A poll on President Obama

How do you feel Barak Obama is doing as President of the United States?

1. Excellent
31
31%
2. Terrible
17
17%
3. OK
20
20%
4. He is so much better than Bush that I think he is OK
31
31%
 
Total votes: 99

lvdkeyes
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Re: A poll on President Obama

Post by lvdkeyes »

The religious right and talk show morons are not the majority, so to generalize that that is what Americans are like is inaccurate.
Khortose

Re: A poll on President Obama

Post by Khortose »

lvdkeyes wrote:The religious right and talk show morons are not the majority, so to generalize that that is what Americans are like is inaccurate.
Actually, I thank GB for mentioning Hitler. When he first came on the scene his party was not in the majority, but the vast indifference of the majority of the German people allowed his rise to power. I still do not think Rin statement is that far off target. I mean how many people really care that these nut cases are trying to establish America as a nation with a national religion of Christianity. Have you forgotten that Bush was elected TWICE!!! If you are correct in that these talk show morons are not in the majority then you prove Rin's case, as the only way Bush could have won was the vast indifference of the majority of Americans
Jomtienbob

Re: A poll on President Obama

Post by Jomtienbob »

Having inherited the worst economy since the great depression, two quagmires, and a Congress with treasonous Republicans determined to oppose any measures which might just improve the economy (supposedly bad for their chances to regain power), when you consider that Obama still managed the most sweeping change of health care, saved the banking and auto industries, I believe you have to give the man an Excellent on what has thus far been delivered.

We would have been a lot further in the recovery if he had gotten the stimulus he asked for, and not the watered down version which made it's way through Congress.
fountainhall

Re: A poll on President Obama

Post by fountainhall »

Jomtienbob wrote:Having inherited the worst economy since the great depression, two quagmires, and a Congress with treasonous Republicans determined to oppose any measures which might just improve the economy (supposedly bad for their chances to regain power), when you consider that Obama still managed the most sweeping change of health care, saved the banking and auto industries, I believe you have to give the man an Excellent on what has thus far been delivered.

We would have been a lot further in the recovery if he had gotten the stimulus he asked for, and not the watered down version which made it's way through Congress.
I'm not American and do not pay daily attention to the details of American politics. But the issue of what he inherited is to me absolutely vital in determining how you perceive his record. I have been reading a lot about the financial crisis. One of the many Bush disasters was Hank Paulson's $700bn TARP package. As Donald L. Bartlett and James B. Steele pointed out in an article for Vanity Fair in October 2009, "once the money left the building, the government lost all track of it. The Treasury Department knew where it had sent the money, but nothing about what was done with it . . . Hank Paulson's Treasury Department had no idea and didn't seem to care. It never required banks to explain what they did with this unprecedented infusion of capital."

This was money, you'll recall, Congress provided to enable the Treasury to buy up banks' toxic assets. Yet, within just days, because Paulson had been given carte blanche, he changed the entire programme to instead inject hundreds of billions into banks, many of whom were perfectly sound and did not want it - but were told they had to take it! Add to that the many mistakes with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, AIG etc., and I think Obama's done a helluva job having taken over a horrendous mess.
lexusgs

Re: A poll on President Obama

Post by lexusgs »

I had the misfortune to catch a few mins of that Glen Beck guy today talking about Obama. Beck's a scary guy....seems to have lot of followers judging the ratings numbers in the US....
Jun

Re: A poll on President Obama

Post by Jun »

Khortose wrote: Actually, I thank GB for mentioning Hitler. When he first came on the scene his party was not in the majority, but the vast indifference of the majority of the German people allowed his rise to power. I still do not think Rin statement is that far off target. I mean how many people really care that these nut cases are trying to establish America as a nation with a national religion of Christianity. Have you forgotten that Bush was elected TWICE!!! If you are correct in that these talk show morons are not in the majority then you prove Rin's case, as the only way Bush could have won was the vast indifference of the majority of Americans
Very good to bring this point up. Remember Hitler rose to power on the back of indifference and after Germany had been suffering severe economic difficulty.

As the US, the UK and various other western countries are heavily indebted & may suffer ongoing economic problems we all need to be vigilant about the lunatics in politics, whether it be religious extremists or those with communist tendencies.

Within Europe, transfer of power to unelected European wide bodies is reducing the power of our votes too.
macaroni21

Re: A poll on President Obama

Post by macaroni21 »

I did not vote because I am not American.

One thing I've found striking is how the USA shed blood to get rid of a monarchy, but have yearned for monarchs ever since. This poll question is in line with the tendency to expect too much of the hero of the day. It's also the horrible effect of Hollywood movies with heroic storylines, where one outstanding man saves the world -- few other countries make movies as mythic as that. The result is (to much of the rest of the world) a shocking immaturity of American political expectations. There is not enough constituency in the US to critique your own political system and political culture, your brightest and most incisive commentators notwithstanding. Yet its the system and culture that determine the limits of what is achievable. Instead however, eyes are focussed only on one man, expecting him to deliver.

Here is a comment by Paul Krugman which should make people stop and think about the political culture there:

---------------------
New York Times

America on the unlit, unpaved road to nowhere
by PAUL KRUGMAN

The lights are going out all over America - literally. Colorado Springs has made headlines with its desperate attempt to save money by turning off a third of its streetlights, but similar things are either happening or being contemplated across the nation, from Philadelphia to Fresno.

Meanwhile, a country that once amazed the world with its visionary investments in transportation, from the Erie Canal to the Interstate Highway System, is now in the process of unpaving itself: In a number of states, local governments are breaking up roads they can no longer afford to maintain, and returning them to gravel.

And a nation that once prized education - that was among the first to provide basic schooling to all its children - is now cutting back. Teachers are being laid off; programmes are being cancelled; in Hawaii, the school year itself is being drastically shortened. And all signs point to even more cuts ahead.

Americans are told that we have no choice, that basic government functions - essential services that have been provided for generations - are no longer affordable. And it's true that state and local governments, hit hard by the recession, are cash-strapped. But they wouldn't be quite as cash-strapped if their politicians were willing to consider at least some tax increases.

And the federal government, which can sell inflation-protected long-term bonds at an interest rate of only 1.04 per cent, isn't cash-strapped at all. It could and should be offering aid to local governments, to protect the future of our infrastructure and our children.

But Washington is providing only a trickle of help, and even that grudgingly. We must place priority on reducing the deficit, say Republicans and "centrist" Democrats. And then, virtually in the next breath, they declare that we must preserve tax cuts for the very affluent, at a budget cost of US$700 billion ($945 billion) over the next decade.

In effect, a large part of our political class is showing its priorities: Given the choice between asking the richest 2 per cent of Americans to go back to paying the tax rates they paid during the Clinton-era boom, or allowing the nation's foundations to crumble - literally in the case of roads, figuratively in the case of education - they're choosing the latter.

It's a disastrous choice in both the short run and the long run.


DRAG ON THE ECONOMY

In the short run, those state and local cutbacks are a major drag on the economy, perpetuating devastatingly high unemployment.

It's crucial to keep state and local government in mind when you hear people ranting about runaway government spending under President Obama. Yes, the federal government is spending more, though not as much as you might think. But state and local governments are cutting back. And if you add them together, it turns out the only big spending increases have been in safety-net programmes like unemployment insurance, which have soared in cost thanks to the severity of the slump.

That is, for all the talk of a failed stimulus, if you look at government spending as a whole you see hardly any stimulus at all. And with federal spending now trailing off, while big state and local cutbacks continue, we're going into reverse.

But isn't keeping taxes for the affluent low also a form of stimulus? Not so you'd notice. When we save a schoolteacher's job, that unambiguously aids employment; when we give millionaires more money instead, there's a good chance that most of that money will just sit idle.

And what about the economy's future? Everything we know about economic growth says that a well-educated population and high-quality infrastructure are crucial. Emerging nations are making huge efforts to upgrade their roads, their ports and their schools. Yet in America we're going backward.

How did we get to this point? It's the logical consequence of three decades of anti-government rhetoric, rhetoric that has convinced many voters that a dollar collected in taxes is always a dollar wasted, that the public sector can't do anything right.

The anti-government campaign has always been phrased in terms of opposition to waste and fraud - to cheques sent to welfare queens driving Cadillacs, to vast armies of bureaucrats uselessly pushing paper around. But those were myths; there was never remotely as much waste and fraud as the right claimed.

And now the campaign has reached fruition, we're seeing what was actually in the firing line: Services everyone except the very rich need, services government must provide or nobody will, like lighted streets, drivable roads and decent schools for the public as a whole.

So the end result of the long campaign against government is that we've taken a disastrously wrong turn. America is now on the unlit, unpaved road to nowhere.
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Re: A poll on President Obama

Post by Gaybutton »

macaroni21 wrote:One thing I've found striking is how the USA shed blood to get rid of a monarchy, but have yearned for monarchs ever since.
"The USA is a great country. I love the USA. This country was founded by slave owners who wanted to be free. And I love all the freedoms we used to have. And we like war. We like bombing people, especially if they're brown people. When's the last time we bombed white people? Have we ever bombed any white people? Yeah, we bombed Germany, but they were trying to dominate the world. Bullshit! That's our fucking job! Hey! If you've got a country full of brown people you better tell them to watch the fuck out! Sooner or later we'll be right there to bomb them. We can't make a decent car anymore. We can't make a microwave or a TV worth a fuck. But we can sure bomb the shit out of your people!"

- George Carlin
Khortose

Re: A poll on President Obama

Post by Khortose »

macaroni21 wrote: Here is a comment by Paul Krugman which should make people stop and think about the political culture there:
Paul Krugman always makes me stop and think as he is usually correct in his observations.
fountainhall

Re: A poll on President Obama

Post by fountainhall »

Khortose wrote:Remember Hitler rose to power on the back of indifference and after Germany had been suffering severe economic difficulty.
So true. But Germany suffered a far more massive economic disaster after World War I than the US is experiencing now - crippling, virtually unpayable, war reparations imposed by the Treaty of Versailles (yep, that's the way the victors' got the spoils in those days). By late 1923, the inflation rate was a staggering 854,000,000,000%! The Germans needed a barrowload of bills just to buy a loaf of bread! As a result, the middle class was wiped out. So it was the victors who in effect created the indifference which led the rise of Hitler. After World War II, the victors realised they could not go the Versailles route again, and so the Marshall Plan was adopted to put Germany and Europe back on its feet (and partly to ensure the Soviet Union did not race to the Atlantic).

Fast forward to the 1970s. Indifference led to the bombing of Cambodia, thereby directly creating most of the conditions for the rise of Pol Pot. No massive inflation this time; only millions dead! We reap what we sow.
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