No I'm pretty sure they grabbed every bit of praise they could for that part of it. It's the 'damage' part they said wouldn't happen and now, looky looky, he was on the payroll of companies that benefited from those lies...
the US was practically at rock bottom when he took over
Well thanks to Obama's policies it was, but there was no guarantee it wasn't getting much much worse. Given the trends, it wasn't looking good.
ANY president in that situation could "show improvement" over a 4 year period
Apparently not Bush. He was handed a functioning, growing economy in surplus and turned it into the worst recession and deficits in history. Hopefully you're not that old. Believe me when history will judge Bush as a fucking moron and Obama as a pretty decent president, if not one of the very good ones.
Nobody else faced the opposition he has faced. Literally the GOP met in Jan 2009 and decided to simply block *anything* he did. They've admitted that. Nobody has faced that. As much as liberals hated Bush, they didn't shut the government down to oppose him - or lower our credit rating - or risk the world economy holding it hostage for tax cuts for the rich...
Obama's done pretty well and frankly would have done better had he not caved on so many issues by starting in the middle and then negotiating to 75% of what the GOP wanted. He extended the hand of cooperation but we know now the GOP specifically wasn't going to let him get anything significant done. And yet he still did...
There was this thing called the RECESSION that has a tendency to reduce revenues collected by the government... Hence Obama was handed a larger deficit.
There was significantly less revenue coming in due the cratering economy and yet we still had the same bills to pay. You can claim Obama is spending like crazy, but he's also doing it while reducing the deficit.
Given that they didn't do anything too too crazy with the Batmobile, I'd guess they only needed one. The General Lee on the other hand launched across 50 foot chasms regularly...cars don't hold up very long like that;-)
If you look at job creation and when the stimulus ended, there's a clear drop in job creation showing that stimulus was working.
Bush had a surplus and a reasonably strong economy given to him and he turned it into massive deficits and the greatest recession since the Depression.
Obama is slowly working us out of that, though without literally *any* help from the GOP.
Currently, the FBI really only sticks its nose into people that have done something 'big.'
You're serious? You haven't seen the dozens of cases where the FBI manufactured a bombplot from some moron who chimed in on a 'shady' website that he wanted to bomb the US?
While true freedom is something to 'lose', it isn't for someone who would be an 'enemy of the state', which with a constructed identity and lack of anything else to 'lose' means, 'nothing to lose'; and a denied clearance.
Missed the deficit part. No he's not driving it higher. It has come down every year he's been in office. It STARTED high when he took office, but that's on Bush since Obama has no control over where he starts.
He's advocating spending because that's what you do in a recession. It's how you get out of a recession. When both the private sector and consumers are pulling back, what do you do? Just wait for it to correct itself? That will take a long time and be quite painful as revenues continue to fall.
Stimulus has the government step in and temporarily spend money, ideally that it needs to spend anyway, to provide demand for goods and services until the private sector and consumers catch back up.
And since we have literally trillions of dollars of infrastructure spending that we literally have to do anyway, do it now. Interest rates on debt are at historic lows, so borrowing is cheap. The returns on a functioning highway system are far and away more than the minor interest rate costs on that debt.
Or you could let infrastructure continue to deteriorate, further dampening economic output as roads aren't repaired as often and many other things aren't done that need to be done. Big cities traffic problems? Sorry, sit in traffic and waste time and money because we can't spend anything until you start making more money.
It's called Keynesian economics. You might want to look it up. It works, it's proven. Tax cuts for the wealthy is proven to NOT work. So lower taxes aren't the answer. If they were, we'd be doing great right now, because Obama has LOWERED taxes across the board from when he took office.
Some of that at the goading of the GOP to be sure, but when Obama suggested a payroll tax holiday the GOP was against it. Funny how they'll hold the country hostage to get millionaires a tax cut, but when Obama says give the little guy a significant cut, they oppose it.
Bin Laden is dead
Good job...but any president would have given the "go ahead"...and this hunt was started long before Obama got into office. Not really that big a trophy for him IMHO. Glad he did it..good job, but not the biggest trophy, he certainly had little personally to do with it overall.
Coming from Bush "I don't really think about Bin Laden much", that's a little hard to say with a straight face.
Not they way they did it...and the amount of new taxes involved in all of this, is going to start really hit the middle class in the next year or so
As opposed to flat out bankruptcies that were hitting more and more families as the cost of healthcare soared? Ask someone without healthcare which they'd rather have, lower taxes, or healthcare. You might be surprised if you step out of the bubble of FOX. And small businesses will LOVE this. Why? Because now they can offer plans competitive with big business that they couldn't before, thus attracting more skilled employees. Which since small business is the main job creator is a good thing isn't it?
Remember how they said this would be a 'job killer'? Pure FUD. The lower 'jobs' are because people would be able to retire earlier due to better healthcare options. And, hey, that's now an open job, so wouldn't that actually be 'creating' jobs since there's one open now that wouldn't be open for years?
Being denied coverage over pre-existing conditions. Again ask someone who had that problem, believe me, they'll take slightly higher taxes to get coverage.
Just like Romney who was totally against HCR, but then said, well I'll keep some of it, by which he meant most of it, nothing is free, but sometimes initial investments pay off through lower health care costs down the road.
Ending of Don't Ask Don't Tell?
Didn't care before, don't care now...don't see how this is really a positive for the military, and from those I know in it..they don't seem it as a net positive.
Funny how below you mention how discrimination hasn't been legal for a long time...except this example that you "don't care" about. Says volumes. They said it would ruin our military; it flatly hasn't. And since dozens of other countries allow it and haven't had any issues, it speaks to the true motivations of those decrying it...or if not that then their ability to understand the military. Neither paints them in a good light.
Wall Street Reform
Needed, but I'm not fully sure what good and bad was done here. Oversight needed, sure, but don't need to shackle with restraints that don't actually address the problems that caused the meltdown.
And just who was obstructing this reform hmm? Oh yes, the GOP. Was it perfect? No, doesn't go far enough. But you can't deny it was needed and was accomplished.
Iraq war ended
I'll be believe that when all our troops are out of there..I think it is ended in 'name only' at this point.
Aljazeera seems to think we're out. That liberal US loving outfit that they are.
Saved Auto industry
Sure...gave it a bailout and mostly gave control to the Unions, which were largely responsible for the bad shape the industry was in to begin with, AND bypassed laws that should have paid off people that were owed the debts first...there was a huge snafu on who got paid in what order and who got left out. I would have been better to let them go through controlled bankruptcy, and shed all the old contracts and start afresh. The auto industry is slowing movinig, but still shackled with unreasonable contracts with labor unions. Obama's bailout of the industry was nothing but a huge GIMME to the unions. It also represented a very uncomfortable intrusion of the Federal Govt into private business....bad precedent.
And just so we're clear, I never said the deficits were 'lower' under Obama, I said they were 'going down' with the unstated portion of 'since he's been president', since well, he didn't have much control over what Bush did.
If Obama had stayed with the Bush budget we'd be in a full blown depression right now. Google 'Bikini Graph' to see what Bush left Obama. We were losing 700,000+ jobs A MONTH at the end of Bush's term. In short order we had stopped that loss and started growing again, albeit slowly.
Borrowing money right now is as cheap as it ever has been. The 'cost' of deficit spending right now is literally trivial. Whereas reducing spending actually shrinks the economy. That million dollar contract that gets cancelled is literally a million dollars out of the economy. Not to mention the follow on effects as it spreads through the market. And it costs a few percentage points of that million dollars per year. Is it a long term solution? Of course not, but short term, you 'invest' in the economy and it will bounce back as there is now more 'demand' available.
IT's how Stimulus works. And for another example of Stimulus, look again at that Bikini Graph, notice a slight drop in the jobs under Obama? Guess when the stimulus money ended...
You do realize the deficit is going DOWN under Obama right? Funny how 'stimulus' creates revenue and all that.
As for policies, Obama has sadly continued many of Bush's ridiculous policies, but let's consider what else he's done:
Near universal health care coverage is somehow bad?
Ending of Don't Ask Don't Tell?
Bin Laden is dead
Wall Street Reform
Iraq war ended
Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act for women's equality
Saved Auto industry
Increased auto fuel economy standards
Reformed student loans saving 10s of millions of dollars a year
New START treaty
the list goes on...
All while facing lockstep opposition by the GOP to many of the THEIR OWN IDEAS; simply because they didn't want Obama and the Dem's to get any credit for fixing the problems caused by Bush and the GOP Congress of the early 2000s.
Google the 'Do Nothing Congress' as coined by Truman. They passed 800 bills. This current Congress passed 200... And yet Obama *still* got lots of things done.
Opposition is one thing, the wholesale obstruction of anything by the GOP is a tragedy we won't know the full effect of for a while.
Actually Yellowstone is 'relatively constant' it's why they understand it erupts every six-seven hundred thousand years and is in theory about due (very roundish). Since the amount of energy in the earth is relatively constant, the force outward of that pressure is likewise going to be relatively constant. Is it constant within a single century? Perhaps not. But over millennia? you bet.
Deccan Traps are a unique event, as evidenced by their prominence in history as one of the largest volcanic episodes we know of. Exceptions don't disprove the rule.
We certainly wouldn't be where we are today as the human race without fossil fuels. However, that 'externality' might just doom us and so, as you so eloquently put it,
"Any energy policy that wants to have any hope of success would do well to acknowledge the DISadvantages of fossil fuels."
Besides making cars electric lets us actually 'save' our oil and gas for important things...like the military and other things that simply have most stringent requirements than simply commuting to and from work.
Not hardly. Until there is a direct path to profits they won't touch anything at this scale.
The free market works well at driving down costs and rewarding short to medium term risks but long term is heavily frowned upon because it kills the bottom line.
Slashdot Mirror
No I'm pretty sure they grabbed every bit of praise they could for that part of it. It's the 'damage' part they said wouldn't happen and now, looky looky, he was on the payroll of companies that benefited from those lies...
They become more stable when you mix them together...
CE
ME
NT
CEMENT!
nah, the 'crap' is instantly informative and likewise instantly thrown away.
The stench of Win 8 will linger for literally years...
the US was practically at rock bottom when he took over
Well thanks to Obama's policies it was, but there was no guarantee it wasn't getting much much worse. Given the trends, it wasn't looking good.
ANY president in that situation could "show improvement" over a 4 year period
Apparently not Bush. He was handed a functioning, growing economy in surplus and turned it into the worst recession and deficits in history. Hopefully you're not that old. Believe me when history will judge Bush as a fucking moron and Obama as a pretty decent president, if not one of the very good ones.
Nobody else faced the opposition he has faced. Literally the GOP met in Jan 2009 and decided to simply block *anything* he did. They've admitted that. Nobody has faced that. As much as liberals hated Bush, they didn't shut the government down to oppose him - or lower our credit rating - or risk the world economy holding it hostage for tax cuts for the rich...
Obama's done pretty well and frankly would have done better had he not caved on so many issues by starting in the middle and then negotiating to 75% of what the GOP wanted. He extended the hand of cooperation but we know now the GOP specifically wasn't going to let him get anything significant done. And yet he still did...
There was this thing called the RECESSION that has a tendency to reduce revenues collected by the government... Hence Obama was handed a larger deficit.
There was significantly less revenue coming in due the cratering economy and yet we still had the same bills to pay. You can claim Obama is spending like crazy, but he's also doing it while reducing the deficit.
Also in the same way that Return of the Jedi didn't actually make a profit according to the LucasFilms...
Given that they didn't do anything too too crazy with the Batmobile, I'd guess they only needed one. The General Lee on the other hand launched across 50 foot chasms regularly...cars don't hold up very long like that ;-)
But it could be! ;-)
this is the slowest and most anemic recovery we've had from a recession since the Great Depression
And since this is quite clearly the worst recession we've had since the great depression, perhaps that follows?
Bush presided over the Slowest and Most Anemic job growth of any 2 term president since Eisenhower.
If you look at job creation and when the stimulus ended, there's a clear drop in job creation showing that stimulus was working.
Bush had a surplus and a reasonably strong economy given to him and he turned it into massive deficits and the greatest recession since the Depression.
Obama is slowly working us out of that, though without literally *any* help from the GOP.
Well there was this set of binders about you labelled 'Slashdot'... ;-)
Currently, the FBI really only sticks its nose into people that have done something 'big.'
You're serious? You haven't seen the dozens of cases where the FBI manufactured a bomb plot from some moron who chimed in on a 'shady' website that he wanted to bomb the US?
While true freedom is something to 'lose', it isn't for someone who would be an 'enemy of the state', which with a constructed identity and lack of anything else to 'lose' means, 'nothing to lose'; and a denied clearance.
Missed the deficit part. No he's not driving it higher. It has come down every year he's been in office. It STARTED high when he took office, but that's on Bush since Obama has no control over where he starts.
He's advocating spending because that's what you do in a recession. It's how you get out of a recession. When both the private sector and consumers are pulling back, what do you do? Just wait for it to correct itself? That will take a long time and be quite painful as revenues continue to fall.
Stimulus has the government step in and temporarily spend money, ideally that it needs to spend anyway, to provide demand for goods and services until the private sector and consumers catch back up.
And since we have literally trillions of dollars of infrastructure spending that we literally have to do anyway, do it now. Interest rates on debt are at historic lows, so borrowing is cheap. The returns on a functioning highway system are far and away more than the minor interest rate costs on that debt.
Or you could let infrastructure continue to deteriorate, further dampening economic output as roads aren't repaired as often and many other things aren't done that need to be done. Big cities traffic problems? Sorry, sit in traffic and waste time and money because we can't spend anything until you start making more money.
It's called Keynesian economics. You might want to look it up. It works, it's proven. Tax cuts for the wealthy is proven to NOT work. So lower taxes aren't the answer. If they were, we'd be doing great right now, because Obama has LOWERED taxes across the board from when he took office.
Some of that at the goading of the GOP to be sure, but when Obama suggested a payroll tax holiday the GOP was against it. Funny how they'll hold the country hostage to get millionaires a tax cut, but when Obama says give the little guy a significant cut, they oppose it.
Bin Laden is dead Good job...but any president would have given the "go ahead"...and this hunt was started long before Obama got into office. Not really that big a trophy for him IMHO. Glad he did it..good job, but not the biggest trophy, he certainly had little personally to do with it overall.
Coming from Bush "I don't really think about Bin Laden much", that's a little hard to say with a straight face.
Not they way they did it...and the amount of new taxes involved in all of this, is going to start really hit the middle class in the next year or so
As opposed to flat out bankruptcies that were hitting more and more families as the cost of healthcare soared? Ask someone without healthcare which they'd rather have, lower taxes, or healthcare. You might be surprised if you step out of the bubble of FOX. And small businesses will LOVE this. Why? Because now they can offer plans competitive with big business that they couldn't before, thus attracting more skilled employees. Which since small business is the main job creator is a good thing isn't it?
Remember how they said this would be a 'job killer'? Pure FUD. The lower 'jobs' are because people would be able to retire earlier due to better healthcare options. And, hey, that's now an open job, so wouldn't that actually be 'creating' jobs since there's one open now that wouldn't be open for years?
Being denied coverage over pre-existing conditions. Again ask someone who had that problem, believe me, they'll take slightly higher taxes to get coverage.
Just like Romney who was totally against HCR, but then said, well I'll keep some of it, by which he meant most of it, nothing is free, but sometimes initial investments pay off through lower health care costs down the road.
Ending of Don't Ask Don't Tell? Didn't care before, don't care now...don't see how this is really a positive for the military, and from those I know in it..they don't seem it as a net positive.
Funny how below you mention how discrimination hasn't been legal for a long time...except this example that you "don't care" about. Says volumes. They said it would ruin our military; it flatly hasn't. And since dozens of other countries allow it and haven't had any issues, it speaks to the true motivations of those decrying it...or if not that then their ability to understand the military. Neither paints them in a good light.
Wall Street Reform Needed, but I'm not fully sure what good and bad was done here. Oversight needed, sure, but don't need to shackle with restraints that don't actually address the problems that caused the meltdown.
And just who was obstructing this reform hmm? Oh yes, the GOP. Was it perfect? No, doesn't go far enough. But you can't deny it was needed and was accomplished.
Iraq war ended I'll be believe that when all our troops are out of there..I think it is ended in 'name only' at this point.
Aljazeera seems to think we're out. That liberal US loving outfit that they are.
Saved Auto industry Sure...gave it a bailout and mostly gave control to the Unions, which were largely responsible for the bad shape the industry was in to begin with, AND bypassed laws that should have paid off people that were owed the debts first...there was a huge snafu on who got paid in what order and who got left out. I would have been better to let them go through controlled bankruptcy, and shed all the old contracts and start afresh. The auto industry is slowing movinig, but still shackled with unreasonable contracts with labor unions. Obama's bailout of the industry was nothing but a huge GIMME to the unions. It also represented a very uncomfortable intrusion of the Federal Govt into private business....bad precedent.
Pure FU
And just so we're clear, I never said the deficits were 'lower' under Obama, I said they were 'going down' with the unstated portion of 'since he's been president', since well, he didn't have much control over what Bush did.
Ah, you're complaining that deficits are simply 'higher' under Obama? Funny how he was handed that higher deficit by Bush.
Under Obama deficits have been 1.4, 1.297, 1.3, 1.1 trillion.
It takes a special kind of stupid to not see that trend.
If Obama had stayed with the Bush budget we'd be in a full blown depression right now. Google 'Bikini Graph' to see what Bush left Obama. We were losing 700,000+ jobs A MONTH at the end of Bush's term. In short order we had stopped that loss and started growing again, albeit slowly.
Borrowing money right now is as cheap as it ever has been. The 'cost' of deficit spending right now is literally trivial. Whereas reducing spending actually shrinks the economy. That million dollar contract that gets cancelled is literally a million dollars out of the economy. Not to mention the follow on effects as it spreads through the market. And it costs a few percentage points of that million dollars per year. Is it a long term solution? Of course not, but short term, you 'invest' in the economy and it will bounce back as there is now more 'demand' available.
IT's how Stimulus works. And for another example of Stimulus, look again at that Bikini Graph, notice a slight drop in the jobs under Obama? Guess when the stimulus money ended...
Talking point? How about documented fact
And that's the WSJ, not exactly a 'liberal' publication...
Of course they don't say anything good about him 'now'. It's not politically popular. The key point is what did they say back when he was in office?
You do realize the deficit is going DOWN under Obama right? Funny how 'stimulus' creates revenue and all that.
As for policies, Obama has sadly continued many of Bush's ridiculous policies, but let's consider what else he's done:
Near universal health care coverage is somehow bad?
Ending of Don't Ask Don't Tell?
Bin Laden is dead
Wall Street Reform
Iraq war ended
Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act for women's equality
Saved Auto industry
Increased auto fuel economy standards
Reformed student loans saving 10s of millions of dollars a year
New START treaty
the list goes on...
All while facing lockstep opposition by the GOP to many of the THEIR OWN IDEAS; simply because they didn't want Obama and the Dem's to get any credit for fixing the problems caused by Bush and the GOP Congress of the early 2000s.
Google the 'Do Nothing Congress' as coined by Truman. They passed 800 bills. This current Congress passed 200... And yet Obama *still* got lots of things done.
Opposition is one thing, the wholesale obstruction of anything by the GOP is a tragedy we won't know the full effect of for a while.
George W Bush tried to cancel these two programs. For a paltry savings of $4 million/yr.
And we're sadly looking back on him as 'enlightened'.
Actually Yellowstone is 'relatively constant' it's why they understand it erupts every six-seven hundred thousand years and is in theory about due (very roundish). Since the amount of energy in the earth is relatively constant, the force outward of that pressure is likewise going to be relatively constant. Is it constant within a single century? Perhaps not. But over millennia? you bet.
Deccan Traps are a unique event, as evidenced by their prominence in history as one of the largest volcanic episodes we know of. Exceptions don't disprove the rule.
Perhaps, but when the OP was complaining about full life cycle, its something that does need to be included.
We certainly wouldn't be where we are today as the human race without fossil fuels. However, that 'externality' might just doom us and so, as you so eloquently put it,
"Any energy policy that wants to have any hope of success would do well to acknowledge the DISadvantages of fossil fuels."
Besides making cars electric lets us actually 'save' our oil and gas for important things...like the military and other things that simply have most stringent requirements than simply commuting to and from work.
Not hardly. Until there is a direct path to profits they won't touch anything at this scale.
The free market works well at driving down costs and rewarding short to medium term risks but long term is heavily frowned upon because it kills the bottom line.