What has improved since 2008?

As my post count indicates, I've only just arrived. And why on Earth would you imagine I would concern myself about the poverty rates in your country?

Lame character dual is lame. And, having been skinofevil, I consider myself something of an authority on lame character duals.

Don't be so hard on the old woman. She's really got no life outside of WF.

One does expect Americans to be less enlightened than the rest of the Western world, but one seldom has one's expectations so emphatically confirmed.

Your rudeness is only trumped by your ignorance.

I fear for conservatism in your country if you're considered an exemplar.

Good thread, Kirk.

Turns out the best we can come up with is the fact of inflated value of reichsmarks in our overcrowded last-refuge stock portfolio accounts, or the gubmint social engineering perks we personally could exploit.

Well, yipp-fuckin-ee.

Put me down for OBL as his sole significant accomplishment to date. Oh, and the reminder that we don't really know everything we think we do for those who thought we'd witnessed a low-water mark wen we lived through Carter.

So America has also learned humility from Obama, we've learned to swallow humble pie. We've learned that they won't grow fonder of us even if we emasculate ourselves before friend and foe.

FTFY.

Oh, that's right.

I forgot to mention a depressed real estate market that sucks for the rest of country and will drag for another decade, but gave us a personal bargain.

Guess I should say it again - Yip-fuckin-ee, thanks Opama for the successful turnaound story called the US real estate market (collapse).


[And that's a clever original little edit trick you did there, I mean, if ur in the second or third grade. Brava! Or perhaps you feel that a member getting laid or graduating are a credit to the Incompetent-in-chief's accomplishments.]

The only unambiguously good things that I can think of are:

• Policy on gays in the military changed.
• Reversal of policy on stem-cell research.

I'm sure that there are other minor positive, but it's all outweighed by the bad stuff. And there's quite a lot of mixed stuff too.

Yer damn right yip-fuckin-ee....and a triple back flip. I made out like a bandit.

And how is the real estate market Obama's fault?

The change on stem cells only involved federal funding. Out fed gov has no real need to be funding stem cell research. So that doesn't count.

But repeal of DADT is a win, abeit pretty minor in the scheme of running numero uno on the planet. Still, was long overdue.

The weakness of his accomplishments as chronicled by his supporters is pretty sad.

[WFer with ODS]"Because he's a Time Lord!!!1! Every bad thing that ever happened is his fault!!!11!"[/]

It's not that he's a Time Lord. It's that he delivered such a concentrated dosage of Suck into the timeline that the natural forward progression of linear time couldn't accommodate it. That resulted in an immediate saturation both forward in time several generations -- as well as backward in time. It was like a suck bomb hit the timeline.

Or, IOW, what tafkats said.

I'm pretty sure you don't mean to say that cheap houses everywhere is an Obama accomplishment.

For one thing, a whole lot of jobs are crushed all the way down the food chain in the home building sector. And the prolonged (jobs) recession will almost certainly continue longer if the single most signifcant component of a person's wealth is derpressed or deflated.

It's very bad for all of us, which I'm confident you'll agree with if you find your new home's value is just 75% of what you paid for it in 5 more years.

Again, How is that Obama's fault?

Since I don't consider a home as an investment, no. I wouldn't consider that a "very bad" thing.

You sure you've thought that position through?

I didn't say I wouldn't consider it a "not terribly good" thing, but I don't plan on moving any time, I paid cash for it, and I have no intention of ever using it as collateral for a loan. So what's the big deal?

"Priscella" agrees!

Good for you. That's the right attitude to have towards home ownership. Especially these days with the market so glutted that banks are bulldozing foreclosures rather than trying to sell them. Kind of reminds me of the early days of the Great Depression when farmers poured milk into the sewer and burned their fields in an effort to raise prices.

If you were paying a mortgage it would be a big deal. As you are not it's not a big deal.

In the version of this photo that isn't cropped so tightly, you can see tha the Lunar Rover is up on cinder blocks.

Four trillion in additional debt and all that's implied in such a staggering figure is a pretty good hint of how it's His fault.

Either the economy (and cash, securities or RE markets) is or is not the conequence of the action of the POTUS. I don't accuse you of inconsistencey, but is it your feeling that RE market is outside the scope of things that can be managed?

We had Japan as the case study of what could/can happen following financial crises. Since the Japanese have been moribund for 3 decades with all their stimilus and goverment debt, why'd we copy them if he's not actually just incompetent (albeit an articulately incompetent)?

Ah, the old Move the Goalposts maneuver.

So it's Obama's fault that the real estate market crashed, because he ran up the deficit after the fact? You do realise that he wasn't even president at the time?

It's Obama's responsibility to lead and to make right decisions. In hindsight. Otherwise he's a failure.

Good results = success.

Bad results, failure

Nobody's perfect, but he's like two out of a hundred or so.

[I'll happily eat my words if the RE market has turned in 2012. You are aware that the RE market is in the process of taking a double dip, yes? Or is that just the Bush policies with a really long lag?]

How could he lead and make right decisions when he wasn't even the fucking president yet? This shit started in 2007.

Um, not the second dip.

Meh if he'd let the economy run its natural course you'd be bitching about how he's sitting on the sidelines while people suffer.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't, probably why we can't get anyone decent to be President. No one in their right mind would want to put up with the job.

Did I miss something and Obama is now President of the EU?

CASA engineers have promised to finish it up by now, but eventually had to issue an official press release stating "It's too hot for that."

Bullshit.

I was a vocal opponent of the nonsense and proven-failure of Keynesian policies.

There were things to do without doing the most predictibly bad things, then squared or cubed. The formula for economic recoveries are well know - cut taxes (permanently, so far as that word can apply), create incentives for employers to grow jobs. Yada yada yada. More jobs, more income, more people afford houses, RE market recovers. D'oh!

Throwing money at the situation is careless and the refuge of big government emptyheads. Spending 13,000 on education per pupil (a sizeable amount for college tuition) is a clue (it's $22,000 in NY, but they're more wasteful than average).

Plus it crowds out the private sector, often in ways that cannot be reversed or fixed without a longer more arduous path away from big government control and spending. We've gone from less than 1/3 to over 40% of the US economy that is FEDGOV. Friggin pathetic.