One of the results of the recent debt ceiling raise is that Obama cannot point to Republicans/Tea Partiers as the causes of his economy. You can only blame Bush so long. If Obama is speaking on the campaign next year and shrugging off accountability for the bad economy on Bush or answering jabs in presidential debates with "it's Bush's fault" I don't think he is going to persuade many independents.
They had the presidency, the senate, and the house of representatives in their control from January 2009 to January 2011. Remember they had the house from what January 2007 until January 2011? They still have the presidency and the senate. They are going to be held accountable for this economy, unless the Republicans lose their minds and run a completely incompetent political campaign in 2012.
I saw some blond female representative recently extolling the resurgence of the US economy. I'm not sure how she performed her analysis, but I don't think saying it is sunny and bright while the economy is p1ssing on our legs is going to convince many people right now. The economy does not look good, and I don't see much that Obama and the Dems are doing that would make it any better. Unfortunately, I have this creepy feeling in the back of my neck that it is fixing to get substantially worse.
Dow down again today...down 512 today alone. They own it alright. What were those exact words of doom and gloom? To paraprase....we have to move on this Bill to stave off default and retain our triple A status, we have to hurry, hurry, hurry as time is running out...we only have until the second of August. Blah Blah Blah. These people not only should be voted out of office, but their bags should be packed and waiting for them at the BORDER. They lack balls to tackle the real problems and make the hard choices. I say get the hell out of Dodge you've had your day.
These bums should be ridden out town on a rail ! Dems first, followed closely by 'establishment republicans'. I think the 'retirement income' market is gonna have a glut
of not-so-able-bodied retirees fighting for a spot on the line !
Location: On an Island in the west coast of New England
Posts: 13,132
I agree with all of the above. When Barry was elected many said this would happen. Fact is Congress had plenty of time to get to the same place they came to now or better a month ago and blew it due to their insane partisanship. They all put the country in back of their party and now we are all going to suffer. Everyone knew the stock market would tank if they hammered out the deal too close to the edge and unfortunately the rest of the worlds market will follow. What they did was treasonous. Their political bickering and power struggles will sit heavy for quite some time. I just hope everyone affected will remember starting in 2012 and not elect anyone who had their dirty little hands in the till. They are all part of their group and own this failure. In business they would all be fired. In politics they need to be voted out. I am changing my sig and intend to keep that way until after the election. I hope others see it and carry it forward.
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Too busy with fishing to spend much time here.
I hope we get to vote.This new super congress is just a preamble to Dictatorship.And they did it all on national television.Congress has been GELDED.God Save Us All
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"GUNS HAVE ONLY TWO ENEMIES,RUST AND POLITICIANS"
Part of the stock market problem today is that Italy is now in substantially the same place Greece is (and has been for many months or even for a year or more). Interestingly, the problems of the PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, and Spain) is one of lavish domestic spending paid for with debt . . . the precise path Obama and the Democrats have put us on.
The other part of the stock market problem today is that the signs that we are headed back into recession (did we ever RECOVER from recession?) are difficult to ignore. Add to this the fact that our government will not be able to do anything substantive between now and January 2013 at the earliest, and it is going to be an unpleasant long slog to recovery. I'm glad I live in Texas where the economy is relatively robust and recovery occurs more readily.
Why can't the government do anything for 16 months? Because Republicans have no faith and confidence in Obama or the Democrats and so will flat out not cooperate with them. On the other side, Obama is a hard-line ideologue and will not change direction.
One of the unfortunate things as I see it is that our situation is analogous to being on a train and having gone past one's stop. Not only has one missed getting off . . . one is going to get further away from one's destination before one can start going back. We are going to continue to dig our economy into a deeper hole at least for the next 16 months before we can start fixing things. That is really depressing.
Lets face it Barry owned this mess for a long time . He just refuses to own up to any part of it. He had two years with a majority in both houses and couldn't even get a budget passed, this mess should have been dealt with last year while the Dems controlled it all, they couldn't get it together and never will! But let's face the other end ,Bush had the world by the testis in his time and the other party didn't do a Damn bit better, they raised the debt limit time after time. Only the people can make this mess better, a balanced budget amendment is needed,yes it will hurt , yes I believe it would make the recession deepen a little fog a while, but long term it is the only way to save this mess. There are a few other things I believe are needed. The 28th amendment taking away congresses exulted status would be a good place to start along with term limits, and a rule that after serving in he federal government in any way you can not accept any money pay etc from any company with federal or state contracts for five years.
Lets face it Barry owned this mess for a long time . He just refuses to own up to any part of it. True, and his troglodyte democrat supporters will not PIN it on him, either. Bumblin' Barry is not the only skunk in the democrat woodpile. But then again, all the morons who vote democrat are also part of the problem.
He had two years with a majority in both houses and couldn't even get a budget passed, this mess should have been dealt with last year while the Dems controlled it all, they couldn't get it together and never will! Dems only ask 'How much?" and "On what ?". They broke this country with Obamacare. We were pretty crapped up after Bush, but the multi-trillion health care package, the trillion dollar non-stimulus package and now THREE wars, well, we've been cooked since 2008. Let's not forget the Bush tax cuts will expire next year too.
But let's face the other end ,Bush had the world by the testis in his time and the other party didn't do a Damn bit better, they raised the debt limit time after time. Bullcrap ! Bush had to deal with democrat majorities in both houses of congress for most of his second term ! Dont pull a 'barry bullcrap' move here !
Only the people can make this mess better, a balanced budget amendment is needed,yes it will hurt , yes I believe it would make the recession deepen a little fog a while, but long term it is the only way to save this mess. There are a few other things I believe are needed. The 28th amendment taking away congresses exulted status would be a good place to start along with term limits, and a rule that after serving in he federal government in any way you can not accept any money pay etc from any company with federal or state contracts for five years. I like the 'no external income' thing...that should be extended to include WHILE they are serving in Congress, in either house. A balanced budget amendment is a no-go; it won't do anything except balance income and expenditures. HOw high you want your taxes to go, to 'balance the budget' when dems give the farm away to parasites for no particularly good reason at all ? THat'd be just dumb. ANd you ALREADY HAVE a term-limits amendment....IT"S CALLED ELECTION DAY !! GET THE EFF OUT AND VOTE !! I can't see compromising the entire system because pockets of troglodytes insist on voting in their meal-ticket...you just need to out-vote 'em. If you can't, move someplace else more politically agreeable to your positions and support THOSE candidates. But in either case, you're wrong wrong wrong here. In my opinion, of course.
Its complicated. Bush and the Republicans did a poor job in managing our country's fiscal state. Specifically they did not insist on constraining spending based on income. Guilty! Do remember, however, that they weren't alone in this. Which brings up an important point.
It seems to be widely agreed that the mess we are in was precipitated by the sub-prime mortgage crisis. What does that mean -- sub-prime mortgage? It means "making loans to people who may have difficulty maintaining the repayment schedule." What drove this, why did this happen more and more? Because of liberals who felt like the poor ought to also own homes, even if they did not meet the long standing criteria of creditworthiness. Has any of you ever loaned money that didn't get paid back to you? Like to a relative in need who promised, absolutely they will pay the money back, on time. They couldn't go to a bank because their credit was not any good. But they are good for the money! Well . . . more often than not if your credit sucks, you are a REALLY bad risk for paying your debt. NO, not everyone of these folks is going to fail to pay back the debt, but on a statistical, probabilistic basis . . . yep, lending to folks with bad credit is going to lead to a lot of bad debt. See the following link for more details:
Basically, as I said, liberals insisted that banks lend money to the uncreditworthy. Because more people were buying houses, house values went up, so people were buying houses in an artificially elevated market. When these people began to default on their mortgages, the housing market crashed. Pretty predictable, but liberals don't want to think about these sorts of things. They have not absorbed the wisdom of the maxim of La Rochefoucauld "We borrow according to our hopes, we lend according to our fears." That fear is healthy. It gives you the fortitude to imagine the scenarios under which you will never see your money again in this life after having lent it out.
But let's turn our attention now to January 2009. What is that, 2.5 years ago? Let's bear in mind what has happened since then. This incredible stimulus spending. From what I read, current spending is 26% of GDP; for the previous 40 years the average has been 19% of GDP. That represents a 37% increase (26/19 = 1.368). And GDP hasn't not significantly dropped over that period -- while it may have remained static. Now that's the biggest part of your problem, folks. Where would we be today if we had not -- excuse me, if the Democrats and Obama had not, because I'm sure not accepting responsibilty for this idiocy -- made a step-function increase of spending in this way? A lot better off. And what else has been done in the mean time. We have Obamacare passed into law. Until that time bomb is defused and unconstructed business must act under the expectation that it is going to continue and enter into full effect. Why do any hiring? Why expand your business? Can you predict what your costs of doing business are going to be after than wing-dinger goes into full swing? I hear that the Obama administration is wheeling out ever more and onerous regulations that businesses have to comply with. Again uncertainty. With the deficit spending the government is doing threatening our bond ratings, what is the cost of borrowing money going to be down the road? Another uncertainty of doing business. Remember La Rochefoucauld "We borrow according to our hopes, we lend according to our fears." This also applies to investing or risking your capital in the form of expanding a business or hiring new people. If I were a businessman thinking about expanding my business or hiring on new people . . . I would be dominated by that second clause . . . "we lend {invest, engage our wealth} according to our fears."
On balance, this bad economy is the fault of the Democrats and Obama. Of course, this is a matter of opinion. My expectation is that members of the Democratic base aren't going to agree with this. OK. That hardly matters. The Demcratic base are going to vote for a Democrat just as steadfastly as I'm going to vote Republican. But where it does matter is among the independent voters. Obama won a lot of these guys over in 2008. He isn't winning them now, not in 2012, not unless the Republicans run a brain-dead campaign. Further, this same dynamic is going to apply to encumbent Democrats who are up for election. If they depend upon winning independents to get reelected (some places there are enough Democratic base to win without independents), those guys are in trouble. They voted in lock-step with Obama. Again, an astute Republican senate or house campaign in these areas is going to link those folks hard to their Obama votes and their Pelosi votes and their Reid votes and their Obamacare votes and to their cap and trade votes. The 2012 election is shaping up to be an incredible Republican tidal wave . . . if they play their cards with competence. I'm not talking about playing their cards with above average skill or with inspiration or with the blessings of luck . . . just play the cards they are dealt competently.
Obama "owns" this economy
