I'm not a fan of Obama, but this article is idiotic.
Obama is not really incompetent. What he is is the pinnacle of middle of the road, push the problems off until next quarter, politics. Additionally, he is a proud participant in the quest to expand the reach of executive powers just like every previous president in my lifetime and then some. Also, like every president since Reagan, he seems ot have forgotten that one of those powers you don't have to bend the constitution for is the veto pen, but that comes with accountability. If one were to try and argue incompetence, what you would have to focus on has NOTHING to do with what the article whines about.
As a politician, his biggest problem is that he views pissing everyone off and coming to a mutually non-beneficial arrangement that everyone hates as being the same thing as good compromise. This pervades his domestic politicking and his foreign policy decisions.
Judged from the perspective of a presidency, probably the worst thing he did was to pursue obamacare in the face of it mutating into shit while also failing to deliver on the commitment to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Had he done both, I'd argue that fiscally, we would have been stuck with something approximating what you would have gotten from any candidate you could possibly have seen elected in the 2008 campaign. The banking mess was a foregone conclusion once Bush got told by party heads to sit down, shut up, and never speak of it again with regards to housing and lending issues at the beginning of his presidency.
Obama is a moron who can't get a solid economic plan any traction and his team are just a bad as their boss, since he has no good ideas (when getting government out of the @#$@#$ way is the best option). It has been his way or the highway until he blinked a few times. Where was compromise in the obamacare or other moronic government spending unless he was dragged kick and screaming to the table when he was not golfing?
Getting the government out of the way is NOT demonstrably the best way to deal with the economy. What we are dealing with is the results of the government having gotten out of the way, and the private sector demonstrated that they could increase the money supply even MORE rapidly and irresponsibly than the government could.
There are no responsible grown ups. It's bratty 5 year olds all the way down, and we are screwed.
100% of the economic problems were caused by Bush and the Republican House and Senate. And what is worst, the Republicans in the House and Senate are making sure the problem continues. The only good thing is that they will inherit the shit sandwich they made and they only know to add more shit to it. So they won't be in power for long.
Dude, you missed a lot of the cause of this. Some of the stuff dates back to Nixon. A lot of it goes back to Clinton. If you think it's all the fault of republicans, then you are part of the problem you are bitching about.
The problem is that most of it (95%) of it is Republican's fault. But they continue to blame others. If they are such good business men then why did the Bush era end up being such a failure. Th e proof of the pudding is in the eating. They talk a good talk then they get into power and proceed to fuck up royally.
And worse yet, their solutions to the current crop of economic problems is to take the Bush policies which created the crisis and to put them on steroids and bring them back. More tax cuts for the top earners to free up more cash for speculation, more squeezing of the lower 90-some percent, less oversight over corporate power which is more likely to cause danger to the public and to working Americans than it is to perform as advertised, i.e. create jobs.
Just imagine if the government 'got out of the way' of BP during the Gulf oil spill, or of nuclear power plants, coal mines, and other places where there is more danger the less oversight we have.
My comment wasn't even about Obama, I am just making an observation that the proposed 'cure' for what ails our economy coming from the GOP/Tea Party is more of what got us into trouble in the first place.
So if I am drinking Kool Aid, then tell me that the crash of 2008 wasn't caused in part by excessive deregulation of the financial sector, which went wild selling nearly worthless investments disguised as solid A-rated products which ended up worthless causing many banks to fail, and required cubic federal dollars to keep afloat.
And if that is the case, how are we to solve this problem with even more radical deregulation, which is what the Tea Party is promising?
I agree, much of today's maladies are the result of REPUBLICANS AND DEMOCRAT policies. Not the 100% as stewart professes .. and then ... the koolaid reference was to your response - no mention of the democrats but the GOP and GW failed polices.
There are 536 people in DC that can and have the ability to right the ship and that have got us where we are today.
Since 2007 - Dems have controlled the House and Senate. Things have been escalating out of control for some time .. the middle class has been squeezed for decades, not just the last ten years.
That is all true, Big T, but it doesn't change the fact that GW DID HAVE failed policies and that the Tea Party wants to go further in the same direction as GW, a LOT further it seems.
I find it amusing that no one has recognized that the baiting title of this link would work a lot better circa 2003 than it does today.
The number was 95%, not 100%. The point is if I was as much a failure when it came to the economy as the Republican are I would be embarrassed and I would shut my mouth. But being psychopaths the Republicans are the most barefaced liars I have ever seen. Unfortunately it works for them since there is a large segment of our populations that aren't sensible enough to know when someone is lying to them if that person sound sincere.
thebaron
Won't see this on the MSM, since they would get a brown nose if the president stopped too fast....