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I agree with you of course. You know what I mean. The majority of people expecting government services are in the Obama camp.

Obama has about 90% black support, about 90% Muslim approval rating, etc.

Thanks to Obama, we are that closer to having medical coverage for everyone - which is only the decent Christian and civilized thing to do. Insurance companies, which had preyed on people's financial resources, then would weasel out of providing care when clients were in need, now have had their evil schemes curtailed. As well, British Petroleum was made to compensate American citizens whose livelihood they had destroyed.
Sounds like Obama has had his share of accomplishments.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

A fairly significant part of why the Obama administration has accomplished less than people hoped is Republican obstructionism, though. There has been record-breaking use of the filibuster, escalating to a basically constant filibuster on everything, even if it was something the GOP would otherwise support. The Republican strategy is to make Obama look weak and ineffective. Of course, he's not exactly making it hard for them—there is more than his fair share of piddling, twiddling, and resolving going on.

Although you might be interested in checking out Politifact. They keep a record of Obama's fulfillment of his campaign promises, and at the moment "Promises Kept" beat "Promises Broken" 5.5 to 1. The "Promises Broken" list is still quite disappointing, and include several important government transparency, fiscal, and human rights issues.

Well, when the 2008 crash hit, I heard plenty of claims that it was all Clinton's fault. And let's be real, Bush did drive our economy and the federal budget into the ground. Obama inherited a huge mess. Has he done a good enough job of cleaning it up? I think we can all look around and agree that the answer is "no." But is he the one who caused the mess? Obviously not.

Do they gauge the score in terms of one promise having a value of one so that if he fulfills a lot of his easy campaign promises the numbers go one-for-one, or is difficulty in fulfillment factored in so that near impossible and often vacuous promises have a high score and cheap simple promises have a low score?

There would be no workable way of factoring the difficulty of the promises, and that is one of the inherent limitations. Still, he has some major promises kept, and several of the broken promises seem insignificant to me (there was something about after-school programs that I don't really care about). Different people, of course, have different priorities.

Little bigoted, there?
By the way, I am a white Christian - though because I'm of the mainline, non-born again variety, I suspect I wouldn't fit the bill for you or most evangelicals.
And what the hell is all this "productive citizens" crap I keep hearing from Republicans? In our country, everyone - - AND I MEAN EVERYONE, GOD DAMN IT!! ! - - is supposed to be of equal worth, and is meant to have an equal voice, regardless of how much money he or she makes. Trust me, there's someone who thinks of himself as a step or two above you who doubtlessly thinks he's of more worth than you.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Actually, it's all George Washington's fault. He needed too much money to support his illegal rebellion. Or no, it's King George's fault for issuing taxes. Or no it's America's fault for fighting in the French-Indian War. Or no, it's the fault of the English and French original colonists. Or no, it's the fault of Christopher Columbus. Or no, it's the fault of Lief Erikson. Or no, it's the fault of shipmakers. Or no, it's the fault of....

I assume you're being facetious, keet. This is an issue that is plainly seen: Bush implemented idiotic policies that crashed our economy. You cannot plausibly deny that. Now, you can fault Obama saying that his recovery programs have been ineffective or counter-productive. But Obama, for all his failings, cannot claim the dubious honor of causing the recession. It was already underway before he took office.

And it should be noted that our economy crashed pretty hard. Even if we have a decade of sustained and very strong growth, we would only just be getting back to where we started before Bush. Obama doesn't have magical powers. He can't simply wish away our economic ills. There is no conceivable policy that would lead to such rapid recovery as people are demanding Obama provide.

There is a workable way actually. Every step in the process is an increment of complexity in a task, for which higher complexity tasks would be providing higher points. Such as,

Campaign promise fulfilled, true or false? If true add the number of steps in order to fulfill promise to register of fulfilled promises. If false, add the number of steps in order to fulfill promise to the register of unfulfilled promises.

Or something like that.

Nope. Trivial/uncontroversial legislation technically has the same number of steps as major, difficult overhauls. The health care bill was certainly more difficult to pass than loads of his other "promise kept" changes, but it had the same number of steps as any of them did. And plenty of things can't be assigned that kind of simple numerical score. One of his broken promises was having the public option in the health care bill. Accomplishing that would have been one step: put the public option in the bill. But it wouldn't have been quite that easy.

sigh... ALL presidents are controlled by smarter men behind the scenes. sheesh. just how dumb do you think we all are?



that is a drop in the bucket compared with how much bush and his cronies wasted in useless warmongering.



i AM a union member, god-damn it! you diss the unions, i diss YOU! whatever you vote, i vote against.



in the grand scheme of things, if i could trade obama's stupid gaffe for 8 years of shrub repub hell, i'd do it in an instant. there is foot-in-mouth, and then there is jackbooted foot up our collective tuckas, and shrub was the latter that makes me much prefer obama's former.



scraping the bottom of the barrel for bad things to say about obama, no?



much of the rest of europe still prefers tacky-gift-giving, somewhat self-regarding obama over shrugging shrub. i know i do.



hell, shrub was seen kissing some middle-eastern guy on the MOUTH. which do you object to more?



i'll take obama's minor slips any damned day over shrub's major slips.



straining at social services gnats and swallowing tax-cutting camels?



this relatively minor embarrassment is preferable to outright head-hanging hiding behind a wall SHAME. but of course repubs continue to indignantly deny that they can do any wrong, just order us all to keep suffering fool's errands for the Greedy Old Pachyderm and pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.



turnabout is fair play, i suppose. darn it.



there are sins, and then there are SINS! given the choice between wasting some $$$ to plant a tree, and WASTING hundreds of BILLIONS on a foolish iraqi war, i'd prefer the tree to further enrichment of the military-industrial complex.



anybody that even thinks they "get" all the reasons and factors behind 9-11 is just is just full of themselves. shrub's administration "okayed" far worse things. like actually torturing people. like taking the geneva convention stipulations against torturing enemy combatants, cavalierly and categorically ashcanning them, then denying that they did any such thing.



can we not keep hypocritically fighting over something so trivial as race? white and black, we are all meat-colored on the inside. both sides can cease and desist over this issue, as there is more than enough blame to go around.



i never voted for that guy, so frankly i don't give a good god-damn. AFAIC you can keep hiding behind the "constitution" which i doubt you really know more about than people who have actually passed bar exams and/or served to uphold and protect the damned thing.



you are seriously denying that ronnie raygun did NOT oversee the transformation of this country, from a [net] creditor nation to a debtor nation? people who believe the repubs can do absolutely no wrong are simply ignoring the elephant in the room.



obama didn't cut taxes only for the well-to-do. obama didn't try to gut social security or gamble with the nation's collective retirement funds via privatization. pick your poison- national debt or massive individual-citizen impoverishment. if shrub had succeeded in investing social security funds in the stock market as planned, that money would have evaporated just like the rest in the big stock market meltdown.



yes, yes and YES!! ! :!: anybody who denies that health care [and its financing system] needs reform is just one medical bankrupcy away from having their head straightened-out for them by the cruel clobbering of reality. why do so many people refuse to understand that under the current non-system, [almost] nobody is above having financially ruinous medical misfortune happen to them? i hope to dickens that obamacare kicks-in soon.



let me count the ways
because, quite simply, he is NOT SHRUB
because, he is not a repub! [although he sometimes acts too much like one for my comfort]. they both have advanced degrees from major institutions so the argument that one is smarter than the other is silly. the real point is that shrub and the repubs had people working for them who seriously believed that since the rapture is coming anyway, there is no reason not to let the world and its unlucky teeming masses outside america just rot, since it is going to end in the great tribulation anyways. the repubs plainly despise people who are less fortunate than they are. hate gets old. less hate, a little more fairness and a little more hope is what the doctor ordered. some crumbs to go to the working class can't hurt anybody.

I am a hoper topic

Remembrance and Hope :The full text of his speech. I will pass on Glenn.

Given that you've posted anti-immigrant threads that were written by other people (in fact, written by other people talking about Bush and then exapted by anti-Obama Republicans), I'd like to see the source for your list of "if Bush did it".

As for whether it's wise to miss Bush - NO. His negligence contributed significantly to the Depression and it's about time you stop fantasizing that a change in administration suddenly un-does the bad of the former. Presidents don't start with a blank slate and while Obama would've been wise to start working on the economy from day one with a massive, direct government employing, green publics works program rather than compromising with your ideological fellow travellers, that does not negate the fact 8 years of Bush fiscal policy ruined America.

Last edited by Master_Pedant on 12 Sep 2010, 8:06 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Not a Depression - yet. But give Obama some time and it will be.

ruveyn

The distinction is vague to nonexistent. The US has been set back for several years and the standard of living has permanently declined. That's enough to make a Depression in my books.

http://economics.about.com/cs/businessc ... ssions.htm