When the last 60 posts are on the Battle of Iraq, yet the thread is called "How is Obama doing?", I'd say you have run of track.

Yeah, we have run off track. Still, questions unanswered. And the reason for the GWOT discussion is that it affects how much change, (or, god forbid, lack thereof), Obama is making.

It's April now. And I think Obama is doing quite well. It's a big mess, and it's going to be tricky. I really like him. I'm glad he's in charge. His administration is doing pretty awesome job considering the circumstances.

thank you for re-railing (un-derailing?) this thread ;)

I'm overall happy with Obama. There are a few things I'm not pleased about. He keeps calling it a war on terror, which is a terrible idea. You cannot fight and win wars against tactics. Calling it a war on terror automatically makes it a never ending war. I'm ready for the war to be over.

I'm also not thrilled that he isn't pushing prosecution of Bush and his fellow criminals. Yes, I know, I've heard the "we gotta let the country heal" argument ad nauseum since even before Bush left office. We heard the same thing when Ford pardoned Nixon. But, we need to send a clear message that even Presidents are not above the law. Right now the lesson is that once you become president, you can do anything you want and you won't get into trouble for it. Perhaps if Bush and his cronies did some jailtime, future presidents would realize that using the constitution as toilet paper, and torturing people, and committing treason, not to mention war crimes, are not things that they can get away with.

He won't push for any war crimes on Bush, not when he's already started doing some of the things Bush did (wiretaps, etc.)

He is doing really good so far. He was able to stop the freefall on the economy and it has rebounded and may be a net positive since he took office soon. He also handled the pirate/hostage situation very well.

How is Obama doing? I guess it depends on "winners" and "losers".

After a trillion or so dollars on corporate aid and bailouts in the financial sector, companies in the financial sectors are starting to report profits that exceed expectations and new shareholders are making a shit load of money. The XLF is a exchange traded funds representative of the broad financial market. Among the top holdings include Wells Fargo, JPMorgan, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, and Citi. On March 6 the XLF was trading at $6.18. Today it is trading around $10.85. That is a 75% return in about a month.


No doubt the XLF was hit pretty hard from a year ago, but a lot of investors were dumping their investments and only the bravest who held to the bottom lost massive amounts of their investment. Now lots of investors have bought into these companies at or near the bottom given the government commitment to bail them out.

But here is the kicker. While these firms got a trillion or so in bailouts, and now starting to show some profits, with stock prices starting to go through the roof....Guess what...foreclosures continue to rise...banks are doubling credit card rates...raising fees... etc., etc. and basically screwing the American public with the costs of the bailout on one hand and securing their profits on the other.

I am a "capitalist pig" and I can appreciate making money and taking advantage of opportunity. But I wonder why Obama did not focus more on helping people rather than financial institutions, why not focus on consumers rather than investors.

The winners of round one are clearly the financial institutions and investors. The losers - average Americans

So, perhaps on this basis you can tell me how Obama is doing. Personally, I can love Obama if he can give me a 75% ROI every month.

RNC faction wants Dems branded socialists - Jonathan Martin - POLITICO.com

Keep it up GOP, keep grasping at those straws

For the first month and a half after Obama got elected we would here non-stop from the media and many members on this board about how the Dow had dropped because of Obama (of course this ignored the fact that the economy was in a free fall for 5 months prior).

In March the free fall stopped and the markets started going up. The comments about the Dow and Obama disappeared. Now the Dow is up since Obama took office and has been climbing consistently for 2 months (longer than what it dropped under Obama). Will these same members have enough credibility to come out and admit one of these 2 things:

1) Obama had nothing to do with the free fall.

or

2) Obama stopped the free fall and so far appears to have turned the market around.

I'm betting no.

Wait....socialism works?

Interesting how the "evil mainstream liberal media" put the dow dropping as their top story every night, but now that it's going up, we don't hear anything about it. boy, these media outlets sure are in the bag for Obama!

/sarcasm

How is Obama doing?

Does anyone know what his objectives are in Afghanistan? How does he define success in Afghanistan?

July deadliest month for U.S. in Afghanistan - USATODAY.com

Gates announces temporary increase in U.S. Army | Reuters

Obama budget cuts target military funding - Washington Times

What is his plan for national defense? Why does he no longer think our military resources are over extended?

Seems to me like we have lost focus with no clearly defined purpose.

Honestly, I have no idea what his strategy is. If it's not part of his white house briefings....

well, first off it's pretty bloody disengenuous for any supporter of the bush administration to talk about a lack of clarity on obama's part in afghanistan. seven years of incoherence and now obama's is a Problem? horsepucky. that's right, i said horsepucky.

i haven't a real sense of how afghanistan makes sense. never had it. this ludicrous "war on terror" was the ostensible motivator, then it turned into the americans being part of a civil war in afghanistan and later on the border of pakistan and then the americans as a dimension of what was happening in the swat valley...none of this makes any sense. obama keeps troops there because, apparently, he buys something about this nitwit "war on terror" thing--at least enough to see it as something potentially rational, which i don't and haven't. i think he's kinda boxed in there. but i can't say that i know the strategy---or the objectives.

my main problem with obama is that he's gone nowhere near far enough in torching the legacy of the bush people and the neoliberalism of which they were a singularly incompetent expression. nowhere near.
the problems neoliberalism has wraught are not over, the "crisis" is not finished--but obama seems to be more or less content with half-assed measures circumscribed by assumptions that are of almost exactly the same logic as that of the bush people.

it's not great.

there are things he's doing that i support--i think he's right about health care for example, even i am continually baffled about why the french model is not considered as a template for an alternative to the american. but whatever, he's doing something about it. i like his green emphasis, but haven't really seen much action in that direction yet. i'm more supportive of the changes in direction in foreign policy, particularly with respect to israel. but we'll see how things play out.

The Bush focus on Iraq was heavily criticized by Obama. Obama stated the "real" war was in Afghanistan. Bush's actions in Iraq, agree or disagree, had clear goals and objectives.

Given the exhaustive discussions on the war in Iraq explaining the strategy and reasons for support of military actions in Iraq, your comment about being disingenuous, seems to me to be disingenuous.

Bush had clear objectives in Iraq? How could they have been "clear" when they changed every 6 months?

The broad goals and objectives did not change. The tactics and strategy did, this is the nature of war. I can not image what you would have said about Lincoln, given the number of Generals he fired before sticking with Grant.

Why waste time feeding the troll?

Aceventura revives this dead thread talking about Afghanistan, Roachboy points out that Obama's dealing with Afghanistan is near enough to Bush's that it's ridiculous to argue one is any more or less sensible than the other, and in response Aceventura posts a non-sequitur about Bush and Iraq. Why argue over an irrelevant point? If he wants to get back to Afghanistan then whatever, but he's trying to shift the discussion for some reason--from past posts my guess is he wants to argue for the sake of disagreement and not really to understand what's going on or even what he himself dug the thread up to discuss.

ace's point, I think, is that Obama is Bad.

No, no, he is a ...bad, bad man.


:thumbsup:

Back away from the koolaid.

DOW just closed above 9000.

yep.

554,000 jobless claims last week. The housing market is still in shambles. The rich got richer with the bailout while the poor got poorer. Wasn't that the big complaint about Bush, the rich got richer and the poor got poorer??? Tell me again whats different??

I have little confidence that either party has the average American best interest at heart. When are the average jane and joe blows from both parties going to awake and figure out most of the controversy is merely to keep you occupied while they pillage the public coffers?

Under Bush the rich got richer & the Lazy got poorer. I see nothing wrong with this. Obama is taking away for the incentive for the rich & successful to continue. After you take everything away from the rich & redistribute to the poor where or who do you steal from next? The rich as you say already pay most of the tax burden. Under obama everyone except the political class will be poor. unemployment continues to rise & the Dems want more tax dollars.
If the so labeled middle class earners do not get hit directly with an increase in income tax, there will be an increase in tax on consumer goods. With all of the increase in unemployment, the tax revenue was destined to drop, soooooooooooooo therefore they will have to increase tax on everyone to be able to give away all of the free stuff they are promising to give away.

please cite all the programs Obama has implemented that have stolen from the rich and given to the poor.

Any tax increase on a class of taxpayers and not the rest of the tax payers is stealing from the rich & giving to the poor. Any tax increase at all is Govt. stealing from the citizens.

No, no. You are wrong! According to Derwood, since we elected them, they can do whatever they want and we are in defacto agreement - since we elected them. It isn't theft because we elected them.

Personally, I'm in favor of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. Consider the rich have been stealing from the poor for generations, I call that justice... There's a reason Robin Hood is thought of as a hero, and it ain't just his skill with a bow.

Not that I'm necessarily agreeing that that's what's happening here. But if it were, I wouldn't personally be sad about it.

Digbudro--where do you personally fall, economically, if you don't mind me asking? Are you among the rich you're afraid are going to get stolen from?

I'm considered by most to be upper middle class. I work in the oil industry for a living. I work offshore in the Gulf Of Mexico. I spend 260 +/- days a year away from my family. I sacrifice a lot to provide for my family. So I do not need some two bit socialist to take more of my money that I work for.

I'm just curious. Did you ever meet a "poor" person that managed to make good? Did they make good from "stealing back" their money from some "rich" person or did they make good by shear hard work? How do you reconcile this and fit it into your political beliefs?

As a former poor person, now a marginally nonpoor person, I made good via a healthy dose of educational grants, which were no doubt ripped from the clenched fist of a person more wealthy from me (assuming one likes making stupid simplifications about the tax system).

Anyone who thinks success is solely the result of hard work is either ignorant or delusional.

I'm just curious. Do the people who claim so vehemently that their money is being stolen to be given to the poor actually know where most of the tax revenues go towards? Do they know how much of the tax revenues actually go towards poverty reduction?

Of all the countries in the world we have reliable data for, the only nations where the taxes and spending reduce inequality less than the United States are Taiwan and Switzerland, and that is only because they have very low inequality to begin with.

In fact, just to bring in an example from this own thread, the oil industry receives about 15-18 billion a year in subsidies. If you add subsidies to oil transportation, that figure increases to close to 35 billion dollars. TANF, in contrast, costs about 18 billion dollars.

I do know several people who were poor and have worked hard & have built successful businesses. Some who work for someone else and are very successful. The secret is hard work. Not holding your hand out for the government to feed you.
By the way what is that you do for a living?

I wonder if digbudro would still be considered upper class if his salary were reduced in proportion to how much of our money he is getting paid?

---------- Post added at 03:29 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:27 PM ----------

Research for a nonprofit.

The oil industry does employ thousands of people. Transportation, construction, planning, research, food services, medical, just to name a few.

You offering me a job?

I have to ask Digbudro, since you are so anti-tax are you against all oil subsidies?

I told my son - "If you got mad crazy skilz, you will never have to worry about a job".
He says to me - "Watch me play Halo on the 360."
I say to him - "Son, if you have marketable skills, you will never have to worry about a job. Go, do your homework.


This is not direct to you or anyone else in particular. It is just an observation on my part. People who have something to offer, that is needed and has value, don't stay unemployed long. They don't stay poor either.