US News
Obama marks 100 days by touting steps on economy
Apr 29, 2009, 16:17 GMT
US President Barack Obama delivers a speech at Fox High School in Arnold, Missouri, USA 29 April 2009. President Obama marked his first 100 days in office with the town hall meeting. EPA/WHITNEY CURTIS
Washington - US President Barack Obama marked 100 days in office by citing the progress his administration has made in tackling the nation's economic problems but cautioned that more needed to be done.
'Now, after a hundred days, I am pleased with the progress we've made, but im not satisfied,' Obama said at a townhall meeting Wednesday in Arnold, Missouri.
Obama touted his massive economic recovery plan to rescue the United States from its worst recession in decades, brought on by the crisis in the housing and finance markets.
'On our first day in office we found challenges of unprecedented size and scope,' he said.
Obama said the benefits of his economic recovery plans were already beginning to emerge, with jobs in the horizon in building new infrastructure and through ventures to make the United States more energy efficient and less dependent on foreign oil.
Obama was planning to hold a press conference Wednesday evening to further elaborate on his young presidency.
Obama said he has been meeting his campaign promises to improve life for Americans, while addressing key foreign policy issues, including a withdrawal plan for Iraq, refocusing on al-Qaeda and Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and directly engaging traditional enemies.
'We're doing what we said we'd do,' he said.
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'That wasn't me,' President Barack Obama said on his 100th day in office, disclaiming responsibility for the huge budget deficit waiting for him on Day One.
It actually was him - and the other Democrats controlling Congress the previous two years - who shaped a budget so out of balance.
And as a presidential candidate and president-elect, he backed the twilight Bush-era stimulus plan that made the deficit deeper, all before he took over and promoted spending plans that have made it much deeper still.
Obama met citizens at an Arnold, Mo., high school Wednesday in advance of his prime-time news conference. Both forums were a platform to review his progress at the 100-day mark and look ahead.
At various times, he brought an air of certainty to ambitions that are far from cast in stone.
His assertion that his proposed budget 'will cut the deficit in half by the end of my first term' is an eyeball-roller among many economists, given the uncharted terrain of trillion-dollar deficits and economic calamity that the government is negotiating.
He promised vast savings from increased spending on preventive health care in the face of doubts that such an effort, however laudable it might be for public welfare, can pay for itself, let alone yield huge savings.
A look at some of his claims Wednesday:
OBAMA: 'Number one, we inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit.... That wasn't me. Number two, there is almost uniform consensus among economists that in the middle of the biggest crisis, financial crisis, since the Great Depression, we had to take extraordinary steps. So you've got a lot of Republican economists who agree that we had to do a stimulus package and we had to do something about the banks. Those are one-time charges, and they're big, and they'll make our deficits go up over the next two years.' - in Missouri.
THE FACTS:
Congress controls the purse strings, not the president, and it was under Democratic control for Obama's last two years as Illinois senator. Obama supported the emergency bailout package in President George W. Bush's final months - a package Democratic leaders wanted to make bigger.
To be sure, Obama opposed the Iraq war, a drain on federal coffers for six years before he became president. But with one major exception, he voted in support of Iraq war spending.
The economy has worsened under Obama, though from forces surely in play before he became president, and he can credibly claim to have inherited a grim situation.
Still, his response to the crisis goes well beyond 'one-time charges.'
He's persuaded Congress to expand children's health insurance, education spending, health information technology and more. He's moving ahead on a variety of big-ticket items on health care, the environment, energy and transportation that, if achieved, will be more enduring than bank bailouts and aid for homeowners.
The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated his policy proposals would add a net $428 billion to the deficit over four years, even accounting for his spending reduction goals. Now, the deficit is nearly quadrupling to $1.75 trillion.
---
OBAMA: 'I think one basic principle that we know is that the more we do on the (disease) prevention side, the more we can obtain serious savings down the road. ... If we're making those investments, we will save huge amounts of money in the long term.' - in Missouri.
THE FACTS: It sounds believable that preventing illness should be cheaper than treating it, and indeed that's the case with steps like preventing smoking and improving diets and exercise. But during the 2008 campaign, when Obama and other presidential candidates were touting a focus on preventive care, the New England Journal of Medicine cautioned that 'sweeping statements about the cost-saving potential of prevention, however, are overreaching.' It said that 'although some preventive measures do save money, the vast majority reviewed in the health economics literature do not.'
And a study released in December by the Congressional Budget Office found that increasing preventive care 'could improve people's health but would probably generate either modest reductions in the overall costs of health care or increases in such spending within a 10-year budgetary time frame.'
---
OBAMA: 'You could cut (Social Security) benefits. You could raise the tax on everybody so everybody's payroll tax goes up a little bit. Or you can do what I think is probably the best solution, which is you can raise the cap on the payroll tax.' - in Missouri.
THE FACTS: Obama's proposal would reduce the Social Security trust fund's deficit by less than half, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.
That means he would still have to cut benefits, raise the payroll tax rate, raise the retirement age or some combination to deal with the program's long-term imbalance.
Workers currently pay 6.2 percent and their employers pay an equal rate - for a total of 12.4 percent - on annual wages of up to $106,800, after which no more payroll tax is collected.
Obama wants workers making more than $250,000 to pay payroll tax on their income over that amount. That would still protect workers making under $250,000 from an additional burden. But it would raise much less money than removing the cap completely.
Facts? What facts? All you spewed was GOP propaganda. Pull your head out of Cheney's backside and breathe some oxygen for a change. Your brain, what there is of it, is befuddled by ^ss gas.
Who ever is in charge ,there is a powerful lobby that will have it's own interests catered for:Wall Street.
www.wallstreetwatch.org/soldoutreport.htm
The current attitude towards Wall Street tycoons responsible for the present worldwide crisis is too soft to function,reading the way corporate finance controls your institutions (and the rest of the world) in above link should it make clear that the real power behind the political institutions controls policy though almighty lobbies .Their voice dictate,votes from the population are merely a façade .
However the GOP is the main vehicle these lobbies use to transfer their orders to the political establishment .
Facts? Yes facts? All you can spew is Obama/Pelosie propaganda. Pull your head out of Pelosie's backside (Gross) and breathe some oxygen for a change. Your lack of a will to control your own destiny and future, what there is of it, is befuddled by your CO2 emmissions.
It's just the plasyers that change...from Geither's buddies holding up investment houses for kickbacks to his buddies for government pension fund investments to Obama's loans with Countrywide, Wall Street pays dearly to the folks in power...and in matters of politics, they are completely neutral. Need a reason to blame someone?
read below...
This was all preventable.Sep 21st, 2008 - 01:59:13
John McCain predicted Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac crises, pushed 2005 legislation to prevent trouble:
The 'FEDERAL HOUSING ENTERPRISE REGULATORY REFORM ACT OF 2005' would have headed this off but it was killed in the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs by Chris Dodd who recieved the most money from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
President Bush sought to rein in Fannie and Freddie in 2003.
The Democratic response to Bush in 2003:
“These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. “The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”
Representative Melvin L. Watt, Democrat of North Carolina, agreed.
“I don’t see much other than a shell game going on here, moving something from one agency to another and in the process weakening the bargaining power of poorer families and their ability to get affordable housing,” Mr. Watt said.
Now run along Tonny, after all there's a neocon somewhere that you MUST be able to find a reason to hate...for all the wrong reasons.
..the real swine flu. 9% unemployment(12 in my state) , a broken financial system...hell, I'd almost relocate to Deer Lodge!
Boy, He wasn't kidding!
90 percent of our National Debt came about under Reagan, Bush 1, and Bush 2.
The big spenders were the GOP 2001-2006.
Worse were the original lowball estimates on the cost of Iraq; and General Shinseki got fired for telling the truth. We had 8 years of lies under Bush, and the GOP continues to propagate garbage, as do the propagandists who speak on their behalf. Spending by the GOP from 2001-2006 was massive. Article from National Review 5/12/06:
article.nationalreview.com/?q=NTNkZmE0ZDM5YTUyMzE2NGZlMjNkOTJlZDg0ODgwN TI=
'As Americans for Tax Reform estimates, Republican outlays between 2001 and 2006 have devoured the savings that a Democratic White House and GOP Congress generated last decade. In 1993, federal spending consumed 23.8 percent of national income, and then bottomed out at 20.6 percent in 2000. Six years later, that figure boomeranged to 23.8 percent. Absent the War on Terror, homeland security, and hurricane recovery, 80.1 percent of today’s spending propels old-fashioned, big government.'
'The least the GOP can do is stop creating new entitlements. The darkest hour for Washington Republicans was their creation of the new Medicare prescription-drug benefit. The GOP Congress approved and President Bush signed this measure in late 2003 to purchase elderly votes in the 2004 elections. So, what did it cost to bribe seniors into re-electing Bush?
“Overall, President Bush’s senior vote percentage increased from 47 percent in 2000, to 52 percent in 2004,” Heritage’s Riedl says. “This represents a gain of 976,000 votes.” The new benefit’s 75-year liability (or long-term “price tag,” for budget purposes) is $8.1 trillion. “We can calculate that politicians purchased seniors’ votes at a price of $8.3 million apiece,” Riedl reckons. “Not that it came out of their campaign accounts or personal funds, of course.” ='
============
Obama inherited many unfunded mandates - PLUS Bush's final deficit; PLUS the TARP costs. He has to deal with long-term VA expenditures for our wounded, while the Walter Reed scandal under Bush speaks for itself.
How about the Katrina repairs not done?
Obama is now making an INVESTMENT in education, job retraining, health care, and the other vital funding that the country has LACKED. Some of this is now necessary because of GOP policy failures in not seeing what was coming; including roll-backs of regulation. The Dem's get to share in this; but from 2001-2006 it was GOP-led.
Like any long-term investment, the payoff takes years to show up.
What the GOP does not want to talk about is the outright failure of the economy that WOULD have resulted had their shopworn policies of making the rich wealthier been the story for 2009. Instead, we have someone with a BRAIN in charge - making SP4 and his ilk look like the sheer idiots that they are.
And they prove it with each posting .....
You can hear those brains rotting ..... and there was not a lot, to begin with.
www.urban.org/decisionpoints08/archive/01bushtaxcuts.cfm
The 2001-2006 tax cuts are actually bigger than budgeted because they do not include the cost of patching the Alternative Minimum Tax.
The revenue cost of the tax cuts totals approximately $2 trillion over the 2001–2010 period.
In 2006, the bottom fifth of income earners got an average tax cut of $20, or 0.3 percent of their income.
In 2006, the top fifth of income earners got an average tax cut of $5,800, or 4.1 percent of income. At the very top, the average tax cut was more than 6 percent of income.
Combined with a minimal AMT fix, making the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts permanent would add $3.5 trillion to the national debt over 10 years. By 2017, the annual revenue loss would be almost $500 billion.
Measured over 75 years, making the tax cuts permanent would cost as much as the combined shortfalls in the Social Security and Medicare trust funds.
..except for the glaring fact that tax revenue went to an all time high, personal wealth reached a record level, unemployment was 4.9% and all of it done by reducing taxes.
Now we have 9% unemployment, a 3.4 Trillion deficit on the way, a stagnant economy and liberals having a yank-fest over what looks to be the largest waste of government money since FDR.
The Audacity of Hope...I say the Audacity of Hype.
Hey Idiots Stick, glad you are back got tired of not having anyone as stupid as you to wipe my feet on....
'..except for the glaring fact that tax revenue went to an all time high, personal wealth reached a record level, unemployment was 4.9% and all of it done by reducing taxes.'
And where did this go Idiot's Stick??? Oh here is where it went....
'Now we have 9% unemployment, a 3.4 Trillion deficit on the way'
You are by far the most stupid redneck, tobacco chewing, sister molesting redneck to frequent this board....Keep it up you give hope to all those that cannot count to 3.
Hey SP4, did your mother have any children that lived?
You cannot take one element out of an equation - the debt rose under Bush, and massively.
That means that outgo was more than income. The tax cut (which even Bush designed to end in 2010) was a huge financial hit; just at the point when defense and homeland expenditures rose.
The proof is always in the tally at the end. The cost of the TARP and Bush's own deficit would have increased the ending Debt figure. Had Bush included 2009 war costs in the budget, it would have been higher yet.
www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt_histo5.htm
Bush the Idiot 2001-2008 = 73% increase in 8 years = $4.2 trillion
09/30/2008 10,024,724,896,912.49
09/30/2007 9,007,653,372,262.48
09/30/2006 8,506,973,899,215.23
09/30/2005 7,932,709,661,723.50
09/30/2004 7,379,052,696,330.32
09/30/2003 6,783,231,062,743.62
09/30/2002 6,228,235,965,597.16
09/30/2001 5,807,463,412,200.06
Reagan 1981-1988 = 161% increase in 8 years = $1.6 trillion
09/30/1988 2,602,337,712,041.16
09/30/1987 2,350,276,890,953.00
09/30/1986 2,125,302,616,658.42
09/30/1985 1,823,103,000,000.00
09/30/1984 1,572,266,000,000.00
09/30/1983 1,377,210,000,000.00
09/30/1982 1,142,034,000,000.00
09/30/1981 997,855,000,000.00
Bush Sr. 1989-1992 = 42% increase in 4 years = $1.2 trillion
09/30/1992 4,064,620,655,521.66
09/30/1991 3,665,303,351,697.03
09/28/1990 3,233,313,451,777.25
09/29/1989 2,857,430,960,187.32
Clinton 1993-2000 = 28% increase in 8 years = $1.26 trillion
09/30/2000 5,674,178,209,886.86
09/30/1999 5,656,270,901,615.43
09/30/1998 5,526,193,008,897.62
09/30/1997 5,413,146,011,397.34
09/30/1996 5,224,810,939,135.73
09/29/1995 4,973,982,900,709.39
09/30/1994 4,692,749,910,013.32
09/30/1993 4,411,488,883,139.38
====================
09/30/1981 997,855,000,000.00
09/30/2008 10,024,724,896,912.49
Total 28-year increase = 9.026 trillion
subtract Clinton = 1.26 trillion
GOP debt hike = 7.77 trillion = 86 percent of total debt added (rounded)
Those are the official National Debt figures as of September of each year. Since the 2008 problems began after September, much of what Obama inherited should have been on Bush's tab.
Just as he left veteran long-term health care for the next President, as well as just letting the tax cut lapse ..... Bush did not pay his own bills. Easier to blame the next guy in line; because he had schmucks like you to defend his miserable 8 years.
Pakistan vulnerable to overthrow
Iraq bombings continue - and more importantly, no political settlement between Kurds, Sunni and Shia
Afghanistan cannot be won militarily - the question is what we can do diplomatically and by other means.
Deregulation and financial manipulation ruined the American economy - this will take years to sort out; perhaps even decades to get back to where we were.
The only thing in our favor is that the economies of our 'enemies' are hurting as well.
You're getting to see a REAL President in action, speaking in complete sentences. Not the Idiot from Crawford that you worshipped. Talk about 'false idols'. The next Idiot in Line is Palin. Why can't the GOP find someone with intelligence? Because anyone who THINKS for a living understands that there IS no GOP platform; outside of the word 'NO'.
President Obama turned the page on 100 days in office with an iffy boast about job creation and claims of fiscal prudence that are hard to square with his spending.
Obama spoke with abundant confidence about his chances for achieving the big-ticket items on his agenda despite economic calamity:
-- His assertion that his proposed budget 'will cut the deficit in half by the end of my first term' is an eyeball-roller for many economists, given the uncharted terrain of trillion-dollar deficits the government is negotiating.
-- He promised vast savings from increased spending on preventive health care in the face of doubts that such an effort, however laudable it might be for public welfare, can pay for itself, let alone yield huge savings.
-- He pitched a remedy for Social Security's long-term crisis that analysts say won't fix half the problem.
Obama held a prime-time news conference Wednesday and addressed citizens at an Arnold, Mo., high school, using both events to review progress at the 100-day mark and look ahead.
A look at some of his claims:
OBAMA: 'We began by passing a Recovery Act that has already saved or created over 150,000 jobs.' -- from news conference.
THE FACTS: This assertion is dubious on several levels. For starters, the U.S. has lost more than 1.2 million jobs since Obama took office, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Even if Obama's stimulus bill saved or created as many jobs as he says, that number is dwarfed by the number of recent job losses.
But Obama's number is murky, at best. The White House has not yet announced how it intends to count jobs created by the stimulus bill. Obama's number is based on a job-counting formula that his economists have developed but have not made public. Until that formula is announced --probably in the coming week or so -- there's no way to assess its accuracy.
Whatever the formula, economists who study job creation say it will require some creative math. That's because Obama has lumped 'jobs saved' in with 'jobs created.' Even economists for organizations that stand to benefit from the stimulus concede it probably is impossible to estimate saved jobs because that would require calculating a hypothetical: how many people would have lost their jobs without the stimulus.
___
OBAMA: 'We must lay a new foundation for growth, a foundation that will strengthen our economy and help us compete in the 21st century. And that's exactly what this budget begins to do. It contains new investments in education that will equip our workers with the right skills and training; new investments in renewable energy that will create millions of jobs and new industries; new investments in health care that will cut costs for families and businesses, and new savings that will bring down our deficit.' -- news conference.
'I've personally asked the leadership in Congress to pass into law rules that follow the simple principle: You pay for what you spend, so that government acts the same way any responsible family does.' -- in Missouri.
THE FACTS: While the budget does set a roadmap for achieving the president's goals, it says nothing about how to pay for his health plan, expected to cost more than $1 trillion over the next 10 years. And while the deficit, under the plan, would drop to $523 billion in 2014, it achieves it with unrealistic assumptions, such as projections that spending in Iraq and Afghanistan will amount to only $50 billion a year.
___
OBAMA: 'Number one, we inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit....That wasn't me.' -- in Missouri.
THE FACTS:
Congress, under Democratic control in 2007 and 2008, held the purse strings that led to the deficit Obama inherited. A Republican president, George W. Bush, had a role too: He signed the legislation.
Obama supported the emergency financial bailout package in Bush's final months -- a package Democratic leaders wanted to make bigger.
To be sure, Obama opposed the Iraq war, a drain on federal coffers for six years before he became president. But with one major exception, he voted in support of Iraq war spending.
The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has estimated Obama's policy proposals would add a net $428 billion to the deficit over four years, even accounting for his spending reduction goals. Now, the deficit is nearly quadrupling to $1.75 trillion.
___
OBAMA: 'I think one basic principle that we know is that the more we do on the (disease) prevention side, the more we can obtain serious savings down the road. ... If we're making those investments, we will save huge amounts of money in the long term.' -- in Missouri.
THE FACTS: It sounds believable that preventing illness should be cheaper than treating it, and indeed that's the case with steps like preventing smoking and improving diet and exercise. But during the 2008 campaign, when Obama and other presidential candidates were touting a focus on preventive care, the New England Journal of Medicine cautioned that 'sweeping statements about the cost-saving potential of prevention, however, are overreaching.' It said that 'although some preventive measures do save money, the vast majority reviewed in the health economics literature do not.'
And a study released in December by the Congressional Budget Office found that increasing preventive care 'could improve people's health but would probably generate either modest reductions in the overall costs of health care or increases in such spending within a 10-year budgetary time frame.'
___
OBAMA: 'You could cut (Social Security) benefits. You could raise the tax on everybody so everybody's payroll tax goes up a little bit. Or you can do what I think is probably the best solution, which is you can raise the cap on the payroll tax.' -- in Missouri.
THE FACTS: Obama's proposal would reduce the Social Security trust fund's deficit by less than half, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.
That means he would still have to cut benefits, raise the payroll tax rate, raise the retirement age or some combination of these measures to deal with the program's long-term imbalance.
Workers currently pay 6.2 percent and their employers pay an equal rate -- for a total of 12.4 percent -- on annual wages of up to $106,800, after which no more payroll tax is collected.
Obama wants workers making more than $250,000 to pay payroll tax on their income over that amount. That would still protect workers making under $250,000 from an additional burden. But it would raise much less money than removing the cap completely.
___
OBAMA: 'My hope is that working in a bipartisan fashion we are going to be able to get a health care reform bill on my desk before the end of the year that we'll start seeing in the kinds of investments that will make everybody healthier.' -- in Missouri.
THE FACTS: Obama has indeed expressed hope for a health care plan that has support from Democrats and Republicans. But his Democratic allies in Congress have just made that harder. The Democratic budget plan that Congress passed Wednesday gives Democrats the option of denying Republicans the normal right to block health care with a Senate filibuster. The filibuster tactic requires 60 votes to overcome, making it the GOP's main weapon to ensure a bipartisan outcome. The rules set by the budget mean that majority Democrats could potentially pass health care legislation without any Republican votes, sacrificing bipartisanship to achieve their goals.
The Republicants are still reeling from their loss - ignore them.
And they are bowing to their leader, Lumpbaugh!
That long post was obviously lifted - but no source given. On the other hand, while I quote sources, I CAN THINK FOR MYSELF; GOP PUPPETS!
Once again, the GOPhers cannot understand that doing SOMETHING is better than doing NOTHING. The investments that Obama made (and we have yet to see 90 percent of the payoff, since much of it happened very recently) cannot be a basis for judging overall PAST job losses. Any numbers through Q1 of 2009 were set in stone by Bush's policies; just as was paying for the TARP as proposed under Bush's tenure.
We will not have any reliable numbers for Q2 of 2009 until July (to be revised in Aug-Sep) - at that point, we should see the down-trend begin to bottom out. Laying off workers is cheap, as is reducing inventory.
Add to that large-scale closures such as Circuit City; and you get repercussions all the way down the Sypply Chain. That's why auto PARTS makers are being assisted - and those same workers will benefit from Chrysler staying alive, in some form.
When the economy picks up, companies will RAPIDLY hire and build up stock - because you can produce goods very quickly today, and with automation, less 'touch labor' is required. Some companies carried excess payrolls, and those payrolls will remain lower than before in the name of 'efficiency' and 'cost reduction'.
Q1 of 2009 has seen large-scale layoffs from large companies - not the norm; and that will abate as the public mood gets better - causing companies to become more optimistic. We'll see a FLOOR forming - housing prices will do the same. The past 6 months are unparallelled in recent history in terms of cutbacks; and a direct offshoot of what Bush's team handed off. Obama is like your ER doctor who gets to treat you for a gunshot - which is a pretty good metaphor; considering Cheney's history.
What an intelligent person understands is that this investment will pay off in the medium term; as opposed to tax cuts for the wealthy (who got that way by not spending everything that they had, in the first place). The only thing that 'trickled down' was the gravy from their lips.
Whatever incremental gains have come about from Obama's policies (and most of it will show up over the rest of 2009, as well as into 2010) have made things A HELL OF A LOT BETTER in terms of jobs than 'doing nothing'; which is the GOP platform in a nutshell.
apnews.myway.com/article/20090429/D97SCPI00.html
Here's an earlier 'fact check' from Calvin Woodward, who wrote that piece that was cut/pasted (and was not given credit)
www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20081103/fact-check-campaign-s-most-w anted/
(11/3/08)
'THE FACTS: McCain's health care plan alone is estimated to cost $1.3 trillion over 10 years by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, which also estimates that McCain's tax cuts and spending programs would drive up the national debt by $5 trillion in a decade.'
'When a non-licensed plumber who owes back taxes and would get a tax cut under Obama is held out by McCain as a stand-in for average working people who should vote Republican, you know truth-telling took a back seat to myth-making.'
Funny how these ultra lefty socialist liberals are so scared for their future they still continie to attack Bush!!!(DEMS or socialists were the ones owning the problems in power for the last 2 years, Bush just let them be). GO LIVE IN NORTH KOREA OR CUBA!!!
RE the ignorant: 'Funny how these ultra lefty socialist liberals are so scared for their future they still continie to attack Bush!!!'
----------------
Not scared; but pissed off; dealing with the crap left behind by your hero. The ones who are afraid for their future are those who feed off the GOP trough. The party has fallen to a very low level of public support.
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/postpoll_042609.html
'The new Washington Post/ABC news poll has all sorts of intriguing numbers in it but when you are looking for clues as to where the two parties stand politically there is only one number to remember: 21.
That's the percent of people in the Post/ABC survey who identified themselves as Republicans, down from 25 percent in a late March poll and at the lowest ebb in this poll since the fall of 1983(!).'
www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jS-2PKur2waVdxNtQsn1eSSimZGQ D97SDF3O0
'Democrats were favored by a margin of 61 percent to 29 percent on education; 59 percent to 30 percent on health care and 59 percent to 31 percent on energy. Congress is expected to consider major legislation later this year in all three areas.
Democats were also viewed with more confidence in handling taxes, long a Republican strong suit. The only issue among nine in the survey where the two parties were rated as even was in the war on terror.
The survey found Obama's job approval at 62 percent, in line with other recent polls. Moderate Republicans disapproved of his job performance by a relatively narrow margin of 44-39 percent, and self-described conservative independents by a somewhat larger margin of 51-36 percent. Conservative Republicans overwhelmingly disapproved, 75-18.'
===============
This is unfortunate for GOP office-holders, and a hangover from the incompetence of the Bush Administration. There are thoughtful Conservatives like George Will who also condemn what Bush did - on the basis of his incompetence and stupidity, rather than his values per se.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Will#Criticism_of_the_George_W._Bush_admin istration
Bush should actually be up on trial for that incompetence - poor planning and strategy in Iraq; walking away from the Taliban problem in Afghanistan (moving instead to a war that he felt he could 'win'); funding Musharraf and ending up, billions of U.S. dollars later, with Pakistan even a bigger problem that it was.
Then there's the waste, fraud and abuse of the Iraq campaign, including the dollars to contractors.
(9/2007)
revolutionradio.org/2007/09/27/bush-administration-doj-blocking-iraq-fr aud-suits/
'Peter Keisler, the acting US attorney general, covered up evidence of alleged widespread contracting fraud in Iraq by preventing whistleblowers’ complaints from being investigated, according to a prominent fraud attorney.
Alan Grayson, an attorney who has represented scores of whistleblowers in suits against companies that were awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in government contracts related to Iraq reconstruction, blamed the Bush administration for the lack of government action on Iraq fraud.
In an interview with Truthout, Grayson said Keisler has purposely delayed investigations into Iraq contractor fraud because of Keisler’s political allegiance to the Bush administration. Keisler has refused to prosecute whistleblower lawsuits because Bush “does not want more bad news coming out of Iraq,” Grayson said, adding “to have an entire class of cases treated this way is truly unprecedented. I’ve been doing this for 20 years and I’ve never seen it before.”
=================
(April 2009)
www.nytimes.com/2009/04/11/world/middleeast/11custer.html?_r=1
'A federal appeals court ruled Friday that a contractor found to have committed widespread fraud in Iraq could not avoid paying millions of dollars in damages by claiming that the United States law governing false claims essentially did not apply there, as a previous judge had found on technical grounds.
The decision, by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Va., reverses a decision that had put a chill on what are believed to be dozens of pending whistle-blower cases involving contractors in Iraq. The earlier decision set aside a jury’s verdict in 2006 that the contractor, Custer Battles, must pay about $10 million in damages and penalties to the United States government and two whistle-blowers.
The jury had found that under the False Claims Act, Custer Battles filed fake invoices and vastly inflated its costs, as two former employees of the company had charged. But the judge in the case, T. S. Ellis III of the Federal District Court in Alexandria, Va., ultimately made two rulings that would have freed the company from paying any damages.'
more bullcrap from a grade 3 educated idiot. No wonder he toed the GOP line. He can't think.
is down to 21% of Americans. All that is left is the wingnuts, religious zealots, racists and rabid dogs, as their posts(mainly cut and paste) clearly show.
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Apparently he got SP4 to shut upApr 29th, 2009 - 22:55:54
Now THAT'S an achievement.
Congress (BOTH houses) passed the budget plan with zero help from the GOP.
www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gHAZ8shLcqCPFkexBzGo_Oi26xnQ D97SDBJO3
WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats in Congress capped President Barack Obama's 100th day in office by advancing a $3.4 trillion federal budget for next year — a third of it borrowed — that prevents Republicans from blocking his proposed trillion-dollar expansion of government-provided health care over the next decade.
Wednesday's House and Senate votes to adopt the nonbinding budget blueprint were only a first step toward Obama's goal of providing health care coverage for all Americans. The budget plan for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1 sets the parameters for subsequent tax and spending bills expected to boost clean energy programs and student aid and extend many of former President George W. Bush's tax cuts.
'It's a budget that reduces taxes, lowers the deficit and creates jobs,' House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said. 'It honors the three pillars of the Obama initiatives: energy, health care and education.'
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You can tell that progress is happening, because Gingrich is bitching about the cost of repairs for the 8 Bush years, when the National Debt nearly doubled. Of course, News does not mention his own shortcomings, because he's an egomanic like Rush.
'In just 100 days, President Obama has been devastatingly effective in moving forward swiftly the most radical, government-expanding agenda in American history.'
(And just who f'd it up from 2001-2008, you self-serving blowhard?)
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