America is so over Obama. In 2008, the media and a majority of the voters were head-over-heels in love with the man who told them that “yes, we can” overcome war and recession.
By 2012, the amour had cooled but they were willing to give four more years to the guy who was – if nothing else – way hotter than Mitt Romney.
But now it’s 2014 and the passion is totally gone. Obama is the withholding boyfriend who knows that he’s probably on the way out and is just sending the odd friendly text message from the golf course. If this relationship-breakdown metaphor seems a little strained consider this: Barack Obama is close to having played more rounds of golf since 2009 than Tiger Woods.
America would happily kick him to the curb, but he can’t run again in 2016 – so these midterm elections are the chance to send a message of complaint.
The Republicans won’t get a landslide (for reasons I’ll touch upon later), but if they do perform well then it’s worth noting that voters aren’t just being petty and spiteful to the President and his party. They have sound reasons to be angry about the Democrat record.
It’s true that unemployment has fallen to its lowest point since Obama took office, but that’s actually coincided with a collapse in his approval ratings: joblessness has dipped below 6 per cent, but 53 per cent of Americans think Obama is doing a bad job with the economy.
The reason? Quality of life is poor. Starting at the very bottom, poverty levels point to stagnation. In January 2009 the poverty rate stood at 14.3 per cent. It rose to around 15 per cent and then fell back down in 2013 to 14.5 per cent (but the actual number of those in poverty remained the same from 2012). Things are worse for black Americans, whose poverty rate has risen in that same period from 25.8 per cent to 27.2 per cent.
This line jumped out:
Quixotic, yeah.
How not to get a headache while trying to juggle an ”open borders, dreamers, multiculturalism” with quarantining brown-skinned immigrants or their ”heroic” health care messiahs?
Vacillating, yup.
It hurts one’s brain to try to support Muslim Brotherhood’ers when one of them leads ISIS.
And when there are Kurds, Parshmurgahs who the world is rooting for in fighting ISIS while you sit on your hands.
So far Obama hasn’t launched any $4 Trillion wars that have left far more regional instability in their wake that was there to begin with. Nor have his policies set America up for the worst and most prolonged economic crash since the Great Depression; rather, his policies kept state governments and millions of struggling families afloat during the worst of it (which republican politicians that availed themselves of Stimulus funds refuse to acknowledge) and have led to economic recovery. Anyone suggesting that the U.S. economy is in greater danger or worse shape now than it was from mid-2007 through mid-2009 must not have been paying close attention.
Has the ebola crisis has been mishandled? If so, how do we account for the fact that a U.S. ebola epidemic isn’t happening, and isn’t going to happen? That situation has pretty much been under control from the beginning. There was already an infectious disease protocol in place which has been rapidly adjusted as developments required. The epidemic is being fought off overseas, at the source. That, the most proactive and most effective approach to keeping the nation safe, has been criticized by Obama’s opponents. I’m glad they weren’t calling the shots.
@Greg:
Iraq was stable before Obama destabilized it.
What policies would those be? Can you name any? It was the liberal social engineering of the Community Reinvestment Act that caused the economic crisis. Carter and Clinton…. and Obama wants to reinstitute it.
Have you happened to have noticed what happens to the economy when the possibility that the government will stop printing billions of dollars and dumping them into the investment markets? This economy is handing on by its fingernails, is stagnant and the only reason unemployment is not 12 percent is because so many have given up looking for a job.
Ah, you aren’t from Texas. We’ve had three cases, spawned by one illegal traveler that Obama let in. More cases in New York. When 150 or so are coming in from the infected regions every day (including medical personnel that are supposed to know better) and mingling with the unsuspecting public, how can you possibly say that an outbreak “isn’t going to happen”? Based on what, Obama’s proven capabilities of handling a crisis and keeping them from spiraling out of control?
The greatest risk we face is an absence of leadership, a risk made greater due to there having been no leadership for 6 years. Just golf, vacations, campaigning and fund raisers.
@Greg: Greggie Greggie Greggie, try and focus on the article. Your Black Messiah has failed America “period”! Even Democrats believe our country is headed in the wrong direction!! Your blame Bush crap really gets old!! Sadly that’s all you have left after Republicans take back the Senate!!
Obama’s ”policy” about ebole-exposed medical workers coming in from West Africa is odd.
On the one hand he claims it is ”scientific.”
Yet, during the same speech (today at 1pm EST) he also claimed it was individually tailored for each and every person coming in!
So, he’s doing what?
So far we’ve seen that medical workers are batting 0.000 in terms of truthfulness about their ebola situations.
They have – each and every one of them – put their own selfish interests ahead of the public health.
Whether it was so they could travel for a wedding, party with friends, or simply go out for soup each one took advantage of a ‘voluntary quarantine,” to go out and potentially infect strangers.
But Obama is willing to take their word for it when they say, despite thermometers to the contrary, that they feel fine.
YIKES.
How is this ”scientific?”
@Bill, #3:
About as stable as a house of cards. Stable things don’t fall apart when you stop holding them together.
I did already. The Stimulus Program. The injection of funds kept the slowing wheels of the U.S. economy from stalling out completely, while providing relief to the unemployed and to state and local governments all across the nation. How many more large and small businesses would have vanished, had that money not been available to be spent on their goods and services? Stimulus put the brakes on an economic death spiral. The less that was being spent, the greater the number of jobs and businesses that were being lost. The greater the number of jobs and businesses lost, the greater the decline in spending. It was a vicious cycle, of the same sort that led to The Great Depression. We narrowly dodged the bullet. People seem to forget just how close we came to both a national and a global economic catastrophe.
@Common+Sense, #4:
The expression “Your Black Messiah” reveals a lot. Just not about me.
@Greg: Greggie Greggie, thanks for reading my post. To bad you didn’t read the article!! It talks about the President you voted for who is Black BTW and how he has failed!! Somehow you must have thought it was about President Bush but NO it was NOT!! I seriously doubt that if we would have had a real President vs. your Black Messiah that the Middle East would be in as much turmoil as it is now. How you coming on proving that Romney lied on his taxes as you supported Slimy Harry on the floor of the Senate? Still waiting but I’m sure you will NOT supp0rt yours or his lies!! Greggie, did President Obama tell the American People that if you like your health insurance and/or doctor you could keep them “period”?? He says he did and has apologized but I would like to know if you think he lied??
@Bill, #3:
There have been some very serious problems over the past 6 years. More than many past presidents have had to deal with. It’s been trouble from day one. Obama walked into the middle of two ongoing wars and an economic meltdown-in-progress. The opportunities for disastrous errors in judgement have been plentiful. I think he’s done well, all considered.
One of those considerations is that the opposing party has done everything humanly possible to undermine public confidence in their leader and to derail his every effort. We’ve got a political faction that openly stated from the git-go that their primary mission was to assure the President’s failure. I still find that statement of intent hard to believe, despite 6 years of evidence that they meant exactly what they said.
@Greg: Hold on there Greggie, Democrats controlled all branches of government when President Obola was elected, let’s not get carried away here!! Also the Republican led House has passed over 350 bills that still sit on Slimy Harry’s desk!! You should really pay attention!!
@Common+Sense, #9:
The total is 387, actually. Here’s a list of them.
Republicans are waving the current number around as if it actually means something. The thing is, having hundreds of bills that have been passed by the House expire without action by the Senate at the end of each Senate term is not unusual. Rather, it’s the normal situation, and has been for a long time.
Here’s a chart showing the number of such bills at the end of each Senate term from the 94th Senate to the 113th. It’s from an August article that appeared in the Washington Post.
As you can see from the chart, hundreds of bills passed by the House normally expire in the Senate in every term without being voted on, regardless of which party holds the majority. That isn’t what accounts for the lack of productivity of Congress as a whole. They’ve passed fewer bills in both Houses than any Congress in recent memory. This chart tells that story very clearly. The Legislative Branch has become mostly dysfunctional. I don’t know where they get off claiming that the Executive Branch is dysfunctional. The Executive Branch is actually running the country. It’s actually dealing with threats and problems on a daily basis, most often in the face of Congressional resistance. Admittedly the resistance is mostly political rhetoric. They can blow hot air, posture, and expound, provided they aren’t expected to act.
@Greg:
If the stimulus did such a great job, why has the number of food stamp recipients essentially doubled since Obama took office?
What is the reason for Obama’s approval rating being 38-39% in the most recent polls? If he has done such a fantastic job, why is he so low in the polls?
If Obama has done such a good.job, why are democrat politicians running for office (like Grimes and Hagan) refusing to answer whether or not they voted for Obama?
If Obama’s keynesian economic policies are so darned wonderful, why has the middle class seen a $5000 decrease in annual income from the median since Obama took office, despite the stimulus?
@Greg:
Obama did not have opposition party operatives going to foreign heads of state trying to undermine his policies like Reagan had with Kennedy. Obama has had 6 years of media cheerleading, and has still been the worst president in history. Hell, Obama makes the Carter administration look competent.
Guys, You can not argue with a stump and expect a real answer!
@Randy:
Why would you insult stumps by comparing them to Greggie?
@Pete, #11:
Increased enrollment resulted from the recession and unemployment, combined with state changes in eligibility requirements. The fact that real wages haven’t increased for working class Americans for 40 consecutive years might also have something to do with it.
I really don’t know. The national economy has been growing each year since 2009. (It’s interesting to compare real GDP growth during the Bush years with the Obama years. What the numbers reveal might surprise a lot of people.) Corporate profits were setting records month after month, year after year. Where do you suppose all that money went? It certainly didn’t go to America’s poor or to American wage earners.
@Greg:
Ding! Ding! Ding! Glad you finally confessed that both Biden an Obama lied when touting pulling the troops out (what was holding the house together) and created this chaos. No argument from anyone that Iraq was ready to go it alone; the argument is that it was stupid to not leave the residual force EVERY ADVISER with a lick of sense recommended.
Nice try, Marshal of Dodge City, but not the answer to the question I asked. Name one of those onerous BUSH policies that brought about the economic disaster. I, however, will respond to your contention; the “stimulus” was a resounding failure, at least as far as stimulating the economy goes; all it stimulated was political support for Obama by way of taxpayer funded pay-backs. However, there were no “shovel-ready” jobs (“I guess they weren’t as shovel-ready as we thought… ha, ha, ha”) and, in fact, Obama intended to get another one but this is one of those bills laying dormant on Reid’s desk.
#8
You think what Obama faced was worse than what Bush faced? Three recessions and 9/11? Obama has faced some tough issues, for sure, but they have mostly been of his own making. Deepwater Horizon, Fast and Furious, Benghazi, IRS, ISIS, Ebola over here, 10.2% unemployment, a stagnant economy, racial tensions…. all Obama’s children spawned by his policies and agenda. Several of them, Fast and Furious, IRS and racial tensions, are intentional creations that happened to get out of control. Yes, the nation faces a great threat and we are to rely on the least reliable, capable and determined person we have ever had in the White House.
#10
It doesn’t matter if the House only moved one bill to the Senate; if the Senate just sits on it, the Senate is the problem. And then, if the Senate blames Republicans for obstruction, we then know that the Senate is blocking the legislation for purely political reasons, causing the public to suffer because the Democrats have no accomplishment to campaign on so they have to vilify the Republicans.
Remember the last government shut down? Obama had to impose artificial pain on the public so they would notice the government was not on the job of controlling their lives and that the Republicans were the cause; both false premises.
#15
As the title above says, Greg, the numbers don’t lie. The economy has been in doldrums, stagnant and anxious. Obama’s regulations and taxes have stopped growth and driven business overseas. The middle class has lost $20,000 in asset value under Obama while the “wealth inequality” has grown.
And this, Greg, all occurred during Obama’s productive years; what will happen during his lame duck 2 years? Sheesh.
No Democrat is running this year on the coat tails of Hope and Change. That phrase is pretty much buried. It’s not that the country is clamoring for Republicans. It’s that many have now fully awakened from their failed projection of what they thought Obama would be or represent. Reality can only be denied for so long.
The country is seeing what happens when we elect someone with no real qualifications for the job he got. Just ask his supporters what qualifications he had or what he had done that prepared him for the job he sought and then sit back and enjoy the silence. He is just a far left ideologue in a country that isn’t all that far left. But to the hard core supporters he has left it will always be someone else’s fault or he had it tougher than anyone else. All of this is pure BS. He knew the shape of the country when he ran for President so the fact is if he didn’t want the job then he should not have run for it. His best skill is reading prepared text from a teleprompter.
Opinions appear to vary:
14 Facts About The Obama Presidency That Most People Don’t Know, with links to their sources.
Here’s a quick-list of the 14 claims the article makes:
1. We’ve now had 63 straight months of economic expansion.
2. We are currently enjoying the longest period of private sector job creation in American history.
3. Unemployment has dropped from 10.1% in October of 2009 to 5.9% and projected to reach 5.4% by summer of 2015.
4. The stock market continues to set new records since President Obama has been in office.
5. The Federal budget deficit is shrinking. It’s been reduced by two-thirds since 2009.
6. Under President Obama, spending has increased only 1.4% annually, the lowest rate since Eisenhower was president.
7. For 95% of American taxpayers, income taxes are lower now than just about any time in the previous 50 years.
8. Our dependence on foreign oil has shrunk due to record domestic oil production and improved fuel efficiency standards.
9. At least 7 million more Americans now have health insurance than before.
10. The Affordable Care Act has added years to the life of Medicare.
11. Since passage of the Affordable Care Act, we are seeing the slowest rate of increase in healthcare costs since 1960.
12. We currently have fewer soldiers, sailors and airmen in war zones than any time in over 10 years.
13. There have been zero successful attacks by al Qaeda on US soil since Obama became president.
14. We now successfully catch and deport more illegal immigrants than ever before.
@Greg:
So.corporate profits – per your cited website – increased under Obama…but the middle class got squeezed more as shown by the over $5000 decrease in the median income….and you think that makes Obama’s economic policies better?
Governmemt doesn’t produce wealth. It only confiscates it from those who earn, to give to political cronies, and drips out paltry amounts to buy the votes of the uneducated.
Back on the thread topic…..you did see the report that came out today showing that 25% of physicians state they will not accept obamacare in 2015, right?
@Greg:
Your post is ridiculous. The very first point is a gross bit of bogus propaganda. Forbes reported the GDP from 2008-2013 was 0.73%, the worst since the great depression. This report was based on data from the CBO, hardly a right wing organization. Your second point is counting PART-TIME job numbers to make such a disingenuous claim, which anyone looking at the workforce numbers falling back to 1970s levels can see.
Your third point is based on cooked unemployment figures, again deceptively counting part-time employment as equivalent to full time employment. The alleged 1.4% annual federal spending increase does not take into account the increase of the national debt under Obama by roughly 70%. The increased domestic energy production has been in spite of Obama, occuring only on privately held lands, and due in large part to fracking which the left opposes. At least 6 million people are about to lose their health insurance after the election in spite of being lied to that they would get to keep their insurance if they liked it. The estimates are that obamacare insurance rates will increase by a staggering 14% in 2015. The removal of US troops from Iraq has resulted in the brutal rise of ISIS. Considering that Hassan was in communication with Al Qaeda prior to his muslim terrorist attack at Ft Hood, there absolutely has been Al.Qaeda associated terrorism in the US during Obama’s term, and there was that little terrorist party in Benghazi during Obama’s term. And Obama just let 30-40 thousand illegals into the US this summer, and is threatening to push through amnesty via executive fiat after the elections next week. Russia successfully took over the Crimea on Obama’s watch, and we have a high level Obama official – rumored to be the snivelling coward Kerry – calling the leader of the only democracy in the middle east a “chickenshit.”
Yeah…pushing bogus numbers of a deceitful propaganda narrative isn’t going to change the tide of an election in a time of such pathetic incompetency by arguably the worst president in US history. Chamberlain arrogantly said his worthless peace of paper meant “peace in our time”. His bogus claims didn’t have any more validity than the leftist agitprop you keep pushing.
@Pete, #19:
I’m not sure how such a claim even make sense. Obamacare isn’t a particular health insurance plan or a particular health insurance company.
What seems ridiculous to me is the assertion that things have gotten worse under Obama than they were during the last couple of years of the Bush administration.
@Greg:
That would be the last year of the Bush administration. For the rest of that administration, we had growth, despite a recession in 2000 (inherited from Clinton?) and then another in 2001 due to the 9/11 attacks. Low unemployment and high productivity marked the Bush administration (note you have yet to reveal what those “economic policies” of Bush’s that caused, in the narrative of blame of the left, the recession of 2007-2014.
The housing market collapse was well underway by mid-2007. Technically, of course, economists tell us recession that followed didn’t begin until the last quarter of 2007, so I’ll concede the point. Everything was great until 2008.
(See Real GDP Growth Under George W Bush. The chart, which can be found about 1/3 of the way down the page, clearly shows that a marked downward trend in GDP growth began around 2004. The picture was not really as rosy as it seemed. Excessive personal borrowing was sustaining consumer spending; a lot of people imagined they were flush owing to the housing bubble. On top of that we had the Bush tax cuts, which was simply another version of economic stimulus at the expense of rising public debt. The binge turned into a total bust in 2008.)
And the housing bubble and financial crash was brought about by the Community Reinvestment Act.