Obama won.. (Read 1497 times)

It's a great essay--succinct and hits all the major points.

The comments, however, quickly turn into a slightly more educated version of every inane Facebook or RunningAhead dot com pissing match regarding politics (kinda like this thread) so I'd recommend stopping at:

"Just a word to the wise from one White Man to (presumably) another."

Salami, salami, baloney.

If he did vote, who did he vote for?

He says elsewhere on his blog that he voted for the Libertarian candidate, Gary Johnson.

the Republican party turns me off

Both parties turn me off anymore.

I will admit that the Republican party is in disarray ....  pretty easy to see.  This election if nothing else showed that.  Didn't Obama get reelected with the highest unemployment rate since FDR?  It was there for the taking for the Republicans and they could not get it done.

I know that earlier on the thread you said that the statute of limitations had run out on blaming Republicans for the economy, but I think that reasonable people know that the great economic crisis out of which we are slowly moving happened on GWB's watch and in large part because of government deregulation of the financial industry -- and that the R's have basically tried to block Obama at every turn as he has tried (admittedly in lukewarm fashion) to address it.

 

I know Mobram justifies this because Washington is SUPPOSE (sic) to be hard, but Washington seems especially hard now because the R party pretty much seems to have "making things hard for everyone" at the very top of their agenda and "addressing the countries problems" way the hell down the list... See the last point in the little essay that I linked on Meanness.

 

Admitted pet peeve: when people use the excuse that neither party is ideal to collapse all meaningful differences.

 

Disclaimer ahead of time: I am a kool aid drinker.

To your pet peeve .... IMO the differences in the parties is a good thing ,,, I would not want it any other way,  I just disagree that it is solely the R party that is blocking progress.  Sure maybe it is not 50/50 with who is wrong but it ain't one sided.

Regarding the economy, didn't Clinton get the whole mortgage crisis ball rolling?  My point is that there are many things that happened to get the economy where it is under several watches.  It's good to try to figure out the where and why so that mistakes are not repeated, but not just so we can point the finger at the other guy.

The blame game ... that's a peeve of mine, and is why I post when I see "Bush's fault" instead of just keeping out of these threads like I should.

I know that earlier on the thread you said that the statute of limitations had run out on blaming Republicans for the economy, but I think that reasonable people know that the great economic crisis out of which we are slowly moving happened on GWB's watch and in large part because of government deregulation of the financial industry -- and that the R's have basically tried to block Obama at every turn as he has tried (admittedly in lukewarm fashion) to address it. 

It's all well and good that it happened on Bush's watch, except that it was Clinton who deregulated the financial markets and also began policies to drive home ownership rates.  Yes, Bush continued some of these poor policies as well. 

If you're going to say what is happening on Obama's watch is Bush's fault, the argument that Clinton is responsible for what happened on Bush's watch is equally valid.  Have a buck to pass?

In actuality, the economic morass we are currently in is a result of a series of bad policies in both the banking and housing markets which have been going on under administrations of both parties since at least the early 90s.  And the current administration's supposed fix -- Dodd-Frank -- has not even been effectively implemented, and banks were deemed "too big to fail", thereby encouraging future risk-taking.

I think each of the last three administrations deserve equally poor marks in this area.

MTA:  I see Finn's recollection hit this as well while I was typing.  Carry on.

In actuality . . . 

It always amazes me that "actuality" is actually a real word.