Posted on 08/03/2010 5:16:07 PM PDT by Michael Eden
One could conclude - based on rhetoric alone - that George Bush never left office, and Obama never actually ascended to the presidency.
After all, according to the Obama narrative, only one man is responsible for anything these days. And that man is George Bush.
Obama isn't "responsible." He's completely irresponsible.
Obama has never once taken the "The Buck Stops With George Bush" sign off of his desk.
Since we all know that the buck stops at the highest political office, and since we all know that Obama keeps passing the buck off to George Bush, we can therefore know that Obama really isn't our president. Whether he produces his damn birth certificate or not. Given the fact that leadership is ultimately about taking responsibility, and Obama refuses to take any responsibility whatsoever, he's clearly not the POTUS. And since Bush is apparently STILL responsible for everything, he becomes our defacto president even nearly two years after actually leaving the office.
Well, Barry Hussein may never accept responsibility for the failure of his policies, but at least more Americans are finally saying that this is Barack Obama's sucky economy, rather than agreeing with Obama that he had nothing to do with anything.
From Rasmussen:
48% Blame Obama for Bad Economy, 47% Blame Bush Monday, August 02, 2010That last paragraph is particularly significant. Independents OVERWHELMINGLY blame Obama over Bush for the worsening economy.For the first time since President Obama took office, voters see his policies as equally to blame with those of President George W. Bush for the country’s current economic problems.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 48% of Likely U.S. Voters now think Obama’s policies are to blame for the continuing bad economy, up three points from last month. Forty-seven percent (47%) say the recession that began under Bush is at fault.
With voters across the country expressing stronger belief that the economy is getting worse rather than better, these new findings spell potential bad news for Democratic candidates this fall. The president is already planning to limit his campaign appearances with candidates because of potential voter backlash.
In June and last October, 45% blamed Obama’s policies for the country’s ongoing economic woes, the previous high finding on this question. The number who blame Bush is down from 62% in May 2009 when Rasmussen Reports first began tracking the question regularly. Only 27% faulted Obama at that time.
As is often the case, Mainstream voters and the Political Class have wholly different viewpoints on this question. While 61% of Mainstream voters now blame Obama’s policies, 87% of the Political Class say the bad economy is due to the recession that began under Bush.
Fifty-five percent (55%) of men blame Obama’s policies for the current economic problems, while 52% of women think Bush is the cause.
Among voters not affiliated with either major party, Obama is now chiefly to blame by a 52% to 44% margin.
And if that news isn't revealing enough, Gallup/USA Today just came out with a poll showing Obama at only 41% approval - the lowest of his presidency. He's now flirting with being in the 30s.
I don't really care what Democrats think about Obama vs. Bush. The Democrat Party can be rightly defined as the party of moral idiocy. But we are finally seeing rank-and-file Americans who are not involved with political ideology looking at going on two years of failure and false demagoguery and coming to the correct conclusion about whom to hold responsible.
When the economy appeared to be improving, Obama starting talking about his "summer of economic recovery."
From Politico:
Obama, Biden declare 'Recovery Summer' By MIKE ALLEN 6/17/10 5:06 AM EDTBut then we got all kinds of lousy economic news to rain turds all over Obama's "Mission Accomplished" summer of recovery tour.Vice President Joe Biden today will kick off the Obama administration’s “Recovery Summer,” a six-week-long push designed to highlight the jobs accompanying a surge in stimulus-funded projects to improve highways, parks, drinking water and other public works.
David Axelrod, a senior adviser to the president, said: “This summer will be the most active Recovery Act season yet, with thousands of highly-visible road, bridge, water and other infrastructure projects breaking ground across the country, giving the American people a first-hand look at the Recovery Act in their own backyards and making it crystal clear what the cost would have been of doing nothing.”
We got news like this:
Steep decline in GDP growth raises alarms By Don Lee, Los Angeles Times July 31, 2010Reporting from Washington — U.S. economic growth slowed sharply in the spring, stoking concerns about a weak job market, a drawn-out struggle for the unemployed and growing financial pressures on millions of American families.
The nation's gross domestic product grew at an annualized rate of 2.4% in the second quarter, falling from an upwardly revised 3.7% expansion in the first three months of the year, the Commerce Department said Friday.
While many economists had expected growth to moderate, the reported decline was a jolting 35% below the previous quarter. Gross domestic product is the value of all goods and services produced in the economy. [...]
In the wake of Friday's report, a number of economists downgraded their growth forecast for the second half of the year to as low as 1.5%, an anemic rate that would likely push the unemployment rate above June's 9.5% figure.And today, we learned that housing prices were down, factory orders were down, and consumer spending was down. As the LA Times put it:Commerce officials also revised downward some prior growth figures for real GDP, which is the inflation-adjusted value of all goods and services produced in the U.S. The government Friday said real GDP grew 5% in the fourth quarter of 2009, down from a previously reported 5.6%.
Overall, the new data painted a picture of a deeper recession than previously believed.
Government spending and inventory adjustments have powered the economic recovery that began last summer, and they juiced up the second quarter as well. But economists expect tighter public spending, particularly by budget-strapped state and local governments, to be a drag on the economy in the coming quarters. Many private economists projected that the unemployment rate would rise to 9.8% or higher by the end of the year.
U.S. consumers did not boost their spending in June and their incomes failed to increase, further evidence that the economic recovery slowed in the spring. And Americans saved at the highest rate in nearly a year.Personal spending was unchanged in June, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday. It was the third straight month of lackluster consumer demand. Incomes were also flat, the weakest showing in nine months.
The disappointing report on spending and income was among a raft of data released Tuesday that confirmed the economy ended the April-to-June quarter on a weak note.
Factory orders dropped 1.2 percent in June to a seasonally adjusted $406.4 billion, the Commerce Department said. It was the second consecutive decline after nine straight months of gains. Lower demand for steel, construction machinery and aircraft dragged down the figure.What's funniest of all - if anything is funny during a complete failure's destruction of what had been the greatest nation in the history of the planet - is that Obama was literally still congratulating himself when the bad news came dumping down:And the number of buyers who signed contracts to purchase homes fell in June. The National Association of Realtors says its seasonally adjusted index of sales agreements for previously occupied homes dipped 2.6 percent to a reading of 75.7. That was the lowest on records dating back to 2001 and down nearly 19 percent from the same month a year earlier.
Last week the government said economic growth for the second quarter slowed to 2.4 percent. Many analysts believe it will dip further in the second half of the year as high unemployment, shaky consumer confidence and renewed troubles in housing weigh on the year-old economic recovery.
President Obama was in New Jersey yesterday killing time before his appearance on ‘The View’. So he stopped at Tastee Subs and held a small business summit, pushing for legislation to increase funding to the Small Business Administration. In between sound bytes on jobs and bites of Tastee’s super-sub special, more bad economic news came rolling Obama’s way.And then all of a sudden the Obama administration is all, "Oh, crap! Stop looking at our "success"! No! Don't look at our "recovery summer"! We don't want to take responsibility after all! Start looking at Bush again! He's the only one who is actually RESPONSIBLE!"
So now - after Obama patted himself on the back and congratulated himself for his mission accomplished, all of a sudden we're back to the "Bush recession."
BIDEN LAMENTS 'BUSH RECESSION'.... Vice President Biden appeared on NBC's "Today" show earlier, and used a line I don't recall leading White House officials using before, at least not lately.Which is to say that, according to the Obama administration, George Bush is to blame for all the jobs HE lost, PLUS all the jobs that OBAMA lost. After going on two years in office, Obama still isn't responsible for anything at all. Oh, except for that brief period when it looked like maybe things were looking up and Obama could suddenly be "responsible".Ann Curry noted that the administration has been blamed for high unemployment rates, and asked, "Has this administration done enough?"
Biden replied, "Let me put it this way: there's never enough until we restore the 8 million jobs lost in the Bush Recession. Until that happens, it doesn't matter. I mean, it matters, but it's not enough."
When Bush left office, unemployment was 7.6%. Barry Hussein promised that his massive stimulus would save the day. He assured the American people that he understood what was wrong, and that he had the solution. His administration promised that if the stimulus (which started out at $787 billion, then got revised upward to $862 billion, but which will actually cost taxpayers $3.27 TRILLION) was passed, unemployment would not go over 8%.
President Obama is being forced to wade into a domestic economic debate that just won't go away: As the unemployment rate rises, there have been calls for a second round of stimulus spending.And the LA Times article cites economists as now predicting that unemployment will rise to at least 9.8% - or higher. Which for the record is a lot higher than 8%.Obama is in a difficult position. He has to defend his $787 billion economic stimulus package at a time when there are few visible signs that it has had an effect. Unemployment is at 9.5 percent, even though the White House predicted in January that with the stimulus bill, it would rise to only about 8 percent.
It's not enough to say Obama was incompetent. He lied. He pitched himself as Mr. Wonderful, and utterly failed to live up to all of his false promises.
In October 2008 I wrote an article which quoted Chief Executive Magazine as follows:
In expressing their rejection of Senator Obama, some CEOs who responded to the survey went as far as to say that “some of his programs would bankrupt the country within three years, if implemented.” In fact, the poll highlights that Obama’s tax policies, which scored the lowest grade in the poll, are particularly unpopular among CEOs.And I had cause to cite that article again recently, as Obama pursued the incredibly demagogic rhetoric that said we had to go forward with his "change" rather than backward. Lest you don't see the obvious flaw, allow me to point out that Germany went forward with Hitler's "change," too. And then there was Stalin's "change," and Pol Pot's "change," and Castro's "change," etc.
To argue that moving forward to "change" is somehow intrinsically good is intrinsically stupid. It is the very worst kind of moral idiocy. And that "logic" has repeatedly justified the most evil outcomes in the history of the human race.
The CEOs - whom unlike the Obama administration actually understand something about business - have turned out to be right. And Obama has turned out to be completely wrong. Over and over and over again.
Obama pitched his entire campaign for presidency on "hope" to go along with his nebulous "change." Sadly, the American people didn't understand that there isn't and can be no hope in the progressive agenda of Barack Hussein. There is only increasing government control over more and more of our lives.
It should terrify you that Obama is well on the way to the three-year plan toward bankruptcy that the CEO's predicted of an Obama presidency.
Responsibility is above his pay grade. Why are we surprised with that, he told us before he was elected.
Might as well start calling it Obamastan.
Or maybe something that carries some hint of who we used to be, such as “The Divided States of Obamastan.”
Aren't they two distinct questions?
Well, it appears that 95% of American are wrong. The CongressCritters are getting away with economic murder.
And this comes as a completely “unexpected” turn of events to the 50+ percent of Americans, dead and alive, that thought that the Presidency was a learn-on-the-job affirmative action position where prior experience doing ANYTHING SUBSTANTIVE was not required, and voted accordingly.
What fools these mortals be... (this line gratuitously stolen)
You have a point there.
There are good polls. But there are also a lot of bad polls, with loaded questions designed to elicit an intended response.
I would argue that Obama was more “responsible” for the economic crash in 2008 than was Bush in the sense that Obama championed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and helped prevent any reform of these GSEs that were most responsible for the destruction of our mortgage industry. Bush tried repeatedly to regulate Fannie and Freddie.
I’ve written a bunch of articles trying to point this fact out. Here’s one:
http://startthinkingright.wordpress.com/2009/07/08/biden-we-misread-the-economy-and-its-all-the-republicans-fault/
But obviously Obama was not yet president - just a slimebag Democrat Senator who took more money from Fannie and Freddie than anybody - when the collapse occurred.
But mind you, Obama was part of a huge Democrat majority in both the House and the Senate when the collapse occurred, also. That seems to always get forgotten.
I don’t give a rat’s butt if I get torched for saying it but women are so effing stupid when it comes to judging political character it is no surprise that 52% of them still blame Bush. Seriously folks, there was some valid reasoning in place before women’s suffrage.
In a lot of ways Bush Spoiled these American ingrates. He managed to keep the eocnomy going, two wars going, and prevented attacks.
All so the idiot hippies could spit in his face and call him a killer.
Most conservatives seem to rely on "if the bad economy continues to 2012, it's bad for the Dhims," which may be true, but doesn't refute the argument of what started the crises in the first place.
Correction: YOUNG women are effin’ stupid; namely the under 50 crowd. Example:
Typical Obama voter at work; just turned 21, watches MTV religiously, lives with mamma and her sister, is morbidly obese but still believes she’s “hot.” Recently saw a Mennonite family at an out of town walmart and declared them “pilgrims!”
I am NOT making this up!!
You are completely correct.
Republicans also do this with taxes. When was the last time you heard an intelligent presentation of what is an obvious fact of history: that when you lower tax rates, you stimulate growth, and when you stimulate growth, you increase actual tax revenues. This has happened every single time it has been done going back to the early 1920s. It happened when Warren Harding did it. It happened when Kennedy did it. It happened when Reagan did it. It happened when Bush II did it.
http://spectator.org/archives/2010/07/28/the-timeless-principles-of-ame/print
And yet somehow, again and again, the argument by default is that tax cuts create deficits, and that if you have a tax cut, “you’ve got to pay for it.”
If you cut taxes, and cut spending, you will see a reduction in the deficit. That was what happened during the Republican Revolution, when a REPUBLICAN congress forced Clinton to reduce capital gains taxes and cut spending.
It’s the same thing with what happened that created the economic collapse. The defacto narrative is that Bush and Republicans created it. When in fact the Republicans were LONG GONE when it happened, and Bush had tried SEVENTEEN TIMES to deal with what would ultimately create the disaster - Fannie and Freddie.
We lose, because we refuse to argue intelligently with our opponents. We lose, because we allow garbage to become the defacto “truth.”
Got pitchforks?
“”Obama is now starkly revealed as a weak leader who will take the country down the toilet bowl with him.””
That was the reason he was PUT there.
Neal Boortz had an excellent analogy this morning:
You saw a doctor 4 years ago for an ailment. It was diagnosed and medication prescribed for it.
4 years later you still haven’t gotten any better so you go to a new doctor. He diagnoses the same ailment and prescribes medication for it.
You don’t get any better and complain to the 2nd doctor. That doctor asks, “But what about the doctor you saw 4 years ago?”
The person on the line who Neal was trying to talk to wasn’t receptive so Neal cut him off and continued his analogy.
I thought it was perfectly stated as to the tripe we hear every day from the libs blaming GWB.
Got guillotine?
There’s a joke about a man finding a turtle lying on top of a post, and wondering how the “post turtle” got there. And then the wise old cowboy explains.
The old rancher said, ‘Well, ya know, Obama is a ‘post turtle’.’
Not being familiar with the term, the doctor asked him what a ‘post turtle’ was. The old rancher said, ‘When you’re driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that’s a ‘post turtle’.’
The old rancher saw a puzzled look on the doctor’s face, so he continued to explain.
‘You know he didn’t get up there by himself, he doesn’t belong up there, he doesn’t know what to do while he is up there, and you just wonder what kind of a dumb ass put him up there!.’
I don’t go for “conspiracy theories” that Obama was “placed” there by some consortium. I agree that such is possible, but without the evidence to prove it, I go with the view that he was elected by a stupid electorate.
Why do I think Obama was elected? He was the politically correct candidate, and he was the ideological opposite of Bush - whom the media successfully blamed for all of our economic problems (see my last couple comments above).
And by the way, if you didn’t vote for Obama, you’re a racist. Proof that you’re a racist? Who needs it. The allegation should make you submit.
All the arguments the media are buying are ridiculous. If we HADN’T done the stimulus, the economy would have been far worse. Proof? We don’t need any. Obama has actually “created or saved” millions of jobs. Proof? We don’t need it. The stimulus didn’t work, but only because it wasn’t a giant enough stimulus. Proof? Who needs it?
The media would be your “conspiracy force.” They defended Obama when he was caught red-handed in a racist, Marxist, anti-American church. They bought a constant stream of “spin” that argued for crap that the media would NEVER have bought if the candidate/president had been Republican.
And that has just gone on, and on, and on.
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