Your Uncle Dave’s often wondered if the Republicans threw the election by rigging voting machines (circumstantial, but been shown just too easy to do for a reason) and by nominating a doddering old fool for Prez (watch some of his speeches since then and say I’m wrong) and a wacko for VP because they knew they had screwed the economy and whoever was in the White House would be unable to fix it. And the Dems made sure it couldn’t be fixed by getting elected a first-rate speech reader and… well, that’s about it. And we fell for it all. Read the whole commentary for a no holds barred analysis of failure.
When Barack Obama rose to the lectern on Inauguration Day, the nation was in tatters. Americans were scared and angry. The economy was spinning in reverse. […] In that context, Americans needed their president to tell them a story that made sense of what they had just been through, what caused it, and how it was going to end. They needed to hear that he understood what they were feeling, that he would track down those responsible for their pain and suffering, and that he would restore order and safety.
[…]
In contrast, when faced with the greatest economic crisis, the greatest levels of economic inequality, and the greatest levels of corporate influence on politics since the Depression, Barack Obama stared into the eyes of history and chose to avert his gaze. Instead of indicting the people whose recklessness wrecked the economy, he put them in charge of it. He never explained that decision to the public — a failure in storytelling as extraordinary as the failure in judgment behind it. Had the president chosen to bend the arc of history, he would have told the public the story of the destruction wrought by the dismantling of the New Deal regulations that had protected them for more than half a century. He would have offered them a counternarrative of how to fix the problem other than the politics of appeasement, one that emphasized creating economic demand and consumer confidence by putting consumers back to work. He would have had to stare down those who had wrecked the economy, and he would have had to tolerate their hatred if not welcome it. But the arc of his temperament just didn’t bend that far.
#34, Now they’re trying to lay the blame on the Tea Party.
http://tinyurl.com/3o5c6dm
Do you really think we were going to sit by and let you bury us even further in debt? Axelrod needs to read the comments by the S&P chairman — the solution was a non-solution and that is why they cut it. If the two major parties had simply agreed to cut spending instead of increasing it, there wouldn’t have been any complaints.
Instead, they both wanted to keep their own programs and kill the other party’s.
We didn’t even get close to what we wanted but it’s not over yet. Standby for Round 2.
I dunno, Dave. I think you’re giving the parties too much credit. I can’t believe they’re that smart. Here’s a way to find out though: if they sweep the elections in 2012, those smarts SHOULD fix the economy within 2 years; at least as far as the government can fix anything. I’m NOT counting on anything, as I’m convinced the goal is to continue to screw Americans out of their jobs and their wealth; whatever the point of that may be.
Our system of government like most manmade devices can’t survive large pendulum swings for long, especially when the foundation (economy) is brittle.
How quickly things change. Remember the prediction by Dallas earlier this year?
Still waiting for the horrorwitz predicted collapse for the Fall of 2009. I predicted Obama economic performance as follows:
(2009)Year 1: stop the free fall. Strengthen the trusses of the economy: done
(2010)Year 2: economic and job growth, stock market confidence : done
(2011)Year 3: employment gains , unemployment under 10 %. : WIP
(2012)Year 4: happy sheeple, more weight gain , gym memberships up : TBD
(2013)Year 5: Obama second term ; teabagger implosion ; GOP looks for new brand.
Horrorwitz 0 , Dallas 5
http://goo.gl/mvHeH
(see comment #2)
Obama was elected because the Democrats spent 2 years accusing Bush of anything and everything. The American people were duped into voting for a candidate that was the least like Bush.
“What Went Wrong With Obama”
Went? There was no motion needed.
At least Carter is not so lonely at the bottom anymore.
The fact that you don’t see Bush 2.0 as the biggest Fup of the last 50 years indicates you are a Zombie.
If it were true it might make a good story
Look at the political parties and how they handled the debt limit deal / lack of debt limits and see the cluelessness of the elements of the US political system – especially the Republicans
Fantasy island that they could envision and produce any thing this grand
Plain stupidity, greed evil – with proper marketing of Obama to the masses – who were waiting for the messiah
Lots of luck – its a good way for Americans to talk themselves out of their situation by trying to blame new world order or disorder types
LOL
No Hope. No Change.
Is Social Security (SS) a Welfare Plan?
Nope!
1. You’ve been paying taxes for 40 years right? SS is one of those taxes. Only the upper income (“rich” isn’t PC) are regressively excluded from paying SS tax.
SS contributions are not exactly a tax. It is a payment required by the Federal Insurance Contributions Act. The upper income (payroll types) get to stop paying FICA because once you have paid more into the trust than you could get back you are done.
2. SS is a transfer of money from party B to party A, via a tax. There isn’t a pool of money you’re contributing to, waiting for you when you retire or become disabled.
Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund and the Federal Disability Insurance Trust Fund
3. You can’t decide to use another retirement plan, to avoid the tax, unless you’re under a qualifing State retirement fund.
You can just never get a job or marry someone with a job. Really rich folks do this.
4. SS is paid because the recipients are expected to need it (though no means test is applied).
SS is paid because the government promised it would be.
5. If SS were insurance, the premiums would go up in cost as more people were expected to live longer, or the retirement age would increase to track the average life expectancy. Welfare is just handed out given a relatively fixed set if criteria.
You may want to check to see how old you will have to be to collect SS. It used to be 65. Now they move the age of eligibility to compensate.
Things were moving in the right direction. Then the GOP gained control of congress. They won the fight to stop the much needed stimulus which stops the growth of the economy and infrastructure improvements, they won the debt ceiling fight, and now they’ve won a credit downgrade. The GOP’s winning is a lot like USA losing…
But I’m sure they see this differently…but when you connect the dots, it’s an obvious picture…
What I do not get about the article is these wars are not even addressed. A lot of people voted for BO because they hated these costly wars. Nobody appears to follow-up on this and we are going to be stuck fighting forever. These costs and time spent make WWI & WWII look like recess. And nothing is accomplished.
A real trust fund is a pile of money that stated life as size X, and at some later point reached size Y. Y may be greater, or less, than X.
Social Security doesn’t start, nor end, with anything. It is a tax, and a transfer of wealth from party B to party A, in real time (incrementally, and continously).
Thiis is exactly the definition of welfare.
Now, for some time Social Security, has had surpluses. Those surplusses were handed over to the General Fund (where “regular” taxes end up) to pay for stuff that was allocated budget, but otherwise unfunded.
In return for handing over Social Security funds to the General Fund, the General Fund handed back IOUs to the Social Security Fund.
Those IOUs have to be paid back, with interest, from future General Fund taxes.
Our government may have called it a “Trust Fund” to win populist votes, back when everyone knew what trust funds were -and wished they themselves had a private trust fund to provide a backup, but the Government is not, and can not become, a “rich parent” who is able to set up trust funds for each of his citizens.
You can call it a “Trust Fund” all you want, and the brain washing obviously has worked very we, but it operates like welfare.
A rose by any other name is but a rose… With appologies.
I read the entire NY TIMES article, and it certainly IS a far left newspaper, isn’t it???
I had NO idea that drilling for oil is causing the “extreme weather”. Who knew?
Not to mention all the other predictable Right hating diatribe. Seems this writer just can’t stand simply stating the fact. Obama is a terrible president, elected by the left, to prove a black man can be President. Although, the writer does mention he has NO experience whatsoever in real life. So we have a leader who has never led. Great.
Rick Perry took over for George Bush and he improved his states credit rating from AA to AA+, while Barack Obama achieved a downgrade. Somehow, S&P didn’t think Bush’s handling of the economy was worth a downgrade in the US credit rating.
Dvorak,
I’ll agrue that all wars are unfunded, and only are paid back after the fact.
See the Whiskey Rebellion, which took place after the Revolution, as a response to efforts to tax back payments to the bonds that financed Our War with The British.
Back when America was growing like gangbusters, we could afford to finance any size war though future taxes.
WWII killed industrial capacity in Europe (not Russia) and Japan, while our capacity, knowledge, and spirit was strengthened.
However, war kills progress generally, and costs lots of money, and can’t be repaid by economies that can’t grow afterward.
As the War on Terror will never end, it will eat our financial capacity to nothing. Those who only know history, but can’t pull their heads out of books and see the reality of our circumstances will never project this outcome.
We are screwed.
For one, he failed to pull a magic wand out of his ass and create 300,000 new jobs on top of the 100,000 that he saved.
That bastard.
I didn’t call it a trust fund, the government did. The government still calls it a trust fund though they now feel entitled to “borrow” from it.
I assume you’ll not sign up for SS when (and if) you are eligible?
Economy was growing 60000 jobs per month for about a year, then Obamacare passed, and this dropped to 6000 jobs per month.
A recession is when your neighbor loses his job, a depression is when you lose your job, and a recovery is when Obama loses his.
One last comment about Social Security:
Some say you “earned” your future Social Security payments.
Really, you “earned” them? What the hell are you doing for me, during your retirement, that makes me think you earned a portion of my pay? Just because you’re alive, you are due my money?
Isn’t that the definition of welfare?
Put that in your Tea Bag and smoke it you bastards.
This article sounds a lot like me! 🙂
Obama seems to be grossly unprepared for many aspects of the job.
A right leaning centrist. No wonder everyone is disappointed.
And no, I don’t expect to receive any Social Security payments becuase SS is projected to be insolvent a few years before my “retirement”.
If offered Social Security, I will take it. I’m pragmatic, but enjoy exposing holes in ideologies.
I will take my lesson from Animby: if I think about this long enough to thoughtfully post, I’ll only depress myself.
I’ll give Barry props for “trying” to compromise with the Pukes, but he does seen wildly robotic not to learn from the total rejection they have given him. Its not human to take some umbrage at the BS they have shoveled his way. Somethin’ ain’t right with that boy? Raised black in america?
I also disagree with any nothing any of this is “planned.” The course of human affairs is too chaotic.
Is SS welfare or not? You get out more than you pay in, but you do pay into it. Seems purely definitional to me.
are the parties two sides to the same coin? OBVIOUSLY NOT. You can criticize them for both being corrupt, self dealing, and in the pocket of big Corps, but that does not a coin make. course, if you want to push definitions to the point of equating different things as the same thing==your’re just a lazy thinker, or a shill or dupe.
I would personally impeach Obama for not bringing our troops home. He didn’t campaign expressly on that, but he was too close enough. I’d further impeach him for not jailing most of Wallstreet–as much as failing to be the chief law enforcer of our nation, as it seems to me it is only the foundation for further theivery. No one is above the law, no matter how tall their stack of money.
So—heh, heh===what to do with our structural unemployment, soon to crash dollar, and second financial crises? Have we learned yet to let too big to fail crash and build back from those ashes rather than the continuing fire?
I doubt it.
Silly Hoomans.
#46, I haven’t worried about them since Obush said he was going to get them all out next year.
Whew! That’s a load off of my mind.
Government exists to regulate private and commercial activities, to redistribute money (take in money and spend it), provide faces, or project power, towards overseas actors.
The republican view on the money role of the government is well expressed here: http://kpcb.com/usainc/
Gitmo is evil, the wars are evil, moving American jobs overseas is evil, moving American technology overseas is evil, wiping out the savings of generations of Americans is evil, destroying the American system of constitutional government is evil, and saying nothing about these things is complicity with the evildoers.
Well now we know the rest of the story! Obama is a great and inspiring speaker. He convinced a entire nation of Blacks,Whites, Hispanics to vote for him and he managed to become Presidents with hopes of bringing respect to this great Country of the USA. Instead we just have a Congress who is so inept at making decisions that we as a Country came only hours from defaulting in the history of the USA. Now that they have officially only raised the debt ceiling and yet again pushed the cost cutting aside another few months. Have we been downgraded by S&P credit rating because of our Governments lack of doing. Or maybe as our President told the US. Its up to us to fix this problem?? I think if we could as a nation we would probably fire most of them in Congress and find some people on the street to give it a go. I would tell the President to be the President and don’t push his job off on the US voter who voted you into to office in the first place!
#62, Instead we just have a Congress who is so inept at making decisions that we as a Country came only hours from defaulting in the history of the USA
We were not going to default. That was one of a multitude of lies being perpetrated to scare the populace.
I would tell the President to be the President and don’t push his job off on the US voter who voted you into to office in the first place!
The President can only sign into law what Congress sends him.
Obama started off with the bitter enmity of the right wing nuts. Much more so than any other President in history. The de facto leader of the Right, Rush Limbaugh even wanted America to fail, and he is getting his way. The Senate Republicans stalled over 400 bills.
The right wing nuts hate America. Especially those identified with the Tea Baggers.