Counting our blessings: let's talk about how Obama is better than Bush

[Genx87]

The unemployment rate in October, 2009, the end of the final Bush fiscal year, was 10%. It's been going down ever since. Or do you want to claim that Obama is responsible for budgets passed by the Bush Administration?

Hahaha now you are going to use fiscal years?

You hacks will do whatever you can to paint the other turd uglier than your own. Unemployment in Oct 2001 was 5.4%. Please use that number from now on for consistency sake when comparing bush coming in vs going out.

 

[Jhhnn]

No backpedaling...it is called rounding to make it easier to write out. Man, you are so lame if this is your "ha ha, he is stupid" support...



You have a short term memory problem.



Which is why Obama gets the blame. He wasted money on something he claimed would work but did not. All it did was hurt the nation by pushing us rapidly deeper into debt.

Utterly dishonest. The stimulus did work, just not as well as intentioned, simply because the situation was worse than anybody really knew.

Repubs, as you know, have blocked any efforts at further stimulus... taking off on their anti-gubmint deficit reduction rant instead.

 

[Genx87]

Utterly dishonest. The stimulus did work, just not as well as intentioned, simply because the situation was worse than anybody really knew.

Repubs, as you know, have blocked any efforts at further stimulus... taking off on their anti-gubmint deficit reduction rant instead.

It didnt work as well as planned because that is the nature of the beast. THey could had used twice as much money and it wouldnt have accomplished what they promised. But instead put us in debt at twice the rate as the original stimulus. When will you people wake up and realize govt cant fix our problems?

 

[Matt1970]

Utterly dishonest. The stimulus did work, just not as well as intentioned, simply because the situation was worse than anybody really knew.

Repubs, as you know, have blocked any efforts at further stimulus... taking off on their anti-gubmint deficit reduction rant instead.

If the President had promised to put mandated healthcare and tax hikes on a back burner untill the economy recovered, then the stimulus would have been a lot more effective. Neither Bush nor Obama did anything to boost consumer confidence which is everything in a recession. You can pump all the money the treasury can print into the economy but unless people are going to spend it like they normally would, the economy will stay in the shitter.

 

[Jhhnn]

It didnt work as well as planned because that is the nature of the beast. THey could had used twice as much money and it wouldnt have accomplished what they promised. But instead put us in debt at twice the rate as the original stimulus. When will you people wake up and realize govt cant fix our problems?

And you know that how? I mean, other than through your faith in rihgt wing ideology...

If the President had promised to put mandated healthcare and tax hikes on a back burner untill the economy recovered, then the stimulus would have been a lot more effective. Neither Bush nor Obama did anything to boost consumer confidence which is everything in a recession. You can pump all the money the treasury can print into the economy but unless people are going to spend it like they normally would, the economy will stay in the shitter.

Tax hikes? WTF are you raving about? 1/3 of the stimulus was tax cuts... probably the least effective part.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/19/us/politics/19taxes.html

 

[umbrella39]

1. Bush didn't ban stem cell research
2. Obama is making sure government has complete control over your student loan and money, uncle sam now controls your debt - bad place to be
3. All according to bush's plans
4. Illegal war is still illegal

face it, folks want the good times of bush back rather than this failed president.

retardtag

You can't even convince anyone on your side of the aisle that you views aren't profoundly retarded/insane anymore... Face it, your opinions are extremest and don't represent even a scant handful of the populace. I honestly don't remember a thread you have ever posted in where you have exposed yourself as being this utterly partisan stupid... Just look at some of your replies here, print them, and read them every day. People like this are eventually institutionalized.

 

[micrometers]

Here's the thing about the stimulus. It would have been very easy to determine if it had failed or been a massive overshoot.

How?

Simple. Inflation.

Inflation hasn't happened, however. In fact, it has arguably been a deflationary environment. That would actually point to the stimulus being too small.

 

[airdata]

The bar wasn't exactly high with Bush. Obama has continued many Bush era policies and has generally been a disappointment to people who thought he'd bring change.

 

[kage69]

Not really...

"corpse-men"

I'm glad that even though your psychosis regarding Obama is probably serious and in need of treatment, you are still good for a laugh.

No idea what "corpse-men" is supposed to mean though. You guys really need better material.

At least cyber took a weak swing at defending his attempt to perpetuate a dishonest meme - you? You got nothing, as usual.

 

[umbrella39]

The bar wasn't exactly high with Bush. Obama has continued many Bush era policies and has generally been a disappointment to people who thought he'd bring change.

This for the most part, didn't buy the whole change part and though knowing he was the lesser of two evils still didn't and still won't cast a vote for either of them in my lifetime.

 

[Jhhnn]

The bar wasn't exactly high with Bush. Obama has continued many Bush era policies and has generally been a disappointment to people who thought he'd bring change.

Which makes all the wingnut hatin' on him utterly irrational.

I used to say that Clinton was the Best Republican president since Eisenhower, but Obama may have out done him...

 

[randomrogue]

I am simply waiting for someone to talk about how Obama is BETTER than Bush. Bush was not the best public speaker...but Obama sucks without his teleprompter.

How about this for an answer. They are both terrible. Better? Asking us to compare two types of crap for your viewing pleasure doesn't seem very fun. At the end of the day it's more about what happened under a President's Term. You can't compare two President's handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis for example. However I can look at Bush and Obama and note that one started multiple wars with no plan whatsoever. One couldn't catch Osama Bin Laden at Tora Bora. One embarrassed the crap out of us after Hurricane Katrina. One drove our economy into the ground. Do I really need to go on? Bush served as President and reigned supreme over one of the worst times in our nation's history. I voted for the guy and don't regret it since I felt like I was voting for two pieces of crap but I'm at least man enough to admit that Bush was a complete failure.

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

Obama is a much better golfer!

 

[JeffreyLebowski]

I don't like Obama. However anyone who likes Bush more than Obama is out of their damn mind. Holy crap it shocks me when I see someone actually wish they could go back to Bush. That guy was a complete and total failure. History books will definitely record Bush as the worst US President we had up until this point.

Giant Douche, Turd Sandwich. Bush was so bad that we need a new category for him.

If you think Bush was bad, you know nothing about history. Buchanan, Harding, Grant???

 

[JeffreyLebowski]

Obama is a much better golfer!

And a skilled gun salesman.

 

[cybrsage]

Utterly dishonest. The stimulus did work, just not as well as intentioned, simply because the situation was worse than anybody really knew.

OK, we will simplify this for you using an analogy. An anaolg is a similarity between like features of two things, on which a comparison may be based.

You are told the US is shifting from analog TV signals to digital TV signals and your old analog TV set will no longer work as it is. You decide to buy a new TV, so you buy one which has a digital tuner in it. You plug it in, turn it on, and find out every show has a green tint to it. Further research shows it simply cannot show less green...though that was not the intention of the manufacturer.

According to you, the TV still work, just not as well as intended. To the rest of us, it is a piece of junk that needs to be returned to the store...it fails miserably at what it was intended to do.

The stimulous package did not do as you Obama claimed...therefor it failed. It was not simply as "did not work as well as intended", it did not work period. The claim was to keep unemployment at the line drawn, and it failed miserably...not even close to that line. It was a failure.

Repubs, as you know, have blocked any efforts at further stimulus... taking off on their anti-gubmint deficit reduction rant instead.

No kidding. Why on Earth would anyone want to buy another one of those TVs which do not work? That would be stupid.

"Oh, 3/4 of a BILLION dollars failed to work properly...lets throw another 1/2 a BILLION dollars at it, maybe it will work THIS time." Durrrr....

 

[cybrsage]

How about this for an answer. They are both terrible. Better?

Should have stopped here. The rest was not about how Obama is better.

 

[cybrsage]

And a skilled gun salesman.

THAT is the truth. Obama is certainly better for the gun industry. I agree. That is one blessing to count.

 

[Jhhnn]

OK, we will simplify this for you using an analogy. An anaolg is a similarity between like features of two things, on which a comparison may be based.

You are told the US is shifting from analog TV signals to digital TV signals and your old analog TV set will no longer work as it is. You decide to buy a new TV, so you buy one which has a digital tuner in it. You plug it in, turn it on, and find out every show has a green tint to it. Further research shows it simply cannot show less green...though that was not the intention of the manufacturer.

According to you, the TV still work, just not as well as intended. To the rest of us, it is a piece of junk that needs to be returned to the store...it fails miserably at what it was intended to do.

The stimulous package did not do as you Obama claimed...therefor it failed. It was not simply as "did not work as well as intended", it did not work period. The claim was to keep unemployment at the line drawn, and it failed miserably...not even close to that line. It was a failure.




No kidding. Why on Earth would anyone want to buy another one of those TVs which do not work? That would be stupid.

"Oh, 3/4 of a BILLION dollars failed to work properly...lets throw another 1/2 a BILLION dollars at it, maybe it will work THIS time." Durrrr....

Sooo Lame. So desperate. So trollish.

A better analogy would be a patient in the emergency room who's been hit by a runaway vehicle, in this case the scam of the ownership society. The doctors think he needs 2 pints of blood, but the patient really needs 3, so he is given only 1. He gets better, death is no longer knocking at the door, but full recovery is still in doubt. Attempts to transfuse more blood get caught in hospital rules & bureaucratic wrangling, while the patient languishes...

Repub doctors advise bleeding the patient, of course, in the ancient ways of voodoo economics... cut govt spending to create jobs! cut taxes to increase govt revenues! cut benefits to help the down & out!
Expansionary austerity!

It's magic!

 

[shira]

Hahaha now you are going to use fiscal years?

You hacks will do whatever you can to paint the other turd uglier than your own. Unemployment in Oct 2001 was 5.4%. Please use that number from now on for consistency sake when comparing bush coming in vs going out.

Sure: It was 5.4% when Bush started and 10% when he left.

For Obama, it was 10% when he started and will probably be below 8% when the election is held.

Bush: Unemployment goes up by 4.6% during his term in office.

Obama: Unemployment goes down by 2+% during his first term in office. By the end of Obama's second term, it may well be below the level it was when Bush started. Which only goes to show that it takes a long time to repair the damage to the economy done by right-wing economic policies.

Happy now?

 

[shira]

You do not remember the President's now infamous graph?

I fully accept your point that the graph's predictions were not nearly pessimistic enough. In fact, what we now know is that without the stimulus, unemployment would have peaked at over 12%. And with the stimulus - which we now know was much too small - the damage was limited to 10%.

Thanks for clarifying that Obama's stimulus prevented much worse unemployment than even the most pessimistic prognosticators feared.

 

[micrometers]

the truth is that the "stimulus" was actually too conservative by half. The peril of government spending is that it might lead to inflation.

Well, there has been no inflation.

 

[Sonikku]

He got into Ivy League with something better then a C average. (clout ftl)

 

[UberNeuman]

Two ways that GWB was better than Obama has been:

1. GWB was better at picking up shrubs and twigs on his ranch...
2. Making a joke about missing WMD's at a press core dinner - while troops were serving, being injured and in the worst case, losing their lives over what put them in harms way...

\guess that was only one....

 

[cybrsage]

Sooo Lame. So desperate. So trollish.

Was Obama successful in the spending of the money? No, he failed to meet the goals he said he would meet with all that money.

It failed to do what it was supposed to do. I know you REALLY want Obama to never be wrong (easier to worship him that way I suppose), but seriuosly, take your partisan blinders off and see reality.

Bush tried it, it failed. Obama decided he needed to try it again, but used the "go big or go home" view. It might have worked, but it did not.

Now that we have seen two failed attempts at using stimulous to fix the economy (yes, Obama's attempt did fail to fix the economy), we should not try a third attempt.