Seeking an intelligent Obama hater - no debates here!

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@godix

Ditto, although my % is higher towards independents and republicans.

Until about 2003, I would describe myself the same way, I voted for more REpublican Presidents than Democratic Presidents. Heck I voted for more third party presidents (Perot) than Democratic Presidents until Bush.

The ‘useless war’ was already scheduled to end before Obama even took his oath. At best, he gets credit for not fucking up the withdraw Bush had planned.

Cite please.

The President has little control over the economy. Things go in cycles. The recession would have ended and Dow would have gone up regardless of who was in office. Congress and the Fed can accelerate recovery, or make things worse, but even so their ability is limited. It’s VERY questionable if anything Congress did helpped. The fed probably did help, but they hit a brick wall on how far they can influence things. And Obama had almost nothing to do with either Congress or Fed actions. The same is true of your posting Dow figures for Bush by the way. You give both Bush and Obama far too much credit here.

Almost every economist in existence disagrees with you.

Almost everyone agrees that the actions taken by the government to bail out the banks and the GSEs was critical to avoiding a much more severe financial crisis. I don’t think you can lay the blame for the recession squarely at Bush’s feet, but he deserves much of the blame, perhaps the only people who are MORE to blame are Greenspan and people like Angelo Mozillo.

You finally found something that Obama can be credited/blamed for. Now can you convince me it was a good thing?

Time will tell if the ultimate cost of bailing them out was worth it but at the time it was clear that a GM bankruptcy would have created significant more unemployment, not just at GM but at auto parts manufacturers and the entire rust belt.

As for why I dislike him, hate is far too strong a word, it’s that he is not a leader. He has grand ideas in his speeches (or at least used to), but he doesn’t do anything about them.

I agree, he spends too much time asking permission to do what he was elected to do.

He asked Congress to pass a healthcare bill, then sat on his ass and let them fuck it all up. As a result, the health care reform we were promised in the election is nothing like what we got. What we got is so damned complex, takes so long to take effect, and does so little that really we probably would have been better with nothing being changed.

I disagree that we would have been better off with nothing but the failure to address the slope of the cost curve in the health care bill is a HUGE disappointment to me.

He did the same thing on the stimulus. He said he wanted one then sat back and let Congress turn it into a pork barrel vote buyoff spoils to the victor thing. By Obama’s own standards, it’s a miserable failure. Most of the money went to crap that had nothing to do with the economy. If he were a leader, he might have stepped in and strongarmed congress to keep things reasonable, but he didn’t.

I agree here as well. He wanted to spend the money on infrastructure, he should have made congress do it.

He wants to close Gitmo. But he can’t find someone else to do it for him. And since he can’t seem to do anything himself, that’s the end of that conversation. Gitmo will remain open until we get a President with enough balls to actually be a leader.

Hopefully, he will grow some soon.

Same with DADT. He should have written an executive order abolishing DADT his first day, then look at Congress and go “I’m the leader of the military, screw your bigoted law. We can turn this into a Constitutional issue if you want, but I’m the commander in chief and I command homosexuals be allowed to serve.” But he didn’t. DADT is ending, and Obama has, if anything, stood in the way of that.

Here i disagree. DADT if a law passed by congress, he HAS to enforce it.

He focused his efforts on things that, currently, America doesn’t need. We need the economy to recover. We need jobs. We need regulations to keep things from getting so messed up again. And he has totally ignored that. Instead, we got a year long fight over health care (and almost nothing to show for it). We also got two years of “But republicans are cockblocking us.” Democrats had both sides of Congress and the Presidency, but all they did was desperately hope voters didn’t realize that.

Do you agree that the Republicans made it impossible to get anything done without 60 votes in the Senate so a simple majority was meaningless in the senate? So 60 was the new 51. How many months did Obama have 60 Democrats in the senate? 2 months.

Governor Pawlenty didn’t certify Al Franken as senator until the supreme court of his state told him he had to. This didn’t happen until June 30 of 2009.

Ted Kennedy died on August 25, 2009.

I guess he could have shoved everything through in those two months.

Not the it’s relevant to a thread about Obama, but I’m really getting tired of this bullshit claim. Only 20 Republicans put forward the idea and supported it. This was at a time when there were over 280 Republicans in Congress. It takes some real political blindness to call only 7% of republicans supporting the thing a ‘republican plan’. (# of republican supporters buried, without the obvious conclusion it did not have widespread republican support, in this article)

20 Republicans would have been enough to get it passed.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@code_grey

I feel no love for tax-and-spend in general, but what I see at this point in Obama and his party is a militant refusal to understand that as permanent unemployment grows and wages fall, there is simply no money left in people’s pockets to pay the usual cartel-imposed price tag for non-essential and exorbitantly priced services like healthcare, government and similar.

If you have a salary of $80K, you can afford to be scammed. You can afford to pay double and triple in the hospital to help out non-paying indigents and to keep the doctor living in his fancy mansion making couple of times more than French equivalents, all at the same time. You can afford to pay for insurance that would cover this scam - Americans did it for years. But now things are changing - wages are down, employment is down, there is not much disposable income left. If you work for hourly wage and you are lucky to have a 40 hour week all paid up, you will have trouble paying rent, let alone cover the healthcare shakedown business. Now, folks like you in India or China probably make comparable amount of money, but over there nobody is shaking them down to pay for healthcare at rates based on the time when America was rich.

So, what to do? The costs have to come down. It should somehow dawn upon the highly paid employees of the various government sponsored cartels, be that medical, government itself, education etc, that they personally will not survive the economic collapse of the country, regardless of what is solemnly promised in their union contracts and so forth.

But, yeah, tell it to the commie wrecker called Dumbak Barama. He is got a better idea - a flat healthcare tax on everybody regardless of income, raises for government workers, plans to further hobble private sector through cap-and-trade “environmental” shakedown and so forth. Continuation of insane foreign wars began under Bush, regardless of how they get renamed. Scaling down of military defense capability especially through reductions of the nuclear forces. The debt ballooning so much to pay for useless shit that nobody is lending nowadays, to the point of them openly printing (err, quantitatively easing) money.

In short, my expectation is that this guy will finish what Bush has started in terms of destroying the country. He is either the last straw or one of the very last ones.

Is this post sincere?

[Saint_Cad]

Obama is increasing spending beyond what Bush left him. I know that many Dems will argue that this is not true and they are right - this year. But Obama is jacking up the deficit starting next year and he is depending on everything going to plan for the deficit to be reduced eventually. I posted a bunch of cites in another thread but I don’t feel like hunting them up right now.

He has been ineffectual as a leader. I knew this would happen with his inexperience and his nebulous campaign promise of “change” and I see grumblings on the left side of the aisle about his lack of leadership but the Dems will still not admit the Reps were right when we said this would be the case. IMHO, this comes from Obama surrounding himself with “yes-men” as advisors.

The economy is not recovering despite what we are told. Houses still don’t sell in my area. There are no jobs out there even in Denver. Economically, I don’t see this “change” in policy that he claimed he was going to make.

Although I disagree with the health care bill, I won’t bring it up because I appreciate that some feel that the greater good may sometimes be unpopular. However, don’t charge taxes for 4 years before giving out benefits and tell me you’re saving money.

In short, I don’t like Obama because he is exactly the president I thought he would be.

[Lobohan]

@Saint_Cad

Obama is increasing spending beyond what Bush left him. I know that many Dems will argue that this is not true and they are right - this year. But Obama is jacking up the deficit starting next year and he is depending on everything going to plan for the deficit to be reduced eventually. I posted a bunch of cites in another thread but I don’t feel like hunting them up right now.

I suspect your cites aren’t correct in any case. Obama’s contribution to the debt has been necessary things like the stimulus.

He has been ineffectual as a leader. I knew this would happen with his inexperience and his nebulous campaign promise of “change” and I see grumblings on the left side of the aisle about his lack of leadership but the Dems will still not admit the Reps were right when we said this would be the case. IMHO, this comes from Obama surrounding himself with “yes-men” as advisors.

That’s simply silly. The left are of course upset because he is strongly looking for compromise. The right are being angry children however. So Obama offers a hand to them and they throw rocks at him. Many on the left want Obama to be a left version of Bush and ram shit through with no thought for compromise. Obama doesn’t want to do that.

The economy is not recovering despite what we are told. Houses still don’t sell in my area. There are no jobs out there even in Denver. Economically, I don’t see this “change” in policy that he claimed he was going to make.

The quintessential conservative misunderstanding. I don’t see it, so it doesn’t happen!

I don’t care what is happening in your neighborhood. The US economic numbers are dependent on overall trends, not what you can personally see.

Although I disagree with the health care bill, I won’t bring it up because I appreciate that some feel that the greater good may sometimes be unpopular. However, don’t charge taxes for 4 years before giving out benefits and tell me you’re saving money.

This is an amazingly silly thing for you to say. Were you pissed that people were paying money for the interstates before you could drive on them? Your objection here betrays a massive misunderstanding of how the universe works.

Also, the CBO says that HCR will save over a trillion over the next 20 years. Think on this hard now. If it saves 100+ billion in the first ten years and 1+ trillion in the next ten years… how is that possible if you think they’re taking in 10 years of revenue for 6 years of service? How is that possible that it can save more money in the next ten years?

I’ll answer it for you, it’s because systems are being set up in the first four years. You can’t implement a giant system in a day. This objection is just so utterly without merit it is painful to see people trying to wave it around.

In short, I don’t like Obama because he is exactly the president I thought he would be.

You don’t like Obama because you’re a partisan. He could fart GDP and you’d hold your nose.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@Saint_Cad

IMHO, this comes from Obama surrounding himself with “yes-men” as advisors.

Seriously? Who are these “yes-men”, exactly?

[Lobohan]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

Seriously? Who are these “yes-men”, exactly?

Biden. That fucker is always supportive. Except when he offers advice that is based on his experience and it goes counter to what the President thinks ought to be done.

But other than that…

[elucidator]

@Saint_Cad

…Although I disagree with the health care bill, I won’t bring it up …

Well, that’s good. In return, I won’t bring up the Republican plan confiscate all the kids puppies and skin them to make scrotum comforters for rich folks. Nope, not even going to mention it.

[Saint_Cad]

@Lobohan

I suspect your cites aren’t correct in any case. Obama’s contribution to the debt has been necessary things like the stimulus.

The result is a budget plan that would give the country trillion-dollar-plus deficits for three consecutive years. Obama’s new budget projects a spending increase of 5.7 percent for the current budget year and forecasts that spending would rise another 3 percent in 2011 to $3.83 trillion.

So spending goes up 9% But then again the quote is from the notoriously unreliable CBS news. Even if you are right that the increase in spending is for stimulus, that would be great if you believe in Keynesian economics which I do not believe is applicable here.

@Lobohan

That’s simply silly. The left are of course upset because he is strongly looking for compromise. The right are being angry children however. So Obama offers a hand to them and they throw rocks at him. Many on the left want Obama to be a left version of Bush and ram shit through with no thought for compromise. Obama doesn’t want to do that.

This is ridiculous even for you. Both sides view Obama as ineffectual at pushing forward his agenda so that makes him a good leader. Doesn’t leader come from the root “lead”?

@Lobohan

The quintessential conservative misunderstanding. I don’t see it, so it doesn’t happen!

I don’t care what is happening in your neighborhood. The US economic numbers are dependent on overall trends, not what you can personally see.

So please point out how the economy is improving. Is it the jobs created in congessional districts that don’t exist? Or maybe the continuing foreclosure/pre-foreclosure crisis. Maybe it’s that it is impossible to get a loan from a bank or just maybe counting all of the people whose unemployment has run out an not unemployed.

And remember the OP ask why I don’t like Obama. Because I don’t care what is happening OUTSIDE my community. No jobs, even in a nearby metropolis. Houses won’t sell but I can’t buy because of no loans out there. Why should I say that I like Obama because GM stock went up $0.03 and it doesn’t matter that Mrs. Cad was out of work for 15 months.

@Lobohan

You don’t like Obama because you’re a partisan. He could fart GDP and you’d hold your nose.

You are so right. Someday I hope to be a blindingly non-partisan as you continually show yourself to be.

[Lobohan]

@Saint_Cad

So spending goes up 9% But then again the quote is from the notoriously unreliable CBS news. Even if you are right that the increase in spending is for stimulus, that would be great if you believe in Keynesian economics which I do not believe is applicable here.

Economists believe in Keynesian economics. Whether you do or not is irrelevant. I don’t know why you think your uninformed opinion holds more weight than the majority of working economists.

This is ridiculous even for you. Both sides view Obama as ineffectual at pushing forward his agenda so that makes him a good leader. Doesn’t leader come from the root “lead”?

Health care reform. Wall street reform. The stimulus. Pull out of Iraq. There is a whole website for this if you care to inform yourself.

So please point out how the economy is improving. Is it the jobs created in congessional districts that don’t exist?

That’s a reference to a typographical error. Don’t you actually have any facts at all at your disposal? Or are you simply a collection of misinformation and myths that has somehow attained sentience?

Or maybe the continuing foreclosure/pre-foreclosure crisis. Maybe it’s that it is impossible to get a loan from a bank or just maybe counting all of the people whose unemployment has run out an not unemployed.

Okay, I don’t even know how to inform you since your words betray layers of misunderstanding.

We had a huge economic downturn. You know that, right? It was gigantic. But we’re coming out of it now. The recession has ended and the recovery is underway. Do a google news search and steer clear from right wing blogs and you should be okay. U.S. Economy: Figures Show Recovery Accelerating - Bloomberg

And remember the OP ask why I don’t like Obama. Because I don’t care what is happening OUTSIDE my community. No jobs, even in a nearby metropolis. Houses won’t sell but I can’t buy because of no loans out there. Why should I say that I like Obama because GM stock went up $0.03 and it doesn’t matter that Mrs. Cad was out of work for 15 months.

Mrs. Cad should be pissed at Bush if she wants to blindly lash out. We’re fixing the economy. I’m sorry your wife can’t find a job. Maybe you should call your Republican member of congress and ask them to extend unemployment benefits. Since the Republicans are calling your wife lazy.

And on the subject of the auto bailouts. You know that we’re getting the vast majority of that money back and it is credited with saving 1.4 million jobs?

You are so right. Someday I hope to be a blindingly non-partisan as you continually show yourself to be.

A good start would be to start caring about facts and stop repeating right-wing lies you get from random blogs.

[Saint_Cad]

Last retort for Lobohan
I believe the OP specifically wanted no debate. I expressed my opinion but then you drag this into a debate that basically amount to “I disagree with you therefore you are wrong.” Even when I cite facts from a reputable news source showing you are wrong, you’re attitude is “I’ll ignore that therefore I’m still right.”

[Lobohan]

@Saint_Cad

Last retort for Lobohan
I believe the OP specifically wanted no debate. I expressed my opinion but then you drag this into a debate that basically amount to “I disagree with you therefore you are wrong.” Even when I cite facts from a reputable news source showing you are wrong, you’re attitude is “I’ll ignore that therefore I’m still right.”

You posted no such cite. You posted that the deficit is going up. I said that it was going up because of necessary things like the stimulus.

Otherwise you posted nothing, so please, don’t try to pretend that you are the one bowing out after a good effort. You have presented nothing but misinformation that you believe because you can’t be bothered to check on its veracity.

Now you’re running off and claiming victory. Which I supposed is par for this course. I can’t make you base your beliefs on reality, I can only try to show others how utterly without merit they are.

[godix]

@Damuri_Ajashi

Cite please.

Since quote doesn’t quote me, this was asking for a cite on my claim that Bush negotiated the withdraw of troops from Iraq, not Obama. As for cites: The Status of Forces Agreement between Iraq and US setup that US troops would withdraw from Iraqi cities by mid 2009 and withdraw completely from Iraq by the end of 2011. This was negotiated during 2008, before Obama won the election much less took office.

Time will tell if the ultimate cost of bailing them out was worth it but at the time it was clear that a GM bankruptcy would have created significant more unemployment, not just at GM but at auto parts manufacturers and the entire rust belt.

That’s certainly a valid point, and I won’t claim that it’s bad that GM and Ford survived. I question the long term damage of supporting firms that can not compete, especially since this isn’t the first time the government got involved with auto companies. I also question if establishing a precedent of too big to fail is a good idea, which goes beyond the auto companies but does include them. Plus I don’t like the general feeling that it wasn’t about saving jobs, it was about saving Democrat voting union jobs. I can’t help but notice Obama was all for saving unions that lean democrat, but Obama smeared a business group that leans republican by accusing them of being funded by foreign countries, even though there was no proof at all of it.

Anyway, point is, I’m not going to say bailing out the auto companies was a totally horrible move, but I do have great reservations about it.

Here i disagree. DADT if a law passed by congress, he HAS to enforce it.

In general, yes. I still believe Congress passing laws on who is allowed to join the military has Constitutional issues though. And the President is not required to enforce a law that may be unconstitutional. If it really is or not would be a court issue, but I would have liked to see Obama push the issue. As much as Presidents try expanding the executives power, it’s odd they gave up on something that seems to clearly encroach on a listed presidential power.

Do you agree that the Republicans made it impossible to get anything done without 60 votes in the Senate so a simple majority was meaningless in the senate? So 60 was the new 51. How many months did Obama have 60 Democrats in the senate? 2 months.

I will agree that the fillibuster makes things harder. I’m torn between if that’s good or bad. I do not blame the Republicans for attempting to block things that are against their parties beliefs. And since they did have 59 democrats, and a clear majority in the House, I find it rather disingenuous to blame everything on those dirty rotten Republicans. Somehow Clinton got stuff done without 60 seats. So did Bush. If Obama can’t, it says more about Obama than it does about republicans. Although, realistically, it probably says more about how bad a leader Harry Reid is than Obama.

Governor Pawlenty didn’t certify Al Franken as senator until the supreme court of his state told him he had to. This didn’t happen until June 30 of 2009.

To be fair, that was an extraordinarily close election that did have it’s own issues. Sure, republicans were intentionally cockblocking dems, but they actually had a valid issue and gave up around the point where it was obvious their case had failed.

20 Republicans would have been enough to get it passed.

Only 4 of those 20 were still in office. However my point was, it was never a republican plan. It was a plan put forward and supported by less than 10% of republicans. So trying to imply republicans are hypocritical for not supporting something that over 90% of them never supported to begin with just doesn’t make any sense.

[godix]

@elucidator

Well, that’s good. In return, I won’t bring up the Republican plan confiscate all the kids puppies and skin them to make scrotum comforters for rich folks. Nope, not even going to mention it.

Suddenly being rich has a whole new incentive. Puppy scrotum comforters. If someone hasn’t made them, they should.

[elucidator]

@godix

… I find it rather disingenuous to blame everything on those dirty rotten Republicans…

No, I blame the dirty rotten “conservatives” (as much as that word has any real meaining, anymore). The “D” after a name doesn’t mean lefty, it could just as easily refer to one of the menshevik. Clintonista “turd way” business-friendly dead bluedogs who took control of Dem leadership when they were making themselves over into Republican Lite. * Feh!*

[Rachellelogram]

I do not approve of Obama. I have never approved of a President in my lifetime because the whole business of politics, in my opinion, smacks of a scheme for fame, money, power, and enabling re-election. I would not approve of McCain if he had won, either.

It would take a seriously ethical person winning the office for me to approve of them as President. I know I’d end up as corrupted as the current politicians, if I were in politics (I’m not interested, for the record). This is a very high standard, one to which even I could not possibly aspire. Although I have met other people who I believe meet this standard, who would make great Presidents–I am simply not among them.

These seriously ethical types are not drawn to politics. Even if they were, people would not vote for them. A good President should be doing what is best for his/her people, and what is best is not popular. Thus, I approve of no President.

Also on a personal level, I have a hard time taking theists seriously. WTB atheist candidate.

[iamthewalrus_3]

I voted for Obama, and I’m not particularly happy with his progress so far. Most of the reasons have already been mentioned, but I’ll mention a few highlights.

• Too much political capital was spent on what I believe to be a really bad health care process. I think it will be yet another entitlement that grows like Medicare and Social Security until it’s a serious drain on the budget. I think that the incentives are all wrong, and will lead to serious fiscal problems. I’m not opposed to a basic safety net, but I strongly disagree that it’s better to take the first step without really thinking things through. We’re going to be stuck with this for the long haul.
• I’m disappointed that Guantanamo is still open, and that the anti-civil-liberty provisions of government that began or intensified under Bush are… pretty much still in effect. We still have secret prisoners who aren’t getting trials or lawyers. We now have an expanded government quasi-police bureaucracy in charge of hassling travelers and playing make-believe security.
• I disagree with some of the bailouts. I think we need much larger structural reforms in finance to fix the problems of excessive risk. I see this as yet another iteration of privatizing gains and socializing losses.

This isn’t all directly Obama’s fault, but some of it is. And it’s disheartening as hell.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

If they’re secret, how do you know they’re there?

[LonghornDave]

@CanTak3

• His bailout plans have saved GM and Chrysler.

@Hilarity_N.Suze

I’m not sure GM and Chrysler should have been saved. Wasn’t Chrysler saved once before? Lot of good that did.

@Damuri_Ajashi

Time will tell if the ultimate cost of bailing them out was worth it but at the time it was clear that a GM bankruptcy would have created significant more unemployment, not just at GM but at auto parts manufacturers and the entire rust belt.

@Lobohan

And on the subject of the auto bailouts. You know that we’re getting the vast majority of that money back and it is credited with saving 1.4 million jobs?

@godix

That’s certainly a valid point, and I won’t claim that it’s bad that GM and Ford survived. I question the long term damage of supporting firms that can not compete, especially since this isn’t the first time the government got involved with auto companies. I also question if establishing a precedent of too big to fail is a good idea, which goes beyond the auto companies but does include them. Plus I don’t like the general feeling that it wasn’t about saving jobs, it was about saving Democrat voting union jobs. I can’t help but notice Obama was all for saving unions that lean democrat, but Obama smeared a business group that leans republican by accusing them of being funded by foreign countries, even though there was no proof at all of it.

Anyway, point is, I’m not going to say bailing out the auto companies was a totally horrible move, but I do have great reservations about it.

Sorry to interrupt the debate/non-debate of “intelligent” people here, but do any of you people actually keep up with the news? Here’s a newsflash that will blow all of your minds: Both Chrysler and GM received their government bailouts under Bush (December 2008), and they both filed bankruptcy (Chrysler in April 2009 and GM in June 2009) under Obama.

A fairly good policy that I suggest you all attempt to adopt is that when you are attempting to debate a topic and you are espousing your opinions with such authority, you might want to learn the basic fundamental background facts.

[Lobohan]

@LonghornDave

Sorry to interrupt the debate/non-debate of “intelligent” people here, but do any of you people actually keep up with the news? Here’s a newsflash that will blow all of your minds: Both Chrysler and GM received their government bailouts under Bush (December 2008), and they both filed bankruptcy (Chrysler in April 2009 and GM in June 2009) under Obama.

A fairly good policy that I suggest you all attempt to adopt is that when you are attempting to debate a topic and you are espousing your opinions with such authority, you might want to learn the basic fundamental background facts.

What was your problem with my statement? Just because you’re ideologically committed to hating something doesn’t mean that thing is the wrong idea. It might, just might be possible, that your ideology is wrong.

[Shodan]

@LonghornDave

A fairly good policy that I suggest you all attempt to adopt is that when you are attempting to debate a topic and you are espousing your opinions with such authority, you might want to learn the basic fundamental background facts.

Oh, you’re no fun.

Regards,
Shodan