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The Media Can't Save Barack From Obama Economy
by John Tamny, Toreador Research and Trading (Guest Contributor)
With the Obama economy limping along thanks in part to the Administration’s policies in favor of extreme dollar weakness, there’s growing speculation as to his re-election chances in 2012. Will a difficult economic situation that includes high levels of unemployment make Obama a one-term president? History says no given the power of incumbency.
Added to that, another popular narrative of late points to an Obama victory owing to the supposed economic illiteracy of the electorate, along with a media that will provide our weakened president with positive media coverage no matter the state of the economy. Of course the problem with this bit of theorizing is that Americans aren’t stupid, and after that, past elections suggest that those same Americans tend to tune out the media.
Ronald Reagan’s two terms in office tell the tale here. As USA Today media reporter Peter Johnson has put it, “Over the course of his campaigns and eight years in office, Ronald Reagan’s press peaked and fell but was always negative. … In his re-election bid in 1984, 91 percent of his coverage was negative.”
The above is important. Despite a rising economy and millions of new jobs, the media invariably stuck to a number of gloomy themes during the Reagan years, including the rising homeless population, twin deficits, and a generalized assumption that the supposed economic gains of the 1980s were only being enjoyed by the wealthy few. Amidst this constant negativity, Reagan was returned to office in 1984 with one of largest landslide victories in electoral history.
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Back then, stocks confirmed what voters already knew — that the economy was doing very well. Despite a major recession brought on by Paul Volcker and the Federal Reserve’s needless flirtation with quantity money targets in the early 1980s, the Dow Jones Industrial Average still returned 134 percent during Reagan’s presidency. Markets and the Electoral College told the truth about an economy and presidency that the media regularly tried to cast in a negative light.
To put it simply, voters aren’t dim and they know when the economy is performing well. Conversely, when the economy is acting badly, voters are well aware once again.
For evidence supporting the above, we must first journey back to Jimmy Carter’s presidency. As William Greider put it in Secrets of the Temple, “Despite the aggravations of inflation, President Carter had presided over one of the longest and most expansive periods of economic growth in postwar history, four years of recovery starting in 1976.”
So while GDP, the frequently faulty measure of economic health, was rising during Carter’s presidency, neither the stock markets nor the electorate were fooled. The recession during the Carter years was the falling dollar, as evidenced by spikes in gold and oil. A falling dollar is always recessionary for limited capital flowing into hard, commoditized assets, and away from innovative ideas that fund our economic advancement.
Though the media certainly preferred Carter over Reagan heading into the 1980 elections, the electorate felt differently and handed Reagan a 44-state landslide. The economy was weak, voters knew it, and the Reagan Revolution began.
Moving to George W. Bush’s presidency, GOP partisans continue to talk about “52 months of uninterrupted economic growth”, along with mostly low unemployment that prevailed during his presidency. But thanks to a falling dollar that once again drove gold and oil skyward, voters expressed their displeasure.
Luckily for Bush, the dollar’s most substantial decline began after the 2004 elections, thus saving him from certain defeat. But by 2005-06 the dollar was in freefall, real estate was the hot asset much as it was during the Carter years, and as capital flowed into the proverbial ground as an inflation hedge, voters knew something was amiss on the way to voting out happy talking modern Republicans who wouldn’t know a supply-side principle if it smacked them in the head.
Of all people, the usually brilliant economist Thomas Sowell opined about the Bush economy in 2006 that the “liberal media and intelligentsia are strenuously trying to preserve the vision of poverty and economic distress”, but in truth, the voters didn’t need a media that disliked Bush to tell them something was wrong. They knew things weren’t right, the symptoms (rising gold, oil and all other commodities) of a weak dollar were the telltale sign of a weakening economy, and the Republicans rightly experienced major losses in 2006, followed by the White House in 2008.
Moving to the present, no doubt most in the media worship President Obama, and because they do they’ll strive mightily to create the impression that all is well, or at the very least that the economic malaise isn’t Obama’s fault. They would have a point, though for reasons none could articulate. Simply stated, the Bush bailouts remain a big weight on economic growth for failure always authoring capitalism’s advancement, not to mention that the Bushies handed Obama a dollar that was already severely debased.
Basically the Bush bailouts of banks and car companies “in the name of free markets” disallowed the initial economic cleansing necessary for a massive snapback, and then once in office, Obama’s economic team poured gasoline on the fire; most notably with policies meant to mimic the Bush economic disaster in the form of nosebleed spending and an even weaker dollar. The economy is weak, its weakness by definition has Washington and the Obama administration’s fingerprints all over it, and no matter how the media spin that which isn’t working, Obama is in serious trouble.
What’s unknown is if there’s a Republican who truly knows why the Obama economy sags, and who can talk about anything other than tax cuts which, at this point, are not the point. Specifically, is there a Republican who can explain to voters that $100 trips to the gas station are the direct result of the Administration’s currency policies, not to mention that a weak dollar decreases the very investment that drives company formation and job creation.
If such a Republican exists Obama will be a one-term president. If not, the Republicans don’t deserve to retake the White House.
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OK Dipstix.
IF you can't figure this out, then you shouldn't have the vote or take advantage of the first amendment:
If my taxes are raised, I keep LESS of what I EARNED.
If my taxes are lowered, I keep MORE of what I EARNED.
That's right, E-A-R-N-E-D. Labor. Work. Are any of you working or sucking from the gubmint teat at some ivory tower?
OK Dipstix.
IF you can't figure this out, then you shouldn't have the vote or take advantage of the first amendment:
If my taxes are raised, I keep LESS of what I EARNED.
If my taxes are lowered, I keep MORE of what I EARNED.
That's right, E-A-R-N-E-D. Labor. Work. Are any of you working or sucking from the gubmint teat at some ivory tower?
That's right. Republican versus Democtrat is like Coke versus Pepsi, a phony dichotomy which usefully serves the interests of the plutocrats who are really in charge. They're two the faces of a one party corportocracy. They give us a few wedge issues to get worked up over, but when it comes to election time they agree... it's time to continue looting the public.
Wait, if there's no difference which party passed the so-called "great society" programs in the 1960s which are the sole reason for our current insolvency. (They are called medicare and medicaid). Don't forget root causes people: the social welfare state is a failure because pretty soon you run out of other people's money to spend.
And which party passed the community reinvestment act? The source of the current bank insolvency? There's a big difference expressed in their voting records. And which party rejected TARP in the house? The Repub.
Who voted for the next biggest source of insolvency: obamacare (without a single REP vote!) Which party opposes raising the debt ceiling? Which is the party of Rand and Ron Paul?
No difference, Ha, viva la difference.
Ooops. Looks like you left out one small item:
Medicare Drug Benefit May Cost $1.2 Trillion...and here is an editorial concerning the Tea Party:
Bogeyman-in-chiefBogeyman-in-chief
Posted: June 23, 2011 - 9:35pm
By John Brummett Copyright 2011 .
New national polling information released by political scientists at the University of Arkansas reveals interesting and perhaps mildly counterintuitive findings about the tea party.
This survey, conducted under the joint aegis of the UA’s Blair Center and Winthrop Rockefeller Institute, shows that devotees of the tea party are better-educated than the rest of the population as well as possessed of higher incomes.
That is the perhaps mildly counterintuitive part, if, like me, you factored a higher yahoo quotient than is apparently so.
What is merely interesting, meaning not surprising, is that a greater percentage of tea party people believe in the inerrancy of the Bible than is the case with the rest of the population, including regular Republicans.
Also interesting is that tea party people are less supportive than the general population, again including regular Republicans, of the supposed ideals of equal opportunity and equal rights for all, specifically minorities.
Tea party people are significantly less supportive of gay rights and significantly more hostile to illegal immigration than garden-variety Republicans.
But what I find most interesting on this subject is not anything contained in this data compiled from more than 3,000 survey calls nationwide last November. Instead, it is in the candid analysis provided me by Dr. Angie Maxwell, assistant professor of political science at the UA.
She said the poll suggests that the common denominator in the tea party’s emergence is President Obama.
“He represents a world they can’t function in,” she said.
First things first, to get it out of the way: Maxwell is not saying that all tea partiers are racists and that their movement is based on a racial bigotry toward this historic president.
She is saying the tea party arises from much more than that — from, as she describes, a coincidence of varying cultural and economic fears all falling under the general heading of a dreaded new world. People with these fears have come to “put all of them,” to “project them,” on Obama, she said, often without basis in fact or fairness.
For example:
If you fear a changing America in which white people become a minority because of the black population as combined with other new ethnic groups and with the Hispanic influx, then Obama, being of mixed race and with a foreign father, personifies that fear for you.
If you fear a changing America in which traditionally conservative Christian church values are being eroded by new forms of spiritual thinking and by cultural changes such as the growing acceptance of homosexuality, then Obama, with a Muslim parent and a former pastor who once screamed “God damn America,” personifies that fear for you.
If your relatively high household income is drawn from the medical profession, from doctoring or as a drug rep, perhaps, and if you fear that health care reform will transform America into something more like a European country and lower your standard of living, then Obama personifies that fear for you. You don’t call it Pelosicare or Reidcare. You call it Obamacare.
Maxwell compared this to the way the Whigs sprang to prominence for a couple of decades solely from resentment of Andrew Jackson.
If she is right, then the Republicans have a short-term window and long-term problem.
The tea party is vital to Republicans at the moment, representing maybe a tenth of the electorate. Republican victories in the next elections will hinge on appeasing this far-right bloc.
But if the glue that holds the tea party together is fear of Obama, then the tea party goes away after Obama goes away.
That would leave the Republicans burdened with a deadly combination — a weak reality, meaning a sort of nondescriptly soft conservatism, and a reputation for a harder conservatism that would have caused an alienation from the more pragmatic, and usually decisive, center.
For immediate purposes though, the tea party lives, and garden-variety Republicans must oblige it, so long as Obama is its bogeyman-in-chief.
John Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com; his telephone number is (501) 374-0699.
what a fucking joke...as if EVERYONE is emotional and that is the only thing that explains anything. Don't like freakin homos? You're a homoPHOBE. Don't like the criminality and lack of civilization of black "culture"? You're a blackoPHOBE aka "rayciss."
Don't want our country to devolve into mexico? XenoPHOBE.
No matter what you're a phobe of something. And all phobias are by definition irrational, so that makes you irrational and black cabbies too for not picking up any member of the group that doesn't tip and from which 99% of the assaults and murders on cabbies come from. All phobias. All irrational. All needing of reeducation from a dipshit disingenuous white liberal speaking from his whitopia and learning all he knows about black people watching characters that a drunk pedophile (Morgan Freeman who is fucking his step granddaughter) plays on TV.
The fundamental premises these people operate under are complete bullshit. It is right under their noses, even immigrant cab drivers fresh off a boat can figure it out, but they refuse to look.
I am personally tired of the war on civilization and civilized values.
"then Obama, with a Muslim parent and a former pastor who once screamed “God damn America,” personifies that fear for you."
LOL!...Mr.Brummett left out some very important things from leftwing Angie's "survey"...the Tea Party resents, derides and openly attacks MSM lap dogs like him...and they cannot stand high brow elites like Professor Maxwell...could this possibly have anything to do with them slamming the TP?
And the reverend Wright was on a roll with the "shepherding of his flock"...why just pick out the GD America quote?...why not the others?...why not the Jew bashing from his pulpit?...why not the open fomenting of racial and cultural bigotry within the black community in Chicago?...the reverend Wright is much more than GD America...its a window into Barry's character as a man, it was he who sat in those pews for all those years, he was married there and had his children baptized there...in Wrights "church".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdMa5kQUrTg&feature=related
And we don't much care what race Barry is from...Herman Cain has wide support within the Tea Party and Representative West was elected with Tea Party support here in Fla. to replace that incomprehensible boob Ron Klein who now begins a new career in the laws he helped write & vote on...so no, the "survey" is bogus as far as racial/cultural lines.
By the way, the Tea Party does not "fear" any of what these two say that it does...mostly we laugh at them and point out the cynical moonbattery
wtf is wrong with Wright's Jewbashing? Did he correctly point out the 400 years of economic exploitation of blacks by jews? Was one of the pieces of evidence he used sourced from a jew-written scholarly work on the history of jewish dominance of the slave trade, for example how in brazil, the slave markets were closed on jewish holidays due to lack of participants? Did he highlight the carpetbaggers and their usury schemes used to acquire entire sharecrops from blacks after emancipation?
Really, people ought to stop their stupid salivating to the bell anytime they hear someone call out a group and they should rationally analyze the evidence that made them do this.
If you take a look at who the representatives and advisors were to Versailles (the Warburgs were on both sides) and the utter destruction it visited upon Germany, followed by the jew-dominated Weimar government and eventual total economic collapse, whereupon the insider tribe took almost total ownership of the German State, suddenly, the Holocaust no longer looks a matter of total, unprecedented, unalloyed, distilled insanity, does it? We can't have shit like that, reason. Reason is the enemy of the elite. Sure, genocide was irrational, but there was much more than Reinhard to this little sordid tale.
As for Wright's cultural and racial bigotry, sothefuckwhat? Do you HONESTLY think that the term "racism," invented by a homosexual jew marxist to be SPECIFICALLY relevant ONLY to white people (by his definition) means a motherfuckin THING to anyone else? Seriously? Do you really think anyone else cares?
I laugh every day at people who try to score brownie points with the imaginary audience they think claps for them and their racial nonsense. The racehustling industry has turned the entire anglosaxon people into a bunch of stasi rats trying to out the people they should be trying to help (because all the other groups ARE with "my people").
Obama gonna pay my mortgage, Obama gonna pay my gas- that IS the reality for everyone else. Wake your ass up or get run over by racial and ethnic blocs. I see this crap IRL every day as jews band together without apology (and always have), indians do it, chinese do it, blacks do it, hispanics do it. And here whitey is the odd man out, bamboozled by 70 years of tribe racial agitation.
I'm not sayin you have to tattoo the confederate flag on your forehead, but you do need to at least get the forehead out past the edge of your ass.
Feel better now?
"wtf is wrong with Wright's Jewbashing?"
Maybe because he selectively leaves out portions of history to his own purpose?
"Did he correctly point out the 400 years of economic exploitation of blacks by jews?"
Economic exploitation is not confined to one culture or religion...any damn fool should know this trav.
Why did the the right reverend Wright exclude the muslims in his condemnation? Why would they not share equally in his "blame game sermons" of exploitation? The entire north & east coasts of Africa was brutalized by Arabs for their economic gain. Couldn't possibly be an allegiance with the Nation of Islam & black liberation theology could it?
"I'm not sayin you have to tattoo the confederate flag on your forehead, but you do need to at least get the forehead out past the edge of your ass."
LOL!!!...I'm not sayin you could ever make some relative, coherent point in regards to human behavior and motivation as you have never been able to pull your head out of your ass long enough to see any flag tattoed anywhere on me or hear anything but the echo of you own voice in that cavity.
you didn't answer the fuckin question.
Instead of responding to the question, you go off about some other group, arabs or somethefuckother group.
Why are you asking me straw questions about why Wright didn't mention these groups in response to a question about his mention of someone else?
Stop salivating.
The issue is, counselor...the right reverend Wright and his cynical blame game indoctrination camp he calls a church and Barry's membership there for over a decade.
You asked wtf was wrong with Wright singling out jooos...I answered with wtf was wrong with that. He's guilty of omission, if I have to spell it out for you.
Only Jooos and "white" America (whatever the hell that winds up meaning in a nation of whites/browns/yellows & reds) are blamed by this bigoted windbag man of God...when it was not just Jews or Catholics or Protestants or europeans or yankees or southerners that exploited black Africans for profit...it was also muslims...and it was also blacks & mulattos in Louisiana.
Oh noes!!!...good gawwwd, black plantation owners!...how can this be!...my whole friggin world view is crashing!...ROTFL!
Look trav...this has to do with culture & economics...not skin color or religion. You can't go back in time and change history, its already there for anyone to see.
Yes, I can get annoyed with your joo bashing and black bashing because you never clarify what it is you mean exactly.
If you mean droopy panted gangsta hoodlums raping & pillaging just fucking say so...don't place an entire race in a negative category because its absolute bullshit and you know it...same with Jews, if you mean penny pinching socialist/statist bankers with their hooks into government coffers say so...and you know all Jews are not that, as well.
And for what seems like the one millionth time...I'm not Jewish or black...but I know some damn hard working ones of both "breeds". They get up in the morning, shit, shower & shave and try to make a living for their families...just like everyone else.
Hope this helps clarify my position...yours is still a question to me...and don't throw up Alex Jones all over the keyboard as I will not be able respond with paranoid puke all over the place...the floor is yours...
Exactly.
I dont like neocons and people who want to supervise the sex lives of others or force kids to bow their heads in school to a prayer to jebus.
The tea party republicans are my best chance to keep taxes from rising and govetnment from expanding
Yay, Bubbles is here!
"Randy: Does that thing really launch Bubbles? Bubbles: Does the tin man have a sheet metal cock?"
:~)
Yep! Gotta laugh at how much energy is wasted by the drooling dullards as they yammer away. Blah blah blah your party is the problem! Blah blah blah my party does everything right!
Oh precious little fools, will you ever learn?
Oddly when a Democrat is the worst nightmare imaginable then Democrats say the parties do not matter. The Repubs suck and are controlled by the elites. The Dems are just evil and are controlled by the elites. Go wipe your chin for the Kenyan muslim.
As real as they are in europe.
Just because the population that bothers to vote tends to have a conservative tilt does not mean the elections are not real.
"If such a Republican exists Obama will be a one-term president. If not, the Republicans don’t deserve to retake the White House."
+1 internets
I don't think a republican or a democrat deserves to take the white house or continued control of Congress. It's the democrats and republicans that put us in the situation we are in today. They keep representing special interest while ignoring whats in the publics best interest. They have done this for decades. The 17th amendment needs to be repealed. That would be a major step in killing special interest vote buying. The founding fathers knew better than to have both bodies of congress being elected by popular vote.
Gee, glad to see that arguing over the deck chairs on the Titanic is alive and well.Don't buy into this grand illusion of R and Ds.
The event Horizon to fix fiat currency has passed.
The inexhorable time-keeping of Math is a bitch, and she always wins in the end.
Why does it always seem that time slows the closer you get to the singularity?
Because time does slow down as you accelerate to near the speed of light!
Actually, this is more like the recriminations towards the crew by the remaining passengers as the last lifeboats dropped. I'm hiding in my state room inflating my dingy.
Jerking off won't help.
The US economy is limping along because George W Bush and the Republican party drove the country into an economic ditch with a war conjured up with Cheney and the all the crazies from the AEI. Remember Cheney's mantra when asked about costs - "deficits don't matter."
It takes a great deal of patient pushing and shoving to get the economy out of the ditch. The Republican's who now insist on budget cuts with out tax increases on their rich contributors are not interested in the truth. Where were they when George Bush was exploding the size of government - they were voting for it. They allowed Bush to keep the Iraqi War out of the budget so that neither he or they would look bad.
It's all about jobs. No matter how hard the BLS lies, obfuscates, distorts, tortures, the statistics surrounding the economy, it still comes down to JOBS... and the Obama administration has squandered a great opportunity to create at least a few million. Result: a one term president who leaves office in Jan 2013 with a great golf handicap.
so basically, by definition, Bambi is blameless for anything. You can just claim "the ditch was really THAT deep."
NeObama could have withdrawn us from those wars, like he promised, on day ONE of his administration. What did he do instead?
Pull you fuckin head out of your ass.
correct but also wrong. Obama was given a damaged economy, but he left it in the charge of the same people who ran the bush economy so they have the same perscription and end result is disaster. Obama because A one term poresident when he brought geithner on board, reappointed bernanke, and took advice from sommers. these people will almost always do teh exact opposite of what is needed, because they go their positions by helping the bankers, not the economy. UNtil obama gets people who want to help the economy, not the bankers we are screwed. note the perscription of all these people. weak dollar, flood system with money. volker understodd you had to clear the system with the high interst rates. If these idiots has left teh ecnomy alone and given some more sound money practices the economy would be better now.
the democratic obama just appointed the same fools from the bush team. we have more systemic instability again etc.
I voted for the guy, but i made a mistake and will never vote fo him again. so either the republicans put out ron paul, or I just don't vote. there will be a lot of people who won't vote for obama on principle (he turned his back on the hope change things), and that may the the republicans a chance to win. they won't do any better though because the same cadre of idiots will be in charge of the economy.
OBummer shares no blame for anything....he's just been sitting in the chair for over year 2 years. He, and all his fanboys, have to stop blaming anyone else for their problems and start solving them. OBummer's answer has been to spend more.... please.... he has made his own mark and, yes, it is his economy. The Buck Stops with Him! Yes, both parties suck....that's not the point. Prez hasn't done anything productive, but increase the size of government and spend money on bridges to no where (shovel ready has done exactly nothing).
Love the Dem lefty hussein islamo *s* s**k*rs who post here. Scum. Bush was crap but hevaen compared to now. You lefty scum have no clue.
Lern to spel, Einstein.
Have you ***holes ever heard of The Community Reinvestment Act, Bill Clinton, FannieMae, FreddieMac, Countrywide Financial, Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, Franklin Delano Raines, Beth Wilkinson, and on, and on, and on..........?
Blame the CRA again? As if a few underprivileged people outsmarted all the banksters and took all of their money. Tell us another another one.
Tell us where the CRA says to make bad loans. Tell us where it says to create the subprime mortgage market. Tell us where it says to overleverage.
The CRA is another one of those "good intentions having bad results" kind of policies. It was intended to help prevent discrimination in lending, to assure that low-income (but creditworthy) minorities could obtain financing for their homes, on approximately the same terms as rich white folks.
Built into the CRA was the provision that people could SUE bankers for discrimination in lending; "red-lining", the practice of avoiding lending on properties in certain neighborhoods, was made legally liable.
Jesse Jackson and similar agitators led public campaigns to humiliate and demonify banks who wouldn't lend in inner-city areas; lawsuits were threatened and filed weekly. The bankers gave in, under actual or threatened litigation, and made the loans.
Unfortunately, the CRA did not discriminate either - between hard-working, good-risk immigrants who could repay their loans with savings and sacrifice, and the illegals, free-loaders and welfare moochers who couldn't support house payments. The banks couldn't choose to lend to some minorities and not others, so they lent to everybody who applied.
The subprime collateralized-debt-securities were an attempt to limit losses; the banks knew how many of these loans were LIKELY to go bad, and created a bad solution to their worse problems: sell the mortgages in bundles, tranches and all sorts of perversions to cut their own risk. They cut corners at the local county clerk's offices with MERS. They chopped and spliced every way from Sunday, ruining clear title to real estate and creating even more problems.
I generally dislike bankers; the guys at my credit union are OK, but my major-bank has frequently tried to screw me out of extra fees and charges. Lately, though, they seem to have started to get the message; I overdrew by about $25 for six hours on a weekend before I noticed, moved over cash to cover it, and they appear to have not charged me anything for the oversight.
Be that as it may; I'm no great fan of big bankers, no fan at all of central bankers, and opposed to politicians in general. CRA was social engineering wrapped up in bad legislation and tied up with community-organizer activism. CRA DID say to make bad loans, but excused it on the basis of minority status. CRA DID create the subprime mortgage market, and the bankers created the failed attempts to disperse risk. CRA DID NOT say to overleverage - unless where it REQUIRED banks to make loans in poor neighborhoods, it stretched them even more than they were, with bad-quality loans to boot.
Banks are rarely smart, but Washington's solutions to discrimination in housing lending are a large part of why we're hurting now, why the housing market has not rebounded to any extent, and why more banks will fail this year. I DON'T blame the underprivileged - I blame the politicians who tried to help them, and shot all of us in the foot in the process.
Blame the CRA again? As if a few underprivileged people outsmarted all the banksters and took all of their money. Tell us another another one.
You are too uninformed to be here. You need to spend some time in the recent history of clinton, rubin, summers, greenspan and a dozen other high level democrat players, primarily jews, who caused this mess.
Then come back and get further enilightened.
Member of both parties have been taking bribes of all kinds for a quarter century from those involved in the residential and commercial R.E. markets and this is the result of it. And it's still going on.
The point is, that Obama inherited the mess, he certainly did not cause it, calling it "the Obama economy" lets way too many other perps off the hook, and stinks of partisanship.
Agreed Koos...I want a Clawback Amendment...the voting record is there to rescind pensions & perks...and jail them if they voted on or crafted legislation and then went on to work for those who benefited from the law...we know who they are.
But its his economy now...he can't push for billions in pie in the sky government subsidies that only add to the debt load, a trillion dollar "shovel ready" giveaway to state employees and a thousand healthcare waivers to his private crony's and walk away to play another round of golf with them after signing it.
It is what it is...its quite obvious.
I'm sorry, the mess might not be entirely of his making, but he owns the mess now.
Obama inherited the mess, he certainly did not cause it
What is "it"? The state and trajectory of the economy on 1/20/09, or the current FUBAR condition?
What part of the mess do you want to credit to Hussein? If it was a mess, and still is, indeed worse, what does that say about his abiity to make any of it any better?
I used to post a couple of charts showing the trajectory of the deficit when Mr. O was inaugurated. I don't have them any longer, but the slope was nearly vertical. That rocket could not have been stopped or even slowed down by anyone. It will have to reach terminal velocity on its own. Obama hasn't helped, but he surely hasn't had a farts chance in a hurricane to stop it. It's all slight of hand at this point.
One of the ironic things in the English language is that it is "sleight of hand".
The vertical trajectory you speak of was a function of the TARP debacle, no? I don't defend any post 1913 and pre-Obama adminstrations - they all contributed. The difference with Obama is that he wants to collapse the U.S. - he has no loyalty to the country and would love to consolidate the NWO.
my two cents.
Pure conjecture, but you are certainly entitled to it.
How does "sleight of hand" imply its opposite? I'm a bit confused.
Was pointing out that you misspelled it in your earlier post, that's all. That's the sl(e)ight of hand.
Fair point on the reply, though.
Hey! Thanks for pointing that out. I believe that orderly thought can only be expressed through accurate media. I always use spell-check function but that was not an eligible candidate. Those homonyms are a bitch. I should be more careful.
Yes, wasn't it Clinton who eliminated the budget deficit only to have his efforts destroyed by Bush and the same Republicans who now are whining about their own handiwork..
Clinton didn't eliminate the budget deficit. Clinton and a Republican congress narrowed it.
Rubin, Summers, & Greenspan closed the budget gap and created the surplus. IT WAS AN ACCOUNTING GIMMIC. They "capitalized" on lower interest rates and moved a significant portion of the US public debt from the long to short end of the yield, in the process reducing the annual interest expense accrual.
Imagine fatboy Larry on a used car lot shouting:
"Now is a great time to refinance your high interest 30-year fixed rate mortgage, we offer a wide variety of short term interest-only ARMs which will save you a SHITLOAD of money and allow you to use the savings to by some more COOL STUFF for yourself.
Correct on all counts, it was only on paper and assumed a static economy...which is like assuming it will never rain or if tax rates/regulation changes peoples behavior will not change.
As a matter of fact, I don't want government running a surplus at all...because what that really means is they are taking more from the real economy (by taxing the people) than is needed to run government.
They can't be trusted with debts & deficits spending...let alone any actual surplus (savings)...it would be like placing an ounce of China White, syringe, spoon & candle in front of a junkie and asking him not to touch it...ain't gonna happen.
No, it wasn't Clinton. The balanced budget and surpluses never materialized until the Repubs took control of the House in 1994. That being said, don't mistake me for a big supporter of them, either! I was responding to that stupid, tired, metaphor about the car being driven into the ditch. And BTW, the current driver has no clue what to do about anything!!!
It was sleazy Willy who
- Started to use excessively fraudulent government statistics
- Signed NAFTA, killed Glass-Steagall, and sent American jobs oversea
In other words, Bill Clinton was a cancer. One might feel good for a while having an undetected and invisible cancer but it quietly keeps growing and spreading and, by the time one discover the cancer, it is already in a final and terminal stage with no ways to do anything about.
Finally, IMHO, GWB was/is a criminal POS and an imbecile but he inherited a very bad recession from Clinton that started in the last few months of the Clinton presidency following the financial markets collapse (the Internet bubble, the biotech bubble, and a beginning of the real estate bubble).
Well played. Facts are to libs as krypton is to superman.