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It made me chuckle.
It also made me cry, because it has truth to it.

MaryHunter, I understand that this site is made of a deep seeded hatred towards Obama and to anyone that doesn't kowtow to the opposition of the left.
Yet, ideologies aside, partisan issues notwithstanding, and forget previous shortcomings of either party, are you really as blind as this thread indicates? Seriously.

Ok, I know that we're supposed to pretend that everything bad in the world started on 1-21-09 and accordingly is to be blamed on the administration in charge from said date. Also, I know it's some mortal sin here to cry "Bush".

However, blame it on who you will, on 1-21-09 we were faced with an economic crisis, an escalating debt, two wars, a housing crisis, a health care crisis, a failing energy policy, and a job market in gone to hell. We were faced with nothing short of a disaster for the United States on practically every front. Now, look at today in comparison. There's overwhelming evidence that the stimulus, combined with the bank bailout package, prevented an economic depression. Should the stimulus have been larger? Pundits and policymakers will forever argue the $ amount and the implementation but few mainstream economists seriously dispute that Obama's decisive action prevented a much deeper downturn and restored economic growth in the third quarter. The New York Times recently quoted Mark Zandi, who was one of candidate John McCain's economic advisers, on this point: "The stimulus is doing what it was supposed to do -- it is contributing to ending the recession," he said. "In my view, without the stimulus, G.D.P would still be negative and unemployment would be firmly over 11 percent." Yeah, I know that you may not be too keen on Zandi from the NYTimes but again, that's the consensus of mainstream economists.

The nature of this site seems to be to join with the party of "no" and do nothing, offer nothing, and obstruct anything constructive. It seems to be the belief that as long as you can root for failure and even if you have to invent failure, it's some sort of win for you.

And Evil Otto, that's a long winded post and should give you plenty of ammo to slice and dice and manipulate into an extremely long distraction. Have at it. I won't read the first word.

Hey, it doesn't have to be evil otto, any of us can step up to this.

How has the economic crisis or escalating debt, the housing crisis or any of that changed? Especially the debt. How has the "stimulus" changed any of it? What money has been spent that "created" or even "saved" jobs? Overwhelming evidence? I don't see anything that could even be considered favorable. What is it?

Yes, we say no. It's far from that to say we're obstructing something "constructive". We're obstructing something we consider to be destructive. Sometimes nothing IS better than "something". To us, it's obvious that this is one of those times.

The "consensus" of mainstream economists is as valuable as the "consensis" of environmental scientists. Most of them have an agenda one way or the other. I see the unemployment rate continuing to rise. Employers may be squeezing what workers they have, but they're not hiring new ones. Why would they?

My objection to Otto, Evil, isn't that he/she "steps up" but rather the mundane multi-thousand word copy and paste only to reply with rhetorical gibberish to each word/sentence/phrase that ultimately evades the topic. Of coarse, that's the goal.

You seem to be in denial of the consequences on no action. I often read here about the "cost" or the "spending" of health care reform but no one dares address the "cost" or the "spending" involved in turning a blind eye or just kicking the can down the road. No one here wants to offer any suggestions on how the disaster Obama inherited could have been at least held in check without "spending" or how much it would "cost" to get us out of the mess. Many here want to pretend that the Bush/GOP irresponsibility was a "passing trend" or a "cycle" and much like any recession in history, would have or could have went through a "phase". That defies rational understanding of economics and history.

Bobby Jindal, Mitch McConnell, Saxby Chambliss, Johnny Isakson, and Texas Gov. Rick Perry all have two things in common -- they (1) railed against recovery efforts, rejecting the very idea of government spending improving the economy; and (2) later discovered they liked stimulus spending after all, and felt it was important to help the economy in their state.

And just to get a few wingnuts stirred up, Obama may soon be able to point to his first 12 months in office and say he approved most progressive budget bill in a generation, got a Supreme Court nominee confirmed, lifted the ban on stem-cell research, passed a national service bill, passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, passed new regulations of the credit card industry, passed new regulation of the tobacco industry, achieved some key counter-terrorism successes, and helped improve the nation's standing on the world stage.
And with rescuing the economy from a depression and passing the health care reform bill Americans have been waiting decades, he'll blow the GOP out of the water in 2012.

"Most progressive" budget bill? Most expensive? Most debt increasing? And... where did the money go? A bunch of imaginary congressional districts? How about most criminal? That would be the best description. "Got a Supreme Court nominee confirmed"? What was the las president who didn't? And What is the real pedigree of this statist freak the congress bent over and passed for him, like they bent over and passed the porkulus without reading it?

The rest of that nonsense... trivial stuff with a sympathetic congress, but... counter terrorism success? He's been systematically gutting the capability of the CIA and FBI. It's merely coincidental that they've still been able to catch anything going on, and the nation's standing? Are you farkin kidding me? By what, bowing?

If anything he's ensured that our recession will become a depression, if it hasn't already, and IF that healthcare debacle passes it will be the death of the Rats for the forseeable future. Look at the polls. We (the US public) do not want it regardless what you lefty elitists think. Try to wrap your tiny mind around that.

Posted by: andy42302 at December 6, 2009 2:53 PM
Posted by: andy42302 at December 6, 2009 5:11 PM

Andy, your dreams of an Obama recovery are about as misguided as the continual lust of RINOs for pork. Read your history, my friend. We're looking at Jimmy Carter on steroids here. Only reason we don't have a monstrous Misery Index higher than Carter's is that inflation hasn't kicked in… yet. What's the money supply at now, I forget… oh yea, a gazillion times higher than it was 2-3 years ago. Thanks Ben, Bush, Tim, and Barack. Meanwhile, even the Chinese are leery about buying our debt.

And, all those "crises" you rattled off up there:

housing crisis came about because of failed Democrat policies started with Clinton and fueled by Frank, Dodd, etc. Period.

escalating debt started with Bush being hoodwinked with a misguided belief that we could bail out corporations (AIG, Chrysler, GM all took lots and went to trough for more and more, like crack addicts). B. Hussein took Bush's opening as the money pusher and ran with it. Result: 12+ trillion dollars in debt over the next 10 or so years and counting, kicking the can to our kids and grandkids.

healthcare crisis - what healthcare crisis? You want to see a HC crisis, look at the UK, there've been many posts here on that. The only crisis is the one Statist Democrats want us to believe needs to be FIXED RIGHT NOW OR WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE. Nonsense.

failing energy policy could have been easily addressed by Bush and Congress by getting started on drilling, baby, drilling, for oil and natural gas, to get us off the foreign oil nipple. And don't even try go bring up 'green' AGW crap, the swindle is unraveling.

jobs market gone to hell, mostly in the last 9 months, and passing the Porkulus was supposed to keep unemployment at 8 percent, tops. How did that work out? The slight downtick from 10.2 to 10% unemp in Nov was only because of temporary hires for the holiday season; full time positions were down bigtime, that wasn't reported.

Just because Obama, Bush, etc. say something needs to "be done" doesn't mean that whatever they did was the right thing. At least Bush gave us tax cuts that actually stimulated the economy and increased revenues, just as Reagan and Kennedy did. It seems that Obama's Hopey-Changey aim is to utterly destroy the American economy so he can allow Government to swoop down and take over everything, even our bodies.

And how are you going to create more jobs, o socialists: tax employers more? Allow the Bush tax cuts to expire? Keep our corporate tax rate among the highest in the planet? force employers to either offer health insurance to employees or penalize them?

What are the unemployment rates in France, UK, Germany, Spain, Italy etc? How long have they been that way? (homework assignment) And, OBama wants to make us more like them?!

BHO supporters: would YOU hire someone in this climate, with such uncertainty as to what Big Brother is going to do next, cap and trade or health care or the next thing, to increase your costs and tax your profits?

Oh yea, I forgot, profits = evil. Employers should stop being so obsessedd w/profits and just hire people. Obama said so last week.

pomolom, while I'll concede that your housing crises finger pointing to Dems has some merit, the rest of your response is utter nonsense.

The debt (national and budget deficit) from the time Bosh took over from when he left was a total disgrace. Do I really need to give you those figures? And don't start the crap about the dems taking over in 06 unless you can at least give me a piece of legislation that they can be blamed for.

Health Care- if you think everything is fine and that the rest of the world is jealous of our heath system, then your blinders are too embedded in your head for rational discussion. If we do nothing, there will be a $10 trillion tab for tax payers to pick up over the next decade.

failing energy policy/drill baby drill. This has been debated to death and most everyone from Bush, the oil companies, Palin, McConnell, and so on have conceded that this would only deduce the price at our pumps by less than 3%. We don't have the oil capacity to drill our way out and shale oil is of such low quality, it will not help the consumers, ONLY THE OIL COMPANIES. Everyone knows this but you still parrot debunked nonsense. WTF?

Have you looked at last months job reports? Did you see them when Bush left office? I just don't understand how you can sit back and blame Obama.

"Drill baby drill" is one of the dumbest things in 40 years. Andy is correct, it does not help our country. Under current regulation and enviromental standards it is oil that would be sold overseas anyway.

You do realize that Obama has done more to increase the deficit since he took office than Bush did for two terms, don't you andy? I'm not defending Bush's spending record, just pointing out that you can't attack Bush on that point without attacking Obama even more forcefully.

"Drill baby drill" is one of the dumbest things in 40 years. Andy is correct, it does not help our country. Under current regulation and enviromental standards it is oil that would be sold overseas anyway.

Huh?

I thought one of the standard liberal talking points referred to our addiction to imported oil.

Alaska, one of the few places in America where energy production is permitted, is running a state budget surplus greater than the entire state budget, thanks mostly to state royalties on energy.

Each year, Alaskans get a sizable check representing their share of the profit on the state's energy investment trust fund.

All of this is in spite of 50 years of liberals doing everything in their power to block energy development.

Imagine if energy development was welcome all throughout the US. Not only would government have hundreds of billions of dollars in royalties due every year, which it could then invest in a serious program to develop energy independence, but Americans would also have meaningful, high-paying jobs, instead of unemployment checks and government cheese brought on by a recession caused by decades of compounded liberal policies.