Thread: We Agree Obama is Doing a Shit Job

^ 70% is for the % of "independents" there, rub.

Rasmussen polls: total approval of BO: 55%, down from 61% in Jan. 36% of the nation's voters now Strongly Approve of BO's performance; 31% Strongly Disapprove.

Also of note, 58% believe the Obama administration’s recent release of CIA memos about the harsh interrogation methods used on terrorism suspects endangers the national security of the United States.

No sh*t; at least most of the people are thinking straight on that one.

Rasmussen Reports™: The Most Comprehensive Public Opinion Data Anywhere

according to the most recent washington post poll, 69% of americans approve of obama's job performance.

and since some here have repeatedly displayed little or no knowledge of the american political process, here's a very simple summary: 1/3 gives you no shot at setting the agenda, and therefore, no relevance.

Obama's overall rating remains high, with 69 percent of Americans approving of his job performance. He gets solid marks for his handling of the economy, maintaining a better-than-2-to-1 advantage over congressional Republicans on the issue. Majorities said that Obama has exceeded their expectations in his first three months in office, has accomplished big things and has kept his main campaign promises. Further, public optimism about the economy and the country's direction also remain on the rise since his election, even as few think his major economic initiatives have moved the needle on the nation's flagging economy, their communities or their finances.

Two-thirds of those polled approve of how Obama is handling international affairs in general, up slightly from last month, just before he embarked on his first European trip. Majorities of Americans also approve of how he is handling health care, global warming, taxes and Cuba, four areas in which the administration has tried to stake new ground in its first few months.

Obama off to solid start, Post poll finds - Washington Post- msnbc.com






oh yeah....btw, whatever happened to texas seceeding?
and those teabaggers, whatever happened to them?

good times.

The only 100 day retrospective you need to understand:

The NYPost commemorates Barack Obama’s milestone with 100 days, 100 mistakes.

Seems like it has been a hell of a lot longer than 100 days, doesn't it?

Ah yes, the venerable NY post.
Right wing blogs are more amusing, but no less predictable.

^ Nothing in that list that is an untruth.

Mr Obama's 63 per cent job approval rating at this stage in his first term beats his predecessors George W Bush, at 56 per cent in 2001, Bill Clinton on 55 per cent in 1993 and George Bush Snr on 58 per cent in 1989, according to the US pollsters Pew.

You are a bunch of sore Republican losers.

Originally Posted by rubik101

You are a bunch of sore Republican losers.

so much so that after a mere three months out of power, some of them are talking about seceding.

Originally Posted by rubik101

Mr Obama's 63 per cent job approval rating at this stage in his first term beats his predecessors George W Bush, at 56 per cent in 2001, Bill Clinton on 55 per cent in 1993 and George Bush Snr on 58 per cent in 1989, according to the US pollsters Pew.

You are a bunch of sore Republican losers.

You forgot Reagan. 67% to my recollection. Anyway, they are all in the same 55-67% bandwidth, so bambam's pct is a pretty sorrya** showing for this soooo popular prez.

Looks like the honeymoon's winding down.

Barack Obama's audacity of hype crumbles

As he approaches 100 days in office, the President faces a grim reality check. Paul Mason reports from America's economic front line.



Buddleia has taken over large parts of downtown Gary, Indiana. The city, once home to 300,000 people, is down to just a third of that. There are mile after mile of deserted, derelict and abandoned homes; sub-zero winds blow in off Lake Michigan.
"Gary, Indiana is like an eagle poised to fly," mayor Rudy Clay tells me, "All we need is the air of the fiscal stimulus beneath our wings and we'll soar once again and make America proud."

The mayor has applied for $400 million out of Barack Obama's $787 billion fiscal stimulus plan. Top of his wish list are automatic weapons and Kevlar vests for the police, and some more police to tote them: last year, in this, the crime capital of the Midwest, he had to lay off police officers due to shortage of funds.
The city symbolises the scale of the economic challenge facing Obama as he approaches 100 days in office. If the president is to deliver something more than the "audacity of hype", homes will have to be built in Gary, health care delivered, and a way found for its inhabitants to live on something more than benefits and debt. But much of America is in revolt against what needs to happen for this to be achieved. And Obama's own momentum on the economic front looks weak.
There are three levers the federal government can pull in the face of this crisis: monetary easing, fiscal stimulus and bank recapitalisation. Obama has used all three but so far ineffectively. In each case, he has run into obstacles rooted deep in the US institutional set-up, indeed deep in the country's psyche.
On monetary policy, Obama has remained a bystander to the efforts of Ben Bernanke at the Federal Reserve. Having reached close to zero interest rates in December, Bernanke announced the Fed would print money in an attempt to bring down real interest rates. Then he travelled to the London School of Economics to tell the world to reject the classic policy of "quantitative easing": the Fed would buy private-sector debts, not government bonds. Finally, on March 18, after a fractious argument within the Fed, he relented, adopting the classic form of the tactic on a massive scale. During this 90-day gap between thought and decisive action more than 1.5 million Americans lost their jobs.
Monetary easing is beginning to work, but it ran into the two obstacles that seem to plague the Obama administration: inertia and free-market dogma.
With the bank bail-out, momentum had already been lost because of the presidential transition. Henry Paulson abandoned his original policy of buying up toxic debts on Nov 25. Tim Geithner, his replacement, finally came up with a new plan on March 23. Known as the Public-Private Investment Programme P-PIP), it will buy up the bad debts at a generous 85 cents per dollar, allowing the very banks that are being bailed out to participate in the purchase. It provides a massive hidden subsidy from the taxpayer to the banks, say its critics. And, so far, it has not worked.
The P-PIP draws scathing daily commentary on the US news channels. At the IMF's spring meetings the weekend, the fund's boss, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, placed heavy pressure on Obama to get his act together on the toxic debts. As with Paulson's original TARP plan, what stands in the way of credibility is the principle of avoiding nationalisation – even in part – and the determination to resolve the crisis on terms favourable to the banks.
If there is a pattern emerging here it is not incompetence but, say Obama's critics, "capture". Both Bernanke and Geithner stood at the heart of the Bush policy elite during the days of dither and denial that followed the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Obama, lacking credible economic heavyweights in his own circle, was obliged to reach into the ranks of Clinton-era Democrats. The irony of Larry Summers' appointment as chief economic adviser was not lost on historians of the credit crunch: Summers had hailed the 1999 law that deregulated Wall Street as "a major step toward the 21st century".
Obama is surrounded by decision-makers who had "drunk the Kool Aid" during the subprime bubble and were profoundly committed to the neoliberal ideology of self-regulation that has now fallen apart. Only the fiscal stimulus truly bears Obama's chosen brand values of audacity and untaintedness. But this, too, is proving heavily problematic.
In January, two Left-leaning members of Obama's transition team laid out radical objectives for the stimulus plan. It would "create or save" between three and four million jobs by the end of 2010 and boost GDP by 3.7 per cent. It would be delivered not primarily through tax cuts but by public spending. And, though construction and energy would account for a quarter of the job creation, more than a million extra health, education and social care jobs would be created, together with 800,000 public sector jobs saved at state level.
The implication was clear: the whole shape of America would begin to change. The stimulus would achieve the administration's social objectives as well as a raw macroeconomic boost. But this has now run up against reality.
In the first place, the mechanisms for turning public money into private-sector jobs are as crumbly as the concrete that holds up America's freeways. There are myriad agencies to go through, many of which are having trouble spending the money. I toured the Midwest with a list of the number of jobs to be created, district by district, issued by the federal government. It was based on demographics but seemed to bear no relationship to the job-creation plans of local-level governments.
Then there are the politics. For a city such as Gary, redistribution is only possible if the state-level government plays ball. "The only obstacle in the way," says Rudy Clay, "is the mindset of the folks who have the decision to make it happen". This is code for Indiana's Republican governor. Privately, city officials believe they'll be lucky to get half the cash they asked for.
Allocating the cash, however, is only half the story. Two hours down the road from Gary, in the town of Elkhart, you get to the root of the problem. At 19 per cent, it suffers the highest unemployment in America, because the "recreational vehicle" industry centred in the town has collapsed. I found a group of unemployed RV workers busy constructing a timber-frame housing complex for homeless families. The fiscal stimulus in action?
Well, no – this is a voluntary project run by a local church. And though the men have had their benefits increased and their health care plans subsidised by stimulus money, they are unanimous in their scorn for the policy itself. "We don't want unemployment benefits, we just want to work," they say.
Last week, Republican campaigners against the stimulus held "tax tea parties". But opposition to the stimulus goes much wider than this. It is visceral, widespread and real. Elkhart's Republican congressman Mark Souder sums up the objection: "Historically, our model has a bit more of a boom-bust element to it, but every time we've had these busts we came roaring out. If we change to become more like Europe, sure we'll stabilise. But we'll never be the growth engine and the protector of the world again."
As Obama's 100th day approaches, the dangers looming on the economic front are clear: neither on monetary, fiscal nor banking policy is there a tangibly successful programme in place. Meanwhile, the economic pain is getting worse, encouraging his opponents to chip away at his credibility.
The bank bail-out will transfer large amounts of taxpayers' money to the bankers, while at least some of the
fiscal stimulus money will be redistributed to the poor and to the welfare system. Middle America, already mad at both policies at the gut level of economic principles, will get even madder if they don't work

Barack Obama's audacity of hype crumbles - Telegraph

Watched all the libbie Sunday "news" shows today and it's a libbie world sewn up tighter than a chick's door with the added spice of infibulation.

^ Yep, them low-income folks have been really stupid. But BO will rescue them and leave everyone else to die. 555555

Oh, look - a thread of frightened conservative bitter losers. How original.

No new pointless wars so far. I can't say it's all bad.

We should have let Bush stay for another 4 years at least we could have got this over with once and for all. Now we are just dragging it out............The USA needs to fall.

How can a goverment that has 2 completly opposite groups running it ever get anything done for real? Just a bunch of halfmeasures and bandaids. Everybody knows what needs to be done but nobody can agree on how to do it.

Originally Posted by beazalbob69

Everybody knows what needs to be done but nobody can agree on how to do it.

Yes, I agree. The 'real' government is between the Progressives and right of the Democrat party- and they are taking their time to find some middle ground. The Republican opposition is just plain 'anti' everything, and has become a noisy irrelevance.

Originally Posted by beazalbob69

We should have let Bush stay for another 4 years at least we could have got this over with once and for all. Now we are just dragging it out............The USA needs to fall.

Definately in my top 10 stupidest comments on Teak Door.

^
Wow I am beside myself with pride now. I made your top 10 list! That must be really hard to do around here!

that post was just a little sarcasm by the way....as is this one now that I think about it.

Originally Posted by beazalbob69

How can a goverment that has 2 completly opposite groups running it ever get anything done for real? Just a bunch of halfmeasures and bandaids. Everybody knows what needs to be done but nobody can agree on how to do it.

Yep, have no debate. What, are you cuckoo?

Originally Posted by sabang

Originally Posted by beazalbob69

Everybody knows what needs to be done but nobody can agree on how to do it.

Yes, I agree. The 'real' government is between the Progressives and right of the Democrat party- and they are taking their time to find some middle ground. The Republican opposition is just plain 'anti' everything, and has become a noisy irrelevance.

Take a look at this page:

LII: Constitution


In order to secure and protect our rights the writers of the Constitution saw need to make things as clear as possible starting with,

Bill of Rights

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law...


Read through the Bill of Rights and see how many times the word 'no', 'not', and 'nor' are used. Saying "no" is not a bad thing.

Actual Billboard in the liberal state of Minnesota!



This is, by all reports, an actual billboard on I-35 in Wyoming, Minnesota:

Oh, dear. Franken must be going gaga.

Yeah, and on the flip side of that sign is this...