Your opinion on the job that President Obama is doing so far (1 Viewer)

[Statorama]

Obama's Gallup numbers down with young people and seniors

Approval of Obama is down among all major age groups over the past month, but the drop has been particularly steep -- 11 points -- among adults aged 18 to 29 (though young Americans continue to give Obama the strongest support). It has dropped by four to seven points during that time among the three older age categories of Americans. However, over the past week, the sharpest drop -- from 48% to 43% -- has been among seniors.

It'll be huge if the R's can take back Florida.

 

[toshiba]

Obama's Gallup numbers down with young people and seniors

Approval of Obama is down among all major age groups over the past month, but the drop has been particularly steep -- 11 points -- among adults aged 18 to 29 (though young Americans continue to give Obama the strongest support). It has dropped by four to seven points during that time among the three older age categories of Americans. However, over the past week, the sharpest drop -- from 48% to 43% -- has been among seniors.

It'll be huge if the R's can take back Florida.

I went with Mild, I do not think though that this will translate to a republican vote in 2012 for me.

 

[Statorama]

Obama's $2 TRILLION dollar admission

Seems like the CBO was right afterall...

THE Obama administration did it again last week -- getting bad news out on a Friday evening to minimize press coverage. Within hours after President Obama left Washington for his vacation on Martha's Vineyard, the Office of Management and Budget leaked word that, sometime this week, it will revise its projection of the federal budget deficit over the next 10 years from $7 trillion to $9 trillion.

That $2 trillion upward revision will put the White House's numbers in line with the $9.1 trillion deficit that the Congressional Budget Office projected in June. Back then, the administration criticized CBO's analysis; now it's admitting that CBO was right after all. (Of course, CBO might yet revise its projection upward even more, in light of current economic realities.)

Even in an era when previously unheard-of amounts of money are tossed around in Washington with abandon, the administration's admission that its plans will put the nation another $2 trillion deeper in debt sent tremors through the capital.

Just a year ago, a claim that a politician's programs would double the national debt would have been an attack by his opponent. But under Obama, doubling the national debt has become a promise.

Worse, nearly everyone believes that the administration's projections are still too optimistic. They assume rates of economic growth that are nowhere in prospect and project that the federal government will -- somehow -- contain spending on health care even as it takes on ever-expanding responsibility for that sector and adds millions to the Medicaid rolls.

Fiscal bad news seems destined to continue. The New York Times reported Monday that in 2009 the federal government will auction off $8 trillion in Treasury securities -- up from $5.5 trillion in 2008 -- an average of $253,000 per second. And OMB now projects federal debt held by the public to skyrocket past 60 percent of gross domestic product -- a level last reached during World War II.

Does the rest of the world (principally China) have an unlimited appetite for American debt? The Obama administration intends to find out.

As summer draws to a close, it is easy to sympathize with Obama's desire to seek refuge at the beach. His administration's triumphant early days are a distant memory as he sinks in the polls. Among likely voters, those who "strongly disapprove" of the president now represent a plurality of around 40 percent.

It is much too early to say that the administration's stumbles on the budget, cap and trade and health-care "reform" represent the president's Waterloo. After all, presidents, unlike usurping emperors, get four-year terms. What does seem clear, however, is that the administration's "never let a crisis go to waste" strategy is dead.

President Obama tried to use an undoubted economic crisis as a pretext to reward the Democratic Party's constituencies and enact a broad range of liberal measures that have long been on the left's wish list. The result is a sea of red ink that has appalled most voters. Those who have turned out for tea parties and town halls, far from being "un-American," as some Democrats absurdly charge, are in fact the vocal tip of a very large iceberg.

Democrats, therefore, will reassemble in Washington in the fall with diminished expectations, recognizing that they can enact only as much liberalism as voters are willing to pay for -- or, more accurately, commit their children and grandchildren to paying for.

 

[Death Bytes]

Cash for Clunkers reduced net jobs, so people should find a different reason to like it.

 

[Statorama]

 

[urbanhack]

Keep up the great work in here Gilligan.

 

[Statorama]

Probe of Obama's former choice for Commerce Secretary swept under the rug

Sorry America, Eric Holder has less important things to do.

 

[Statorama]

True level of unemployment is 20%

So if you care not just about people who meet the official definition of "unemployed" but also about people who are dropping out of the labor force, 2009 seems to be trailing 1982 in terms of the health of the labor market. Williams says that when he takes into consideration people who haven't looked for work in more than a year because they can't find jobs, the real unemployment rate today goes all the way up to 20.6 percent by his calculations. "It won't take much to get it to the worst since the Great Depression," he says.

 

[Statorama]

Another case of Obama surrounding himself with the "best and brightest"

"We're really entering a third wave of environmentalism in the United States. The white polluters and the white environmentalists are essentially steering poison into the people of color communities."

 

[CrossEyed]

Another case of Obama surrounding himself with the "best and brightest"

"We're really entering a third wave of environmentalism in the United States. The white polluters and the white environmentalists are essentially steering poison into the people of color communities."

Do they even do background checks on any of these people?

 

[Andy Dufresne]

Another case of Obama surrounding himself with the "best and brightest"

"We're really entering a third wave of environmentalism in the United States. The white polluters and the white environmentalists are essentially steering poison into the people of color communities."

Do they even do background checks on any of these people?

Yes.

 

[Statorama]

We've learned nothing since 9/11

Betraying our dead

By RALPH PETERS

Last Updated: 10:39 AM, September 11, 2009

Posted: 1:13 AM, September 11, 2009

Eight years ago today, our homeland was attacked by fanatical Muslims inspired by Saudi Arabian bigotry. Three thousand American citizens and residents died.

We resolved that we, the People, would never forget. Then we forgot.

We've learned nothing.

Instead of cracking down on Islamist extremism, we've excused it.

Instead of killing terrorists, we free them.

Instead of relentlessly hunting Islamist madmen, we seek to appease them.

Instead of acknowledging that radical Islam is the problem, we elected a president who blames America, whose idea of freedom is the right for women to suffer in silence behind a veil -- and who counts among his mentors and friends those who damn our country or believe that our own government staged the tragedy of September 11, 2001.

Instead of insisting that freedom will not be infringed by terrorist threats, we censor works that might offend mass murderers. Radical Muslims around the world can indulge in viral lies about us, but we dare not even publish cartoons mocking them.

Instead of protecting law-abiding Americans, we reject profiling to avoid offending terrorists. So we confiscate granny's shampoo at the airport because the half-empty container could hold 3.5 ounces of liquid.

Instead of insisting that Islamist hatred and religious apartheid have no place in our country, we permit the Saudis to continue funding mosques and madrassahs where hating Jews and Christians is preached as essential to Islam.

Instead of confronting Saudi hate-mongers, our president bows down to the Saudi king.

Instead of recognizing the Saudi-sponsored Wahhabi cult as the core of the problem, our president blames Israel.

Instead of asking why Middle Eastern civilization has failed so abjectly, our president suggests that we're the failures.

Instead of taking every effective measure to cull information from terrorists, the current administration threatens CIA agents with prosecution for keeping us safe.

Instead of proudly and promptly rebuilding on the site of the Twin Towers, we've committed ourselves to the hopeless, useless task of rebuilding Afghanistan. (Perhaps we should have built a mosque at Ground Zero -- the Saudis would've funded it.)

Instead of taking a firm stand against Islamist fanaticism, we've made a cult of negotiations -- as our enemies pursue nuclear weapons; sponsor terrorism; torture, imprison, rape and murder their own citizens -- and laugh at us.

Instead of insisting that Islam must become a religion of responsibility, our leaders in both parties continue to bleat that "Islam's a religion of peace," ignoring the curious absence of Baptist suicide bombers.

Instead of requiring new immigrants to integrate into our society and conform to its public values, we encourage and subsidize anti-American, woman-hating, freedom-denying bigotry in the name of toleration.

Instead of pursuing our enemies to the ends of the earth, we help them sue us.

We've dishonored our dead and whitewashed our enemies. A distinctly unholy alliance between fanatical Islamists abroad and a politically correct "elite" in the US has reduced 9/11 to the status of a non-event, a day for politicians to preen about how little they've done.

We've forgotten the shock and the patriotic fury Americans felt on that bright September morning eight years ago. We've forgotten our identification with fellow citizens leaping from doomed skyscrapers. We've forgotten the courage of airline passengers who would not surrender to terror.

We've forgotten the men and women who burned to death or suffocated in the Pentagon. We've forgotten our promises, our vows, our commitments.

We've forgotten what we owe our dead and what we owe our children. We've even forgotten who attacked us.

We have betrayed the memory of our dead. In doing so, we betrayed ourselves and our country. Our troops continue to fight -- when they're allowed to do so -- but our politicians have surrendered.

Are we willing to let the terrorists win?

 

[kaa]

I always believed that while the country was moving to the right, it needed one final backtest of liberalism before it could commit itself to a republican supermajority. There's a generation of young people today and all they know is Bush41 wrecked the economy, Clinton was good for the economy, and Bush43 wrecked the economy. This demographic needs to be shown the failure of liberalism. I believed Barack Obama was the one man who could show them why liberalism sucks.

Up to this point, Obama hasn't let me down. In that sense, I completely approve of the job he has done to turn the public away from liberalism. Its actually pretty exciting to watch. He's making all the mistakes we need to finally push this country forward.

 

[kaa]

I actually tend to believe you have to be pretty cynical about the intelligence of the American people to think someone like Barack Obama can succeed. Obama is style over substance. He doesn't have experience, but can deliver a prepared speech very well. I think the American people are too smart to be fooled by someone like this for very long.

 

[Statorama]

I actually tend to believe you have to be pretty cynical about the intelligence of the American people to think someone like Barack Obama can succeed. Obama is style over substance. He doesn't have experience, but can deliver a prepared speech very well. I think the American people are too smart to be fooled by someone like this for very long.

and he has ashy elbows.

 

[jamny]

Which will come first?

Obama condemning Iran for having nuclear weapons?

or

Israel bombing Iran for having nuclear weapons?

 

[perry147]

Which will come first?Obama condemning Iran for having nuclear weapons?orIsrael bombing Iran for having nuclear weapons?

Obama need to let the Jews make Tehran glow.

 

[kaa]

Which will come first?Obama condemning Iran for having nuclear weapons?orIsrael bombing Iran for having nuclear weapons?

Obama doesn't begin to have a clue about foreign policy. I doubt he'd go beyond a milquetoast statement.

 

[Statorama]

Federal deficit hits $1.38 trillion in August, a new record

He inherited it, but he made it worse.

The government in August took in $145 billion in receipts, but $256 billion in outlays led to an overall monthly deficit of $111 billion. That number is better than anticipated — most expectations were that the government had added $162 billion to its tab last month.

The record deficit stems from increased government spending to stop the recession and financial crisis combined with lower government tax revenues.

In late August, the Obama administration projected that the deficit for the full budget year will eventually hit $1.58 trillion.

 

[the moops]

He inherited it, but he made it worse.

Did he ever state otherwise? Pretty sure the size of the federal deficit is not a surprising revelation to anyone.

 

[Statorama]

Obama caves to Union interests, slaps tariffs on Chinese steel

 

[Statorama]

A million jobs saved...at $787,000 per job

Saving A Million Jobs at $787,000 Per Job

By Bill Frezza

The White House Council of Economic Advisers said Thursday the $787 billion stimulus plan kept one million people working who would otherwise not have had jobs.

You wouldn't let me stand up and make the simplistic claim that these million jobs were saved at a cost of $787,000 per job without challenging the details of my accounting, would you? Surely, reality is more complex.

But when the White House Council of Economic Advisers calculated the number of jobs saved by our government's massive stimulus spending, how is it that they entirely neglected to account for the impact on employment of removing $787 billion dollars from the balance sheet of the private economy?

What kind of single-entry bookkeeping is this? Who are these experts so willing to make glib claims with a straight face? How is it that the press, politicians, and pundits credulously report these claims as facts? And why are those who question whether the emperor is wearing any clothes treated like obstructionist members of some lunatic fringe?

There are those who passionately promote the theory that the government can, on net, create jobs by taking money from one set of citizens and handing it to another. Does this make sense to you? Are these promoters easily fooled, willfully blind, or cunningly smart? Let's take a look under the covers and examine the source of this week's claim.

The White House Council of Economic Advisers is lead by three presidential appointees. Currently, these are Christina Romer, Austan Goolsbee, and Cecilia Rouse.

According to their biographies on the Council web site, these people have never held jobs outside of academia. Their positions at Princeton, Berkeley, and the University of Chicago were protected by lifetime tenure. Unemployment, to them, is a theory that cannot become a personal reality. What in their backgrounds makes them experts on the subject of job creation?

They never had to meet a payroll. They never had to raise money to fund their businesses from skeptical investors. They never bet their life savings on their own business judgment. They never had to scramble to pay off a banker who called in a loan. They never had to decide whether to take a calculated risk to expand their workforce hoping to take market share from a fierce competitor. They never had to make a judgment call on whether or not to launch an unproven new product. They never had to manage a reduction in force, explaining to employees that their jobs have been eliminated because the tax and regulatory burdens imposed by some new law forced them to cut costs. They never lost business to a government-subsidized competitor whose cost of capital was vastly lower than theirs. They never had to grease the palms of politicians offering constituent services to resolve a bureaucratic hangup caused by the labyrinthine government approvals these selfsame politicians inflict on many businesses. They never had to deal with a missed sales forecast caused by an economy so roiled by capricious and uncertain fiscal policy that frightened customers were holding back orders. They never had to deal with a key supplier that unexpectedly went bankrupt because their source of credit dried up as dollars got sucked out of the commercial economy into government debt. They never had to negotiate with angry landlords after being forced to shut down a business destroyed by spurious mass-manufactured class action lawsuits. They never had to stand up in front of disappointed investors to explain why they lost money that had been entrusted to them. And you can be sure that none of them ever fell on their face and had to pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and decide whether it was worth going through all of the joys described above to take another shot at building a business from scratch.

Go read their biographies. Do Christina, Austan, and Cecilia appear to you to be contributing members of the productive economy? Do you see any evidence that they've spent even a fraction of their careers creating jobs? What do you think qualifies these people to work as high level apparatchiks of a governing class determined to manage the businesses of others?

All three have Ph.D.'s from fancy universities. They are prize winning experts in macroeconomics. To have come this far you can bet that they are ambitious, articulate, well connected, and brilliant. Yet when the Council of Economic Advisers did its calculations to determine the number of jobs saved by the stimulus, they shamelessly counted assets and totally ignored liabilities.

People this smart cannot be easily fooled. People so visibly in the public eye cannot remain willfully blind.

No, these people and those that appointed them are cunningly smart. It's we who are the fools for listening to them. Long after these experts return to their sinecures in academia to train another generation of economists on the wisdom of central planning and Keynesian pump priming, it's we and our children and our grandchildren who will be paying the price.

 

[bostonfred]

After Bernanke's comments today, I just wanted to say another big thanks to Obama for getting us out of this recession. Great job. Absolutely incredible how well he has handled the first year of his presidency.

 

[Jutz]

After Bernanke's comments today, I just wanted to say another big thanks to Obama for getting us out of this recession. Great job. Absolutely incredible how well he has handled the first year of his presidency.

I have heard this a few times... and have even heard the president himself say that we are officially out of the recession...I'm not saying it's going to be... but I am saying this statement and belief could end up being the Obama version of Bush's victory speech in Iraq...I have heard both good news about the economy... as well as not as optimistic news that some think another downturn is coming...And as a side note... thank you to GWB for passing TARP... this was just as much part of the stimulus as anything Obama did... and early signs are we have a better chance at recovering this $ then any of Obama's plans...

 

[bueno]

Risking a trade war with our largest creditor just to appease unions.

Investors buying gold to hedge against currency decline.

20% real unemployment.

The FDIC almost out of money.

The dollar in the crapper.

Record deficit spending.

Bank failures still continuing.

How is any of this good news?

 

[bostonfred]

And as a side note... thank you to GWB for passing TARP... this was just as much part of the stimulus as anything Obama did... and early signs are we have a better chance at recovering this $ then any of Obama's plans...

It's interesting how many conservatives were howling about TARP before and are now using it as a rallying cry to say Bush saved the economy, not Obama. I'm curious why you didn't mention Congress?

 

[Jutz]

And as a side note... thank you to GWB for passing TARP... this was just as much part of the stimulus as anything Obama did... and early signs are we have a better chance at recovering this $ then any of Obama's plans...

It's interesting how many conservatives were howling about TARP before and are now using it as a rallying cry to say Bush saved the economy, not Obama. I'm curious why you didn't mention Congress?

I'm still not 100% convinced we are out of it... so I am not inclined to sincerely thank anyone right now... I actually made the statement moreso to point out that you failed to mention GWB in your post. I felt that as long as you were handing out congradulations... he should be included.Now I am curious... you are asking me why I didn't include Congress??? Why didn't you include Congress??? To answer your question... I was actually following your lead of giving the president credit for the economy... regardless of who is in Congress. I look at the POTUS as kind of like the QB... gets more credit... and blame... then they should.

 

[bueno]

And as a side note... thank you to GWB for passing TARP... this was just as much part of the stimulus as anything Obama did... and early signs are we have a better chance at recovering this $ then any of Obama's plans...

It's interesting how many conservatives were howling about TARP before and are now using it as a rallying cry to say Bush saved the economy, not Obama. I'm curious why you didn't mention Congress?

Didn't like TARP then and don't like the stimulus package either.And don't get me started on cash for clunkers. Spending $3 billion to save $350 million is exactly the kind of bad economics this president pushes!

 

[Statorama]

Obama: Of course we're not going to cover illegals, we're going to give them all amnesty

 

[Saints-Man]

And as a side note... thank you to GWB for passing TARP... this was just as much part of the stimulus as anything Obama did... and early signs are we have a better chance at recovering this $ then any of Obama's plans...

It's interesting how many conservatives were howling about TARP before and are now using it as a rallying cry to say Bush saved the economy, not Obama. I'm curious why you didn't mention Congress?

bf, I was against TARP both under Bush & Obama(a lot of people on this board were). If it turns out that TARP was beneficial and neccessary, then I will admit I was wrong. It does appear that it has been beneficial, so I was wrong.But too many of the lefties are solely crediting Obama with this. That is not truthful. TARP was started by Bush and continued by Obama. They both deserve credit. It is hard to see how one can be credited without the other.

If it turns out that TARP saves nothing and costs the American taxpayers a lot of money, then they are both to be blamed. I don't see how this is that difficult.

 

[Statorama]

Just wait until the FHA goes belly up and needs to be bailed out. Ugh.

 

[David Dodds]

And as a side note... thank you to GWB for passing TARP... this was just as much part of the stimulus as anything Obama did... and early signs are we have a better chance at recovering this $ then any of Obama's plans...

It's interesting how many conservatives were howling about TARP before and are now using it as a rallying cry to say Bush saved the economy, not Obama. I'm curious why you didn't mention Congress?

bf, I was against TARP both under Bush & Obama(a lot of people on this board were). If it turns out that TARP was beneficial and neccessary, then I will admit I was wrong. It does appear that it has been beneficial, so I was wrong.But too many of the lefties are solely crediting Obama with this. That is not truthful. TARP was started by Bush and continued by Obama. They both deserve credit. It is hard to see how one can be credited without the other.

If it turns out that TARP saves nothing and costs the American taxpayers a lot of money, then they are both to be blamed. I don't see how this is that difficult.

So the guy that wrote a blank check and did not ask how these banks were using the money is on equal footing with the guy who made executives cut their pay, cancel boondoggles, stress tested the organizations, got them to promise to lend more out, had them document their expenditures, etc. Obama's team put PRESSURE on the banks to turn it around. Most hated the rules so badly that they did everything in their power to repay the govt ahead of schedule so they could get out from underneath the rules.

 

[Statorama]

Obama cuts throats of allies, feeds them to Russian Bear, gets nothing in return

Obama feeds allies to bear

By RALPH PETERS

Last Updated: 10:05 AM, September 18, 2009

Posted: 3:45 AM, September 18, 2009

STILL determined to "push the reset button with Russia," President Obama hit the delete key on our allies in Eastern Europe.

Obama's decision to abandon missile defense as we know it, cutting the throats of Poland and the Czech Republic, handed Moscow's hard-liners their biggest win since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Russian strongman Vladimir Putin insisted all along that we'd never be permitted to deploy an anti-ballistic missile system in the former Soviet empire. He was right.

And Obama got nothing in return. No Russian commitments on Iran's nuclear program. No sovereignty guarantees for Georgia. No restrictions on arms sales to Venezuela. Not even a bearhug.

Yesterday, when Defense Secretary Robert Gates explained the rationale for ending our plan to deploy a high-tech radar system and anti-missile interceptors to Eastern Europe, every military argument he advanced was absolutely correct. But, in strategic terms, the decision's a disaster.

The move to kill this program was a White House attempt to toss a bone to the extreme left, which has always hated missile defense. (Why defend ourselves, when we're the enemy?) For that, Obama betrayed the trust of allies who'd done all they could to please us.

The Poles spent enormous political capital to convince their citizens to risk this deployment. They've backed us consistently in NATO and the UN. They sent combat troops to support us in Iraq.

The Czechs also fought our political battles for us, supporting our foreign wars and siding with us in international forums -- angering West European powers.

Now add Poland and the Czech Republic to the list of allies, such as Israel and Honduras, that we've thrown to the wolves. Obama's foreign policy embodies a line from "Animal House": "You [screwed] up -- you trusted us!"

But the worst thing is how this decision's read in Moscow. Putin, Russia's new czar, sees this as a triumph of his will over Obama's weak, retreating US. And he's right.

Thus it came to pass that, 70 years to the day after the Red Army invaded Poland, Warsaw's residents heard the news of this US betrayal and the implicit message that, yes, Eastern Europe still belongs in Moscow's sphere of influence.

If you're a citizen of Ukraine, Georgia or even the NATO-member Baltic states, you must be shuddering. You thought NATO and the US were serious about your right to live in freedom?

Better dig that Latvian-Russian dictionary out of the attic.

The last thing we needed to do was to further encourage Putin to believe he's all-knowing and invincible. But that's just what we've done.

To be fair, the entire debacle has been a bipartisan mess.

I, for one, never believed this was the right system at the right place and time. The technology was immature, and Iran's a regional, not an intercontinental, problem. But conservatives who believe that any hyperexpensive weapon system deserves automatic support shoved it down our throats and those of our allies. (It's not just the left that damages our defense.)

Once the Bush administration committed to the deployment, I grudgingly supported it: We couldn't hang the East Europeans out to dry after strong-arming them for commitments.

Now the Obama administration's made the mess immeasurably worse. It's a lose-lose situation for us -- and for our allies.

Moscow believes we just signed over a new lease on Eastern Europe. And we didn't even get a tin of caviar. Will the Obama-Putin Act go down in history as the post-modern Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact?

 

[Philo]

Obama cuts throats of allies, feeds them to Russian Bear, gets nothing in return

Wasn't one of Obama's main selling points that we wanted Europeans to like us again?

Hope & Change!

 

[perry147]

Obama cuts throats of allies, feeds them to Russian Bear, gets nothing in return

Wasn't one of Obama's main selling points that we wanted Europeans to like us again?

Hope & Change!

CONTAIN IRANIAN THREAT

President Obama based his decision to scrap the Bush administration's European missile defense plans on a reassessment of the Iranian threat. A new intelligence assessment has Iran making much more progress on short- and medium-range missiles than the long-range ones the Bush plan was designed for

MORE %#$#% LIES FROM THE RIGHT.

 

[jonessed]

Obama cuts throats of allies, feeds them to Russian Bear, gets nothing in return

Wasn't one of Obama's main selling points that we wanted Europeans to like us again?

Hope & Change!

CONTAIN IRANIAN THREAT

President Obama based his decision to scrap the Bush administration's European missile defense plans on a reassessment of the Iranian threat. A new intelligence assessment has Iran making much more progress on short- and medium-range missiles than the long-range ones the Bush plan was designed for

MORE %#$#% LIES FROM THE RIGHT.

It clarifies that the intelligence sees this as the short-term goal (4-5 years). Either missile system would take over a decade to put up so there is obviously more to it than that. It's been speculated for some time he would kill it.I don't really have a problem with backing out, but we should have been more diplomatic about it.

 

[Statorama]

What is likely George Stephonopolus last interview with Obama

Pretty good grilling from a liberal commentator

(my favorite part is when Obama starts arguing that a fine that people pay to the government for not having health insurance isn't a tax....then George quotes the dictionary on what a tax is....good stuff...well, that and Obama saying he didn't know that ACORN received federal funding )

 

[Statorama]

Patterson rejects Obama demand that he not run for NY Governor

edit: it's a shame that instead of throwing his support behind one of only two black governors in the nation....he throws him under the bus.

 

[the moops]

Patterson rejects Obama demand that he not run for NY Governor

edit: it's a shame that instead of throwing his support behind one of only two black governors in the nation....he throws him under the bus.

So you want Obama to throw his support behind Paterson because he is black?Paterson is a disaster.

 

[the moops]

Obama saying he didn't know that ACORN received federal funding )

He didn't say that.

 

[Statorama]

Obama saying he didn't know that ACORN received federal funding )

He didn't say that.

Listened again and he indeed does say that he didn't know that ACORN received "a whole lot" of federal funding. Considering his long-time ties to ACORN, this comes across as disingenuous at best.

 

[the moops]

Obama saying he didn't know that ACORN received federal funding )

He didn't say that.

Listened again and he indeed does say that he didn't know that ACORN received "a whole lot" of federal funding. Considering his long-time ties to ACORN, this comes across as disingenuous at best.

Of course it is disingenuous. But you did admit that he didn't say what you said he did.

 

[Statorama]

Remembering the oldies but goodies...Obama pays ACORN subsidiary $800K to register voters...thousands of those registrations turn out to be fraudulent

From CNN no less

CROWN POINT, Indiana (CNN) -- More than 2,000 voter registration forms filed in northern Indiana's Lake County by a liberal activist group this week have turned out to be bogus, election officials said Thursday.

The group -- the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN -- already faces allegations of filing fraudulent voter registrations in Nevada and faces investigations in other states.

And in Lake County, home to the long-depressed steel town of Gary, the bipartisan Elections Board has stopped processing a stack of about 5,000 applications delivered just before the October 6 registration deadline after the first 2,100 turned out to be phony.

"All the signatures looked exactly the same," Ruthann Hoagland, a Republican on the board. "Everything on the card filled out looks exactly the same."

The forms included registrations submitted in the names of the dead -- and in one case, the name of a fast-food restaurant, Jimmy Johns. Sally LaSota, a Democrat on the board, called the forms fraudulent and said whoever filed them broke the law. Watch how dead people are turning up on voter registration forms »

"ACORN, with its intent, perhaps was good in the beginning, but went awry somewhere," LaSota said.

Over the past four years, a dozen states have investigated complaints of fraudulent registrations filed by ACORN. On Tuesday, Nevada authorities raided an ACORN office in Las Vegas, Nevada, where workers are accused of registering members of the Dallas Cowboys football team. And the group has become the target of Republican attacks on voter fraud, a perennial GOP issue.

A subsidiary of the group was paid $800,000 by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's campaign to register voters for the 2008 primaries, and ACORN's political wing endorsed Obama back in February. But Obama's campaign told CNN that it "is committed to protecting the integrity of the voting process," and said it has not worked with ACORN during the general election.

Brian Mellor, an ACORN attorney in Boston, said the group has its own quality-control process and has fired workers in the past -- including workers in Gary. But he said allegations that his organization committed fraud is a government attempt to keep people disenfranchised. Watch more about this investigation »

"We believe their purpose is to attack ACORN and suppress votes," Mellor said. "We believe that by attacking ACORN, they are going to discourage people that have registered to vote with ACORN from voting."

CNN was unable to reach ACORN officials in Gary and in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where the group's Indiana operation is based. Offices in both cities were empty when reporters visited.

Lake County elections officials have set aside all 5,000 of the ACORN-submitted applications in what Hoagland called the "fake pile" for later review. But she said every one will be reviewed before the election to make sure no legitimate voters are skipped.

There has been no evidence of voter fraud yet, because voters have yet to go to the polls. But elections officials say they will be sending their information to prosecutors, who will determine whether any investigation will begin.

"We have no idea what the motive behind it is," she said. "It's just overwhelming to us."

 

[Homer J Simpson]

Obama cuts throats of allies, feeds them to Russian Bear, gets nothing in return

Obama feeds allies to bear

By RALPH PETERS

Last Updated: 10:05 AM, September 18, 2009

Posted: 3:45 AM, September 18, 2009

STILL determined to "push the reset button with Russia," President Obama hit the delete key on our allies in Eastern Europe.

Obama's decision to abandon missile defense as we know it, cutting the throats of Poland and the Czech Republic, handed Moscow's hard-liners their biggest win since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Russian strongman Vladimir Putin insisted all along that we'd never be permitted to deploy an anti-ballistic missile system in the former Soviet empire. He was right.

And Obama got nothing in return. No Russian commitments on Iran's nuclear program. No sovereignty guarantees for Georgia. No restrictions on arms sales to Venezuela. Not even a bearhug.

Yesterday, when Defense Secretary Robert Gates explained the rationale for ending our plan to deploy a high-tech radar system and anti-missile interceptors to Eastern Europe, every military argument he advanced was absolutely correct. But, in strategic terms, the decision's a disaster.

The move to kill this program was a White House attempt to toss a bone to the extreme left, which has always hated missile defense. (Why defend ourselves, when we're the enemy?) For that, Obama betrayed the trust of allies who'd done all they could to please us.

The Poles spent enormous political capital to convince their citizens to risk this deployment. They've backed us consistently in NATO and the UN. They sent combat troops to support us in Iraq.

The Czechs also fought our political battles for us, supporting our foreign wars and siding with us in international forums -- angering West European powers.

Now add Poland and the Czech Republic to the list of allies, such as Israel and Honduras, that we've thrown to the wolves. Obama's foreign policy embodies a line from "Animal House": "You [screwed] up -- you trusted us!"

But the worst thing is how this decision's read in Moscow. Putin, Russia's new czar, sees this as a triumph of his will over Obama's weak, retreating US. And he's right.

Thus it came to pass that, 70 years to the day after the Red Army invaded Poland, Warsaw's residents heard the news of this US betrayal and the implicit message that, yes, Eastern Europe still belongs in Moscow's sphere of influence.

If you're a citizen of Ukraine, Georgia or even the NATO-member Baltic states, you must be shuddering. You thought NATO and the US were serious about your right to live in freedom?

Better dig that Latvian-Russian dictionary out of the attic.

The last thing we needed to do was to further encourage Putin to believe he's all-knowing and invincible. But that's just what we've done.

To be fair, the entire debacle has been a bipartisan mess.

I, for one, never believed this was the right system at the right place and time. The technology was immature, and Iran's a regional, not an intercontinental, problem. But conservatives who believe that any hyperexpensive weapon system deserves automatic support shoved it down our throats and those of our allies. (It's not just the left that damages our defense.)

Once the Bush administration committed to the deployment, I grudgingly supported it: We couldn't hang the East Europeans out to dry after strong-arming them for commitments.

Now the Obama administration's made the mess immeasurably worse. It's a lose-lose situation for us -- and for our allies.

Moscow believes we just signed over a new lease on Eastern Europe. And we didn't even get a tin of caviar. Will the Obama-Putin Act go down in history as the post-modern Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact?

This is some brilliant foreign policy analysis.

 

[Sarnoff]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/...-his-depth.html

President Barack Obama is beginning to look out of his depth

It is lovely to feature in other people's dreams. The problem comes when they wake up. Barack Obama is an eloquent, brainy and likeable man with a fascinating biography. He is not George Bush. Those are great qualities. But they are not enough to lead America, let alone the world.

By Edward Lucas

Published: 8:30AM BST 20 Sep 2009

Admittedly, the presidential to-do list is terrifying. The economy requires his full-time attention. So does health-care reform. And climate change. Indeed, he deserves praise for spending so much time on thankless foreign policy issues. He is tackling all the big problems: restarting Middle East peace talks, defanging Iran and North Korea and a "reset" of relations with Russia. But none of them are working.

Regimes in Moscow, Pyongyang and Tehran simply pocket his concessions and carry on as before. The picture emerging from the White House is a disturbing one, of timidity, clumsiness and short-term calculation. Some say he is the weakest president since Jimmy Carter.

The grizzled veterans of the Democratic leadership in Congress have found Mr Obama and his team of bright young advisers a pushover. That has gravely weakened his flagship domestic campaign, for health-care reform, which fails to address the greatest weakness of the American system: its inflated costs. His free trade credentials are increasingly tarnished too. His latest blunder is imposing tariffs on tyre imports from China, in the hope of gaining a little more union support for health care. But at a time when America's leadership in global economic matters has never been more vital, that is a dreadful move, hugely undermining its ability to stop other countries engaging in a ruinous spiral of protectionism.

Even good moves are ruined by bad presentation. Changing Mr Bush's costly and untried missile-defence scheme for something workable was sensible. But offensively casual treatment of east European allies such as Poland made it easy for his critics to portray it as naïve appeasement of the regime in Moscow.

Mr Obama's public image rests increasingly heavily on his extraordinary speechifying abilities. His call in Cairo for a new start in relations with the Muslim world was pitch-perfect. So was his speech in Ghana, decrying Africa's culture of bad government. His appeal to both houses of Congress to support health care was masterly – though the oratory was far more impressive than the mish-mash plan behind it. This morning he is blitzing the airwaves, giving interviews to all America's main television stations.

But for what? Mr Obama has tactics a plenty - calm and patient engagement with unpleasant regimes, finding common interests, appealing to shared values - but where is the strategy? What, exactly, did "Change you can believe in" – the hallmark slogan of his campaign – actually mean?

The President's domestic critics who accuse him of being the sinister wielder of a socialist master-plan are wide of the mark. The man who has run nothing more demanding than the Harvard Law Review is beginning to look out of his depth in the world's top job. His credibility is seeping away, and it will require concrete achievements rather than more soaring oratory to recover it.

Edward Lucas writes for The Economist and is the author of The New Cold War (Bloomsbury, £8.99)

 

[cstu]

Obama cuts throats of allies, feeds them to Russian Bear, gets nothing in return

Wasn't one of Obama's main selling points that we wanted Europeans to like us again?

Hope & Change!

"The Poles spent enormous political capital to convince their citizens to risk this deployment. "That doesn't sound like people who will be disappointed by the decision. As far as the rest of Europe goes, I doubt they were happy about our missiles being in the backyard to begin with.

 

[cstu]

And as a side note... thank you to GWB for passing TARP... this was just as much part of the stimulus as anything Obama did... and early signs are we have a better chance at recovering this $ then any of Obama's plans...

It's interesting how many conservatives were howling about TARP before and are now using it as a rallying cry to say Bush saved the economy, not Obama. I'm curious why you didn't mention Congress?

bf, I was against TARP both under Bush & Obama(a lot of people on this board were). If it turns out that TARP was beneficial and neccessary, then I will admit I was wrong. It does appear that it has been beneficial, so I was wrong.But too many of the lefties are solely crediting Obama with this. That is not truthful. TARP was started by Bush and continued by Obama. They both deserve credit. It is hard to see how one can be credited without the other.

If it turns out that TARP saves nothing and costs the American taxpayers a lot of money, then they are both to be blamed. I don't see how this is that difficult.

I've said all along that one of the best things Bush did as President was to get TARP passed. This country was in deep trouble and it helped get things back on track. Now that we're a year past the banking crisis and the Dow is inching back to 10k people seem to have already forgotten how far we've come. Both Bush and Obama have prevented a disaster and I don't see how that is so difficult to understand.

 

[cstu]

I always believed that while the country was moving to the right, it needed one final backtest of liberalism before it could commit itself to a republican supermajority. There's a generation of young people today and all they know is Bush41 wrecked the economy, Clinton was good for the economy, and Bush43 wrecked the economy. This demographic needs to be shown the failure of liberalism. I believed Barack Obama was the one man who could show them why liberalism sucks.

Up to this point, Obama hasn't let me down. In that sense, I completely approve of the job he has done to turn the public away from liberalism. Its actually pretty exciting to watch. He's making all the mistakes we need to finally push this country forward.

I'm sure all of the young people who have watched the stock market rebound with Obama as President are really questioning him on the economy.

 

[P Boy]

I always believed that while the country was moving to the right, it needed one final backtest of liberalism before it could commit itself to a republican supermajority. There's a generation of young people today and all they know is Bush41 wrecked the economy, Clinton was good for the economy, and Bush43 wrecked the economy. This demographic needs to be shown the failure of liberalism. I believed Barack Obama was the one man who could show them why liberalism sucks.

Up to this point, Obama hasn't let me down. In that sense, I completely approve of the job he has done to turn the public away from liberalism. Its actually pretty exciting to watch. He's making all the mistakes we need to finally push this country forward.

I'm sure all of the young people who have watched the stock market rebound with Obama as President are really questioning him on the economy.

Yeah, just keep lyao. Young people are so much more in tune with the stock market than they are with trivial matters - like trying to find a job. Good solid response demonstrating once again quite clearly how in touch with the general public the Obama nut huggers are.

 

[Statorama]

That call where we asked the NEA to promote Obama's agenda....yeah, that was inappropriate