. The only person in the U.S. that should be happy with Obama is Jimmy Carter because Obama is such a total disaster he makes Jimmy Carter look good! If Obama wins reelection our nation will never recover and will become a giant, pathetic, debt ridden, poverty stricken, Banana Republic!
Conservatives, please learn to spell.
Two talking points to destroy of the lemming commenters.
The DJIA was at appx 13,000 in 2007 and gold was at 600.
Today DJIA is at 13,000 and gold at 1800. The DJIA would have to be at 39,000 if indexed to gold.The US GDP growth has average appx 2% over the last three years yet US Federal DEFICIT spending has been around 10% of GDP. How are you going to sustain a government when 50% of your taxation goes to interest on the debt.
Everything is fine, nothing to see here, keep bankrupting the country, massive taxation in the future will take care of that debt.
The fascinating thing about Glastris' line of argumentation is that it's of a piece with the original delusion that attended Obama's candidacy and early term as president, namely that he's a savant. This manifestly idiotic trope, repeated endlessly and/or implicitly acknowledged by Obama media groupies, reached its zenith -- or nadir if your prefer -- with the recent Newsweek cover story titled "Why Are Obama's Critics So Dumb?", written appropriately enough by fellow self-regarding fraud Andy Sullivan.
This is what I find so grating about the man and his presidency. And to make things worse, Obama clearly believes his own hype! Listen, I agree with some things he's done. For instance, he's largely adopted the Bush anti-terror regime, whatever Glastris and his interns would have you believe. But it's impossible to stomach the increasingly desperate insistence that the man's a brilliant intellectual, and by extension it would appear a great president.
I'm reminded of a recent New York Times op-ed by Drew Westen -- a pro-Obama essay as it happens -- that unwittingly captured the essence of the man. Here's the salient passage: "Those of us who were bewitched by his eloquence on the campaign trail chose to ignore some disquieting aspects of his biography: that he had accomplished very little before he ran for president, having never run a business or a state; that he had a singularly unremarkable career as a law professor, publishing nothing in 12 years at the University of Chicago other than an autobiography; and that, before joining the United States Senate, he had voted "present" (instead of "yea" or "nay") 130 times, sometimes dodging difficult issues."
This, I think sums up Obama: An empty suit with an undeniable gift for oratory and self-promotion. But given his dearth of achievement, how might we explain the original narrative about his supposed intellectual superiority? This is the interesting part. Liberals who fancy themselves to be their political adversaries' intellectual betters have in effect projected an idealized view of themselves onto Obama. This, in effect, is how articles of his nature come to be written.
As the founder and former CEO of a multi-billion dollar public auto retailer, and someone who was intimately familiar with the history and the players involved with the failure of Detroit I will add another positive wrinkle to Obama's achievements...
An even bigger accomplishment in the Auto Restructuring, and one the Administration is even MORE unwilling to focus on for obvious reasons, was the judgement (absolutely correct) that both the Management and Boards of GM and Chrysler were incompetent and unworthy of investment. So Obama, thru Rattner, did what a truly GREAT CEO or Private Equity guy would do...he fired them,and brought in new guys from completely outside Detroit. That was a HUGE risk, undertaken at lightning speed, which all of the traditionalists in the industry thought was crazy.
But in one fell swoop, he fixed 50 years of Detroit incompetence at the highest levels. Only Bill Ford had the courage to do this previously, when he fired himself and brought in a great guy from outside the industry. And he doesn't get the credit he deserves either, though he saved his shareholders and family in the process.
To put it another way, Obama has done two Private Equity deals in his life. They were bigger than the sum total of everything Mitt Romney has EVER done, and they worked better and faster...and all the benefit accrued to the nation at large....no "2 and 20" skim off required.
That level of direct involvement and decision-making, like his direct decision to "GO" on Osama Bin Laden, shows you that Obama actually has great courage and decisiveness when the chips are down and a big decision MUST be made. History will, in the fullness of time, give him enormous credit for this. But don't hold your breath for the moment.
This will go to the streets. Once again, the forces of social manipulation and individual freedom are in battle array. This site is a socialist shill. Censorship here reigns supreme. It's ok. Like I said....it will end in the streets.
suibne -
This will go to the streets. Once again, the forces of social manipulation and individual freedom are in battle array. This site is a socialist shill. Censorship here reigns supreme. It's ok. Like I said....it will end in the streets. "From September 1998 to January, 2001, he (Glastris) was a special assistant and senior speechwriter to the President Bill Clinton". This should be enough to disqualify anyone.
suibne -
This is a joke, right?
These so called accomplishments are overstated at best lies at worst. For Example: 1. The stimulus was the largest in American history but the vast majority of it went to the Rich. 2. The sweeping new Wall Street regulations are weak and meaningless since they allow business as usual do not reinstate Glass-Steagall and will stop the next collapse. 3. The "tough" new restrictions on the credit card industry are half hearted at best and do not even bring us back to how it was in the 90's. 4. Calling the pitiful reform to student aid "revolutionary" goes beyond absurd straight to hog wash! 5. His net neutrality stance only came after intense pressure and was still not exactly tough. 6. I will give him don't ask don't tell. 7. Obama did not help in Egypt. The US supported the regime until it was gone and is even now trying to stop the people from forming a democracy. 8. The end of the war in Iraq did not really happen. The U.S. still have thousands of private military there and DOD as well. Which they are in the process of EXPANDING The same is true of Afghanistan. The truth is that Obama has accomplished some things but most of them will either have no effect or simply slow the collapse. That said, no President could be expected to stop the fall of the current system. It is ending and the only thing we can do is begin to set up a new one.
Well Hot Damn!!! Who knew??? He IS the Messiah.
It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood. Can you say "nihilist?" Everything obama ever said or did was about himself. By the by, ever hear of the U.S. Constitution? You might pass it it on to the clueless-in-chief.
Well Damn! If we can get Obama on Mt Rushmore, maybe we can put Slick Willie getting a BJ up there too!
I guess this proves the theory: if a ridiculous joke of an article like this doesn't make us sick, it just makes us laugh harder!
Zero is intentionally bankrupting our nation, and pushing us toward civil war. What he doesn't realize though is that the military will NOT have his back. He will go down in history as the worst, most deliberately destructive, most anti-American sack of pig manure to ever defile the Oval Office. His name will be synonymous with arrogant malevolence. And his supporters will be widely regarded as fools and useful idiots.
Notably missing from this analysis is any mention at all of a thoroughly dismal record on both governmental transparency and civil liberties. While I will readily concede that this Administration has many substantial and worthy accomplishments to its credit, it is also leaving behind an embrace of many of the worst aspects of the Bush Administration. Warrantless surveillance, the purported ability of a President to order Americans killed with no oversight at all, drone strikes, the failure to close Guantanamo and a ruthless war on whistleblowers are, among other things, leaving behind an Executive Branch even more powerful and less accountable than it was when he took office. The lessons of such bodies as the Church Commission from the 1970s have been forgotten as has the precept, baked into the Constitution in the form of checks and balances, that unaccountable power tends to be abused. By consolidating and adopting many of the Bush era post-9/11 excesses as his own, I fear that this President has planted the seeds of a plant that will yield this nation a most bitter fruit somewhere down the road. That, too, will be, as it should be, part of this President's legacy. These consequences may be unintended, but I have little doubt that one of his successors will abuse this authority. The old aphorism is true: power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
What an Obamanation of a story!
Oh, and Barry boy, you don't salute our National Anthem and flag by coddling your pecker. And you don't refer to patriots by using vulgar sexual slurs, you worthless scrap of rat $#!t
It can't be April Fool's Day yet, is it?
Obama is still better than these idiot Republicans running for presidency. For fuck's sake, we're back to talking about banning contraception and abortion? Seriously?
Sammy - the jokes on all the Clueless Liberals who are buying this swill.
If my pecker was a flute maybe Paul Glastris would play it.
The most incompetent President ever. Only the most toady sychophant could consider him to be in an unfinished state of greatness.
Can you say "nihilist?" Everything obama ever said or did was about himself.
I can say nihilist. And unlike you, I know what it means. The word you're groping for like a moron is "narcissist."
Nice to see all the tea-tards here. Thanks for reminding me to donate to Obama's re-election campaign.
This site is a socialist shill. Censorship here reigns supreme.
Yes, that must be why this thread is full of right-wing morons making comments that haven't been deleted.
Go over to Red State and make a liberal comment. See how long it lasts before it gets deleted.
How do you people manage to operate a computer when you are this unbelievably stupid?
This thread is really illuminating about the differences between liberals and conservatives.
Liberals, as seen in the article and the thread, rely on facts, figures, data and evidence to make their case. Look at all the links to charts, graphs, and independent analysis here -- they all come from liberals.
And conservatives offer some misspelled rants and the written equivalent of a fart noise. No facts, no figures, no independent analysis, just whatever the right-wing rant of the day is.
With deep thinkers like these, it's easy to see why this country was steered into a ditch the last time conservatives were in charge.
The correct answer is that Obama has accomplished a great deal; a great deal of damage.
Describing Obama as an "unfinished greatness" is like describing a turd as unpolished.
The DJIA was at appx 13,000 in 2007 and gold was at 600.
Today DJIA is at 13,000 and gold at 1800.In 2007? How convenient. Was that when Obama took office? No, that was January 20, 2009. The day Obama was sworn in, the DJIA was ... 7,949.09.
In other words, it was nearly cut in half over the last two years of the Bush administration ... and it's climbed back just as high over the last three and half years of Obama.
And the price of gold tripled? Of course it has! Glenn Beck has convinced all of you idiots to pay far, far more than its true value and, duh, that's driven the price up.
It's called a speculative bubble. Have fun with the bubble bursts.
"And conservatives offer some misspelled rants and the written equivalent of a fart noise."
In fairness, I think that's part of their party platform.
Give the author credit. He is right . Obama has done more in three years than any President in decades. If you wish for this country to become like Greece and Portugal, Obamahas done more in three years than any President in decades. If you want to be totally dominated be the government even on how to tie your shoes, again who did more than Obama to achieve this, and in only three years. Finally, if you are fan of this great country becoming a second rate nation who patronizes terrorists while chastising our friends, Obama is the best decades, and in three years to boot. Just Think my fellow Americans if he get four more years what this man of unfinished greatness will accomplish. I have no doubt he will be carved in a mountain after that. In moscow, alongside Vladimir Putin.
I LOVE OBAMA.....he has forced this country to get back to their
ROOTS-true colors.....white privileged racists- in full view. It does not matter what he does or says, accomplishes or not, there are those whose positions, politics and RACE will raise it's ugly head simply because he is BLACK. Go ahead, have a blast with that one "YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH." The jokes on you....he did get elected, despite your delusion
of power and control. He has made one great accomplishment - He is President and you are not. You say " I will pull the handle for Republican...no matter who it is "
I am pulling the handle for the BLACK ONE- again!!!! No party affiliation necessary!!!! Go GOP- Greedy Old Party!!! -
The republican brick-heads will never appreciate the competence, the intelligence and good heart of President Obama. The republicans have their sights on power, and then squeezing the US population to the point of slavery. The republicans have nothing to offer...except to their brainwashed, foolish followers.....and the only thing offered to these foolish followers are false images and false prestige. The republicans, in general, are liars and deceivers, creepy and willing to sell out our country for profit margins. The republicans are the evil ones in our society. Unfortunately.....apparently half of our nations' population has been swayed by the lies and deceptions spewed out by the likes of Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly, Beck, Palin, Huckabee, and the rest of those pinheads.
So....since we are such of a divided society...all I can hope for is that the Democrats and President Obama continue to speak the truth, continue to try and do the right thing for all of us in our society, keep their integrity, and hope that the majority understand the gravity of the situation, and reelect President Obama, and more democrats to the house and senate. If the GOP wins...our nation will be in a free fall towards ruin.
Hilarious!!! My post was deleted. Sending it on to
where democracy is in action and the constitution is considered!
I was proven right!! -
As an Israeli, I don't know much about US internal affairs, but I want to add my two bits about Obama from my perspective. When it comes to his handling of the Middle East and the Arab Spring, Obama has been nothing short of brilliant. Bush's tenure has been so catastrophic that it left the ME on the verge of the abyss. Obama helped turn it around.
The first catastrophic legacy of Bush was that Jihadists were about to put their hands on nuclear weapons. The Taliban was threatening to take over already-nuclear Pakistan, while Iran was developing its own plan without Bush doing anything about it. Obama improved the connections with the Pakistani gov and intensified operations against the Taliban, and managed to push it back. Then he managed to get Iran isolated and sanctioned, and took a series of bold moves to slow down its nuclear progress (the badass killing of Bin Laden kind of made everyone forget the pretty badass move that preceded it, of inserting a virus into the Iranian computer system). Iran still hasn't given up its plan, but there's no one I'd trust more than Obama to stop it.
The second catastrophic Bush legacy was the strengthening of the so-called "resistance axis". Led by Iran, the "resistance" combines Arab crusader-phobia and Antisemitism to promote the myth that the West is conspiring to take over the middle east, and the Muslims should unite and fight it. Bush played right into their hands when he portrayed himself as a crusader who comes to assert new order in the region. Syria joined the resistance camp, and the Iran-Syria-Hizballah-Hamas axis became highly popular over the ME. It was almost certain that Iraq will join in once the Americans left, and there was a danger that popular uprisings will bring other Arab countries to join it as well.
Obama turned it all around with his clever "lead from behind" tactic. He never gave the "resistance" any excuses to claim that the US is leading the changes. When Khamenei, Qaddafi & Assad reached for the tried-and-tested "American meddling" excuse to explain the popular uprisings against them, it suddenly sounded hollow. Meanwhile, Obama worked behind the scenes to keep the uprisings alive. The result? The Iranian regime lost legitimacy with many of its people, and is now hated all over the ME because of its support of Assad and its own brutal crackdown of the protests. Syria is torn and crippled, and Assad lost all legitimacy. Hizballah, so revered until recently, lost all its clout and became despised. Hamas is weakened and rotating away from the axis. Iraq shows no signs of joining it, and neither does any other of the new Arab governments.
Another Bush failure was the failure to get Bin Laden. Al Qaeda became more popular in the Bush years, albeit limited in its actions. Obama returned the focus to Al Qaeda and took out not only Bin Laden but most of the leadership. Today, Al Qaeda seems irrelevant to the new ME. Among other things, this also ensures that the US will not come out of Afghanistan as the loser.
Yet another problem was America's coddling of Arab dictators. This was inevitable since their cooperation was needed in the war against terror, but it made the US seem hypocritical, and made Arab liberals hate her for it. Obama did not make the mistake of standing by his dictator "friends", but went with the people. And he cleverly did it in a way that ensured the new regimes replacing the dictator were leaning towards the West. Now, the US can work with Arab liberals to push these states towards democracy.
Bush's big thing was bringing democracy to the Middle East. He failed. In Obama's time, we are seeing a genuine democratic movement in the Arab world. Most importantly, we are seeing the rise of moderate Islamists, who are honestly trying to combine Islam and democracy. The Obama administration helps the process by drawing the distinction between moderate Islamists and Jihadists, and willing to work with t
Bush's big thing was bringing democracy to the Middle East. He failed. In Obama's time, we are seeing a genuine democratic movement in the Arab world. Most importantly, we are seeing the rise of moderate Islamists, who are honestly trying to combine Islam and democracy. The Obama administration helps the process by drawing the distinction between moderate Islamists and Jihadists, and willing to work with the former while showing zero tolerance to the latter.
Bush's actions also strengthened the far left, and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez became an influential figure that also gave much financial and ideological support to the resistance axis. Obama's humane capitalism took most of the wind out of Chavez's sails, and he lost a lot of popularity in South America. In the ME he is now completely discredited, and his high popularity dropped to zero.
Finally, Obama collaborates well with other democracies, repairing the damage of Bush. This cooperation strengthens the free world against the rise of the non-free powers, and already got many good things done. Turkey, that was rotating towards Iran, is now back in the Western camp. This is extremely important for the future of the world.
Obama masterminded the elimination of Bin Laden and Qaddafi, two of the biggest scourges of our time. His clever maneuvering considerably weakened other rascals like Khamenei, Assad, Bashir, Chavez, Ahmadinejad, Nasrallah and Meshaal. He got the US out of Iraq, and started the pull out of Afghanistan. And he did all that with minimal cost in American lives and money.
When it comes to foreign affairs, this is arguably the most intelligent, wily and badass American President ever. For the sake of all of us, I hope he gets reelected. Heaven forbid we should get another Republican.
So funny! After all the spin, the sycophantic media attention, and propaganda, his "fans" are at 12%. Of course, they ate the smart ones... The other 88% are just to lowbrow to see the dear leader's greatness. It's comical. Little red guards love the dear leader.
Why is it that when we criticize the incompetent muslim president we have we are accused of being racist? Really? Can you idiots not see what horrible things he has done to this county? Oh I forgot the ignorants are the only ones that fall for his lies and can't see his goal is to destroy this country as we know it. God help our country. How long do you think we can continue to give money away to people that give nothing back? What about the lavish vacations he takes and the way he recklessly spends our money? How about only letting people who actually pay taxes vote?
Obama's record is mixed - neither as "great" as the author claims nor as horrendous as his GOP critics claim - and his presidency thus far incomplete, which is why it's absurd both for the author to advance the claims in this piece and for historians to attempt any sort of real time ranking.
In Obama's defense, our country has, thus far, avoided a double dip recession, a real possibility at one point. However, one rebuttal to the author's praise of Obama's economic policies from is that the employment data shows that our country has become considerably more stratified during his term of office. The vast majority of jobs created have been temp and low-wage "service" jobs. Even the manufacturing growth tends to be either highly-specialized (and therefore better paying but also fewer in number) or low-wage. The average job lost during the Great Recession payed around $34/hr while the average job created has been just a little bit above minimum wage. There's been some improvement in this but not enough for a president to hang a hat on for "greatness."
I would say that he has accomplished little of what he promised and what he has accomplished has been disastrous for our country.
"$1.2 billion in deficit reduction."
Ah ha ha ha. That line alone let's you know this article is either a parody or written by a blind ideologue who judges Obama's accomplishments not on results, but on how well they conform to his own fantasies about what makes good policy. I think it's clear that most people took the poll to mean has the president "accomplished anything useful" and not just "has he done stuff." Is the deficit lower? Is unemployment lower? Is the war in Iraq ending faster than it was on track to end already? Is Guantanamo prison closed? Are military tribunals ended? Is health insurance more affordable or effective, or the reform popular? Is food safety appreciably and measurably better? The answer to all of these is, sadly, "no." This president has done a lot, but none of it has been worthwhile.
Ok, its a gag but you ran the story early? obviously should have been run with an April 1st date, April Fools Day. Ok very funny. Ha Ha Ha
Legislation is passed and signed during every administration. The Obama administration's response to the economic crisis was largely a continuation of what was started during the last month of the previous administration. And the results have been uncertain anyway.
Obama scorecard -
The mortgage crisis: Poor, no force or pressure applied to the financial industry to help keep people in their homes even when they still had the ability to pay.
Job: Poor, especially poor in responding the issue of black unemployment specifically.
Health Care Reform: Lack of leadership. Little or no effort to pull the left wing of the Democrat party away from its quixotic support for single-payer and government-run (socialized) medicine. The bill passed and signed had some important provisions considered as reforms to existing system, but the individual mandate is an unconstitutional travesty. If a system of universal health insurance was established, and there are many ideas floating around as to how to do it, both the reforms and the individual mandate would be unnecessary.
Energy Policy: Failure. I imagine him thinking, "We walked everywhere in Hyde Park. Why can't you do the same?" Well, I personally have the advantage of actually having lived in the Hyde Park neighborhood in Chicago. I am tempted to say, you are getting what you deserve for electing a president from a neighborhood that doesn't even have a gas station in it. But the simple fact is, for whatever reason, he just doesn't have a clue. The role of personal transportation, not only in the culture and psyche of Americans, but in the economy itself is something he apparently does not fully understand. He has little experience either in his upbringing or in his adult life that would make it necessary for him to do so.
Foreign Policy: Somewhat constructive in places, actually. His patient response to the Arab Spring uprising probably has been his high point. He has moved American foreign policy in a slightly less interventionist direction. In that impetus, he keeps the company of Ron Paul.
Industrial Policy: The revival of the American auto industry is something he deserves credit for. Otherwise, he has little interest in heavy industry and manufacturing, but continues the Democratic Party's fascination with high-tech. If he proclaims it too loudly, it might become his valediction.
Does he deserve reelection? There is no overwhelming reason why. You can only be the latest new thing once. Then the novelty wears off.
When I read the article, I was very persuaded by the reasoned arguments, based in deep evidence, that the author made.
But then I read all these comments calling the president a dirty socialist poopyhead, and I'm swayed by the power of their case.
Oh, I should add, for all the Republicans here who think this column is funny:
President Obama's current approval ratings according to Gallup -- 50% favorable, 48% unfavorable. Mitt Romney's current approval ratings according to Gallup -- 39% favorable, 47% unfavorable. Rick Santorum's current approval ratings according to Gallup -- 38% favorable, 37% unfavorable.
Also, Obama has a strong advantage over all the Republican contenders in general election matchups:
Enjoy the chuckles now, people. We'll be laughing in the general.
So the roughly six million foreclosures that are expected to unfold under this president's first term merit *one* passing mention? Easily that many are forecast in later years, should current policies continue for another term.
The Bpyz Klub tone of the piece, with only male economists mentioned, is insulting. Alice Rivlin, Brooksley Born, Christina Romer, Sheila Bair and others had key roles and/or astute observations that might have offered some balance to this Hosanna.
This article presented the Podesta Bible pretty faithfully: if you don't agree with BHO you don't really get what is going on. If you still don't agree, you are a racist member of the "obstructionist" opposition who is handy when blame is ascribed for failures.
Thanks, but no thanks.
Everyntime I fill up at the gas station and I am sometimes forced to choose between gas to go to work and food I am reminded of his accomplishments.
Paul Glastris writes:
"How will history judge the stimulus? Not so well if the economy stays weak or sputters out; quite well if it continues to improve.""History" will, based on subsequent trends, no more come to a conclusion about the effectiveness of the stimulus (not the only issue it gives rise to) than it has about FDR's programs. Nor, since subsequent events are affected by a variety of influences, should it.
That assessment of the "stimulus" will be, as it is now, based on the theoretic validity -- or not -- of the specific measures taken.
Obama's problem for me was his decision to send missiles into Yemen back in 2009, ostensibly to take out a group of 46 Al Qaeda, only to blow 21 children into tiny pieces, and their families with a handful of so-called terrorists in the group. It has never been established whether any were in fact terrorists, but Gen. Patreus quickly paid millions to then Yemeni President Saleh, to claim the missiles were his. When Amnesty International displayed pictures of the missiles, it became clear they were U.S. owned and The Nation, reporter Jeremy Scahil, testified to the incident to Congress. Saleh, as many now know, is in NY receiving protection and health care free of charge which I content was part of the quid pro quo for covering up the crimes. I believe the "cover-up" reaches the status of war crime and that Obama et al will and should face an indictment for that. In our justice system, cover-ups are considered prima facia evidence of guilt. The sad thing is, to this day, no one has confronted Obama, or Patreus about the cover-up, but Patreus who was promoted to Director of the Central Intelligence Agency,provides him a shield to not comment. You can still read the coverage on this at The Nation or search keyword "America's Secret Wars." here's a link if it gets there and I hope each of you who cares, will insist it is time for the media, joke that it is, confronts him for answers: http://www.thenation.com/blog/156977/jeremy-scahill-testifies-congress-americas-secret-wars
If you still don't agree, you are a racist member of the "obstructionist" opposition who is handy when blame is ascribed for failures.
Jesus Christ, get a grip. Where in the article did Glastris accuse critics of Obama of being racist. Point to it.
Oh, you didn't read the piece? Of course not. That would've required you to pull your head out of your ass first.
Is this article a play on words of what liberals call Ronald Reagan-a likeable duce!
The greatest President in my 66 years - no one comes close! When you consider the 100% opposition from the GOP, especially once the Tea Party came into power, it's really astonishing what this amazing man has managed to get done!
For me, as a woman, I am especially thrilled with the addition of two fabulous women on the Supreme Court. I need everyone to think about the Supreme Court when they go into the voting booth and for some illogical (or racist) reason are thinking of voting for whoever the GOP finally winds up holding their noses and nominates to run against the President - those appointments made in the next four years will have a major impact on all of us who are part of the 99% -
to Florida Chick - you guys astound me - the rising gas prices are Obama's fault? Are you kidding me!!!! If the GOP had years ago passed any meaningful alternative fuel bills we would be well on the way to energy independence by now! As it is, he has raised fuel standards that in years to come will save all of us a bundle of money when we fill up our cars - by the way, are you driving a gas guzzler as so many of your ilk do!
I still see way too many big cars on the roads - we all have a part to play in getting us off foreign oil - and we can't be irresponsible and just try to drill our way out of this mess - we only have around 2-3% of the world's oil and use over 20%! -
Who could have guessed that there would be yet another Obama apologist rationalizing away the greatest wholesale treason committed by both the Democrats and the Republicans. They both bow down to their Gilded Fascist Elite masters.
Remember, a vote for the lesser of two evils is still a vote for fascist evil.
Kevin - no question they all have to make compromises in order to get things accomplished - I don't blame Obama - I blame US! The percentage of people who vote is pathetic! If everyone were engaged and demanded their elected officials work for us instead of their corporate masters, they would do that! As it is, the public rarely pays attention, the corporations pay the bills so they can get elected, and we suffer as a result. What all of us need to do is get behind the bills introduced which would eliminate money from our elections. Have you done that Kevin? I have.
This article is a joke, right? Written with tongue
firmly in cheek. -
This article is a joke, right?
Not as much as this kind of comment.
If you have something specific to say that would contradict or counter the careful arguments laid out in the piece, then please, proceed.
But if you're just going to make a stupid comment like that, we'll just assume you have no counter-argument to speak of.
I love that the piece begins with a statement about how so many people assume Obama hasn't accomplished much because they only listen to the talking heads .... and then a bunch of idiots who only listen to talking heads come here to insist Obama hasn't accomplished much.
Thanks for proving the author's point, Dittoheads.
Have been reading the above and had to make note of a few comments.
The ACA (or ObamaCare - I'm embracing the term and say - thank God Obama Cares!) while not perfect thanks to the fact that compromises had to be made to get Blue Dog votes (by the way, anyone who ever thought Dems had 60 votes in the Senate I have swampland in Florida to sell you - those guys always were lite Republicans from Red States - Lieberman was NEVER going to vote for a bill that badly hurt the insurance industry) still is the most important piece of legislation passed in decades - I never ever heard any person say they loved their health insurance company but you know how people are - change is scary - all of a sudden there was this public outcry - leave my health insurance alone - I love my health ins the way it is - are you freaking kidding me? Now people with pre-existing conditions will be covered for what they actually need health ins for!!!! That alone was huge! Not being cut off in the middle of expensive treatment because you had a cap - that will save thousands and thousands of lives!! Oh, by the way, the "death panels" the idiots on the right were screaming about, were actually end of life discussions to have with your doctors which would have been covered so that people could, if they wanted, make sure they had living wills and be able to die with dignity rather then being hooked up to machines for no purpose other then to make their dieing worse and cost the taxpayers billions and billions more money - the biggest expenses occur last several months of a person's life and usually because they haven't prepared a living will. Pathetic! Also, there will be a pool of companies to chose from and everyone will have access to which will save billions. The plan is far from perfect - I know it will be improved over the years and hopefully America will join all the civilized countries and provide health care for everyone - the fact that whether you live or lie should depend on how much money you have is just disgusting!
Hats off to Paul Glastris for a great article. I'm glad it's attracting so much attention.
I have no doubt that President Obama will be viewed as one of the the best, if not the best, presidents we have ever had fifty years from now. I am inspired every day by his wisdom, patience and basic humanity.
His ability to maintain his good nature despite the hate he has encountered (just read some of the responses to this article) amazes me.
God bless you, Barack Obama, for all you given our country and I look forward to being a witness to all you will accomplish in the next five years!!!
You've made the mistake of equating tons of legislation to getting something done, unless the goal was to create a jobs program from Washington attorneys.
Most of what Obama has "done" will need to be undone. Most of what he got "done" was "done" on party line votes, laden with enough pork to get the members of his own party to vote for it.
The American public has it right. You got it wrong.
Hitler accomplished a lot, too.
Although I usually vote Republican, I admire Bill Clinton. But Obama compares very unfavoribly to Clinton. Obama is much more ideological than Bill, and certainly more devisive. I didn't get the feeling that Clinton was a disdainful of the private sector. Obama thinks that he and his government can and should do EVERYTHING
Good God, this writer is staggeringly stupid.
Ever heard of a Greek tragedy? They're almost always about a man of "incomplete greatness" who destroys everything through his hubris. Only difference is that they finally take responsibility for what they've done at the end, and I ain't holding my breath for Obama to step down from office.
Republican beliefs, bumper sticker style:
My Mind's Made Up, Don't Confuse Me With The Facts
If You Can't Afford It, You Don't Deserve It (applies to everything, like education, health care, etc.)My beliefs, bumper sticker style:
I Think, Therefore I Don't Listen To Rush Limbaugh
(As a woman, thank you Oklahoma)If I Wanted Government In My Womb, I Would F**k A Senator
Eschew Obfuscation -
Let us posit that Barack Obama accomplished a great deal. The problem is, almost none of it was what the American people wanted. He operated from an Alinskyite checklist while pretending otherwise, overrode the advice of almost everyone, and jeered at those who disagreed. This is why his reelection is in jeopardy. The future will decide Obama's place in history, and I don't think history will be kind.
Let us posit that Barack Obama accomplished a great deal. The problem is, almost none of it was what the American people wanted. He operated from an Alinskyite checklist...
Thanks for using that, because it's now clear that you're nothing but a right-wing nut who parrots the party line and I can just skip the rest of your comment.
Next time, do me a favor and mention ACORN or Jeremiah Wright in the first few words so the rest of us who aren't flaming conservative assholes can just move right along. Thanks!
LOL, just LOL
Wes, you remind of the guy hanging on the wire in the movie "Apocalypse Now" shouting political slogans. Alinskyite is an established political term. ACORN is (or was) a controversial, highly partisan political organization. Jeremiah Wright, I will give you, was probably by 2008 a harmless old coot. I doubt he ever preached a sermon at Trinity UCC where there were not at least some white people in the pews. On some Sundays, more than just some.
Anybody who does not think that someone could have a gone to church for 20 years and not remembered a thing obviously has never been there.
What bothers me about Obama and Trinity UCC is that he seems not to have understood that the profile of the congregation there was about the same as the profile of any large, largely white evangelical congregation. Model students and gang members. Recovering addicts. Ex-prisoners. Ph.D. and people with little school. Millionaires and manual workers. Not that a million is such a lot these days!
Alinskyite is an established political term.
Established by whom? I'm a 56-year-old liberal and I'd never heard of the guy until he became The Scary Radical of the Week on all the right-wing blogs. Jesus Christ, you people are so gullible.
ACORN is (or was) a controversial, highly partisan political organization
No, you were told ACORN was controversial and highly partisan. Andrew Breitbart's goons took videos, highly edited them, and played them on Fox News so it looked like they were involved in criminal activity. And when actual law enforcement intervened, what happened? No charges were filed. NONE.
The voter fraud charges? Thrown out. The criminal charges? Thrown out. The conservative guy who made the tapes? Actually, he's in trouble with the law. But ACORN? No.
But the damage was done, because idiots like you are easily scared, and an organization that did invaluable relief work in Katrina, that helped working-class families make ends meet, that helped poor people make their way out of poverty was driven into bankruptcy and had to close its doors. They did nothing wrong, except get into the crosshairs of the mighty Right Wing Hate Machine.
Congratulations on believing the bullshit they spoon-feed you. It must be so nice not having to think for yourself and just do as you're told. And if other people's lives are ruined while you get your little hategasm on, then so what, right?
Keep telling yourself that the best way to show what a good American you are is to keep lying and attacking your fellow Americans. It's what the GOP does best.
By the way, "Ciceronius," if you're going to say this:
Wes, you remind of the guy hanging on the wire in the movie "Apocalypse Now" shouting political slogans.
then you probably shouldn't immediately follow that up by insisting that "Alinskyite is an established political term."
You want to see a crazed idiot who sounds like a rambling Dennis Hopper babbling about shit they don't understand? Look in the mirror. (But adjust your toga first, Tulla.)
I tried to read between the lines for the answer to the most important question facing us today, but was unable to discern the author's true meaning, so I'll have to ask it outright. Mr. Glastris, exactly how sweet do Mr. Obama's anus drippings taste? Once the nose goes in so far, the lips and tongue can experience paradise directly, can't they?
This was intended to be parody, right? If not, what side of the rainbow are you working, Paul?
One example out of hundreds. Obama called it almost criminal that George Bush had created $4 trillion in debt over eight years, and campaigned in 2008 with a promise to halve the deficit.
Obama tripled the annual debt the first year, and exceeded the accumulated Bush debt in less than 36 months.
I suppose that is quite an accomplishment on the mendacity scale.
Of course! Makes total sense.... 88% are just too stupid to understand his greatness! Typical liberal... So close to facists in their thinking; they are the smart ones...EVERYONE else is just a Moron. Really funny Piece! Keep em coming...
So loss of Freedom of Choice, Liberty, and subversion of the constitution are accomplishments???I guess some peoples idea of accomplishments are other peoples act of destruction.
The last ten years have proven that partisans don't care about the agenda, only the label on it; there is no reality-based community, save perhaps those who decline affiliation.
this is almost pure hagiography. it is almost as if the writer has not been reading the news for the last 3 years.
1. HCR. the entire health care bill is written by republicans for the benefit mostly of republicans. but despite the fact that the liberal progressives and leftists all sacrificed real health care reform, in order to pass it, the WH had abandoned it completely. rahm emmanuel told congress to forget it. it was passed by the efforts of democratic democrats and by the most massive progressive and liberal blow back against any president ever. they said no. now! and even swallowed the poison pills obama put in to kill HCR. such as letting the roman catholic church lobby in congress in person. against women's health.
2. repeal of DADT and DOMA: to this day he says gay families are NOT blessed or recognized by his god. he fought repeal of DADT in the courts where his DoJ said under oath that the president lied in his State of the Union address. DoJ says in court under oath that gay people are a threat to the nation. that is the record. repeal of DADT was done by progressives in the House and REPUBLICANS in the Senate. DOMA was fought in court by REPUBLICANS.3. this president has the worst civil rights record in history, setting aside the bill of rights and the 14th amendment making nonjudicial detentions renditions and executions of citizens and non citizens law: crimes against humanity for which we impeached George III. in 1776. We declared our independence because of these human rights he just made moot.
4. this person authorized the trial in courts martial using torture of 15 year old wounded orphan. under international law trying a 15 year old, forget torturing him, is an international crime against international law and against the Geneva Conventions. putting us in the elite group of nations headed by Iran and Saudi Arabia.
the list of human rights and civil rights abuses of this president is the most egregious in USA history.
5. the perpetrators of the worst fraud in usa history have been rewarded with unprecedented ongoing financial largesse from government coffers. the TARP is being paid back with Fed money. direct government subsidy such as free loans to banks lent back to the treasury at 4%. unprecedented profits while the economy is the lowest in 80 years. not one bank or banker openly engaged in ongoing fraud with robosigning investigated much less prosecuted. geitner who as fed ny led the fraud all across the baning sector made treasurer. obama set up a commission the dog food commission to which he appointed the most public enemies of the new deal to repeal social security and medicare while sabotaging health care reform. GE which pays no taxes and is the worst perpetrator of offshoring jobs set up as job czar. in every measurable way, the administration has chosen and ruled against workers, against consumers, against home owners. barney frank's committee was stacked with emmanuel's first term blue dogs who were farther right than the republicans on his committee. real financial reform was attacked by emmanuel, axelrod, and the white house, and radical rightists put there by obama. BEFORE HE TOOK OFFICE right wing supply side economists already had sabotaged any possibility of any kind of real change in fiunance and any real effective response to the worst economic crisis in 80 years. and before he took office obama gave away liberal progressive labor and consumer friendly anything. while the richest of the rich were given more tax breaks and subsidies. direct subsidies. if a tenth of those subsidies had gone to home owners if a tenth of those subsidies had gone to workers and jobs the economy would have turned around. we now face unemployment at depression scale for another decade. workers not working now will never be rehired, anyone no matter what their degrees over 30. will never again see full employment if they are unemployed now. Obama's legacy t
Crises are the moments that allow a man to be great. The sheer amount of legislation passed is not a measure of greatness. Here is some of what we got: Assassinations of US citizens without due process, a quagmire and war crimes in Afghanistan, caving to Wall Street by hiring the foxes to guard the hen house, an administration more secretive and more adversarial to the FOIA than Bush II, more military tribunals, Guantanamo Bay still open, , an environmental record that is dubious at best (take the handling of BP for example), loss of the house to the Republicans, disappointment and disillusionment for many of the young people who worked so hard to elect him, Race To The Top- my liberal friends who work in education (not teacher�s union representatives) refer to it as Race To The Bottom saying corporate hack Arne Duncan and current policy is, hard to believe, actually worse than the Bush administration�s. On the civil liberties front, the new Patriot Act, an increase in secrecy, grabs for more executive power and other laws put in place by this administration may not scare you in the hands of Obama (though they should) but how about Rick Santorum or someone worse? And the worst thing of all: Zero progress on global warming. If you use GWB II as a measuring stick I guess BHO looks great but that is certainly no measure of greatness.
Schneiderman was the Democratic Party nominee for New York Attorney General, defeating four other candidates in the Democratic Primary on September 14, 2010.[12] He won the general election against Republican nominee and Richmond County district attorney Dan Donovan and took office on January 1, 2011.
quote:Correction 1: The mortgage payers are being compensated, as well as the persons incidentally damaged by the housing collapse. NPR discussed it. It�s called the Home Affordable Refinance Program, or HARP, and was started in 2009.
HARP hasn't helped anyone. It is a complete failure. Banks ignore it. http://www.makinghomeaffordable.gov/programs/lower-rates/Pages/harp.aspxbanks only use it to foreclose more easily
Liberals get destroyed these days. Only corporate hacks get called "great", thus this piece.
Amateurish is the perfect word for this article. These aren't 50 unique accomplishments--many are part of the same laws. And he leaves out other accomplishments (Ledbetter, e.g.), it is proof-read poorly, and he whitewashes away all negative aspects of these laws.
"Today, in the tank I built, I 'accomplished' rolling through the streets and crushing people in their cars. Sure, Liberals will say that I'm a murderer, and Conservatives will say that I should have built a bigger tank, but I did clear traffic, right? And traffic is the 14th worst problem in my state. Mission Accomplished! Although everyone hates me now, and while, true, there is that stuff about the people dying and the property I demolished, I feel that history might judge my act as 'great' if our traffic flow continues to improve for the next 30 years." This is essentially most of your argument. You can't tell if the education reforms will lead to better student performance, or if the health care law will be successful, or if the banks will collapse again, but if everything goes perfectly in the future, people might look back favorably on Obama, regardless of what he actually did.
The things this article leaves out could spawn 30 articles. Health Care Reform, written essentially by Wellpoint Insurance, was a massive giveaway to private insurance with no real cost control, and Obama fought _against_ strengthening it because of cowardice and cronyism (cf. his deal with Big Pharma to keep in place their monopolies in exchange for their temporary support.) Financial Reform was an even bigger giveaway to the banks. No cost? 7 trillion dollars from TARP and the Fed were given to the banks with no strings attached. Lending only unfroze a tiny bit, because the banks already had our money and could still gamble with it, sell the toxic assets back to us (through the GSE's), and bet on their own fraudulent packages failing. No one was prosecuted, and any "reforms" were not only pitifully weak but (virtually always) actively blocked by Geithner. Again, Obama was a combination of coward and corporatist, and the results for both of these reforms are a few laughable band-aids and pennies for the public in exchange for massive gifts to the executives who caused these problems (but who have effectively bribed the government into protecting them).
I could type and type about Obama's disappointments and failures to even do the basic, easy, politically popular things a so-called Liberal president should have done--or at least should have FOUGHT for. Marriage equality. Real Progressives on the SCOTUS. Dismantling most of the Patriot Act (instead of strengthening it, like he did). Restoring the 4th Amendment (instead of crippling it further, along with the 1st and 5th amendments). Campaign finance reform. Recess appointments for Progressive regulatory positions (more than just Cordray). Filibuster reform. Election apparatus and voter enfranchisement protection reform. Sunsetting the Bush tax cuts. Firing Bernanke. Taking Entitlements off the table. Fighting for the union workers in Wisconsin and elsewhere. Lessening the Drug War. Raising taxes on capital gains and carried interest and taxing financial transactions. Regulating CDS's. Prosecuting war crimes. Reasonable gun control measures after Giffords was shot. EFCA. Making sure that oil companies actually had the capacity to prevent or contain deepwater spills before handing them new Gulf contracts. Turning off FOX News before deciding which officials to hire and fire. Making the case for why Republicanism is fundamentally detrimental to the country on all levels (and, ideally, blaming Democrats that take the same corporate bribes and legislate exactly like Republicans). I know--he has a Congress to go through, he's not a king, blah blah blah. He didn't fight for these things. He didn't try. Coward and Corporatist down to his very core, even in a time when the publ
Why does getting the tarp passed considered an achievement? I work for a large global company lead by a european liberal CEO and his speech to our US based companies was very little money will be invested in the US due to lack of long term vision by our president.
It's true that Obama and congress passed the biggest numbers of legislations since LBJ.
Bu it is too early to tell his legislation will be like in the future, positive or negative. Many of them are not even implemented while others are watered down.
Some of them will have unintended negative results.Only time will tell. Many of the great presidents were once considered negatively while some very popular presidents are completely forgotten today.
It is likely that Bush and Obama will be remembered with historic events in the early 21th century because of 9/11 wars, Great Recession and Arab Spring.
I think presidents after Nixon until Bush Sr will be largely forgotten including Reagan and Clinton because we don't really remember peacetime presidents like Coolidge.
Reagan and Bush Sr might be remembered for end of Cold War in America just as Thatcher will be to the English, but to the rest of the world, probably only Gorbachev will be remembered in a century.
Let's hope that Obama will be known for a positive turn in history or will be forgotten completely for being benign.
Looks to me as though right wing hate people have enlisted lots of their cohorts to respond to this article. Much of is is mindless repetition of Fox, Limbaugh and other hate media propaganda. Obama does need a spine, for sure, to stand up to this insanity but how about useful criticism?
The conservative movement hates Obama, not just because of race or what he has or hasnt accomplished, but because he has truly exposed their(your if applicable) do-nothing money mongering self righteous ways.
The reason you cant pick an outright leader is because the GOP party has spent and continues to spend way more time criticizing the moves Obama has HAD to make to repair the damages done by the country being free of taxes and regulations over the past 8-12 years rather than finding their own causes and ideas. Keystone pipeline is the answer to energy independence? Really? With all the trouble he has had dealing with both Democrats and Republicans to get things done...the fact is...he's gotten things done....of course no opposition is going to be able to offer an objective appreciation of any of it...other than throwing it into the big taxes and overspending budget, as if 1% wealth tax cuts and starting oil wars somehow is good for our deficit by comparison......oh yeah, sorry to remind you, there was no deficit before your folks got a hold of things....but yet you call yourselves "conservatives".....save it.
Even as a supporter, I can admit that Obama has left chips on the table in his negotiations, and they have thwarted the bang for the buck we got as a country in terms of the stimulus and healthcare initiatives. But can you honestly say he did healthcare to boost his reelectability? how stupid of a statement is that....in order to get reelected...Im going to tackle the one problem that no one else has been able to and subject myself to a nice ride the wrong way down the approval polls. He was willing to do that because its what he believed in was best for this country, simple and plain.
The good thing is, we get to choose all over again in November. I dont know whats going to happen because no one even knows who gets to oppose the POTUS yet.....all I do know is, you guys sure are taking the grass roots community organizer from Chicago a lot more seriously than you did at your last convention before he proceeded to LANDSLIDE your candidate (who actually was a pretty good guy who chose a nimrod as a running mate). If that alone doesnt scream accomplishment, then I dont know what does.
Oh, yes. He certainly has accomplished a lot. Like more wars to install puppet governments that are friendly to the corporate rape of their countries; slaughtering civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Libya; forcing the closure of lawsuits against illegal domestic spying; keeping Guantanamo open; sending drones to murder civilians; murdering American citizens with no arrest, trial or legal procedures; signing the NDAA so that he can decide to "disappear" American citizens; handing over billions of our tax dollars to bankers and other Wall Street criminals. Obama has continued and expanded the crimes of the Bush administration and the corporate media has either lied about what is happening or has not bothered to mention these "accomplishments". And now Atty. Gen. Holder has expounded his belief that military tribunals are preferable to civil trials by jury. Obama has succeeded in shredding the Constitution and has not done anything to help the millions of unemployed in this country. Heckava job, Barack!
I belive President Obama has done a great job, now with the speaker of the House determined to make Obama a 1 term President and to hell helping to get our economy on tract. The only thing I wish he would have done is to have appointed a comitte to bring charges against, Bush Cheney and Rumsfield for war crimes, declaring war aginst Arac, this administration has blood on their hands based on lies!!
This was an interesting read. I will recomend it to others I know, like my girlfriend, who make the complaints that the author addresses- that Obama has been too timd, too concilatory with the GOP, too much of a sellout to Wall St. and corporate America.
And hey, I get it. I read the DailyKos every day, and I see how many liberals feel that way. The point they miss is that the idea that some other, more "forcefull" politician could have made things right in the same situation. It's not blind Obama-worship to point out that there probably isn't a human that could have been elected AND delivered on what is crystal-clear to most liberals. Dennis Kunich or Bernie Sanders would be the prez you want, I get it:now, how do THEY get elected?
Oh, it's amusing to see all the conservative trolls trying to stir up, with their Fox News talking points (easily dismissed by actual facts) and poor spelling and gramar. It'll suck to be you this November!
We lived with indignity and a sense of dread with Dubya Bush and his mentor Cheney, suffering eight very long years. I thought I just might crack up, as a working woman and a progressive. The worst time of my life.
I love President Obama. Constitutional law professor. Reasoned, calm and thoughtful. Engages others. Many important accomplishments. Dealing with so much in such an intelligent way, in these difficult times, globally.
Inheriting a huge mess, as Economist Joe Stiglitz reported before the election was even determined in 2008.
Lyndon Johnson also had a troublesome war. But it seemed more secretive and there was something hanging over him. And he was great with the Voting Rights Act, Mental Health/Mental Retardation Act of 1966, Medicare and Medicaid, the war on poverty and the great society, and civil rights. Wonderful. Yet there was something depressing during those times that is not present now.
I think it is the youthful competence of Barack Obama that is so compelling now. -
Really, all the negative comments are so uninformed about the facts. Do you hate-mongers just listen to talk radio which has managed to blackball (no pun intended) Obama ever since he got elected... all you hear is the GOP candidacy opposing Obama's reelection without a substantive suggestion for improving anything.....
I am embarrassed for the ignorance of my fellow countrymen... you guys just dont read enough... or all you read are the rags..... With climate change and oil shortages, political upheaval everywhere... he presents the calm courage of a true leader.
Obama inherited a country in the ditch.... he has courageously and steadfastly moved us out of it.... despite the rock throwing stone heaving ignoramuses who claim their religious views so vigorously! where is your so called understanding and your so called tolerance....! Just look at the ignorance of those who still think he is a Muslim!!! -
Rome wasn't built in a day!!! 4 years truly is NOT enough time to repair
all the DESTRUCTION caused by a couple of corrupt presidents of our
pathetic past 12 yrs. Fortunately they are gone though not forgotten
and we've been ever so fortunate Obama took on the emense task
of RESTORING our country. A brave man is he & all Americans
will hopefully give him a chance to further progress with repairing
our country.. I reiterate " Rome Wasn't Built In A DAY "!!! -
Among his accomplishments acc. to the article:
"....Sweeping new regulations of Wall Street...."Huh?
If he had a woman on his staff who could whip everyone into action doing this, we'd all be better off: http://youtu.be/OvgJ6foD58Y
What this comes down to for me is no matter what he has accomplished in his three years, what good is it if it bankrupts this country? He criticized Bush and the GOP for their 4 trillion dollar increase in the debt over 8 years but he increased it by 5 trillion in 3 years. I can go on and on about things like this but I have work to do.
I am so looking forward to November. Watching Obama absolutely crush the GOP nominee in the general election is going to be incredibly sweet. The hate-filled conservatives fortunately are still a minority in this country. Hopefully the conservatives and the Tea Party will cease to exist as a force in politics by 2016, due to the massive setback they will suffer in November. President Eisenhower warned the party about them, but the party forgot and allowed itself to be taken over by the hateful crazies.
Thanks for an excellent piece of journalism. Obama 2012!
As Democrat Barney Frank once said... "We Are Not Perfect But They Are NUTS"! After reading all these hate comments it's no wonder the Republican Congress does nothing but turn all that hate and insanity to destroying women's rights and health care with hundreds of stupid bills...
Get prepared for a Democratic Landslide in congress in 2012 and President Obama winning BIG thanks to WOMEN !!! -
It is true we are all wanting the economy to get much better but at the same time we can appreciate the work that has been done to date and acknowledge the President's accomplishments. As a proud American and one who served in the Army, I try to see both sides of any issue regardless of my politics and I have to say on this impressive list it makes me so very proud of our President. I recall in 1991 when the first time President Bush Sr. went to war by getting the support of the World behind him, his leadership was so impressive, how he harnessed world opinion; and yes the economy then was bad for him also unemployment through the roof and and joblessness was at an all time high people sleeping in there cars in Cherry Creek Park in W,DC. I supported our President then as I do now. Great three years Mr. President, given what you inherited. I do not always do a perfect job but when I do it makes me feel great to be acknowledged. Thank you President Obama, Commander In Chief, for your service and thanks for bringing our sons and daughters back home from Iraq and dramatically reducing our forces in Afghanistan. I focus a lot on our troops, so my thoughts often go to them, so continue to bring them home and spend that money here at home. I must say at one point I had my doubts after I voted for you as I thought the problems were to big for any one man; and the way the other side refuse to work with you and obstructed your every move, but then as the story indicates one after another your accomplishments became clearer and America is getting stronger. I will vote for you again President Obama.
Great article, thanks for your insights.
I've been feeling much of the disappointment and frustration you mention, and this piece is causing me to rethink my position.
Your ability to take the long view is so welcome in this age of 24-hour news cycles, instant judgements, and Twitterific reaction times.
Thank you.
I wouldn't say a great deal is accurate. The health reform was a given (he had majority and the backing of the public) since the US's record is one of the worst in OECD...it would go without saying (any democrat in his place would have put this forward.
Auto industry was a matter of dealing with unions and a huge amount of public money to get them out of near or just plain bankruptcy and therefore the companies were much more willing to "cooperate".
And the stimulus package was voted on during Bush's last days (I mean I hated the guy but he handed him the stimulus package)...what Obama did have in his hands in regards to the stimulus package is some supervision on what it was being used for...paying bonuses? oops that escaped his brilliant administration (to be fair they were fairly new on the job).
What I loved most were his promises for main street, and there has GOT to be more regulation...yes I see the regulation...it flew threw congress and has made a great difference and is already being implemented...not. I don't mean that his intentions weren't there but he wasn't elected on intentions but on promises to fulfill...It's not good enough to say there's bureaucracy or republicans blocking his plans. If he had been a senator for more than a couple of years or being the well-read person he is he should have known that the plagues of bureaucracy and republicans were and will always be there...
Enough with the excuses and the rhetoric...The ratings are from the same people that gave him the votes and their perceptions (whether 100% accurate) need to be taken as seriously and rightfully as their votes....You don't get to choose in democracy...that's fascism you may be thinking of.
Outstanding article. Best I've seen. Already ripples: Romney came out today to tout TARP and credit it to Bush. Biggest fastest economic turnaround -- at zero cost -- and it doesn't make it into any headlines.
There are those who could have been in the same room when all of these accomplishments were happening, who would still deny that Obama ever did any good. More and more it points to the fact that many in this country on the right are still furious over the fact that not only a black President sits in the White House but what they think is even worse is that he is a Democratic Black President. For those two things they will never forgive him. If sometime in the future the GOP could wipe from the record that we ever had a black President in the White House it will be removed from the History books just as many other things that people did not approve of were. I pray Obama is re-elected and I will do all I can to help make that happen. If Mitt Romney or any of the others running are elected this country is in for a terrible time. Who will they blame then when it is all falling down around the middle class. Everyone better stop and think about how these people are pandering to their rich friends. When it all goes down, if there is a Republican from these running in the White House you are on your own.
Great read!!! President Obama 2012:The Platzner Post Facebook/Twitter
I voted for President Obama in 2008. I know he's done a lot that has yet to be recognized. I will never vote for any of the current Republican candidates.
I also know that because of his "revolutionary reform" of financial aid, I am no longer eligible for a Pell Grant, and without that Pell Grant, I can not finish the degree program I'm in the middle of.
The bottom line is that the banks are still doing what they've always done and have paid no price for what they did leading up to the crisis. Obama has been more concerned about how Republicans have received his proposals than how his base views them. He has bought into the absurd austerity proposals of the GOP, saying when the private sector tightens it's belt the government must do the same, when the opposite is true. Obama is a Wall Street funded centrist, that talks like a progressive but continues on in the Clinton tradition of triangulating with an increasingly wacky opposition party to retain political power. What the country needs is another FDR that will lead, not someone who negotiates with right wing wackos and the 1%.
so if he has accomplished so much would he be put in the mount like the other presidants that made a difference in this great country?
The problem with your entire article is that you presuppose a president should spend time passing legislation. I'll agree that Obama has pretty well succeeded with his foreign policy, but everywhere else he is an absolute failure. Did he extend the bailouts? Did he intervene in the auto industry? Did he grant unethical loans to bogus energy companies? Yes, and much more. But just doing things doesn't make you great. He is a micromanager, as most liberals are (believing that they have the right answers and can force other people to see it). My measure of greatness is this: am I more free because of his policies? The answer is clearly no, as he has re-signed the Patriot Act, allowed TSA to do whatever they want, doubled the national debt and failed to secure the border. Just because he is busy doesn't mean he is great.
As an outsider looking in, I cannot believe the sheer IGNORANCE on this comment board. Thankfully, I saw SOME intelligent comments...but, frighteningly so, not nearly enough.
Obama is a visionary! He is decent, intelligent, and truly cares about the people. Not just about big business and the rich. And, might I add, others around the world LOVE him!
Why is everyone so terribly selfish? What happened to COMMUNITY? If you want to blame anyone for the state of your country, look at the FACTS and face that Bush left a complete MESS behind for Obama to clean up. Think these things will resolve overnight? Any wise person knows that this takes time. But, for a culture used to such immediate gratification, I am not surprised that many of you do not get this. If you insist on blaming anyone, look to the lying warmonger George Bush!
The lack of intelligence and compassion are astounding to me. Very sad.
P.S. My country has healthcare, we have many great social services, AND, we are wealthy and progressive. So, YES, you CAN still take care of yourself and prosper while still mitigating the plight of those less fortunate.
And, I KNOW I am going to get negative comments from all the dinosaur thinkers, but I honestly do not care and will not read them.
Nice article. A serious summation of what Obama has achieved, and a nice checklist to go through when defending the President's record.
Now we just need to cut through the volume of the right-wing noise machine.
Good work.
A job done by half mesures that ultimately fails ... is not a job well done. The stimulus was too small. See Christina Romer, Paul Krugman, and Joe Stiglitz. Healthcare was a copout to Republican views, that garnered no Republican support, and will now be invalidated by Justice Kennedy. Financial regulation delegated rulemaking authority to Agencies that are now subject to lobbyists diluting or negating their effectiveness. And on it goes. So, ... we got vapid speeches, a president disengaged from the legislative process, and half measures that fail to accomplish the required objective. 52% of the people are correct. He hasn't accomplished much.
There will be one consolation that Obama's successes are not acknowledged by his opponents. They not only don't acknowledge them; they are blind to them. Deliberately blind, but blind nonetheless. Each time Romney makes an attempt to define any program, he steps on one of Obama's accomplishments. Lately, he tried to take credit for the auto bailout one day; and blamed Obama for a 100,000 job loss due to the bailout the next day. The day after that, he indicated manufacturing is ready to make a big surge 'with the right guidance'; neglecting to note that Obama's focus on manufacturing has increased manufacturing jobs for the first time in decades. Then he blamed the stimulus for repairing a 'bridge to nowhere' that the residents call a 'bridge to their past'. He'll keep doing it. And won't see it. He's blind. We always miss our own blind spot.
In essence that this banks continue to be doing what exactly they've always performed and have compensated no price so that they were doing prior to the particular desperate. Obama continues to be more worried about about how precisely Republicans have obtained his plans than how his / her base views these. He's bought in the stupid austerity proposals from the GOP, stating when the personal sector tightens they have belt the federal government need to do exactly the same, once the opposite holds true. Obama is really a Stock market financed centrist, which talks just like a progressive however continues on within the Clinton custom of triangulating with the increasingly crazy opposition party to keep political strength. The particular country requirements is a FDR which will head, not somebody who negotiates having right side wackos and also the 1%. six flags coupon code
You have got to be kidding me. what a bunch of ignorant bumkissers. You people truly are a bunch of fools. It's not going to do you any good though. Because he is going to lose in November and deservedly so. See Ya america destoryers.
The conservative right wing believe any accomplishments they do not want are "because no body wanted them". Arrogance doesn't define what every body wants, it just believes it does. Fortunately, I did and many others. Thank you Mr.President.The Affordable Care Act alone was enough to place his Presidency in high esteem. Here is what the Republican/conservative right wing are known for. A bill has been introduced in the House of Representatives that will cut all funding to educate the U.S. citizen about the provisions/benefits in The Health Care Act. It will stop any information as President Obama must abide by the appropriations of funds legislated by Congress (and by the way the Obama Administration has spent less than the last five administrations in large part due to the Tea Party...look it up on the CBO or OMB web site). Why would they want funds cut?..The Republican Party does not want an informed citizenry. Nothing is more glaring than this one bill that this is their agenda. Keep us stupid. So I have copied the Affordable Care Act and the summaries of the benefits and I am posting it on the wall of my face book account every day. Because after one understands how this directly effects them (and already has), they will be screaming to keep it.
Who wrote this article and what are they on?
He may have done a few things, but that does not mean it was good for the citizens of America at all. The healthcare reform is nothing more than putting us in the wrong direction and I will say that. I am one of the uninsured in this country and I do not want the government to have anything to do with my healthcare period and if you do then do not expect to live a long life. His plan does not provide free coverage unless you are poor and it will not reduce costs, it just means if you do not buy it for yourself, you can now be fined.
He has done more harm with his credit card policies than good. Those policies caused banks to take auctions that harmed millions of citizens and their credit ratings.
He didn't do anything for the automotive industry. Ford stood on their own and Toyota who is the largest auto manufacturer isn't even a US company. Chrysler is still trying to recover and Fiat being the primary shareholder is not going to save them overtime either. GM came out of it because they filed bankruptcy, which is what they should have done at the beginning instead of allowing Obama to step.
Obama has spent more money on promoting himself and keeping his budget while everyone else in America is adjusting their budgets just to survive. This country is no way recovering from a recession, people are still being laid off and jobs are still not being created.
Obama is too busy distracting the people with things while he does things he shouldn't be doing. Education has always been expensive that is why it is a choice to go after. There is no country that offers a free college education. This is just a distraction to keep the American people away for knowing really how incompetent he is.
Obama has not cut or balanced this countries budget and the people are not holding him accountable because you are too busy fighting over who is right and who is wrong in terms of republican or democrats.
Wake up Americans!! The ONLY thing Obama has accomplish is stirring up the American people to go after each other and create a very hostile environment when he promised change in bringing the country together.
Well, this country is not together and we are farther apart than ever. So wake your asses up, this is not about whether you are a democrat or republican, this is about the money you give the government, where they spend it, and who is walking away with it. It is your money not theirs and they are wasting it with Obama at the helm.
Enough said, but the citizens need to wake up and realize that this article is way off base. And just before someone decides to tell me what party I am, just let me say I have been a republican, democrat and independent. I don't care what party you belong to it is what is best for the people of this great nation. We are losing our greatness due to Obama and we are making fools of ourselves by calling each other names.
We need political reform getting Obama and all of the congress men and women out of office. Serving a political office should be a privilege and not a career. They should have regular jobs and serve for a short period of time.
Wake up Americans, you are losing your country and you be distracted by propaganda by nothing more than a marketer.
Through my viewpoint, it seems that there is not much distinction between Bush as well as Obama however in some really dangerous methods, Obama is actually worse. Rose bush at least said having been obtaining your rights aside even if this individual lied regarding "why. inch Obama attempts to pretend this individual hasn't done anything at all of the type when the legal rights he has lost go far past anything the last village fool did below Cheney's usb. So excuse me when we just avoid see the record associated with "accomplishments" that every the actual politicos tend to be patting themselves within the back with regard to allegedly having carried out. shakeology reviews
ok enough no question..is obama like hitler..yes he is but not exactly..hitler love his nation but forget ties with other nation..but obama love his nation and ll unite worldwide christians muslims and jews under the flag of one nation of god who are ready to serve..at same time create close ties with other nation such as china and russia in the expectation they ll one day join the democratic society for world global democracy,,yes..obama is more toward nation educator..its agreeable..should he been elected nov 2012..congrat..if hes tired after one or two yrs in office..biden or hillary allways around..but 2016 republican will take full control..whatever...its personnel view..but ultimately God will decide before He return Jesus back to eart..God knows better
here is oboma media at it worst keep telling us what you think we should think , and not what we know this will be my one and only post here because I will not support this web page or any of it's advertiser beside I have to go build my company that the government has made for me!!
I have a very busy new puppy. He doesn't want to play by the rules, and he doesn't have the intellect or background to understand many of the rules or even to comprehend his destructive capacity. My puppy is always busy accomplishing the destruction of my house: chewing up shoes, shredding sheets and drapes, breaking glass objects, and defecating and peeing everywhere! Obama is like that puppy, with an exception. My puppy doesn't have a monstrous ego and the capacity for dishonesty. Busy activity is only an accomplishment if it has a positive outcome. Not so here.
There is no question Obama has accomplished a lot. People think he has accomplished very little because average American do not think progressivism is progress. They see a faltering, non improving economy, their friends out of work, incresing medical costs etc. so they don't see progress. As usual it is all a matter of how the question is asked. Had the question been: "Do you think Obama has made great progress toward making America more like the European socialist welfare states?" The answer would have been overwhelmingly yes, but that's a question the mainstream media does not dare to ask.
If Obama is re-elected in 2012, the US is finished. The following is in simple language that everyone can understand, not the gibberish that our government keeps telling people.
Please read this carefully and make sure you keep this message going. This needs to be emailed to everyone in the USA...
By Wayne Allyn Root
(former classmate of Barack H. Obama)
Barack Hussein Obama is no fool. He is not incompetent. On the contrary, he is brilliant. He knows exactly what he�s doing. He is purposely overwhelming the U.S. economy to create systemic failure, economic crisis and social chaos � thereby destroying capitalism and our country from within. Barack Hussein Obama was my college classmate.
He is a devout Muslim; do not be fooled. Look at his czars... Anti-business� anti-American. As Glenn Beck correctly predicted from day one, Barack Hussein Obama is following the plan of Cloward & Piven, two professors at Columbia University... they outlined a plan to socialize America by overwhelming the system with government spending and entitlement demands.
Add up the clues below. Taken individually they're alarming. Taken as a whole, it is a brilliant, Machiavellian game plan to turn the United States into a Socialist/Marxist state with a permanent majority that desperately needs government for survival... And can be counted on to always vote for even bigger government. Why not? They have no responsibility to pay for it.
Universal Health Care:
The Health Care bill has very little to do with healthcare. It has everything to do with unionizing millions of hospital and healthcare workers, as well as adding 15,000 to 20,000 new IRS agents (who will join government employee unions). Obama doesn�tcare that giving free healthcare to 30 million Americans will add trillions to the national debt. What he does care about is that it cements the dependence of those 30 million voters to Democrats and big government. Who but a socialist revolutionary would pass this reckless spending bill in the middle of a depression?
Cap and Trade:
Like healthcare legislation having nothing to do with healthcare, Cap and Trade has nothing to do with global warming. It has everything to do with redistribution of income, government control of the economy and a criminal payoff to Obama�s biggest contributors. Those powerful and wealthy unions and contributors (like GE, which owns NBC, MSNBC and CNBC) can then be counted on to support everything Obama wants. They will kick-back hundreds of millions of dollars in contributions to Obama and the Democratic Party to keep them in power. The bonus is that all the new taxes on Americans with bigger cars, bigger homes and businesses helps Obama �spread the wealth around.�
Making Puerto Rico a state:
Who�s asking for a 51st state? Who�sasking for millions of new welfare recipients and government entitlement addicts in the middle of a depression? Certainly not American taxpayers! But this has been Barack Hussein Obama�splan all along. His goal is to add two new Democrat senators, five Democrat congressmen and a million loyal Democratic voters who are dependent on big government.
(This will tip the balance of those living off the government to more than those who must pay for it; and we�re done for.)Legalize 12 million illegal Mexican immigrants:
Just giving these 12 million potential new citizens free healthcare alone could overwhelm the system and bankrupt America. But it adds 12 million reliable new Democrat voters who can be counted on to support big government. Add another few trillion dollars in welfare, aid to dependent children, food stamps, free medical, education, tax credits for the poor, and eventually Social Security.
(see note above re: Puerto Rico)Stimulus and bailouts.
Stimulus and bailouts.
Where did all that money go? It went to Democrat contributors, organizations (ACORN), and unions -- including billions of dollars to save or create jobs of government employees across the country. It went to save GM and Chrysler so that their employees could keep paying union dues. It went to AIGso that Goldman Sachscould be bailed out (after giving Obama almost $1 million in contributions). A staggering $125 billion went to teachers (thereby protecting their union dues).
All those public employees will vote loyally Democrat to protect their bloated salaries and pensions that are bankrupting America. The country goes broke, future generations face a bleak future, but Obama, the Democrat Party, government, and the unions grow more powerful.
The ends justify the means. Raise taxes on small business owners, high-income earners, and job creators. Put the entire burden on only the top 20 percent of taxpayers, redistribute the income, punish success, and reward those who did nothing to deserve it (except vote for Obama).
Reagan wanted to dramatically cut taxes in order to starve the government. Barack Obama wants to dramatically raise taxes to starve his political opposition. With the acts outlined above, Barack Hussein Obama and his regime have created a vast and rapidly expanding constituency of voters dependent on big government; a vast privileged class of public employees who work for big government; and a government dedicated to destroying capitalism and installing themselves as socialist rulers by overwhelming the system.
Add it up and you�vegot the perfect Marxist scheme � all devised by my Columbia University college classmate Barack Hussein Obama using the Cloward and Piven Plan. http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/overwhelm.asp
Last point: think about what this designed �rule of the rabble� will do to anyone successful� and everyone receiving this is. What will your lives be like under communism? The time to fight this abomination is now
13,000,000 unemployed, millions of small business DESTROYED
40,000,000 on food stamps
$15,400,000,000,000.00+ national debt
Your job or OweBama. You decide.
Numbers DONT lie, barry DOES. Baary wants Romney to release his tax records but barry has spent 1.4 million dollars HIDING his past! Hey barry, what are YOU hiding?
1) Health care reform - People don't want it (check the polls), we can't afford it and it will just increase costs 2) The takeover and turnaround of the auto industry - GM is still in big trouble and the only victory was for the unions that voted for Obama ... should have declared bankruptcy and killed union demands 3) The biggest economic stimulus in history - Increase in national debt from 9 to 16 trillion in 3 years...that's good(?)...what did we get for it...record unemployment and an economy on its back 4) Sweeping new regulations of Wall Street - name one regulation that has teeth 5) A tough new set of consumer protections on the credit card industry - are you joking? Banks just worked other fee angles...no real effect 6) A vast expansion of national service - When there are no jobs, I guess service is all that's left 6) Net neutrality - Window dressing...try enforcing it 7) The greatest increase in wilderness protection in fifteen years - More "vote fishing"...meanwhile jobs are lost by preventing the pipelines required for moving needed oil..but China loves it 8) A revolutionary reform to student aid - Again it may get student votes.....meanwhile MBA's are flipping hamburgers so what's really the point without jobs? 9) Signing the New START treaty with Russia - pure politics...Russia is not the problem; North Korea and Iran are...and absolutely nothing has been done with either country 10) The ending of �don�t ask, don�t tell.� - Again for votes...sorry but while I don't mean to be crass, I hate to think that my son has to worry about "grab ass" aboard his submarine.
you error like a curl of smoke hanging not later than a dalian massage direction, sanctify you babbling brook jumbo
This is truly sickening. It's not the country I grew up in with the rules of civility, fairness, seeking truth, listening carefully, quoting creditable sources and facts.
I've read that desire creates anger, and anger creates delusion, and the hatred, propaganda, lies, and delusion demonstrated by the haters of the President is stunning. I fear for this country with so much hatred, fear, and willingness to believe lies and propaganda.
In the latest issue of the New Yorker, Jane Mayer writes that people recognize this president is so emotionally and mentally honest that he is reluctant to even talk to high volume donors. He believes that so much money in the system corrupts it.
Where does such hatred come from? Ask all those people who didn't have health insurance before how much they like having it now. They do. As people on pensions how grateful they are that the stock those pension funds are invested in didn't go bankrupt. Ask Iraqis if they didn't want to be in charge of their own country. Ask the auto workers if they are glad the auto companies were bailed out. Ask if climate change deniers are still at it with drought in 80 percent of the country, and ask people in the West with all the wildfires if they enjoy breathing the ash filled air and the EPA shouldn't regulate air standards.
A sad day for this beloved country with so much ignorance, anger, hatred, delusion, and willingness to believe lies about the most ethical and humane President in my lifetime.
This vitriol is a horror, unworthy of the ideals and principles of our country.
I accept now that the reason for my separation was down to me. After the win ex back spell casting readings it was like it has been seen in a dream vision about me. I realize now that I was not a good person with my girlfriend and i blame myself. I'm happy this has been highlighted now and it has put me on the right path to being a better person. Now that i have her back again,this is the time to try and get her to love me more and more again and to always treat her good even though the
spell still works i will always show her my love,i am happy i win her back again,please wish the relationship therapist email@example.com all your success victory for me,the spirit will be very glad for that.President Obama has added $5 Trillion to the debt in four years without any significant economic benefit which is not the mark of greatness.
President Obama has produced the most divisive class warfare rhetoric from the bully pulpit in the last century. Tearing the country apart is not a mark of greatness.
President Obama is more concerned with his own legacy that he is with the welfare of the American people who needs jobs instead of fiscally unsustainable government programs that create dependence and destroy our future. Creating destructive dependence isn't greatness.
President Obama has diverted $2 Trillion dollars from the private sector to subsidize his political supporters through crony capitalism and bailouts of unions. Barack's insistence on taking care of his political needs at all costs is not the mark of greatness.I could go on, but the point is clear.
Obama's "Elizabeth Warren" like comment in Roanoke on how government is the creator/purveyor of all will go down in history as the most left leaning socialist comment ever made by an American president. It was a disgusting display of liberalism's misguided view of reality courtesy of a Harvard education no less�
America was created by individuals. Individuals ALLOW the government to collect taxes to be used for infrastructure building that they WILLINGLY approve - such that future individuals can continue to create wealth for themselves and growth opportunities in America. Without individuals and their success in the private sector � there would be no government and resultant public sector opportunities. These comments by Obama and Warren are proof positive that government needs to be reset in size and jurisdiction, and sweep clean of socialists.Think back to Edison, Bell, Wrights, Ford and many others � some self educated � who brought their ideas to life without big government, roads, electricity, or infrastructure. They did not get block grants and loans from a central socialist government or approvals from some government agency to create lights, phones, phonographs, flying machines, affordable cars, etc.
This very software used to comment here was a dream in an individual�s head, before it was an idea that became a reality. America became great due to individuals and their self initiative, not big central government directives. To think otherwise is to fall victim to the greatest con in human history, which is that socialism/collectivism leads to a utopia where everyone is treated the same and all outcomes are equal and fair. As history shows - on the way to this socialist utopia or about the time the far left thinks they are making progress � the economy will meltdown and all will be lost because socialism is NOT sustainable.
I think I just lost IQ from reading this super liberal article. Let me clarify some things for the author.
1) "Don't ask don't tell" was a CLINTON ADMINISTRATION bill. Correcting a mistake that was created by the previous Liberal President is not as amazing as this ridiculous article interprets it as.
2) The article was correct, Obama did create all these policies and Wall Street Regulations. In doing so, he spent billions upon billions and put the U.S. into a deeper economic hole of debt with China. I will humor the liberals and pretend like the economy has not gotten worse, which is still UNACCEPTABLE. The economy was bad to begin with, so stop spending more money.
The MOST IMPORTANT DETAIL that most liberals and some conservatives don't understand is that THROWING MONEY AT A PROBLEM DOESN'T PUT IT OUT. The ONLY was to defeat a recession is by restoring Consumer Confidence. It's NOT OKAY to tax the rich for an outrageous percentage of income.
All these 99 idiot percent rallies are by people who have never taken an ECON or World Economics class, so why are they being taken seriously? They are not the 99% because at least 90% of Americans are able to comprehend the fact that the elite and the rich create jobs with their income. After a while, you get to the point where you insert the majority of your income into your business.
The rich are the ones who build factories and create jobs. They also donate hundreds of thousands to charitable organizations and relief programs after a weather disaster. It is completely ILLOGICAL then to tax them and crush the hopes of job growth.
No offense to anyone, but the facts are simple. The fry-cook at McDonalds who flips burgers for minimum wage doesn't create jobs. The cashier at Kohls doesn't create jobs. The truck driver for Wal Mart doesn't create jobs. Elizabeth Warren knows how to talk, but doesn't understand the FUNDAMENTAL rules of an economy. The truck driver delivers goods and co tributes to your business, but is he working himself to death like you are? Does he have to fill out tax reports, calculate income reports, manage expenses, analyze the competition, create prices, manage employee benefits and salaries, contemplate the growth of a business, or manage an entire business? No. He drives a truck from point A to point B. He also didn't have to pay fbusiness school. He also didn't have to take a loan to start up the business originally. He also didn't have to slave over and fight for his ideas to grow. There is no such thing as working equally hard in this world. There are 3 kinds of people in the world: The workers, The thinkers, and the talkers. Guess who Socialist Feminist Warren is?
I think I just lost IQ from reading this super liberal article. Let me clarify some things for the author.
1) "Don't ask don't tell" was a CLINTON ADMINISTRATION bill. Correcting a mistake that was created by the previous Liberal President is not as amazing as this ridiculous article interprets it as.
2) The article was correct, Obama did create all these policies and Wall Street Regulations. In doing so, he spent billions upon billions and put the U.S. into a deeper economic hole of debt with China. I will humor the liberals and pretend like the economy has not gotten worse, which is still UNACCEPTABLE. The economy was bad to begin with, so stop spending more money.
The MOST IMPORTANT DETAIL that most liberals and some conservatives don't understand is that THROWING MONEY AT A PROBLEM DOESN'T PUT IT OUT. The ONLY was to defeat a recession is by restoring Consumer Confidence. It's NOT OKAY to tax the rich for an outrageous percentage of income.
All these 99 idiot percent rallies are by people who have never taken an ECON or World Economics class, so why are they being taken seriously? They are not the 99% because at least 90% of Americans are able to comprehend the fact that the elite and the rich create jobs with their income. After a while, you get to the point where you insert the majority of your income into your business.
The rich are the ones who build factories and create jobs. They also donate hundreds of thousands to charitable organizations and relief programs after a weather disaster. It is completely ILLOGICAL then to tax them and crush the hopes of job growth.
No offense to anyone, but the facts are simple. The fry-cook at McDonalds who flips burgers for minimum wage doesn't create jobs. The cashier at Kohls doesn't create jobs. The truck driver for Wal Mart doesn't create jobs. Elizabeth Warren knows how to talk, but doesn't understand the FUNDAMENTAL rules of an economy. The truck driver delivers goods and co tributes to your business, but is he working himself to death like you are? Does he have to fill out tax reports, calculate income reports, manage expenses, analyze the competition, create prices, manage employee benefits and salaries, contemplate the growth of a business, or manage an entire business? No. He drives a truck from point A to point B. He also didn't have to pay fbusiness school. He also didn't have to take a loan to start up the business originally. He also didn't have to slave over and fight for his ideas to grow. There is no such thing as working equally hard in this world. There are 3 kinds of people in the world: The workers, The thinkers, and the talkers. Guess who Socialist Feminist Warren is?
I am very please to have read this, as I am fed up listening to the totally false accusations of the other party. I agree that President Obama did a terrific job as president of the United States that people like me who is not an American began to pay respect to the American people having such a brilliant president.
The arguments by the right wing are so absurd, false, so out of touch, and I just can't think of enough evil words to describe their motivations and mind set.
Terrific job, really? When you have to include his work on food safety to make any points, then it seems pretty pathetic to me. The biggest problem is that he has failed us on the promises he himself made when he was elected. He said nothing about messing up a relationship with one of our closest allies, Israel, but he's done a good job of that. Lousy attempt to close Gitmo, which was one of the loudest promises, and of course, there's that nagging situation with unemployment, which is worse than before, and declining as we speak. Shipping GM jobs to China doesn't rally bode well...shall I go on? It's no wonder 52% don't think he did much - in terms of positive change.
This is a laughable piece: ACA was single handedly negotiated by Emanuel and run through a �Clowngress� stacked with giddy spend thrift Democrats. The accomplishments, or lack thereof, were all driven by money with an eye on reelection. In my 55 years I have never seen an administration so bought. Whether the Insurance industry, solar, batteries, UAW or Wall Street; Obama has been a first class sellout. And to shower praise on the President for Bin Laden, come on it was teamwork and if not for Clinton and Panetta, Osama would still under the protection of Pakistan watching I Dream if Genie reruns in Abbottabad. The Republicans call this President and empty suit and they are right. Three years with no budget is inexcusable and no matter how you spin it, the buck stops in the Oval Office.
This article is brilliant!
Promises to cut deficit in half - adds 6 trillion to it.
Promises to not raise taxes on Middle Class - Obama care is a tax with many tax layers. If you own a home, you will pay 3.25 percent tax to go into ObamaCare. If you have health insurance, your premium will be taxed 2.1 percent which will go to ObamaCare.
promises to add jobs - 23 million people unemployed.
Saves Auto Makers? You mean Auto Union. The Americans who had GM stock in their IRA's lost their savings. And the tax payer has to pick up the tab--a double hit for many Americans.
Obama spent millions of Tax payer's money on Solyndra with zero jobs produced. And spent nearly $500,000 in ads exclusively with NBC to advertise his "accomplishment" regarding Solyndra deal. (Hmmm....So you wonder why there is a connection between the liberal press and Obama?)
Obama has Over-regulated to the point that small businesses are going under - just walk along a strip mall or small town USA and see all the empty spaces.
Has promised Seniors that their Medicare will be safe but guts it by moving 700 Billion dollars out of it for Obama Care.
Promises transparency but pays millions in dollars to keep his college records sealed. What is in them that can't be seen? Where is the transparency?
He is very accomplished at dividing this nation along social, political and racial lines. Just read some of the comments above that are anti-white because there is criticism of Obama. Remember: Obama is half white.
He has made "success" a bad word.
We were busy counting the olympic gold against China and applaud that the USA team won more than China. But guess what. China has negotiated 10 to 15 trade agreements and there are 18 more initiated. According to Condoleezza Rice, Former Secretary of State and African American, the Obama Administration has negotiated none, nada, zero. And Trade agreements equals jobs. (By the way, Rice is an excellent Stateswoman and I think should run as President.)
Obama is destroying this country - that is his accomplishment.
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In over 330+ comments, it is amazing to see the number of opposing comments showing their ire and delivered in such lengthy detail... could be an indication of how much the truth of this article really hurt. I think they "doth protest too much" Thanks, for the comprehensive summary of an amazing 3.5 yrs.
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Juventus Microblogging), Inter Milan (micro-blogging) or even Manchester City (micro-blogging) (micro-blogging), and hope that this new player pocket,
Obama has nearly doubled the national debt since he became president! That really says something about how good of a president he has been.
I can't believe I live in a country that elected someone named Barack Hussein Obama president. What a bunch of stupid fools. It's disgusting. Israel is the only sane country in the middle east. It is trying to defend itself, it is not the instigator. A quarter of its population is Arab. Not so the Arab countries, they murder people different from them, including their own children. Israel liberals are stupid fools just like all other liberals.
Obama is an utter failure. See the film Obama 2016 to find out why. He expanded foreign trade so we lose more jobs while importing as many poor (and often criminal) parasites as he possibly can so they can put anchors on the welfare. We've watched the decline for four straight years of household income. We've watched job growth fall to the point where it doesn't even keep up with population growth. It just goes on and on and on... Obama: an utter failure.
What has Obama done for us? He's increased the national debt, nearly doubled it. He shut down the explorative space shuttle program, ending the dreams of thousands of children who longed to go into space and explore the final frontier.
Stimulus? If you think of the cost compared to how many jobs were created, it still wasn't entirely worth it. Thousands of dollars per single job.
Foreign trade? And people have the nerve to get angry when things are made in China or Taiwan?
Gay marriage? Hello! Who cares?! There are way more serious issues to deal with. Like the national debt, for instance.
The war on terrorism. Eleven years have gone past since this thing started. There's terrorism all over the world. We can't get rid of all of it. If we don't stop now, when does it end?
A story can be spun to support either side and you are definitely spinning something here; but it's not reality!
I'd like to print out The Incomplete Greatness of Barack Obama, but I want to omit the junky comments, most of which I haven't read but they seem to be about liberal bias.
I'm 79 now, have the memory of a gnat, and am technologically illiterate. But I still know the Democratic philosophy is "the greatest good for the greatest number of people"; the Republican philosophy, if they even have one, seems to be "if you can't win, cheat." I've been voting since 1956. There was a time when I voted just on the basis of what the candidates had done or even what they said they would do. I consider voting my civic duty just as jury duty is, and as years pass I know there's more to it than what they've done and what they've said; I think I'm better informed now and a better judge of how to vote, based on 3 things and 3 things only: CHARACTER, INTELLIGENCE, AND EMPATHY. President O has shown me that he beats Mitt Romney hands down in all 3 of these categories:
PRES O has CHARACTER as defined by whoever it was who said "the best index to one's character is how he treats people who can't do him any good, and how he treats people who can't fight back." And in the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson (or maybe it was Thoreau), "no change of circumstances can repair a defect of character."
PRES O is INTELLIGENCE in the midst of stupidity. Think Congress and its 10or15% approval rating probably based on that statement that their sole purpose is to defeat Pres O. And think Mitt Romney who has a propensity to look down on those of us who still believe in government of, by and for the people; and he wasn't even smart enough not to let himself be heard writing off half of the electorate (of which I am one).
PRES O has EMPATHY for his fellow man, with a true ability to put himself in our shoes, contrary to Mitt who wrote off half of the electorate and later denied it. How dare he now say he "feels" for the middle class; he doesn't KNOW the middle class; and he's so fond of saying he doesn't want to tell us what he will do because "you'll just have to trust me"; well I don't. He's a bully, a liar, and a parsimonious stingy-gut who doesn't want to support his country with money, or he wouldn't be outsourcing jobs, paying less than 13% in taxes et al. ad nauseum. I couldn't think less of him if he'd paid no taxes at all.
Mitt knows nothing about Pres O's brand of democracy; Mitt knows about oligarchy (government by the few) and plutocracy (government by the rich). If I could say two things to his face, they would be "ASK NOT WHAT YOUR COUNTRY CAN DO FOR YOU," AND "TRUTH IS A LIBERAL BIAS - TRY USING IT SOMETIME." And you've got a lot of nerve calling yourself a conservative; there are few conservatives in public service today, but mostly right wing radicals.
I once thought I couldn't vote for a wealthy aristocrat as he would have no idea what the poor and disadvantaged were about. Then of course I learned about FDR who was a wealthy aristocrat, and he pulled our economic hot chestnuts out of the fire, all the while asking people to sacrifice, even children, which we did by saving string and tin foil and using less sugar and fewer shoes, which were rationed, and buying war stamps for a dime each at intermission in the movie theaters and pasting them in a book, later to be exchanged for a war bond. FDR had character, intelligence, and empathy - and on April 12, 1945, the day he died, I became a Democrat at age 12.
PS - There's no better reason for women to vote Obama than that most of them have daughters and granddaughters to think of now, and they certainly don't want Romney/Ryan making decisions they should be making for themselves. And if you think R/R are for SMALL government, think again.
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Obama has done admirably well given the current climate. He has faltered in places ... mainly US citizen rights that its almost impossible to fight against after most sheep believe we need them following the staged 9/11 disaster. The right hates him more than most left prezes from the past simply b/c he followed truly the worst administration in our history as a country. To get a true feeling for the right's adolescent emotional level read the bulletin boards on ESPN following a big game and read the losers comments. This is where the right is now.
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Saw you on McLaughlin this morning, 11/18, and I home you are never invited back. You are an obamaloney lickspittle!! Nothing you said this am regarding Benghazi was accurate or true. Other than eleanor c, another obamaloney lickspittle, the rest looked at you with utter contempt and disbelief. You are a liar!!!
BTW, no way obamaloney will ever be portrayed on Mt Rushmore or any other monument. He'll go down in disgrace before the end of his second term.