Thread: President Obama’s Accomplishments : Discuss

Obama voters, you won! Here’s your prize
Congratulations or something.
By HERMAN CAIN - Posted on December 3, 2012

President Obama won the popular vote by 50.6 percent. OK, those of you that voted for him, you won. But you did not win the lottery. Here’s what you won.

You won a president who wants unlimited federal spending powers with no federal debt ceiling. Would you give unlimited credit to a person who has maxed out all of their credit cards? If you say yes, then respectfully, you are a fool.

You won a president who is asking Congress to spend an additional $50 billion for unidentified projects. This would of course be the same Congress that has not passed a budget since 2009. Do you run your finances without a budget, or at least some idea of how you are going to make ends met? Well, you probably don’t.

You won a president who wants to raise taxes by $1.6 trillion over 10 years, while telling you that it will help reduce the deficit. Do the math folks. That’s not true. It would raise minimal revenue and cause a big decrease in employment and the creation of new jobs. All you have to do is to look at the real history of tax increases. But you see, President Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi know you don’t know the history, and they figure you are too gullible to learn.

Obama voters, you won a president who is still campaigning, so he can keep using the lapdog mainstream media to tell you what he wants you to believe instead of telling you the truth. Strip away your preconceived notions about media channels that Obama told you not to watch, and you just might learn something.

You also won a coming fiscal cliff disaster, because Obama knows he can let it happen and you will agree with him that it's all the fault of the Republicans. You drank the Kool-Aid for four years, so he expects you to just keep on drinking to the very last drop.

Except, the very last drop this time will mean a lot of economic pain and suffering for a lot of families, namely, no jobs! It will mean that our nation's credit rating will most likely be downgraded again. It will also mean that gas prices will go back up and stay up, and that federal spending will continue to get bigger, while the size of our economy gets smaller.

The very last drop will also mean more turmoil in the rest of the world, because of the continued loss of respect for America's economic and military strength, due to this president's inability to lead decisively and forcefully.

Obama voters, you won! But do you like the prize? Read this commentary again in two years and let me know. God willing, I will still be here writing, on the radio and TV explaining what I have been saying for the last four years.

Maybe some of you will wake up.

http://www.caintv.com/obama-voters-you-won-heres-you

Detroit councilwoman to mayor: We supported Obama overwhelmingly,
so go get a bailout from him because he owes us
By Doug Powers • December 5, 2012 12:22 PM

Same old story: A city has been horribly mismanaged and run into the ground, and everybody should pay up so they can keep running it the same way: http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/story/20...now-support-us

DETROIT (WJBK) — The city of Detroit faces a major financial crisis and one member of city council thinks President Barack Obama should step in and help.

City Council member JoAnn Watson said Tuesday the citizens support of Obama in last month’s election was enough reason for the president to bailout the struggling the city.

“Our people in an overwhelming way supported the re-election of this president and there ought to be a quid pro quo and you ought to exercise leadership on that,” said Watson. “Of course, not just that, but why not?”

Nearly 75 percent of Wayne County voters pulled the lever for Obama in November. “After the election of Jimmy Carter, the honorable Coleman Alexander Young, he went to Washington, D.C. and came home with some bacon,” said Watson. “That’s what you do.”

Young served as Detroit’s mayor for 20 years and served as vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 1977 to 1981.

The story doesn’t clarify the person in the room Watson is addressing, but I’m assuming the “you” she’s referring to is Detroit Mayor Dave Bing. The point though is abundantly clear: We voted for Obama and he owes us a bailout, so let’s go get it!

Anybody who’s genuinely concerned about getting Motown back on its feet would never advise a mayor to “do it the way Coleman Young did it”: http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/story/20...now-support-us

Video : http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/video?au...clipId=8033524




**Written by Doug Powers http://michellemalkin.com/2012/12/05...oman-to-mayor/


See also http://sistertoldjah.com/archives/20...-us-the-money/

Obama 4 years after being elected and 1 month after being re-elected: America is poised to take off
By Doug Powers • December 4, 2012 08:00 PM

According to President Obama, America’s economy is ready to take off. Well, as soon as Joe Biden gets done de-icing the plane with liquid nitrogen, somebody figures out how to power the engines with stimulus-funded batteries and the people up in first class are forced to pay their fair share, that is. http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/...ke_665030.html

In an interview with Bloomberg’s Julianna Goldman, President Barack Obama stated, “I think America is poised to take off.” The main obstacle, in Obama’s mind, however, is political dysfunction.

“We’re seeing pretty strong consumer confidence, despite weaknesses in Europe and even in Asia. I think America is poised to take off. And the question is, let’s make sure that we don’t have a self-inflicted wound, because there are a lot of silly games played up on Capitol Hill,” Obama told Goldman.

And of course we can’t have a successful and safe takeoff if we don’t get the ceiling out of the way. http://michellemalkin.com/2012/12/01...ing-authority/

Video : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_je3p...layer_embedded


**Written by Doug Powers


comments http://michellemalkin.com/2012/12/04...oised-take-of/

A Very Real Concern

Americans have a long history of adapting. We’re like USMC Marines – Improvise, Adapt, Overcome.

That talent could very well cement the Socialist nightmare into the fabric of the USA for a very very long time.

Improvising and adapting is how we got into this mess to begin with instead of forcefully confronting socialist demands head on force on force. Each generation is faced with federal Democrat socialist demands for more taxes, more regulations, more bureaucracy and more heavy boot on our necks and Americans improvise and adapt and the best of these Overcome … meaning, make enough money insulates them from the worst of the onerous beat downs by our own government.

I fear our own best attributes are going to seal our fate.

We will adapt and improvise rather than going to the mat with this thing that lives among us.

Consider also that our adaptability may make us essentially ungovernable by this gargantuan relic-of-the-industrial-revolution-style government that the last election seems to have cemented. Yes things look bad, and a lot of people are going to have rough times, but technology is doing some amazing things with regards to commerce, and giant governments may find themselves unable to adapt to the new speed of money/goods.

If you don’t believe this government is hopelessly mired in the past, consider that the NSA is basically trying to store all electronic communications (95% of which is probably spam anyway) on a giant backup server. They aren’t filtering, just storing… and waiting for someone to put a foot wrong. Laughable, except they also wield the power of enormous, faceless, uncaring government.

Obama Has Spent 3.6% of Presidency on Economy
by Wynton Hall28 Apr 2013

A new report by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Institute (GAI) finds that President Barack Obama has spent 3.6% of his total work time throughout his presidency in economic meetings of any kind. http://g-a-i.org/gai-report-presiden...ased-analysis/

The study, titled “Presidential Calendar: A Time-Based Analysis,” based its findings on the official White House calendar http://www.whitehouse.gov/schedule/complete Politico’s comprehensive presidential calendar http://www.politico.com/politico44/ and media reports through March 31, 2013. The study defined the president’s work week as a six-day, 10-hour-a-day time period.

“You should know that keeping the economy growing and making sure jobs are available is the first thing I think about when I wake up every morning,” Obama said in 2011 to an audience of UPS workers. “It's the last thing I think about when I go to bed each night." http://content.usatoday.com/communit...1#.UX2JiMq1WVp

The GAI report, however, reveals Obama’s hours spent on the economy have fallen significantly since entering office. In 2009, Obama spent 187.2 hours in economic meetings; in 2010, 127.8 hours; in 2011, 73 hours; in 2012, 80.4 hours.

In total, the report says Obama has spent 474.4 hours (or 47.4 10-hour workdays) in economic meetings or briefings of any kind throughout his presidency.

To be sure, any president’s economic work includes private conversations and discussions not necessarily captured on the official White House presidential calendar. But the study granted wide parameters to include any meeting that might remotely deal with economic matters. For example, calendar entries like “Obama meets with Cabinet secretaries” and “Obama has lunch with four CEOs” counted as economic meetings. If the White House calendar did not include the time a meeting ended, a generous two hours were given.

GAI’s latest study is in alignment with findings from its presidential calendar analysis last July, which found Obama spending scant time on the economy. Prior results found that Obama spent an average of just 138 minutes a week in economic meetings of any kind. http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Governm...ing-Their-Dogs

“There will be some who will be encouraged by the numbers and some who will wish the president spent more time in economic meetings,” said GAI President Peter Schweizer. “We just tabulate the numbers and let others decide how to interpret them.”

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Governm...n%252Bfacebook

Obama Spent Twice as Much Time on Vacation/Golf as Economy
by Wynton Hall - April 28 2013

According to a new report by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Institute (GAI), President Barack Obama has spent over twice as many hours on vacation and golf (976 hours) as he has in economic meetings of any kind (474.4 hours).

The report, “Presidential Calendar: A Time-Based Analysis,” used the official White House calendar, Politico’s comprehensive presidential calendar, and media reports through March 31, 2013 to calculate its results.

GAI’s findings may actually understate Obama’s recreational hours.

Last year, Obama told CBS News that playing golf is “the only time that for six hours, I'm outside." But instead of six hours, GAI counted a round of golf as taking just four hours. Likewise, for presidential vacation hours, researchers attributed just six hours of any day of vacation to leisure activity.

“Like most people, presidents still do work while on vacation,” said GAI President Peter Schweizer. “So we really went out of our way to fairly and accurately reflect how the president spends his time.”

The study applied a similarly generous assessment to Obama’s time spent in economic meetings by counting anything on the official White House calendar even remotely related to the economy as an economic meeting. For example, “Obama meets with Cabinet secretaries” and “Obama has lunch with four CEOs” counted as economic meetings.

GAI’s new report dovetails with its presidential calendar analysis last July that found Obama devotes little time to economic meetings.

Asked whether the latest numbers paint a negative portrait of presidential economic leadership, Schweizer says that is for others to decide.

“People understand that presidents have the most stressful job in the world and need a break from time to time,” said Schweizer. “There will be some who will be encouraged by the numbers and some who will wish the president spent more time in economic meetings. As a government watchdog group, we just tabulate the numbers and let others decide how to interpret them.”

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Governm...-As-On-Economy

Sequester : Ground the "Blue Angels" - for the year - savings $28 million dollars
21 day vacation for the First Family in Hawaii - cost $23 million dollars.

President Obama’s First 100 Days : Take Two
April 29, 2013

April 29 marks the end of the first 100 days of President Barack Obama’s second term. In recognition of this milestone, Bankrupting America adds up key numbers from the president’s first 100 days.

Talking About Debt And Deficit:

•Number of Times the Word “Debt” Was Used in Inaugural Address: Zero

•Number of Times the Word “Deficit” Was Used in Inaugural Address: 1

•Number of Times the Word “Debt” Was Used in the State of the Union: 2

•Number of Times the Word “Deficit” Was Used in the State of the Union: 11


Number of Days the President’s Budget Was Late: 64 (the president’s budget is due the first Monday of February – Feb. 4 this year.
President Obama delivered his budget Apr. 10)

•Total Spending in the Budget: $3.778 trillion for FY 2014

•Total Tax Increase in the Budget: $580 billion over 10 years

•Proposals for Comprehensive Reform Entitlement Programs: 0


Approval Rating on the Budget Deficit: According to the Associated Press,
39% of adults approve of the president’s handling of the budget deficit and 56% disapprove.

Approval Rating on the Economy: According to the Associated Press,
46% of adults approve of the president’s handling of the economy and 52% disapprove.

Total Added to the Debt Since January 21: $326 billion

Interest Paid on the National Debt (February and March): $40.3 billion

Total Deficit Spending: $310 billion (February and March)

Unemployment Rate and Labor Force Participation Rate:

•February 2013: 7.7% unemployment rate with 63.5% participation rate (130,000 Americans dropped out of workforce)

•March 2013: 7.6% unemployment rate with 63.3% participation rate (496,000 Americans dropped out of workforce)

•Note: At the end of President Obama’s first 100 days for his first term, the unemployment rate was 8.7%, but the labor force participation rate was 65.6%

Jobs Added to the Economy: 356,000 (February and March)

Stock Market:
•Dow Jones on January 21: 13,712
•Dow Jones on April 26: 14,713

http://www.bankruptingamerica.org/pr...irst-100-days/

Approval Rating on the Budget Deficit: According to the Associated Press,
39% of adults approve of the president’s handling of the budget deficit and
56% disapprove.

5% said "No Comment" ??

Approval Rating on the Economy: According to the Associated Press,
46% of adults approve of the president’s handling of the economy and
52% disapprove.

2% ... MIA ??

I have been noticing of late - they do these polls but the numbers don't add up to 100%

The Obama administration’s terrible horrible no good very bad week
By Alexandra Petri, Published: May 14, 2013 at 9:20 am

This has been one of the worst weeks for the Obama administration in recent memory, and it’s only Tuesday.

There were the Benghazi hearings, which actually crept onto Mainstream News Outlets, even if they haven’t generated much more than indignation, more heat than light.

Then there was Friday’s news that the IRS was explicitly targeting conservative 501 (c)4 non-profits for added screening. Have Patriot in your name? How about the Constitution in your mission? If you want to teach people more about the Constitution — well, you might as well tattoo “DEVIOUS ANTI-GOVERNMENT ENTITY” on your forehead and clearly, a regular audit is too good for you. Nothing like saying you’re a supporter of the Founding Fathers and want to return to our nation’s founding principles to make you sound like a suspicious, anti-government group.

Then there came the revelation, Monday, that the Justice Department had obtained two months of AP phone records.

Now we have a real scandal on our hands. Isn’t that enough to unleash all the other menacing theories and clustering fears about the administration?

I can’t wait to see what tomorrow will bring. Could it get worse?

Next it will leak that the drone program, in what the Drone Program Office (mysteriously situated in Kansas) calls “a horrible mix-up with its paperwork,” has given up targeting enemy combatants and devoted all its resources to following Rand Paul at a respectful distance, emitting a baleful hum.

Then the FDA will reveal that it has come up with new guidelines for Plan B and every other form of contraception, where any woman who asks for it over the counter has to be shown a video calling her insulting and unscientific names. Bizarrely, at the same time, Abstinence Only policies in schools will be replaced with videos attempting to recruit children to homosexuality, even though literally everyone asked about this will point out that a) this is not a real thing that can happen and b) this matter is supposed to be left to the states.

“Oh yeah,” a Senior Administration Official will let slip, mid-week, “death panels are absolutely real.”

The Social Security Administration will step forward and announce, ruefully, that it got confused and thought that it was supposed to be investing your money in making sure the party scenes in “The Great Gatsby” were all they could be.

By the end of the week, President Obama will no doubt announce that, exactly as his opponents feared, he is a lizard-man bent on devastating the Earth with fire from his belly. “Born in America?” he will ask. “Let me be clear: I am from Krypton.” Then he will melt the retirement savings of millions of Americans with his eyes.

At this point Michelle will reveal that she’s been poisoning all the White House Children’s Garden lettuce with radium and that her Let’s Move exercises actually sap your muscle strength. They will leap into a chariot drawn by anarchist dragons and pirouette off into the sky, sprinkling Socialism everywhere and crushing small private enterprises under their wheels, pausing briefly to say something Very Very Rude to Bob Woodward.

At the daily press briefing, Jay Carney will announce that he knows nothing about anything that has happened, that, in fact, his entire memory has disappeared, that there is a woman who claims to be his wife but she is a total stranger to him and all her attempts to show him “50 First Dates” have wound up with him sobbing uncontrollably in a corner, not knowing what or whom to believe. “This being said,” he will add, “someone has told me to say, ‘Execute Order 66!’” At this point, out of nowhere, a clone army will descend upon the White House press corps and tear them limb from limb.

A few will escape and start a small resistance, but no one will listen to them because they were once part of the Liberal Media Establishment.

Joe Biden will attempt to pull off his mask of amiability to reveal something sinister, but it will turn out that there is nothing to reveal, and then he will mope because no one decided to include him in the plans.

“I was right!” Donald Trump will bellow, rearing up over America. “I was right about EVERYTHING!”

And when you think of it in comparison to all the wild theories that have long raged, this week’s events seem relatively staid. No dragons, no flames, no clone armies. Hardly enough to melt a talk radio mike. But they have one advantage: They actually happened. That’s more than scary enough for me.

In the coming days, some transparency and accountability would be nice. We can deal with the bad facts and move along, return any lurking dragons to the undergrowth. What actually happened is bad enough for the real world. I’d just as soon it stopped here.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...very-bad-week/

President Obama’s disastrous political week
Posted by Chris Cillizza on May 14, 2013

It’s only Tuesday. But President Obama is already in the midst of one of the worst weeks, politically speaking, of his presidency — besieged by an burgeoning scandal at the Internal Revenue Service, revelations that the Justice Department secretly obtained phone records of reporters at the Associated Press and ongoing Republican criticism over the terrorist attack in Benghazi last fall.

Any one of those stories would be enough to knock an Administration back on its heels. All three — and with the IRS and AP stories coming in rapid succession over the past 96 hours — threaten to permanently derail Obama’s plans to fortify his presidential legacy in the first 18 months of his second term.

The problems are both practical and symbolic. They have both short term and long term political consequences. And almost none of it portends well for President Obama and his Administration.

The practical problems are obvious. Congress is already ramping up its investigative operation; Politico reported this morning that approximately one-third of all House committees are looking into some aspect of the Obama Administration. (Sidebar: Welcome to the perils of the party out of the White House controlling one of the chambers of Congress!)

With Congress tied up in investigating the IRS, the AP and Benghazi — and with the national media covering all three — the time for Obama’s legislative priorities (climate change etc.) are significantly reduced. Can Congress walk and chew gum at the same time? Sure. But they don’t usually do it — particularly when one party sees significant political advantage in not walking to instead focus all of their time on chewing gum.

The symbolic problems are less readily apparent but potentially far more damaging in the long term.

Remember that President Obama was elected in 2008 in no small part because of his pledge to be the anti-George W. Bush. That is, prizing competence over all in governance and putting a premium on transparency. And both of those pillars are undermined by developments in the past four days.

There’s simply no escaping the fact that the IRS’ targeting of conservative groups (without any similar flagging of liberal groups) happened on President Obama’s watch. That he learned of the scandal from news reports on Friday despite the fact that senior officials at the IRS were aware of it as far back as 2011 makes it worse, not better as it relates to Obama’s pledge to restore competence across all aspects of the government.

Then there is the AP phone records story. While the Justice Department will defend their actions as necessary to ensure leaks don’t endanger national security and American lives — the phone records they obtained were tied to a failed terrorist attack last year — the idea of an arm of government secretly grabbing phone records from reporters is, literally, the opposite of transparency.

The cumulative weight of the series of stories, of course, is, potentially, the most dangerous thing of all for the Obama Administration. Group Benghazi, the IRS and the AP into a single narrative and it reads something like this: The government knows better than you. As a result, the government can do whatever it likes. “This is Big Brother come to life and a witch hunt to prevent Americans from exercising their First Amendment rights,” Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker wrote in a letter to President Obama on Tuesday morning.

While Jindal and Walker were referencing the IRS scandal in particular, their quote could also speak to the broader problem the Obama Administration is facing right now. The idea of a government run amok, believing in its infallibility and broadly-defined right to do what it wants when it wants is a dangerous one for this President (or any president).

The rapidity of news cycles and the short attention span of the public (and its government) means that what today looks like a series of mountains that Obama might not be able to climb could well look wind up looking a lot more like molehills six months from now.

But, the timing of the revelations coupled with the fact that each of them not only plays into a broader storyline about this presidency but also threatens to undermine key promises made by Obama when he was elected make this week a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad one for him.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...olitical-week/

"Turtle on a Fencepost"