Obamanation Re-election MegaThread

[mr_genius]

CNN Poll

 

Obama 52% Romney 45%

 

I hope this happens.

 

it will definitely happen if Romney continues to run a TERRIBLE campaign.

[kapkomet]

it will definitely happen if Romney continues to run a TERRIBLE campaign.

 

 

Rmoney is a p****. End of election.

[farmteam]

Rmoney is a p****. End of election.

I get that all candidates have campaign managers, but you at least usually feel like the candidate is the one with the final say so and is ultimately in charge. With Romney, it just seems like he's along for the ride and does what he's told.

[greg775]

Read this column by the Washington Post today. It makes a good case for Obama being one of the worst Presidents ever. Read paragraphs two and three at least, and tell me you are not scared for the next four years. Obama is truly a very very bad President, yet Romney is a horrible campaigner. Can we survive four more years of Obama? I think our country is on track for a DEPRESSION with four more years of Obama. Do you agree? And what do you think of the first few paragraphs at least of this story??? How can Obama survive what he told the small business owners??

 

Romney should focus on ideology

By Charles Krauthammer

August 10, 2012

 

WASHINGTON — There are two ways to run against Barack Obama: stewardship or ideology. You can run against his record or you can run against his ideas.

 

The stewardship case is pretty straightforward: the worst recovery in U.S. history, 42 consecutive months of 8-plus percent unemployment, declining economic growth — all achieved at a price of another $5 trillion of accumulated debt.

 

The ideological case is also simple. Just play in toto (and therefore in context) Obama’s Roanoke riff telling small business owners: “You didn’t build that.” Real credit for your success belongs not to you — you think you did well because of your smarts and sweat? he asked mockingly — but to government that built the infrastructure without which you would have nothing.

 

Play it. Then ask: Is that the governing philosophy you want for this nation?

 

Mitt Romney’s preferred argument, however, is stewardship. Are you better off today than you were $5 trillion ago? Look at the wreckage around you. This presidency is a failure. I’m a successful businessman. I know how to fix things. Elect me, etc. etc.

 

Easy peasy, but highly risky. If you run against Obama’s performance in contrast to your own competence, you stake your case on persona. Is that how you want to compete against an opponent who is not just more likable and immeasurably cooler, but spending millions to paint you as an unfeeling, out-of-touch, job-killing, private-equity plutocrat?

 

The ideological case, on the other hand, is not just appealing to a center-right country with twice as many conservatives as liberals, it is also explanatory. It underpins the stewardship argument. Obama’s ideology — and the program that followed — explains the failure of these four years.

 

What program? Obama laid it out boldly early in his presidency. The roots of the nation’s crisis, he declared, were systemic. Fundamental change was required. He had come to deliver it. Hence his signature legislation:

 

First, the $831 billion stimulus that was going to “reinvest” in America and bring unemployment below 6 percent. We know about the unemployment. And the investment? Obama loves to cite great federal projects such as the Hoover Dam and the interstate highway system. Fine. Name one thing of any note created by Obama’s Niagara of borrowed money. A modernized electric grid? Ports dredged to receive the larger ships soon to traverse a widened Panama Canal? Nothing of the sort. Solyndra, anyone?

 

Second, radical reform of health care that would reduce its ruinously accelerating cost: “Put simply,” he said, “our health care problem is our deficit problem” — a financial hemorrhage drowning us in debt.

 

Except that the CBO reports that Obamacare will cost $1.68 trillion of new spending in its first decade. To say nothing of the price of the uncertainty introduced by an impossibly complex remaking of one-sixth of the economy — discouraging hiring and expansion as trillions of investable private-sector dollars remain sidelined.

 

The third part of Obama’s promised transformation was energy. His cap-and-trade federal takeover was rejected by his own Democratic Senate. So the war on fossil fuels has been conducted unilaterally by bureaucratic fiat. Regulations that will kill coal. A no-brainer pipeline (Keystone) rejected lest Canadian oil sands be burned. (China will burn them instead.) A drilling moratorium in the Gulf that a federal judge severely criticized as illegal.

 

That was the program — now so unpopular that Obama barely mentions it. Obamacare got exactly two lines in this year’s State of the Union address. Seen any ads touting the stimulus? The drilling moratorium? Keystone?

 

Ideas matter. The 2010 election, the most ideological since 1980, saw the voters resoundingly reject a Democratic Party that was relentlessly expanding the power, spending, scope and reach of government.

 

It’s worse now. Those who have struggled to create a family business, a corner restaurant, a medical practice won’t take kindly to being told that their success is a result of government-built roads and bridges.

 

In 1988, Michael Dukakis famously said, “This election is not about ideology; it’s about competence.” He lost. If Republicans want to win, Obama’s deeply revealing, teleprompter-free you-didn’t-build-that confession of faith needs to be hung around his neck until Election Day. The third consecutive summer-of-recovery-that-never-came is attributable not just to Obama being in over his head but to what’s in his head: a government-centered vision of the economy and society, and the policies that flow from it.

 

Four years of that and this is what you get.

 

Make the case and you win the White House.

 

— Charles Krauthammer is a columnist for Washington Post Writers Group.

Edited August 11, 2012 by greg775

[StrangeSox]

Sweet a column from Krauthammer.

 

edit: he can "survive" what he told small businesses because he didn't tell small businesses what Charles Krauthammer and the Romney campaign are telling you he told small businesses.

Edited August 11, 2012 by StrangeSox

[Balta1701]

Greg, are job losses in January, 2009, hung on Obama?

[BigSqwert]

Emphasis mine

 

Various statistical measures of Mr. Ryan peg him as being quite conservative. Based on his Congressional voting record, for instance, the statistical system DW-Nominate evaluates him as being roughly as conservative as Representative Michele Bachmann, the controversial congresswoman of Minnesota.

 

By this measure, in fact, which rates members of the House and Senate throughout different time periods on a common ideology scale, Mr. Ryan is the most conservative Republican member of Congress to be picked for the vice presidential slot since at least 1900. He is also more conservative than any Democratic nominee was liberal, meaning that is is the furthest from the center. (The statistic does not provide scores for governors and other vice presidential nominees who never served in Congress.)

 

via

[farmteam]

Emphasis mine

 

 

 

via

To be fair though, wouldn't pretty much any VP choice that was a congressman be similar? Since everything has shifted further right anyway.

[greg775]

Greg, are job losses in January, 2009, hung on Obama?

 

I just can't believe how bad a President he's been. The economy is just getting worse. Did you read that column? In answer to your question, though, I don't know. Probably not. I am not an expert on these things, but in Obama I see an incredible campaigner/politician and that's it. I want him to be good, but I fear four more years truly will result in a depression and I don't like the way society is going either. Getting worse. Meaner, angrier. We are in trouble, folks.

 

And Romney is a horrific choice. So I just fear for our country cause Obama is not any good.

[Balta1701]

I just can't believe how bad a President he's been. The economy is just getting worse. Did you read that column? In answer to your question, though, I don't know. Probably not. I am not an expert on these things, but in Obama I see an incredible campaigner/politician and that's it. I want him to be good, but I fear four more years truly will result in a depression and I don't like the way society is going either. Getting worse. Meaner, angrier. We are in trouble, folks.

 

And Romney is a horrific choice. So I just fear for our country cause Obama is not any good.

His column is bullsh*t.

 

Why was there no big rebuild from the stimulus? Because 2/3 of it was tax cuts, in order to get the republicans on board. That made the stimulus less effective...and yet we still went from losing 800k jobs a month to adding 150k jobs a month. It should ahve been bigger and less loaded with tax cuts to be more effective, but we had to get it through the senate. The policies that he spent a decade advocating led to that collapse. We cut taxes like he wanted, we gutted regulation like he wanted, wall street went crazy, and they nearly destroyed the world.

 

The Senate didn't take up a cap and trade bill, correct. Of course, with the 60 vote requirement, it wasn't "Rejected" by the senate. That is a lie.

 

The pipeline was rejected not because of any evaluation of the pipeline. It was rejected because the Republicans passed a law that would make approving it "illegal". He also fails to tell you that the pipeline is set up mainly for exports...so in the midwest, you'll actually pay higher gas prices, because that pipeline will allow refined product from the midwest to be exported through New Orleans.

 

And of course...he then continues to pretend that climate change isn't an actual problem....so we're going to spend $20 billion in drought relief just this year. That money is free right?

 

Meanwhile, by the assessment of anyone in that industry, the stimulus literally saved wind and solar pwoer in this country and built a battery industry that never existed beforehand...we're generating several times as much power from those sources as we were in 2008, we are employing hundreds of thousands of people in those industries, and that's our only real chance to deal with climate change.

 

The Affordable Care act will cost money yes. But we're spending that money anyway. He's scaring you by quoting large numbers. $1.68 trillion, sounds horrible, right? You know how much the government would be spending on healht care if nothing was changed? $7-$8 trillion or so.

 

The coal plant regulation? If you think that's a bad idea, my lungs want to fight you. Sick to near death of having 40 year old coal plants down the county dumping crap into my air. Cough. That was regulation that we were supposed to have finished 20 years ago,

but the government has dragged its feet, and that has probably sickened thousands of people.

 

It's all slogans. Posting an op-ed piece that is nothing but filled with slogans and challening someone to take it on is shooting fish in a barrel. If you want to take on people who can support themselves on these issues, don't rely on the weakest columnists out there.

 

[kapkomet]

His column is bullsh*t.

 

Why was there no big rebuild from the stimulus? Because 2/3 of it was tax cuts, in order to get the republicans on board. That made the stimulus less effective...and yet we still went from losing 800k jobs a month to adding 150k jobs a month. It should ahve been bigger and less loaded with tax cuts to be more effective, but we had to get it through the senate. The policies that he spent a decade advocating led to that collapse. We cut taxes like he wanted, we gutted regulation like he wanted, wall street went crazy, and they nearly destroyed the world.

 

The Senate didn't take up a cap and trade bill, correct. Of course, with the 60 vote requirement, it wasn't "Rejected" by the senate. That is a lie.

 

The pipeline was rejected not because of any evaluation of the pipeline. It was rejected because the Republicans passed a law that would make approving it "illegal". He also fails to tell you that the pipeline is set up mainly for exports...so in the midwest, you'll actually pay higher gas prices, because that pipeline will allow refined product from the midwest to be exported through New Orleans.

 

And of course...he then continues to pretend that climate change isn't an actual problem....so we're going to spend $20 billion in drought relief just this year. That money is free right?

 

Meanwhile, by the assessment of anyone in that industry, the stimulus literally saved wind and solar pwoer in this country and built a battery industry that never existed beforehand...we're generating several times as much power from those sources as we were in 2008, we are employing hundreds of thousands of people in those industries, and that's our only real chance to deal with climate change.

 

The Affordable Care act will cost money yes. But we're spending that money anyway. He's scaring you by quoting large numbers. $1.68 trillion, sounds horrible, right? You know how much the government would be spending on healht care if nothing was changed? $7-$8 trillion or so.

 

The coal plant regulation? If you think that's a bad idea, my lungs want to fight you. Sick to near death of having 40 year old coal plants down the county dumping crap into my air. Cough. That was regulation that we were supposed to have finished 20 years ago,

but the government has dragged its feet, and that has probably sickened thousands of people.

 

It's all slogans. Posting an op-ed piece that is nothing but filled with slogans and challening someone to take it on is shooting fish in a barrel. If you want to take on people who can support themselves on these issues, don't rely on the weakest columnists out there.

 

 

Speaking of slogans and talking points.

[Balta1701]

Speaking of slogans and talking points.

Would you like me to go into more detail on any of those? I'd be happy to. My problem is...I wouldn't post that stuff normally, because I'd know I could be challenged on any of it and I'd have to back it up more. But...a person posting a silly column from a pretty bad Washington Post writer and saying "See!" doesn't seem to know that people might reply to the points in it.

[greg775]

Balta, you didn't respond to my generalities.

 

That is ... my assertion that Obama is a horrible President/leader and my assertion that four more years of Obama will likely mean a Depression as well as social revolution. Society is becoming angrier by the day; very mean. It is getting rough out there, folks. Companies that are not cutting jobs are cutting pay, instituting furloughs making it damn clear you as the worker are just lucky to be employed and that is that. The very rich are getting very richer and snubbing their noses more than ever at the middle class and poor.

 

I do appreciate your in depth commentary though. I learned a lot in reading your post. As I said I am not an expert, but I do know trouble when I see it and four more years of Obama ... wow.

Edited August 11, 2012 by greg775

[kapkomet]

Balta, you didn't respond to my generalities.

 

That is ... my assertion that Obama is a horrible President/leader and my assertion that four more years of Obama will likely mean a Depression as well as social revolution. Society is becoming angrier by the day; very mean. It is getting rough out there, folks. Companies that are not cutting jobs are cutting pay, instituting furloughs making it damn clear you as the worker are just lucky to be employed and that is that. The very rich are getting very richer and snubbing their noses more than ever at the middle class and poor.

 

I do appreciate your in depth commentary though. I learned a lot in reading your post. As I said I am not an expert, but I do know trouble when I see it and four more years of Obama ... wow.

 

No, see you don't get it. The government spending is the only thing that can keep our country from exploding in the abyss of the cocksucking corporations and rich people. Romneyhood is the slogan of the century, and poor people must get the hand-me-downs from the cocksuckers. It's fact, and all talking points lead to socialism - that is the only way that works in today's world because the cocksucking rich just don't pay enough. Just stop trying to be a "middle of the road" guy and conform to the fact that government teats are the only way out. Socialism - forward - © Karl Marx.

 

Is that enough talking points in one post?

[Balta1701]

Ok Greg, I'll admit you're right, people are getting angrier. Take a look at that last post. A decent human being would consider that an embarrassment to himself even if written in the usual sarcasm.

[Balta1701]

Balta, you didn't respond to my generalities.

 

That is ... my assertion that Obama is a horrible President/leader and my assertion that four more years of Obama will likely mean a Depression as well as social revolution. Society is becoming angrier by the day; very mean. It is getting rough out there, folks. Companies that are not cutting jobs are cutting pay, instituting furloughs making it damn clear you as the worker are just lucky to be employed and that is that. The very rich are getting very richer and snubbing their noses more than ever at the middle class and poor.

 

I do appreciate your in depth commentary though. I learned a lot in reading your post. As I said I am not an expert, but I do know trouble when I see it and four more years of Obama ... wow.

Anyway, you're 1/2 right. The very rich are getting richer and snubbing their noses more than ever at the middle class and the poor. And frankly, we're not likely to take significant steps to stop it no matter who is elected. We're told that anything you say is a problem is "wealth redistribution!", unfair, "hand me downs from the word that it should be beneath a regular person to use".

 

What is to be done? Well, the best answer I can give is that we can keep trying to bandage it for n ow. Make sure people get health care (check), stop cutting government jobs (which we've cut nearly a million in the past couple years). GET OFF OIL.

 

Basically, unless Europe falls apart, whoever the next president is will likely see 4 years of pretty strong economic growth just because we're climbing out of the very deep hole left by the bursting of the housing bubble. But we have a choice...does all that growth go to the "Very rich getting very richer" or does it get spread around evenly?

[greg775]

Anyway, you're 1/2 right. The very rich are getting richer and snubbing their noses more than ever at the middle class and the poor. And frankly, we're not likely to take significant steps to stop it no matter who is elected. We're told that anything you say is a problem is "wealth redistribution!", unfair, "hand me downs from the word that it should be beneath a regular person to use".

 

What is to be done? Well, the best answer I can give is that we can keep trying to bandage it for n ow. Make sure people get health care (check), stop cutting government jobs (which we've cut nearly a million in the past couple years). GET OFF OIL.

 

Basically, unless Europe falls apart, whoever the next president is will likely see 4 years of pretty strong economic growth just because we're climbing out of the very deep hole left by the bursting of the housing bubble. But we have a choice...does all that growth go to the "Very rich getting very richer" or does it get spread around evenly?

 

Well I will never vote for Romney. The question is ... will I bother to go vote for Obama or not? Not that it matters in my state. My vote doesn't matter. Romney is a lock to win. That is encouraging you think the economy will turn around the next four years cause that wasn't what I was reading. I hope so. I'd be more than willing to give Obama credit if he's in charge of a recovery. I just have not been impressed with the guy's leadership. Maybe nobody can be an effective leader any more, cause I do admit that politicians do not seem to be out for passing legislation that's best for the U.S., they are only concerned with who gets the credit for effective legislation. I truly believe politicians no longer are out for the betterment of our country, just for their own party to get credit and to block the other party's measures. I realize it has been like this forever presumably, but I personally think it's getting much worse. I can see why more and more people do not vote. Both sides disgust me.

Edited August 12, 2012 by greg775

[kapkomet]

Anyway, you're 1/2 right. The very rich are getting richer and snubbing their noses more than ever at the middle class and the poor. And frankly, we're not likely to take significant steps to stop it no matter who is elected. We're told that anything you say is a problem is "wealth redistribution!", unfair, "hand me downs from the word that it should be beneath a regular person to use".

 

What is to be done? Well, the best answer I can give is that we can keep trying to bandage it for n ow. Make sure people get health care (check), stop cutting government jobs (which we've cut nearly a million in the past couple years). GET OFF OIL.

 

Basically, unless Europe falls apart, whoever the next president is will likely see 4 years of pretty strong economic growth just because we're climbing out of the very deep hole left by the bursting of the housing bubble. But we have a choice...does all that growth go to the "Very rich getting very richer" or does it get spread around evenly?

 

 

CLASS WARFARE!!!!!!!!!!! OMGZZZZZZZZZZ!

 

In case you hadn't noticed, it's happening under your precccccccccious leader's watch.

[Cknolls]

Anyway, you're 1/2 right. The very rich are getting richer and snubbing their noses more than ever at the middle class and the poor. And frankly, we're not likely to take significant steps to stop it no matter who is elected. We're told that anything you say is a problem is "wealth redistribution!", unfair, "hand me downs from the word that it should be beneath a regular person to use".

 

What is to be done? Well, the best answer I can give is that we can keep trying to bandage it for n ow. Make sure people get health care (check), stop cutting government jobs (which we've cut nearly a million in the past couple years). GET OFF OIL.

 

Basically, unless Europe falls apart, whoever the next president is will likely see 4 years of pretty strong economic growth just because we're climbing out of the very deep hole left by the bursting of the housing bubble. But we have a choice...does all that growth go to the "Very rich getting very richer" or does it get spread around evenly?

 

Very interested in seeing an economic recovery in conjunction with getting off oil. And the pensions from these gov't jobs are bankrupting the states.

[Balta1701]

Very interested in seeing an economic recovery in conjunction with getting off oil. And the pensions from these gov't jobs are bankrupting the states.

IMO, it's hard to see an economic recovery unless you get off oil. Every time the global economy tries to expand since 2008, oil prices spike and kill off any effort for a sustaining recovery. Oil production has literally become a major limiting factor to the global economy.

[greg775]

OK guys, here's another column I read today backing my assertion that Obama is a great politician and horrible President. What you think??? Basically he writes that Obama was a big flop and he's running a campaign on, "Elect me, I'll get it right eventually." No doubt in my mind he's gonna win, but IMO he is a bad president. p.s. Romney is a horrible horrible alternative as well.

 

Obama seeking a second chance

By David Shribman

PittsburghPostGazette

 

George W. Bush was not an enigma. He had no hidden parts. His father was not mysterious. George H.W. Bush’s life was dedicated to achievement and service. Even Bill Clinton wasn’t unfathomable. Nothing in his presidency — the brilliant highs, the shocking lows — was a substantial, unpredictable departure from his past.

 

Barack Obama, though, is the most enigmatic president since Jimmy Carter, the most mysterious since Lyndon Johnson, the most unfathomable since Franklin Roosevelt. Political professionals sometimes say of public figures that what you see is what you get, more or less. But with Obama, what you see is both more and less than what you get.

 

All this is on display as Obama runs for president in the same economic crisis that helped catapult him to the White House in the first place. His first term was disappointing; even he implicitly acknowledges that. He is looking to renew his vows with the American people — the 18th-century English pundit Samuel Johnson would call that the triumph of hope over experience, his classic definition of the second marriage — and he’s returned to his most comfortable role: candidate.

 

Abrupt change

 

A third of a century ago American pollsters and consultants began speaking of a “permanent campaign” — the notion originated with Carter pollster Patrick Caddell — that transformed the act of governing in the White House into an extension of campaigning for the White House.

 

But there was an abrupt change between Obama’s campaign, which seemed so beguiling, and Obama’s presidency, which managed to repel his allies on the left even as it consolidated, even fortified, his opposition on the right.

 

Obama was a silver-tongued orator in the campaign, but he lacked a silver bullet in the presidency. He was a darling on the stump, a dud in office. This is not a remarkable view. It is held in the White House itself.

 

Part of the reason was the hand he was dealt. No one underestimates the rot in the U.S. economy, made worse by the crisis in Europe that Obama cannot be expected to control and the competitive challenges from Asia that former Gov. Mitt Romney’s proposals also would only glancingly affect. But no one assumes the presidency without anticipating difficulty and unpredictability.

 

Part of the job

 

Bush the younger understood this, and when a White House visitor expressed sympathy for the hardship he faced after the 2001 terrorism attacks, the president said that handling such challenges was precisely why he sought the office. So it was, presumably, with Obama. He ran for president to deal with the economy, not to be burdened by it, and to change the way Washington worked, not to bemoan it.

 

Outside the Washington Beltway, and perhaps inside it as well, the president seems to be two men, one a brilliant practitioner of the political arts, the other a conscientious objector to politics. But politics comes in two dimensions. A skilled president must know how to get the office and then know how to use it. Failed presidents triumph in the former and stumble in the latter.

 

Presidents come in multiple dimensions. The political scientist and biographer James MacGregor Burns opened his classic 1970 work on FDR’s wartime presidency by observing that Roosevelt was “divided between the man of principle, of ideals, of faith, crusading for a distant vision on the one hand; and, on the other, the man of Realpolitik, of prudence, of narrow, manageable, short-run goals, intent always on protecting his power and authority in a world of shifting moods and capricious fortune.”

 

Operating from this kind of divided personality — and here we are obliged to acknowledge that Obama is no more complex than Roosevelt, nor does he have a rougher burden than Roosevelt, who faced a Depression that threatened capitalism and a world war that threatened democracy — FDR nonetheless came to personify a kind of political unity. He flourished in electoral politics, and he flourished as president.

 

The gravest warning sign in Obama’s background wasn’t his spare record in the U.S. Senate (Johnson often ridiculed John F. Kennedy for having accomplished almost nothing in the Capitol), nor his limited experience in electoral office (Lincoln had but one term in the House). Instead, the most troubling aspect of Obama’s past was the 129 abstentions in his Illinois Senate career. They suggested that Obama was more interested in getting elected than in doing the work he had been elected to perform.

 

Tying rhetoric to action

 

Few accuse President Obama of being a shirker and, in any case, no one measures long-term impact by the length of a president’s day or his attention to detail — not since Ronald Reagan (substantial success despite snoozy afternoons and evenings at TV tables watching old movies) and Jimmy Carter (little success despite grinding workdays and such a freakish attention to detail that he programmed the music in the White House and reviewed requests to use the tennis court). But the mystery about this president is why he has not been able to match his poetic style of campaigning across the country with the prosaic business of governing the country.

 

In 2008, when Obama was a phenomenon as much as a candidate, he sowed excitement not seen since Kennedy and promised a change in governing approach not seen since Reagan. Now he is campaigning again, this time lacing his effort with blistering critiques of Romney, many of which seem to have damaged his rival.

 

But the election in November is far less about Romney than it is about Obama. It is also about this stark fact: This is the first election since 1992 when an incumbent president is in the position of asking not only for a second term but also for a second chance.

 

— David M. Shribman is executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

[cabiness42]

OK guys, here's another column I read today backing my assertion that Obama is a great politician and horrible President.

 

I'd go beyond just Obama and suggest that the main reason our entire political system is in such bad shape is that the set of qualities that get you elected to a position bear little resemblance to the set of qualities that help you successfully execute that position.

 

There are probably people out there who would make fantastic Presidents but don't even consider running because they are utterly unelectable.

 

 

[StrangeSox]

I'd recommend generally skipping editorials in newspapers because they're typically really dumb polemics and not honest analysis.

[StrangeSox]

Emphasis mine

 

 

 

via

 

I'd take that with as much seriousness as the quadrannial "reports" that find whoever the Democratic candidate is is the most liberal person ever.

 

edit: He's a self-admitted Randroid, but I wouldn't paint him into the same corner as Bachmann. She's in a special world of crazy.

Edited August 13, 2012 by StrangeSox

[StrangeSox]

What Ryan's budget would cut:

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-k...nd-by-how-much/