Sorry I'm late. My internet at home's been having problems and typing this on my phone with all the quotes would have been a pain.
Quote:Do you really not think that the GDP/unemployment trends would have improved at some point regardless of who was President? I guess if anyone but Obama were in office, we'd be looking 30% unemployment and our GDP would be back to 1970's levels.
He inherited a recession that was about to bottom out, and did in fact bottom out before any of his policies had a material impact, and his policies have kept us at the bottom.
The shrinking under Bush statistics are only relevant if you assume the economy was going to keep doing those things. It wasn't. There are only so many people you can fire before you run out. The economy bottomed out before anything Obama did had time to take effect. And 100,000 jobs a month is not enough to keep up with population growth. That's why we're still on bottom.
"Some point"? Okay. But most economists would tell you that without the stimulus it would have taken much longer, and I can also tell you if it were up to any of these nutjob GOP candidates (except Huntsman), we wouldn't have an auto industry any more. And we'd probably be spending trillions more on land wars in Iran and Syria and God knows where else, with thousands more dead.
Were you two living under a rock in 2008? Another Great Depression was a REAL fear at the time. Economists were absolutely not saying things had "bottomed out" and couldn't get worse. Economists were calling for a massive stimulus (more than what was passed). Soon after it passed our economy started growing again, albeit modestly.
Quote:Everyone knows that has created jobs and solved the systemic problems inherent with wall street and capital hill...
Our financial markets were already some of the most highly regulated in the world. Do you have any shred of evidence that new regulations will correct any of the underlying problems?
No, he didn't restore regulation; the financial markets were always heavily regulated, the most heavily regulated part of the economy when the crash occurred. The crisis came about at least as much because of counterproductive regulations that still exist as it did because of any lack of regulation. It is now looking like the new regulations may well do more harm than good.
If you want to argue that deregulation was the problem and new regulations are the solution, please do this first. Explain what regulations were missing, and how and why they would have prevented the problems that occurred. You can scream regulation/deregulation talking points all you want, but until you can provide a causal link, you have nothing. And I don't think you can do that.
A shred of evidence? How about the bipartisan Levin-Coburn Senate report on the financial crisis, which provides: "The crisis was not a natural disaster, but the result of high risk, complex financial products; undisclosed conflicts of interest; and the failure of regulators, the credit rating agencies, and the market itself to rein in the excesses of Wall Street."
Our system is heavily regulated and needs to be heavily regulated because we have the most active and complicated financial system.
Dodd-Frank was a very complicated piece of legislation with 16 subparts. If there's anything you'd like to discuss in detail feel free. I'm not going through it one by one but in general it established agencies for the purpose of monitoring risk and financial stability and promulgating regulations, increased transparency and reporting from banks and other lenders so they can't hide liabilities from the balance sheet and limits their speculative investments, regulates derivatives (called financial weapons of mass destruction by the world's leading investor and richest man Warren Buffett) and brings them onto the open market, and regulates the valuation of securities and the issuing of mortgages in various ways so that the borrower is able to repay the loan and this sub-prime crisis isn't repeated again.
Quote:And 26 states are sueing because of the unconstitutional mandate...the law doesn't make sense without the mandate and every American already had access to health insurance through medicare/medicaid.
No. There are 23 million per the last estimate I saw who will not be covered. And all the lies about how it would cut costs and reduce the deficit are starting to be exposed. The bottom line is that the vast majority of Americans will be paying more for worse health care and having less voice in the process. I plan to do like the Brits and Canadians and become a medical tourist. So will you if you're smart.
The mandate is constitutional. Just look at what a rabid conservative judge on the 6th Circuit CoA (which ruled it was constitutional) has to say:
Quote:A key part of the ruling was written by Judge Jeffrey Sutton, a President George W. Bush appointee and considered a conservative on the court. He said the health care field is different from other streams of "commerce."
"Regulating how citizens pay for what they already receive (health care), never quite know when they will need, and in the case of severe illnesses or emergencies generally will not be able to afford, has few (if any) parallels in modern life. Not every intrusive law is an unconstitutionally intrusive law," he said. "Time assuredly will bring to light the policy strengths and weaknesses of using the individual mandate as part of this national legislation, allowing the peoples' political representatives, rather than their judges, to have the primary say over its utility."
Congress has the power under the Constitution to regulate interstate commerce, and the health care field is a major component of interstate commerce. No one can "opt out" of our health care system. Anyone can experience a serious and sudden illness at any time, and if they have to go to the hospital and do not have insurance and cannot afford to pay, that cost is passed along to everyone else. Anyone who doesn't buy health insurance is not just taking a risk for himself; he is putting us all at risk.
People who aren't covered include illegal aliens, people who are eligible for Medicaid (which is expanded under Obamacare) and don't sign up, and people who choose to pay the penalty. The purpose of the Act is to expand access to health care by making it affordable to get health insurance, either by expanding Medicaid coverage or giving subsidies to families who don't qualify for Medicaid, and at the same time lowering the cost of insurance by bringing more people into the pool.
Quote:Great idea...straight and gay people sharing showers...thats appropriate.
I'm pretty sure he didn't do that alone.
Because all gays are rapists, right?
Also, newsflash, straights and gays were sharing showers under DADT. Gays just were forced to never talk about anything gay related, but they were there.
I don't know what point you're trying to make with "he didn't do that alone." Yeah, he had the help of Congress, his Defense Secretary and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. There's not a whole lot a president can do on his own.
Quote:This was a political decision and went against the advice of his Generals
You mean continuing with the timetables that Bush has already set forth?
Continued essentially the same timetable as his predecessor had established. Of course, he legitimately inherited the problem. Never fight a war you don't intend to win, and we were in two of them. What we should have done from day one was open up the rules of engagement, win the damn wars, and come home early.
It was a political decision because he's a politician and the American people voted him into office in part because he pledged to end those wars. Last I checked this isn't ancient Rome and we still have civilian control of our military.
I'll give Bush credit for setting the timetables too.
Well, what we should have done from day 1 is finish off bin Laden in Tora Bora, leave and never go into Iraq in the first place.
Quote:By apologizing for American exceptionalism?
Based on what?
You can't be serious. Threat your friends better than you treat your enemies. Obama is treating our enemies better than Shrub treated our friends. Both are wrong. It's hard to know which is worse, but the combination is devastating. It's not like Obama has really done a lot of good with the places that are problems.
American exceptionalism is ridiculous. There's patriotism and then there's blind patriotism.
Not lying, not threatening to blow up everyone who disagrees with him and not pretending that America has never made mistakes? The rest of the world hated Bush so much and so it wasn't hard to improve on this.
How is Obama treating our enemies better than our friends? I want examples.
Quote:By employing the systems he condemned that began under the Bush administration
Minimal cost? How much have we spent on the wars since he became President?
Seal Team 6 killed bin Laden. Obama watched on TV in DC. It took so long because Shrub took his eye off the ball, and because before him Clinton killed our hum int capability. Looking better than his predecessors on this is more a commentary on his predecessors' incompetence than on Obama's competence. Things refuse to be mismanaged long, and there was only so far we could go before things had to change.
We're spending trillions on the wars he inherited but he is winding them down. Though I was referencing the drone strikes on al Qaeda in Pakistan and elsewhere.
I like the last comment best but I think Obama does deserve credit here. He made the decision to invade the compound with Team 6 and risk casualties instead of using a tactical missile strike, so that we could be sure we got him. It was the right call and he gets credit.
Quote:The cost is over $750,000,000...and what do we get now? Sharia Law...that worked out great.
You mean how we supported these people? Yeah, they look like upstanding citizens.
I actually kinda like the approach we took here. Instead of putting a lot of troops in harm's way, use technology to level the playing field, or tilt it a bit in the rebels' favor, and let them take it from there. Problem is you can't influence the outcome as much, but if you let the winners know that they're next if they screw it up, you can probably live with that.
So if I'm understanding you correctly, we can't tax the rich by repealing the Bush tax cuts to raise hundreds of BILLIONS (with a B) because it's insignificant and we shouldn't bother, but the strikes in Libya costing hundreds of MILLIONS (with an M) is substantial?
I don't know if they get Sharia law, but they do get rid of a tyrant.
Obama acted to save genocide. Gaddafi had threatened to slaughter millions of women and children, had the means to do it and was on the march.
Quote:The Dems controlled Congress from 2008-2010...what did they accomplish? 5 trillion in "cuts"? A reduction in the increase isn't a cut. The Tea Partiers did exactly what they were elected to do. Rein in government spending. I guess you think the conservatives shouldn't have a voice? Good to know.
Why didn't he just go ahead and fix all our problems before those nutjob Tea Partiers were voted in?
Conservatives HAD a voice. But after 8 years of Bush our economy was in the ditch.
I wish Obama had done more, and dropped this notion of trying to reason with the Republicans. Unfortunately, the Dems had a bare supermajority (including Lieberman, a conservative on many issues) so he couldn't do whatever he wanted. But even then he got the Dems in Congress to throw the GOP a bone here and there. He extended the Bush tax cuts with a Democratic congress for crying out loud because he thought the GOP would reciprocate down the road and be reasonable, and then 6 months later you see them hold the economy and the US credit rating hostage over the debt ceiling deal. The GOP is only interested in seeing Obama fail, as Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell admitted, and they're willing to take this country down with him.
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