Are we really better off??

[Eman305]

Who are you voting for

[pescando]

bumper sticker in a red pickup at walgrens in marathon said:
IF IN 2008 YOU VOTED FOR OBAMA TO PROVE YOU ARE NOT RACIST IN 2012 VOTE FOR any other TO PROVE YOU ARE NOT STUPID

[fishnfool73]

If you seriously think the Republicans will change anything I hope you're right. Left or right Obama or Romney neither party gives a rotting piece of dog crap about the people once they are elected. They all have personal agendas and unless you are a fortune 500 company it isn't you.

[fishnfool73]

I agree with what you are saying. I went from a life long Republican to free thinker after our beloved Govenor and various other Republican declared open season on public employees.

[goodolmikey]

I know for a fact we are not better off today ,, I run a pawnshop,,, I see the people who come in hurting and I am not talking about crackheads or theives,,, I have more people coming in lately saying they have never had to resort to pawning their crap to meet their bills,,,, We need jobs! and spending 5million dollars to create 20 jobs is just plain B.S .I have always been registered as a independant voter because I dont like the Dems or Repubs but this guy and his policies have to go!!!!

[crashmister]

Jetty, you just crack me up. Quote; I'm not right or left I'm in the real world!!;Quote Maybe MTV's or Sean Hannity's. What you missed was in 2011 more people went to work than during the entire 8 years of Bush. No frigging clue where your getting the 23 million # from. Simply put, 4 years ago this month we lost 2 of 10 wall street banks due to financial deregulation, the DOW was in free fall with no end in sight, 4 other banks were in serious jepordy of failing. We were loosing 200,000 job's a month and it was getting worse as time went on.
You're also a bit off on your information about who is in charge of what. Look up US federal reserve and you'll find that they don't report to congress.
And by the way, even if the 111th congress tried to head off the meltdown the day they took office, there's no way they could have. The damage had already been done. you want to know who how and why? Look up 1999 repeal of Glass Steagall. Complete irresponsibility on the part of Wall street banks, as well as deregulation of Treasury's and Congress's role in oversite caused the meltdown. But the repeal of Glass Steagall made it far worse than it should have been.

[fishnfool73]

Interesting one side brings facts the other lashes out with drug references. Once your argument has to be made with personal attacks you've lost. Back to the argument no I don't think we are any better off now than we were under Bush.

[fishnfool73]

Really easy to blame Obama. However this recession started before he took office with the housing collapse. The housing market and real estate collapsing put a lot of people out of work. That in my opinion started this downward spiral.

[jezratty]

the only thing you can trust about a politician is the fact that they are corrupt... all of them!!! i vote for the lesser of the 2 evils..i would vote for the green party however i have never seen a green candidate that i believe actually stood a chance... as for bush he was a puppet ...an extension of his daddy.. in my opinion an idiot that was only interested in the financial gains of companies that he had ties with... i truly believe his thinking is too remedial to do as much harm as he did in the 8 yrs he was in office...(he had a lot of help from daddy and his friends) in my younger years i had an enormous amount of anger towards the bush administration.. i am not as infuriated at obama.. has he lived up to all that he promised..no, however id rather keep him in office than giving my vote to romney..

For i can fill every page in this book,
Complimenting our president for being one hell of a crook,
Yet i’ll cast my vote for the best liar to lead,
and hope that next time he will be able to read,
Our system is run by folks too tight in the anus,
Behind high priced smiles are intentions most heinous,

[cyril1974]

Its like cows to a slaughter.. the left door, the right door.. doesn't matter, its still the slaughterhouse.. like Chris said... they don't give a rat's ass about you unless you are a fortune 500 corp.. or better.. two sides of the same coin my friend.. that's how you control a population..

[fishnfool73]

Yep the side in charge blames the other for stopping them from making progress and vice versa. Both stonewall the other and blame each other for failures. The only losers are us

[al305]

Not really getting into the right or left debate, but I'm a 13 year Coast Guard vet and I am happily employed and I am doing good financially. My opinion is in this economy you need to get proactive. When all that housing, jobs, etc. Disaster Happened alot of people got lazy. They said ok i'll just collect unemployment. I think that caused a snowball effect we are still feeling now. People need to get off their asses and be proactive. Just my 2 cents. Again I'm not with the right or left. Just a proud American who served his country and got off my ass after the military to get a job.

[fishnfool73]

You seem to love blaming Obama. Throw some at Bush as well. He's the one that killed thousands of military service people in a hopeless war. He's the one that set us to to spend hundreds of billions in the Middle East so his cronies and VP could make billions. I can only imagine where we would be if we never invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. Billions not spent lives not lost.
I agree Obama is a horrid president that is killing our country but he didn't start this down fall.

[crashmister]

I agree, OB should have done more on job's while the Dem's owned the hill. But they only owned it for the first year OB was in office. Scott Brown won Kennedy's seat in January of 2010 and cost the Dem's a filibuster proof majority. Which meant fast tracking anything was now impossible. Repug's then began the most obstructonist legislative run for a single congress or senate in living memory. On thier own, presidents are extremely limited in implementing policy. Like anyone else they have have to get a bill through both houses so they can then sign it. Only then does it become policy. The president dosen't have a magic wand regardless of popular belief. The simple fact is the repug's won't even floor legislation both sides agree on because OB might get credit for it. What Boehner calls job's bill's are simply more tax cut's for wealthy people. None of which incentivize job creation.
This nut sack came up with the plan to tie the debt celing to the budget which caused the down grade in the countries credit rating. The same bunch voted 7 times under bush and 5 times under Clinton to rase it on it's own, no attachments. Just a simple procedural vote with almost no debate. Then come's Boehner and the tea baggers. Their plan, slash gov spending to keep tax cut's for rich people like Romney so they can continue to pay 15% on dividend income in the ten's if not hundreds of millions of dollars. Which by the way get's rolled over, not withdrawn to invest in job creation. In fact the whole selling point of the tax cut's was job creation. Instead we got skyrocketing deficit's and an economic crash.
The fact is OB own's about 1.2 trillion of the deficit. The rest is the Bush era tax cut's, an unfunded medicare part d plan, 2 wars, deregulation and no regulation in the case of Mortgage backed securities that caused the crash in the first place and required the 700 billion dollar TARP. Unempolyement that skyrocketed as a result of the crash, medicade increases linked to the unempolyement increases, and those are just the big ticket items that all contribute to the deficit.
Last September, OB put a job's bill on the table that even republican economists said had the potential to create 1.2 million job's in it's first year (GDP 1.5% increase without multiplyer). That estimate was from Goldman Sachs. Moody's was at 2% GDP increase. Boehner & Republicans in the house wouldn't even consider it, and McConnel and senate repug's filibustered it. WHY? If it worked OB would get credit for it.
Bottom line here is simple. The hole OB walked into was deeper than any hole in history save one, the 1929 crash. That took from 29 until 42 to recover from. The other part of the coin was the massive government spending on the war effort that was the single most important factor in that recovery. Then, the economy lost job's for 3 consecutive years before it leveled off. The ARRA (Stimulus) effectively stopped the downward trend in just over 6 months. The rule of holes is, if you're in one, STOP DIGGING!!! OB took office and both sides then doubled down on tax cut's in his first budget. Mostly due to the fact that economists on both sides said ending them would most likely have a detrimental effect on the economy. So both sides kept digging. Now the same economists are saying ending them would be negledgible as the benefits would outweigh the detriments. One side is still digging and want's to dig even deeper.
"Are we better off" is about perspective or at least it should be. 4 years ago this month 60,000 people hit the unemployement rolls with the Liehman collapse. Add to that the 40,000 that had just lost their job's from the Bear Stears bankruptcy and aquisition by JP Morgan. In 2 months from now 4 years ago, GE, the largest manufacturing company in the country would be in trouble because they could not finance their day to day operation due to frozen credit markets. This is a company who at the time had the highest credit rating avalible for a corporation. In 3 months from now 4 years ago, AIG would announce it would no longer be able to pay claims. 67% of the banks on the planet including all of Wall street had mortgage backed securities insured through AIG. That single incident had the potential to destroy the entire global banking system. The US banking system along with Western Europe and Eastern Asia all shared a tremendous amount of exposure to AIG. If AIG went under so did everyone else. In 2 months 4 years ago we would be losing 250,000 job's a month and buisness bankruptcy would be at 2500 a month.
In sumation the bleakest economy in 80 years.
Today the US is adding job's not losing them. Of course OB's critics say it's not fast enough but they're not doing anything to help either, which by the way is THEY'RE JOB!!! If Congress and the Senate refuse to act on anything because of a pledge to a lobbiest (Grover Nordquist), They're really isn't much a president can do, any president. Clinton at least had repug's willing to govern and compromise. OB has a wall of opposition. No matter what he say's, they're against it, even if it was their idea in the first place.
I keep hearing about OB's policy's, Which ones exactly? Specifically which of OB's are killing the recovery? Keystone? All 2500 temporary job's for a pipeline that won't flow one gallon of gas to be sold here in the US? For the record, it costs more to refine one gallon of gas from tar sands than we pay for a gallon of gas. It's only economically feasible in 6+ dollar a gallon markets like Europe. His failed green energy policy? Besides congress not funding it, nobody is looking at the big picture here. China is spending billions on developing green tech. Why? They want to own the green boom. If in fact they are allowed to do so, theirs will be the dominant economy for the next 1/2 century. Could he do more on energy? Yes he could. But after the Macondo well blowout, and the Enbridge spill in Wisconsin, he's over cautious. Fact is once that genie is out of the bottle it ain't easy getting her back in as we all saw.
OB has his share of problems, but as you're laying the blame, don't forget to include the rest of the band who have actively worked to slow the recovery to make him look bad.
Remember, just after the 2010 blood bath on the hill where repugs took back the house, Mitch McConnel stated that their number one priority was to deny OB a second term. Funny, They ran on job's & the economy, the 2 thing's they have not done Jack about. Instead they attack womens health insurance trying to make birth control a lifestyle choice not a medical need. Funny they didn't mention Viagra, Leverta, and Cialius. Being a man, I know for a fact those have only one use and it ain't medicinal. But this is the GOP we're talking about here. You know the bunch who has a Congressional hearing about women's health with out a single woman testifing. What's scary, Is that made perfect sence to them.

[crashmister]

Speaking of parrots, you're parroting a lie! OB did not gut, remove, limit, or in any way diminish the work requirement for welfare. 5 gov's 3 dem's and 2 repug's asked for welfare wavers. They think they can do better than the fed requirement with a little flexability. OB said yes provided they can increase the current # by 20%. In case you dont know, increase means more not less.

No one can lead a group that flat refuses to follow or even cooperate and just do their frigging jobs. Repug's have fought this guy tooth and nail on everything he's done or tried to do. Even things they publically agree with.

Maybe if you spent more time reading and less time parroting this BS you'd see what's going on here.
The short story is McConnel and house repug's are living up to their post election pledge to do everything in their power to deny OB a second term. They could care less the nation is in trouble and people are hurting. They want him gone and they will trash the country to get rid of him. How many lies you gonna believe before you see what their doing? Your buddie has a whole lot of explaining to do about his taxes and his 10 to 20 million dollar IRA. there is no legal way he could possibly have that much in an IRA. He was a disaster as governor and he'd be an even bigger disaster as president. Frigging guy opens his mouth to change feet.

[al305]