Part 2 of 2:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Big Sarge
Remember when he called Bush un-american for having a 5.4 trillion debt during his 8 years?
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Not exactly, but close enough. Here's the full quote, made while he was still candidate Obama, not President Obama:
The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion for the first 42 presidents – #43 added $4 trillion by his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back — $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That’s irresponsible. It’s unpatriotic.
Now that sure seems damning if President Obama and his policies had actually done worse. But have they? The number is higher, but why? From Politifact again:
Both figures are staggering, but are not entirely Obama’s fault. As we’ve often noted, the FY2009 federal deficit was running at a rate of $1.2 trillion on the day he took office in the midst of a financial crisis.
So if you step into office and the deficit (the difference between what you're spending and what you're bringing in) is averaging $1.2 trillion a year because of spending bills and budgets that were passed before you even took office, you can't really be said to have
caused all of the increase in the debt.
But if you're the president who put two multitrillion-dollar wars on the nation's credit card, hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans on the nation's credit card, and lied to the United States Congress to get them to pass a massive giveaway to the Pharmaceutical industry that you put on the nation's credit card,
then left all those obligations in place still racking up the debt for the next guy who steps in ("Just two policies dating from the Bush Administration — tax cuts and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — accounted for over $500 billion of the deficit in 2009 and will account for almost $7 trillion in deficits in 2009 through 2019, including the associated debt-service costs.), I think you can rightly be blamed for being irresponsible and unpatriotic.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Big Sarge
What is the debt now? I wish all of you would truthfully ask yourselves would you have cut a Republican president this much slack??
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I'd like you to ask yourself why you've cut Republican President George W. Bush and his Republican Congress this much slack for the trillions of dollars of debt
his and their policies and actions have saddled this country with, making it that much harder for
any president of
any political party to make the slightest bit of headway against. How do you think a President McCain might have changed our nation's spending and tax revenue structure so that we could stop the still-current bleeding caused by the irresponsible wars, tax cuts and corporate giveaways Bush put on our credit card?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Big Sarge
Hmm, I thought Obama was at the helm when our country was downgraded.
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John Boehner was at the helm of the branch of government that was held responsible for said downgrade.
“The statutory debt ceiling and the threat of default have become political bargaining chips in the debate over fiscal policy. Despite this year’s wide-ranging debate, in our view, the differences between political parties have proven to be extraordinarily difficult to bridge, and, as we see it, the resulting agreement fell well short of the comprehensive fiscal consolidation program that some proponents had envisaged until quite recently.”
You remember who was threatening to default on our obligations and actually shut the government down rather than raise the debt ceiling, right? That would be the irresponsible actors in Congress, I'm afraid.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Big Sarge
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What I find most interesting is that that pretty little graphic fails to find fault with either Reagan (who more than doubled the debt and stole from the Social Security Trust Fund to pay for his tax cuts) or GW Bush, who did worse, then adds an adorable little color block of a "projection" just to make President Obama's numbers appear that much worse than Bush's actual numbers. Not to mention completely ignoring the source for the ongoing rise in the debt, which is a combination of the still-not-closed gap between spending and income which causes a deficit in our annual budget (something President Clinton left in a state of surplus) and -- again -- two unfunded wars, unfunded tax breaks for the wealthy and an unfunded giveaway to Big Pharma which are all still costing us major bucks for. Seriously, that's just precious.
Quote:
Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce
Of the 206 million eligible voters, 70 million are not registered. Then 63% of the registered voters stayed home, or pushed the "fuck you" button.
So the Republicans got a little over half about 54 million votes cast. That's the "American public" you speak of? Have some more Kool-Aid.
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That doesn't even take gerrymandered districts into consideration. In 2012, Democrats cast 1.7 million more votes for Congress nationwide, but
lost seats to Republicans because of gerrymandered districts. And while Democrats did not out-vote Republicans with raw numbers in this most recent election cycle, gerrymandering gave Republicans 57% of the seats up for re-election even though they only received barely more than half the votes: 52%.
And let's not forget all the states where strict voter ID laws had a negative impact on Democratic turnout. Or the fact that by mere chance, there were more Senate elections in Red states than in Blue.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Big Sarge
Obama killed Osama?? He was the number 1 in the stack & pulled the trigger?? A man with no military service who has ravaged our senior command? Now y'all must be snorting your koolaid. Osama was eliminated due to the efforts of the intelligence community that culminated with a tactical excision. I think Admiral McRaven was responsible for planning and executing the mission. Obama watched a computer screen.
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Come on now. That's just a silly argument and I believe you know it. How about we put it another way: President Obama made it his mission to have his network root out bin Laden's location, then gave the order to have his ass killed. George W. Bush, on the other hand, "really didn't think about him that much."
Bush told conservative Weekly Standard editor Fred Barnes that "bin Laden doesn’t fit with the administration’s strategy for combating terrorism." And in a subsequent press conference he scolded us for not "understand[ing] the scope of the mission" because bin Laden was just "one person" whom he "really just [didn't] spend that much time on." His exact words:
Who knows if he’s hiding in some cave or not. We haven’t heard from him in a long time. The idea of focusing on one person really indicates to me people don’t understand the scope of the mission. Terror is bigger than one person. He’s just a person who’s been marginalized. … I don’t know where he is. I really just don’t spend that much time on him, to be honest with you.
You preferred that tactic over the one President Obama employed: Having him hunted down and his ass shot dead?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Big Sarge
Our Glorious Leader has saved the economy and the unemployment rate is shrinking. Wait a minute, we might need to check that.
Here is the stunning statistic on the economy that tells the whole story about why we aren’t growing faster. Since Barack Obama entered the Oval Office in January of 2009,the percentage of the working age population actually part of the labor force (either working or looking for work) has plummeted by 3 percentage points – to 62.7%.
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While interesting, it fails to account for a single reason that might be the case, merely laying the entirety of the blame at the feet of this president. Allow me to explain the majority of the reason why today's workforce is smaller than that of 1978:
One big reason the participation rate dropped involves long-run demographic trends that have nothing to do with the current economy. Baby boomers are starting to retire en masse, which means that there are fewer eligible American workers.
Demographics have always played a big role in the rise and fall of the labor force. Between 1960 and 2000, the labor force in the United States surged from 59 percent to a peak of 67.3 percent. That was largely due to the fact that more women were entering the labor force while improvements in health and information technology allowed Americans to work more years.
But since 2000, the labor force rate has been steadily declining as the baby-boom generation has been retiring. Because of this, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago expects the labor force participation rate to be lower in 2020 than it is today, regardless of how well the economy does.
Maybe we should check some of Glorious Leader's accomplishments a little closer.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevemoo...e-found-a-job/[/quote] Will you please stop with the insulting names for your president? It's really unbecoming and officer and a gentleman.
I hope at least some of this insight has been edifying for you.
Jill