I don't need him to win against the GOP, but I'd like he and the Dems to actually have a policy agenda. I'm tired of we can't do anything.

And I thought he accomplished some pretty major things in those two years, even against an unprecedented use of the filibuster which forced him to water down several of the things he did get passed.

Well thats fine, I was just taking issue with the word "implemented". I'm pleased with the recent speeches he's made, but I know right now that no matter what he does, he has no chance of getting anything like that passed. Hell, FDR could come back from the grave and couldn't get it done. When Obama can't even get the GOP agree on a 10:1 deal for spending cuts:tax increases, then he's just not dealing with reasonable opposition. Hell, conservative hero Reagan and the Dem Congress agreed to a 3:1 deal in 1982!

I guess DT didn't think he did. I obviously didn't either but I am hardly one of his supporters. Would have loved to see something done about the military industrial complex or torture bay but I guess sending more troops to the Middle East is Nobel Prize worthy. War on drugs, corporate bailouts, energy indepedence, open and honest government... Remind me again what the principles of the Democratic party are?

How do you not see this as a failure of leadership? Either the country doesn't want it or he is a weak leader. I have no idea how you could see a third option in there on why he can't do better than a "10:1" cut. If the American public wants it he should have given to them and if they don't want it but it's needed he should give them their medicine. Instead he just bitches about how the GOP won't let him do his job. He's the president of the country not the 436th member of Congress.

He can't just implement a tax increase. If you want to argue that he could be a more forceful leader, then I could go along with that, but if he put a bil out there with a tax increase in it, the House wouldn't even vote on it and the Senate GOP would filibuster it.

I'm not all rah rah on Obama. There's a ton of ways he's disappointed me. But I'm also a realist. He's received more difficult opposition than just about any other President. A quick look at the filibuster usage chart bears that out. Even the Dems extreme hatred of Bush didn't lead to the same level of filibusters.

His entire presidency boils down to what McConnell said, that the sole goal in all of this for the GOP, public needs be damned, is to make Obama a 1-term president.

I'm not sure what it says that Obama is the most beatable president that I can remember and the Republicans can't find anyone to actually beat him. We've got some real crap to choose from.

Fair point. Though I bet that if the S&P did not downgrade them, that investigation would have quietly slipped away with at most a slap on the wrist.

JPMorgan lowered their growth forecast by a full point, saying:


Thank God we're all focused on how much money we should pull out of the economy.

Considering how bad they are at their job, they need to get more than just a slap on the wrist

SI

Probably right on that as well.

Actually he could have. He had to sign in the bill to extend the Bush tax cuts.

Quick questions (too much Hannity this week):

Is it true Obama's new spending policies are responsible for the increase in debt?

Are there significant economic policies in place now (can see health care down the road) that are radically socialist/left?

What specifically has Obama done that has prevented the continuation of the Bush tax cuts from working (creating jobs)?


I thought i knew the answers to these things but the easiness they are being said and promoted has given me pause. If they are not true, i would think people who have legitimate problems with Obama would also be angered by this rhetoric.

Yeah, it's not like economists have tried for a couple of decades now to get the public to save more, then started griping when they did :rolleyes:

Conditions change. Saving is good during normal conditions, but during a demand crisis the government is the only entity that can fill the output gap.

John Kerry says, "hi!" :)

Watch less Hannity FFS.

1. No. The increase in the debt has been a long-term problem. And all spending is authorized by Congress anyways, so it's really their spending that's running up the debt.

2. Healthcare isn't radically socialist/left. And there aren't any other policies that are radically socialist/left (unless you talk to one of those "all taxes are socialist" wackos).

3. Obama hasn't "done anything" to prevent the Bush tax cuts from working. The fact is that most economists have come to agree that tax cuts do not spur job creation. It's not just true here - it's true overseas in other economies too. It's a fallacy.

[citation needed]

The administration itself doesn't agree with you.

He was talking about the Bush tax cuts though, which are to higher-income individuals. Tax cuts for higher-income individuals have not been shown to create jobs.

Pretty interesting little graph here. Part of this study.

http://www.people.hbs.edu/mnorton/no...in%20press.pdf

A graph of what Republicans and Democrats think the distribution is would be interesting as well.

I think that was in the PDF. It wasn't too much different in my opinion.

That graph kind of reminds me of the old stories about how many people said they watched PBS versus how many actually watched it.

Tom Coburn: Idiot. The Gabrielle Giffords thing is how long ago, and he says "Thank God I can't bring a gun on the Senate Floor"????

(although in a dark humor moment, I wonder if the NRA will grade him down for that statement)

Coburn: Good thing I can't pack a gun - Reid J. Epstein - POLITICO.com

In general, I'm sympathetic ... but would prefer if the "guidance" were defined first (e.g. no felons etc.).

Not sure what the hispanic support for Rep vs Dems are, but this will help ... considering hispanics have (or will soon) exceed african americans as the largest (il)legal minority group.

Obama to deport illegals by 'priority' - Washington Times

Not in good taste, but I think people get too carried away with that stuff. It's an expression we use all the time.

I found the part where he implied Senior Citizens could pay for their MRIs with Apple Pies.

If we're doing graphs, I really want to see the "Amount politicians get paid in relation to the budget vs. what people think they get paid." Cause it is funny how many people seem to think that we'd be able to balance the budgets if politicians stopped getting paid, or at least had their wages significantly reduced.

Well then on top of that Steve, we should look at what they get paid from the US directy. Then how much they actually make through various means, then how much total compensation they receive.

Your right though, here is a facebook post that was nearly worthy of the facebook thread:

Sad ... my gut tells me its true. I don't blame it all on Obama but it happened on his watch so he owns it.

Pre-Market Report - Aug. 19, 2011 - CNNMoney

Just a scenario.

Wall Street set to follow global stocks lower - Business - msnbc.com

No President ever deserves all of the blame or all of the credit but there is a clear vacuum of economic understanding & leadership at play which is directly (and indirectly) causing instability in the markets, imho.

While I am curious what the Pres will have as a "Jobs Bill" speech...my expectations for it could not be much lower. Simply calling it a "Jobs Bill" is probably the wrong approach in the first place (though I can let it slide until hearing it) as the country needs to have direction outside of "hire people". Giving tax incentives to businesses to hire people when there is no real business incentive for them is basically a different form of welfare. We need to stop this kind of nonsensical policy.

The country needs leadership, vision, and a logical incentive for business to use their cash. You can have 2 of those 3 and probably get by, but you need to have more than 1, for certain.

The problem is, we have lawyers running the country instead of business people.

We have lawyers paid for by business people

SI

I'd be curious on how this poll would turn out now.

About a year ago, I had a conversation with someone I would qualify as an otherwise fairly intelligent individual who was going on and on about how welfare people are bilking the system and bankrupting our country because they were making tons of money to sit at home. He started making some conclusions and talking about how to solve these problems and the logic just didn't add up.

So I asked him, "How much do you think the average American makes"? His response: $100-200K. Once I had finished shaking my head at him (and it's a bit baffling since neither he nor I make anywhere close to that), I got to thinking "how many more people make horribly faulty assumptions based on numbers like that"?

Is that how you can easily get away with continually saying things like "taxing people over $250K kills small businesses" (because unless your accountant is an idiot, something like that would be incorporated). Or my belief that a significant portion of society is going "no, you can't do things to rich people because I might be among them one day" (yeah, you're not)?

SI

Don't forget earmarks. Man, if we just got rid of those, everything would be solved!

Yeah, I loved John McCain's campaigning against 1% of spending and how that would fix government.

At least earmarks required you to just shunt, say, $500M of the regular transportation budget specifically to your state. Instead, you just attach it to another bill or create an omnibus bill: "Hey, the $500M fund for the Hubert H Humphrey Homeland Security Defense Facility could have gone to any state. We were just lucky that money magically found its way to Minnesota".

SI

FWIW, the poll started pretty positive and has trended negative as the days went on.

Continuation of health care reform will be a major reason why I lean towards Dems (e.g. but would seriously consider Romney if he comes back into the fold of some sort of serious health care reform). Rooting for you Obama ... make it a reality in 2013.

White House Faces Political Dilemma On Health Law Challenge | FoxNews.com

I thought that this was a legit set of questions and I didn't want it left by the wayside.

1) Techincally, the President signed the Stimulus bill which spent a lot of money that we didn't have in order to try and prevent a full blown depression. Any president would have signed a bill of that magnitude, because they all knew that the alternative would have been a long slow decline of the economy. The Republicans have been squaking about the size of it and how it has burdened the economy ever since it was singed. Hindsight is always 20/20, and we have the privilege of saying that it was the worst choice ever because we didn't dive into a depression.

2) The policies that they are talking about besides the healthcare bill which is in no way socialist, are the government bailouts of the auto industry and banking industry. Money that was spent to keep small businesses, suppliers and to prevent a further escalation of the financial crisis. Had everything been allowed to fail, the US would have no auto industry at all, and any future competitor would need a full generation to catch up. Had all the banks been allowed to fail all this current finger pointing would be needless because we would be looking for who to fire for not having done what we did. Oh, and Bush II started this whole process with the first round of bailouts, which is a conveniently forgotten fact.

3) Businesses are making money hand over fist, and not spending it because they fear. Jobs that were lost were lost for good. Hence the reason why the unemployment rate has been slow to recede. It's going to take a good 10 years for those numbers to come back. This shouldn't be much of a surprise, and it won't have any bearing on who the president is. All this finger pointing by the Republican party is all a set up to try and win the 2012 presidential election. There are no policies that Obama has set up that have worked against the Bush tax cuts. Frankly, if the cuts had been allowed to expire, it's my opinion that Wall Street would have responded much better than they did with the crapfest of a deal that we got. Wall Street realizes that money needs to flow into the system, and that revenues need to be increased.

I do tend to find it amusing that people consider Obama's policies to be socialist or far left. It seems absurdly strange to me considering every other Western industrialized democracy. If we consider a country like the UK as "far left", were exactly should the rest of the world see us? Lunatic right wing madmen (ok, some already do)?

I've not been keeping up on this but boy, how far has he fallen ...

Edwards drops one prominent DC lawyer for another – CNN Political Ticker - CNN.com Blogs

Glad to get this one out of the way and think it was a distraction, I think the real prize is Syria.

BTW - if I was that Lockerbie "I'm not dead yet" guy, I would be leaving town.

Tripoli facing three-sided advance by Libyan rebels | World news | The Guardian

Good to know they are planning for it.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14560983

I agree with this and thought it unfair when it was done to GWB also. However, you would think Obama's team should be managing this better ...

Of course Obama deserves a vacation - CNN.com

I have a much bigger problem with the House & Senate extended recesses than the President's mini-vacations. Especially when the H/S members may be doing many other things even when IN session.

Saving is always good, consumers should not go into debt to boost consumer spending to save the economy. If anything it generally weakens the health of the economy as increasing debt levels increases the probability of default (the magical phenonmenon which justifies charging interest on all loans).

A lot of factors go into 'output' and the government is not the only source of demand as it were. The population itself has a certain level of necessary demand (your food, shelter, energy requirements to actually live) and the technological revolutions of this century are the biggest and best explanation of the expansion of demand and consumer spending (even better than credit card debt, which has also boomed, but not as much relatively).

The people of today live with more conveniences and standard of living than any time in history, and get there through technology and productivity continually growing. If it takes government investment to set the environment for growth, than by all means go ahead, but the moment it becomes just about throwing money around the less it all will really work in the end. We just end up with a few more fat cats with more zeroes in their account balances.

Pro tax cuts:
http://www.house.gov/jec/tax/taxrates/taxrates.pdf

How high incomes react to tax cuts:
Soaking the rich | The Economist

Supply-side economics:
Supply-Side Economics: The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics | Library of Economics and Liberty

All of these are obviously biased towards the 'cut taxes on the rich creates jobs' but give the gist of the argument (and have a bundle of citations to papers of varying quality on the topic).


I prefer the multiplier line of thought, similar to that mentioned by this:
Econbrowser: Pocketful of Multipliers (II): Options for Stimulus Packages

Again, start digging into citations made in the article to get at a variety of opinions.

The problem with reading economists is you can hire an economist to spout whatever nonsense you want them to. Taking a poll of them is just taking a poll of which side has made more bribes!

I've already stated my opinion, high income tax cuts will not create jobs... not based so much on philosophy but on what I consider to be common sense, a wealth of capital is already in the hands of the decision makers, tax rates only impact marginal returns on extracting the money out of a business (i.e. income), and tax cuts in a perfect ideal republican-sponsored supply-side REagnomics world can still only increase capital supply and marginal return on investment... neither of which are the key factors holding back investment (as JonInMiddleGA might say, all those jerks don't deserve jobs in the first place, the losers!!!).

The worry warts are things like 'double dip recession fears', inflation, job numbers and its relation to consumer spending, debt levels, and the fact that taxes right now are so goddamn awesome for looting corporations of dollars. Gotta extract those dollars before the INEVITABLE tax hike, sorry conservatives, your own elephants will help put them in when the time for the reaper comes, they already are targeting poor taxes like increased fees, sales taxes, and loophole reductions that mostly benefit low incomes like earned income, student deductions, etc...

Demand creates jobs, not cuts to income taxes. Seriously, we have one of the lowest top tax rates in our nation's history and high unemployment.

I love reading those articles where they cherry-pick points and ignore others.

As John Stewart said you can get $700 billion simply by taking HALF of everything that the poor have.