[Liberator]

fun fact Barack 'change' Obama is half way done with his term and everything is exactly the same as when he came in.

You mean other than the 3 trillion dollar deficit, jobless "recovery" and so much additional spending from congress than the next 3 generations of Americans will be paying for this generation to get their freebies?

And before you start, Bush ran deficits too.  But the scale is the thing, the Obama deficit is 1/5 of the American economy when it's healthy.  By comparison, Bush's 950 billion is almost respectable.

[Aardwolf]

But the scale is the thing, the Obama deficit is 1/5 of the American economy when it's healthy.  By comparison, Bush's 950 billion is almost respectable.

You can't just take government deficit as a fraction of "the economy"; the economy is statistics, the deficit is a specific number. And the only reason Bush's deficit wasn't in the trillions is because that's completely omitting all of the DEFENSE BUDGET.

Edit I:

fun fact Barack 'change' Obama is half way done with his term and everything is exactly the same as when he came in.

Wow, it's almost as if there were some... other political force... that wanted to stop him. Such a party would be able to score points if he couldn't meet his campaign promises, but who would sacrifice the good of the country for their own political ends??

 

Edit II: also, IIRC this was a discussion about Gitmo.

[Nuclear1]

Waitwaitwait. It would probably sound really ignorant, but I am a dutch kid. That mysterious other political force actually didn't get enough votes and such to be an impeding factor? I thought the democrats still had the majority of the seats.

Yeah, but the mysterious other political force has Fox, and as a result Fox's general audience of morons.  Plus, they tend to entertain just about any loony conspiracy theory these days, thus attracting all the other loons.

jobless "recovery"

Somebody didn't do his recession recovery homework.

http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/nov/09/barack-obama/obama-says-job-growth-always-lags-behind-economic-/

Obama says job growth always lags behind economic growth
 
Some Republican critics have scoffed at President Barack Obama's pronouncements that the economy seems to be improving, pointing to the unemployment rate, which keeps going up.

But Obama has consistently tempered his hopeful words about positive economic indicators with warnings that unemployment rates are likely to continue to rise for a while, even as the economy improves.

"History tells us that job growth always lags behind economic growth," Obama said Nov. 6, 2009, in remarks in the White House Rose Garden.

"He's right about that," said William Beach, director of the conservative Heritage Foundation's center for data analysis.

In the post-World War II era, there have been 10 recessions and after most of them, employment lagged a few months behind other improving economic indicators. But after the last two, in 1991 and 2001, unemployment rates continued to climb for more than a year.

Interestingly, Democrats criticized President George W. Bush regarding the 2001 "jobless recovery," much as some Republicans now criticize Obama for the current one.

The latest jobless recovery came as little surprise to economists who study such trends.

"Employers are hesitant to hire people back to the work force (after a recession) because they don't know if the economy is going to continue to grow, which is understandable," Beach said.

But more importantly, he said, the American economy has become increasingly reliant on service jobs, such as information and financial jobs. "Those jobs come back very slowly," Beach said.

The recession this time is even more severe, so Beach predicts this jobless recovery will last even longer than past recessions.

"I don't think we'll see jobs coming back for a long time," Beach said.

But even without government meddling, Beach believes employment was destined to lag.

The San Francisco Chronicle , relying on numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in August charted the lag between recessions' end and the peak of unemployment rates. In the eight recessions between 1949 and 1991, unemployment rates lagged by an average of about three months. After the last two, however, it took 15 months and 19 months, respectively, before unemployment rates peaked.

Bottom line, President Obama is right when he cautions that employment has lagged behind economic recovery in the past. And so we rate his statement True.

[MP-Ryan]

And before you start, Bush ran deficits too.  But the scale is the thing, the Obama deficit is 1/5 of the American economy when it's healthy.  By comparison, Bush's 950 billion is almost respectable.

Once the bailouts began - and let's not confuse the issue, it was the Bush Administration that fought hardest for them - the subsequent administration had no choice but to continue down the path already committed to.  The United States is in the financial mess it's in because of Republican aversion to financial regulation and the short-sighted stupidity of George W. Bush.

Oddly enough, one of those reasons is also why you're in the current human rights mess over Gitmo too.

The hilarious part is watching "freedom-loving" Republicans embrace fascist policy and erosion of civil liberties in the name of "security."  And let's be honest, the United States is no more secure from terrorist attack now than it was 10 years ago, you're just spending 10 times the amount of money on it to maintain the illusion.

The bizarre-o-meter of American politics has hit new levels over the last 10 years.  It's pretty interesting to watch as an outside observer, and I'm even more interested to see where it goes from here.

[Liberator]

Frankly, MP, I wasn't even talking about the bailouts, which were a "paltry" 750 Billion as I recall.  I was referring to "The Abomination" called H.R.3200  - America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009, which has added(will add?) 1.5 trillion dollars to the federal deficit ongoing until it's repealed or the current government is chased from Washington with torches and pitchforks.  Again, GW Bush was horrific from this point of view, but Obama has not made any moves to curb this spending and from everything he's saying will likely increase it, all while not having the money to pay for it.  And the bastards want to lecture us about fiscal responsibility...

[General Battuta]

My understanding is that in the long run it'll actually save money and reduce the deficit.

Preventative care > palliative care.

[MP-Ryan]

Frankly, MP, I wasn't even talking about the bailouts, which were a "paltry" 750 Billion as I recall.  I was referring to "The Abomination" called H.R.3200  - America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009, which has added(will add?) 1.5 trillion dollars to the federal deficit ongoing until it's repealed or the current government is chased from Washington with torches and pitchforks.  Again, GW Bush was horrific from this point of view, but Obama has not made any moves to curb this spending and from everything he's saying will likely increase it, all while not having the money to pay for it.  And the bastards want to lecture us about fiscal responsibility...

You do realize that the United States currently spends more per capita on health care than any other Western country, and has less to show for it, right?  You realize that Canada, Britain, Norway, Sweden, etc all have universal health coverage and spend less on it with equal or better care than the United States spent prior to the implementation of the new bill?  The new bill is a lot less than it needed to be, but it will reduce expenditures in the long run.  Obama just saved you money, whether you realize it or not.

[Nuclear1]

Christ can't we stop talking about healthcare for one damn political thread?

[Flipside]

Unfortunately, it's become an obsession with the Republicans now, I'm not even certain most of them even really know why they are opposing it, only that it should be opposed because it was championed by Obama. That's why they can't leave it alone, it's kind of the opposite of a personality cult, where the issue isn't the issue, the person suggesting it is.

Notice how it is almost always referred to as 'Obama's healthcare scheme', despite the fact the entire thing went through an entire Democratic process, where the entire party voted it through, even with consultation and evaluations with Republicans, and most of the text was not written by Obama.

I'll say that for the UK elections, we may think that Brown looks like a rubber gargoyle in a washing machine, but we can (for the main part) tell the difference between him and the Labour Party.

Edit: And for clarification, when you go to anti-Labour rallies, there are boards that say things like 'down with Brown', but there's also an equal number of placards saying 'No more Labour', yet, at the tea-parties, the placards I've seen in both Fox and CBS news reports have been almost exclusively targetted Obama, not the Democrats, or even the entire governmental structure that voted the system through, this seems to me to not be about the actual law, it's more personal than that.

[Mikes]

Edit: And for clarification, when you go to anti-Labour rallies, there are boards that say things like 'down with Brown', but there's also an equal number of placards saying 'No more Labour', yet, at the tea-parties, the placards I've seen in both Fox and CBS news reports have been almost exclusively targetted Obama, not the Democrats, or even the entire governmental structure that voted the system through, this seems to me to not be about the actual law, it's more personal than that.

Could simply be that they have little choice but to attack Obama directly at every turn simply because he is/was such a popular and liked political figure. (And in comparison, Brown really isn't and never was heh.)
I.e. If they opposed the Democrats on an issue there are propably less people paying attention than when they oppose Obama on the same issue.

Politics never really was about issues and facts or :cough: "doing the right thing" after all ... it's always about popularity and perception ... and the more mud you sling, the more mud will stick, eventually. Doesn't matter who is right or wrong really, only matters who can convince the most idiots of their version of the "truth".


"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried from time to time."  - Sir Winston Churchill

[Flipside]

Exactly, it's not about policy, it's not about party, it's about attention grabbing by attacking an individual who looms large on the political stage, kind of like a political version of 'Look at meeee!'. Much of the coverage of the Healthcare Bill has been focussed on Obamas struggle to get backing, not only from Republicans, but from his own party, and in the end, it was they who put the Bill through, not Obama, he merely ratified it.

But attacking Democrats in general won't make the news, because that's what Republicans are supposed to do, just as Conservatives are supposed to attack Labour, so they have to make the attack personal purely to get screen-time, and that makes me wonder whether this is genuinely about concerns with the Bill, or whether it is simply about throwing the rattle out of the pram to get attention.

And I think that may be where the main difference between politics in the two countries differ, the UK resisted televised election debates for years, because of concerns that it would turn the political system into a kind of carnival show, where personalities were more important than policies, and I think the Tea-Party system is an excellent example of why it was resisted, the whole thing has turned into a lynch-mob for Obama, and it's spearheaded and organised by a News corporation... that is, to me, wrong on so many levels I cannot even count them.

[Mongoose]

Notice how it is almost always referred to as 'Obama's healthcare scheme', despite the fact the entire thing went through an entire Democratic process, where the entire party voted it through, even with consultation and evaluations with Republicans, and most of the text was not written by Obama.

The thing is, in our system of government, the current president becomes the de facto leader of their party, for better or worse.  People understand that the Democrats in Congress were responsible for formulating and passing the healthcare bill, but Obama represents the Democratic Party as a whole, and because he himself pushed for the legislation, most of the credit/blame for it is levied at him.  It's a similar concept to presidents historically taking far more credit/blame for economic shifts than their office would actually allow them.

[Flipside]

I can understand that, it does happen here to a degree, Brown is Labours figurehead and therefore is representative of their policies as a whole, the concept of 'Gordon Brown' and 'Labour' are certainly interchangeable to a degree, but I don't see the level of pure venom here that I see at things like the Tea-Parties. I know the Republican party is not just the Tea-Party goers, and that they represent the strongest opinions, but people dislike Brown for what he represents, certainly, I don't think anyone is under the illusion that Brown is the source of the problems, merely that his policies may not be the best way of dealing with them.

[Vrets]

[karajorma]

and it's spearheaded and organised by a News corporation... that is, to me, wrong on so many levels I cannot even count them.

That's cause in the UK the ITC would come down on Fox News like a ton of ****ing bricks. They'd spend more time transmitting adjudications than they spent actually showing news.

[Flipside]

Exactly, even satire programs, such as Have I Got News For You, or Mock The Week have to live up to certain requirements in the UK, though their subject matter does give them some leeway, and they constantly take the piss out of the requirement, but it's incidents like this that demonstrate to me why these programs are not allowed to push a political agenda.

[headdie]

Exactly, even satire programs, such as Have I Got News For You, or Mock The Week have to live up to certain requirements in the UK, though their subject matter does give them some leeway, and they constantly take the piss out of the requirement, but it's incidents like this that demonstrate to me why these programs are not allowed to push a political agenda.

i can remember watching a out takes addition of mock the week and dara was told to ask franky boyle and the guy that sits next to him if they could say something that could actualy be transmitted

[Flipside]

Yup, I was in the studio for the recording of one episode, and, to be honest, there's a fair bit you don't see. Some of the non-broadcast Frankie Boyle jokes are hilarious, but would bring down the wrath of the Complaints Commission faster than you can say 'Mocking the Afflicted'

[Sushi]

The thing is, in our system of government, the current president becomes the de facto leader of their party, for better or worse. 

Definitely for worse.

[Grizzly]

What nobody appears to get is that the economic crisis isn't  about presidents' bad policies, it's about some idiots pretending they had money. and some other idiots believing them.