Do you support Obama? Why or why not?

[saunders is god]

um im pretty sure i just did

[Magnus]

Why complain about the man cleaning up the crap in your bathroom? It is not his fault all that crap got there.

Blame the guy who could not control his crap.

Great metaphor, right?

Edited September 21, 2010 by Magnus

[Sandwich]

Why complain about the man cleaning up the crap in your bathroom? It is not his fault all that crap got there.

Blame the guy who could not control his crap.

Great metaphor, right?

Nearly Some people just have bad luck with curries. There's something about blaming things on Bush which feels a little bit like kicking a puppy

To be honest, my impression of Obama is that he wants all the right things but that no level of charming will shake the American far right out of their little selfish cupboards. Ultimately that's what it is: selfish politics versus selfless politics.

How much of a welfare state does the US want? To me it seems like the answer is: only as much as won't cost them a penny.

It's so easy to appeal to people by telling them you'll look after their personal interests. Only half of society seems able to put themselves aside for a moment and actually stare social responsibility in the face. We've had legalised social responsibility in Europe for so long that I guess it's become second nature to have to give away high percentages of all we own. Going from a low-welfare state to a higher welfare state is a brave step and a tough one to contemplate. For instance I'm happy to give away x% of what I earn because that's how it always is. However if previously I'd only been giving away x-10% of my cash I'd think twice. There's threat in increase and so it's a brave move requiring guts on the behalf of the whole nation.

You need a united front to persuade people that it's both necessary and worth creating a welfare state. In my opinion Obama will never succeed whilst half of a government is busily telling its constituents that social responsibility is evil and everybody is in it for themselves, simply because it's true: you keep less as an individual in such a society. Consequently I don't know how kindly history will view Obama -- I suspect as something of a thwarted idealist unable to push through the things that really mattered and forced into bland compromises.

[Daedalus]

I like Sandwich's version. Sometimes when I see videos like the one below I laugh, but really I feel like crying inside. These people are so empty-headed that they truly believe "taking back our country" and "restoring honor and freedom" have meaning! The Tea Baggers are doing a very good job at proving what I had hoped were rare trolls are actually prevalent in some places. It's ridiculous. Anything said against Obama says twice as much about America as it says about Obama.

"This is the last bastion of hope. Right here. America."

"kinda help the you know the white house people to understand that you know we need to you know we need to work for you know freedom cause these things going on in the white house are absolutely insane you know"

[C.James]

I'm divided on Obama;

Pull out of Iraq: makes sense to me

Bank bail outs; maybe not...

On his actual effectiveness I don't think he's living up to the hype. He's trying to run a country on good will and optimistic speeches, that just doesn't work.

[An Almost Graduate]

Not at all.

Canada and the US have basically the same external economic environment, so you can't use that excuse. Canada is implimenting conservative economic policies. Obama is doing things like bailing out green companies selling products that no one wants to buy with monye he collected from successful companies. Basically, it's saying to good campanies, "You can't expand," and to bad companies, "Well, no one wants to buy your products, so we'll bail you out." It's idiotic. No wonder Canada is doing so much better through the recession.

Also, the foreign policy? What the hell is this? He continued Bush's Iraq policies to success, but Bush gets credit for that, not Obama. He then did what Bush would have done, which was surge in Afghanistan, and the Taliban are being crushed, but again, that's Bush's idea. The only difference is: Bush would not be bombing Yemen and he would not be in Libya. Then he cuts the military so the army is struggling in Libya and Libya isn't even fighting much of a guerilla war. Bush left two wars, which were on their way to being resolved and Obama is going to leave dozens of small wars all over the globe and there's no way they can be ended. The excuse is he's not being unilateral. Well guess what? France spearheading the mission in Libya doesn't help Obama when the US seems to be the only country in the world that can win a war (maybe because it's the largest?). What the hell?

Basically he's worse than Clinton on domestic policy (I'm talking about 1992-1994, not 1994-2000, when he intelligently decided to let the Republican Congress run the economy) and worse than Johnson on foreign policy.

[Proletariat]

Not at all.

Canada and the US have basically the same external economic environment, so you can't use that excuse. Canada is implimenting conservative economic policies. Obama is doing things like bailing out green companies selling products that no one wants to buy with monye he collected from successful companies. Basically, it's saying to good campanies, "You can't expand," and to bad companies, "Well, no one wants to buy your products, so we'll bail you out." It's idiotic. No wonder Canada is doing so much better through the recession.

Also, the foreign policy? What the hell is this? He continued Bush's Iraq policies to success, but Bush gets credit for that, not Obama. He then did what Bush would have done, which was surge in Afghanistan, and the Taliban are being crushed, but again, that's Bush's idea. The only difference is: Bush would not be bombing Yemen and he would not be in Libya. Then he cuts the military so the army is struggling in Libya and Libya isn't even fighting much of a guerilla war. Bush left two wars, which were on their way to being resolved and Obama is going to leave dozens of small wars all over the globe and there's no way they can be ended. The excuse is he's not being unilateral. Well guess what? France spearheading the mission in Libya doesn't help Obama when the US seems to be the only country in the world that can win a war (maybe because it's the largest?). What the hell?

Basically he's worse than Clinton on domestic policy (I'm talking about 1992-1994, not 1994-2000, when he intelligently decided to let the Republican Congress run the economy) and worse than Johnson on foreign policy.

More like Canada is doing better despite conservative economic policies.

Two things:

1) You do realize that the de-regulation of the financial sector in the end of the Clinton admin and throughout the Bush admin is what led to the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the first place?

2) Canada wasn't as negatively impacted because of the financial regulations we had in place that the US did not. We're doing better out of it because the CPC were persuaded to adopt the stimulus package that the opposition advocated (and still managed to fumble it à la Clement and the wholesale channeling of money into Conservative ridings. Taking up those policies that you seem to admire so much would have amplified the negative economic consequences of 2008 for the Canadian economy.

As for foreign policy, people who attempt to parallel Vietnam with what America's doing in the Middle East are playing a game of sensationalism sans fact. Saying Obama is "worse than Johnson" is laughable, considering the myriad of political, economic, social, cultural, technological, topographical and other factors that make the Middle East different from Vietnam. Also, I'm fairly certain that he hasn't cut defense spending (how would he even be able to?), but to say that would result in "the army... struggling in Libya" requires a knowledge of departmental spending that you most certainly do not possess, unless you happen to intern there between doing IB and watching Fox.

[An Almost Graduate]

Not at all.

Canada and the US have basically the same external economic environment, so you can't use that excuse. Canada is implimenting conservative economic policies. Obama is doing things like bailing out green companies selling products that no one wants to buy with monye he collected from successful companies. Basically, it's saying to good campanies, "You can't expand," and to bad companies, "Well, no one wants to buy your products, so we'll bail you out." It's idiotic. No wonder Canada is doing so much better through the recession.

Also, the foreign policy? What the hell is this? He continued Bush's Iraq policies to success, but Bush gets credit for that, not Obama. He then did what Bush would have done, which was surge in Afghanistan, and the Taliban are being crushed, but again, that's Bush's idea. The only difference is: Bush would not be bombing Yemen and he would not be in Libya. Then he cuts the military so the army is struggling in Libya and Libya isn't even fighting much of a guerilla war. Bush left two wars, which were on their way to being resolved and Obama is going to leave dozens of small wars all over the globe and there's no way they can be ended. The excuse is he's not being unilateral. Well guess what? France spearheading the mission in Libya doesn't help Obama when the US seems to be the only country in the world that can win a war (maybe because it's the largest?). What the hell?

Basically he's worse than Clinton on domestic policy (I'm talking about 1992-1994, not 1994-2000, when he intelligently decided to let the Republican Congress run the economy) and worse than Johnson on foreign policy.

More like Canada is doing better despite conservative economic policies.

Two things:

1) You do realize that the de-regulation of the financial sector in the end of the Clinton admin and throughout the Bush admin is what led to the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the first place?

2) Canada wasn't as negatively impacted because of the financial regulations we had in place that the US did not. We're doing better out of it because the CPC were persuaded to adopt the stimulus package that the opposition advocated (and still managed to fumble it à la Clement and the wholesale channeling of money into Conservative ridings. Taking up those policies that you seem to admire so much would have amplified the negative economic consequences of 2008 for the Canadian economy.

As for foreign policy, people who attempt to parallel Vietnam with what America's doing in the Middle East are playing a game of sensationalism sans fact. Saying Obama is "worse than Johnson" is laughable, considering the myriad of political, economic, social, cultural, technological, topographical and other factors that make the Middle East different from Vietnam. Also, I'm fairly certain that he hasn't cut defense spending (how would he even be able to?), but to say that would result in "the army... struggling in Libya" requires a knowledge of departmental spending that you most certainly do not possess, unless you happen to intern there between doing IB and watching Fox.

1.) Yes. I do have to add that the White House staff criticized those loans, but they were defended by Chris Dodd and Barney Frank to the point where it would have been political suicide to do anything about them. However, after the .com bust things went swimmingly because the Bush tax cuts went into effect. It's also important to realize that recessions need to happen because it's like exfoliating. You need to clean your skin's dead cells and you need to clean out all of the bad debt. There's a reason that a company like Pets.com, which was estimated to be worth more than Chrystler and GM combined went under basically over night and somehow there wasn't a recession that lasted forever.

2.) I have to correct you on that. Our banks were hit hard by the recession. Canada had to bail its banks out too. Of course, Harper decreased taxes down from 21% to 19%. You are right that Harper is giving subsidies to support the failing manufacturing sector, but that's not something to be proud of. It would be a lot better to give an across the board corporate tax cut and let those industries fail, which is exactly what resulted in the economic boom during the 1980s in Britain. I should also point out that Canada isn't doing the best internationally. That would be Germany. And what is Merkel doing? Cutting aid to Eastern Germany and cutting corporate taxes sounds about right.

...I didn't compare any war in the Middle East to Vietnam and yes, Johnson was worse than Obama. The War Against Poverty was comically useless and Obama hasn't done anything close to that. However, you do have to admit that there's a problem with most of the countries in the world being in Libya and this tiny little country is fighting back ('struggling in Libya' means that Gaddafi is still in power and Obama is asking him to step down)? Hussein was taken in 17 weeks. Why is it taking so long for Gaddafi to step down? Also, it's a fun fact that after having Mubarak step down, Iran is now allowed to use the Suez Canal, which is exactly what Israel needs. I do have to ask, why, when Mubarak was supportive of the Western world, was he forced to step down, when during revolts in 2009 against Ahmadinejad, the US did nothing?

Also, I don't watch Fox. I watch CTV, unless I'm in the car with my mom, and then I'll watch CBC until it gets too annoying, like when they have a lady on to talk about how her pets go to heaven for an hour. I'm Canadian; why would I watch an American news station?

[Proletariat]

I wonder if you would call the Great Depression "exfoliation" as well, or is there a limit to your economic libertarianism?

The problem with Thatcher's "let them fail" approach is that it doesn't accommodate for the human factor. Neo-liberals seem to forget sometimes that the economy isn't just a bunch of numbers and dollar signs. Thatcher drove down inflation by driving up unemployment; that's a few million people who have less purchasing power, who are not contributing to the economy, either through input labour or through input spending, who are draining resources, either from the social security nets that I would prefer seeing, or the charity organizations that you prefer seeing. Harper's corporate tax cuts will not create immediate job growth, and will only result in increased unemployment in 5 years. American companies aren't taking tax savings to hire more workers; they're sitting on their capital. The whole point of getting out of a recession is to not sit on cash, whether you're an individual or a corporation.

You drew the parallel between the Middle East and Vietnam by bringing in Johnson. I'm not sure why you would write "yes, Johnson was worse than Obama" when in your post just above it you called Obama "worse than Johnson".

I do agree with you on Libya though. I strongly disagree with most aspects of American foreign policy in that part of the world, along with their overall direction. I hesitate to use the word "imperialist", but I don't know what their endgame is, and I don't know if they know what their endgame is. If their goals are what they've publicly articulated, then they wouldn't have need for military action outside of Afghanistan. There's something more to it, and I'm afraid I still don't have enough understanding to put my finger on it (although I don't think many in the world do.)

I apologize for the Fox comment. No one deserves that kind of association.

[Guest PoisonousPumpkin]

TOO MUCH TALKING, very few actions. Totally against. However I think he is gonna be reelected because he killed Osama BEH.

[Guest HeartLocker]

Agree with PoisonousPumpkin

[Procrastination]

I am forced to agree with the two previous posts above mine. Obamma is too much talking and no actions, when he was running for president in his campaign we could see many promises and issues he would like to finish in his period. First we could see the budget/deficit/taxes issues:

- Obama said he would focus on continuing to stimulate the economy by creating new jobs and investing in health care, education, energy, and infrastructure. However there are some critical statistics that can really make your perspective of Obama change radically. It is important to know that in the education and health care services industry (what he said he was going to improve) there has not been any major changes, instead, jobs are on the decline! Under President Bush, job growth in this sub-sector averaged 465,000 jobs per year, even during the worst of the recession. So far under Obama, annual job growth in this sub-sector is averaging around 332,000. So although the industry has been virtually recession proof, the number of jobs created under Obama is on the decline. Under President Bush a total of 3,720,000 jobs were added to this sub-sector during his eight-year term. And so far under Obama a total of 578,000 jobs have been created. In terms of percentages, during the Bush years the sub-sector grew at an average of 2.8% annually, while under Obama average job growth has cooled to 1.7%

-Obama's proposal to simplify the tax code was complicated by a mix of tax breaks, this ocurred too to his proposal of Will work to make the tax system more fair to working families and the middle class and eliminate loopholes that benefit the wealthy; his promises were left in the inpunity.

-Obama demanded accountability and transparency from banks and other financial institutions, however he did not ACT towards the corruption in this financial institutions.

-It almost seems that the only positive thing that Obama has done in the budget/deficit/tax issue is that he has constantly supported the Making Home Affordable Modification program to prevent foreclosures and the Making Home Affordable Refinancing programto restructure loans to keep people in their homes.

NOW This is a very important and different point, during his tenure in the presidential seat, Obama has kept the repeal of "Don't ask, don't tell" regarding same sex marriages, don't you consider it, dear IB students, a vit medieval? I think there should be education programs or campaigns to let the people know in the United States reconsider their ideologies against this kind of behaviour. If 2 persons love each other they should be allowed to marry! Don't ask don't tell continues with this repressive regime

(Don't even let me start with Gadafi and Obama)

- It is important to treat the immigration issue in the United States.

Obama believed it was impractical to deport the 12 million immigrants living in the U.S. and supports the Dream Act, which would allow children of immigrants who are in good standing with the law access to higher education. He said it was important to increase the number of legal immigrants to keep families together and meet the demand for jobs that employers cannot fill. Obama said there was going to be a crack down on employers who hire undocumented immigrants. He supported a system that allowed undocumented immigrants who are in good standing to pay a fine, learn English, and go to the back of the line for the opportunity to become citizens. AND NOW.. The most important thing, he said there was going to be respect for all kind of immigrants in America and there was going to be abstention regarding questioning someone about their status...

Let me remind you this has not been improved, once again, there's been a delay and a decline in this kind of policies. How come during Obama's period there have been some states that have passed anti-immigrant policies carried out by the republican party with no control whatsoever of the government and Obama has not even acted! Texas joined the ranks of states like Arizona that have passed anti-immigrant bills allowing police to question anyone who is stopped, including witnesses to a crime, on their immigration status.

(I have a lot more points but I'll stop the rant here hahaha :blum: :blum: )

Edited October 29, 2011 by Procrastination

[An Almost Graduate]

I wonder if you would call the Great Depression "exfoliation" as well, or is there a limit to your economic libertarianism?

The problem with Thatcher's "let them fail" approach is that it doesn't accommodate for the human factor. Neo-liberals seem to forget sometimes that the economy isn't just a bunch of numbers and dollar signs. Thatcher drove down inflation by driving up unemployment; that's a few million people who have less purchasing power, who are not contributing to the economy, either through input labour or through input spending, who are draining resources, either from the social security nets that I would prefer seeing, or the charity organizations that you prefer seeing. Harper's corporate tax cuts will not create immediate job growth, and will only result in increased unemployment in 5 years. American companies aren't taking tax savings to hire more workers; they're sitting on their capital. The whole point of getting out of a recession is to not sit on cash, whether you're an individual or a corporation.

You drew the parallel between the Middle East and Vietnam by bringing in Johnson. I'm not sure why you would write "yes, Johnson was worse than Obama" when in your post just above it you called Obama "worse than Johnson".

I do agree with you on Libya though. I strongly disagree with most aspects of American foreign policy in that part of the world, along with their overall direction. I hesitate to use the word "imperialist", but I don't know what their endgame is, and I don't know if they know what their endgame is. If their goals are what they've publicly articulated, then they wouldn't have need for military action outside of Afghanistan. There's something more to it, and I'm afraid I still don't have enough understanding to put my finger on it (although I don't think many in the world do.)

I apologize for the Fox comment. No one deserves that kind of association.

Haha about the Fox.

Please tell me you don't believe the Philips Curve? It's a fact that economists believed it to be a scientific law similar to gravity during the 1970s. It didn't make sense to them that as inflation continued to rise, unemployment also began to rise. It turns out that when you artificially support companies that need to fail with subsidies, you increase inflation. In the short-term, this is fine, but unfortunately, as inflation rises, all of the costs rise, so the net loss of these failing companies increases, so they need more subsidies. Also, the government needs more taxes. These new taxes mean that more companies are pushed below the line. So now more subsidies are needed. It doesn't take a genius to figure out how this is unsustainable. This is how Britain, the country once in charge of the entire globe, was forced to take loans from the IMF. I mean, everyone agrees unemployment is a tragedy. Unfortunately, when you poison the economic infrastructure with this 'tax the successful, subsidize the losers', you will eventually back yourself into a corner where unemployment will sky rocket. The British manufacturing sector was disgusting, but during the Thatcher era, the tertiary sector boomed. The British are now known internationally for their financial companies; 3/4 major international CA firms are British by origin, 2/4 have head quarters in Britain (Who can blame Deloitte for moving to New York where there's lower corporate taxes?). Come to think of it, when I work for a CA firm in Canada, I'll have Thatcher to thank for my job. Toward the end of the conservative government, by the way, unemployment was falling. From a purely GNP-interested perspective (which influences how good your health care will be, since that's where taxes come from), what the hell is the difference with putting someone in a useless job and paying their EI? Sure no one wants to see them unemployed, but they were going to be unemployed anyway if people continued with the policy of driving down unemployment artificially. The only way for real job growth is to let companies fail; then you can build a real economy, like Major and Thatcher did.

I agree with the notion of needing a massive and sudden stimulus to get out of a recession, which is a neo-liberal policy, sorry to say. Harper is not an orthodox neo-liberal though, which is why he's not letting the Ontario industrial sector fail and he's supporting it through subsidies. The way Bush got out of the .com bust worked perfectly. Lower the capital gains tax, not by 1% per year like Harper does, but cut it by 8% over night. Imagine the economic boom. You'd be like one of those skanks in a 50 Cent video rolling around in your dollar bills, and (this is counter-intuitive, but true) the income to the Treasury would increase.

I don't think Obama has an end game. I think Bush did. I think the end game was pretty clear: Islamic fundmentalism is a threat to the world and it should end. Obama...it's just basically: WHAT THE HELL? No, I think regardless of how hawkish you are, you do have to hate his foreign policy, same with Johnson's. Obama isn't as dangerous as Johnson though because he isn't fighting a War on Poverty, which was a myriad of comically useless programs designed, in Johnson's own words, to make sure poor people voted Democrat and to simultaneously keep them poor.

The difference between the Great Depression and every other recession through history is that it consisted of a bunch of good companies being devalued through speculation on the stock market. It's not a collapse of artificial wealth that wasn't there, which is what the .com bust, the 80's housing slump, and the sub-prime mortgage crisis were all about.

[Proletariat]

Keynesian economics is all about trading the rapid, exponential growth periods that you are talking about in exchange for lessening the impacts of debilitating economic depressions. The bigger the boom, the bigger the bust. This doesn't necessarily mean propping up financially unprofitable businesses; crown corporations here make large profits. In fact, some of Canada's biggest corporate subsidies also go to one of our most profitable: the oil industry ($2 bil. annual federal-to-Big Oil cash flow), which seems comically paradoxical really. However, if you truly do want to take the good times with the bad times (and cover said bad times with spa metaphors) then I suppose we can agree to disagree on fundamental economic philosophies.

I have no clue where you got the idea that stimulus spending is a neo-liberal idea; true champions of that philosophy would be against any form of State deficit spending, no matter what the economic situation is of the nation (see: Hoover.) Bush is a moderate by the present-day Tea Party-infused Republican standards.

I would also love to hear what you think Bush's plan was to end Islamic fundamentalism. Bombing the crap out of Tehran? Like I said, if any of such lofty ideals were actually the real intension of America, then there's really no need to have engaged in any military conflicts outside of Afghanistan. You are dumfounded to the point of caps lock by Obama's foreign policies, yet in an earlier post you criticize him for continuing Bush's plan, which you've now piled praise on; I would be surprised, but this isn't the first time you've done a self-contradicting 180°. My perspective on this is clear: both their "plans" suck.

You call the Great Depression "speculation", then say every other recession is different because it was caused under "artificial wealth." Sorry, but that's essentially the same thing. Everyone jumped on the bandwagon in the '20s, just like everyone jumped on the bandwagon for dot-com. This is the face of Austrian economics.

[Proletariat]

I am forced to agree with the two previous posts above mine. Obamma is too much talking and no actions, when he was running for president in his campaign we could see many promises and issues he would like to finish in his period. First we could see the budget/deficit/taxes issues:

- Obama said he would focus on continuing to stimulate the economy by creating new jobs and investing in health care, education, energy, and infrastructure. However there are some critical statistics that can really make your perspective of Obama change radically. It is important to know that in the education and health care services industry (what he said he was going to improve) there has not been any major changes, instead, jobs are on the decline! Under President Bush, job growth in this sub-sector averaged 465,000 jobs per year, even during the worst of the recession. So far under Obama, annual job growth in this sub-sector is averaging around 332,000. So although the industry has been virtually recession proof, the number of jobs created under Obama is on the decline. Under President Bush a total of 3,720,000 jobs were added to this sub-sector during his eight-year term. And so far under Obama a total of 578,000 jobs have been created. In terms of percentages, during the Bush years the sub-sector grew at an average of 2.8% annually, while under Obama average job growth has cooled to 1.7%

-Obama's proposal to simplify the tax code was complicated by a mix of tax breaks, this ocurred too to his proposal of Will work to make the tax system more fair to working families and the middle class and eliminate loopholes that benefit the wealthy; his promises were left in the inpunity.

-Obama demanded accountability and transparency from banks and other financial institutions, however he did not ACT towards the corruption in this financial institutions.

-It almost seems that the only positive thing that Obama has done in the budget/deficit/tax issue is that he has constantly supported the Making Home Affordable Modification program to prevent foreclosures and the Making Home Affordable Refinancing programto restructure loans to keep people in their homes.

NOW This is a very important and different point, during his tenure in the presidential seat, Obama has kept the repeal of "Don't ask, don't tell" regarding same sex marriages, don't you consider it, dear IB students, a vit medieval? I think there should be education programs or campaigns to let the people know in the United States reconsider their ideologies against this kind of behaviour. If 2 persons love each other they should be allowed to marry! Don't ask don't tell continues with this repressive regime

(Don't even let me start with Gadafi and Obama)

- It is important to treat the immigration issue in the United States.

Osama believed it was impractical to deport the 12 million immigrants living in the U.S. and supports the Dream Act, which would allow children of immigrants who are in good standing with the law access to higher education. He said it was important to increase the number of legal immigrants to keep families together and meet the demand for jobs that employers cannot fill. Obama said there was going to be a crack down on employers who hire undocumented immigrants. He supported a system that allowed undocumented immigrants who are in good standing to pay a fine, learn English, and go to the back of the line for the opportunity to become citizens. AND NOW.. The most important thing, he said there was going to be respect for all kind of immigrants in America and there was going to be abstention regarding questioning someone about their status...

Let me remind you this has not been improved, once again, there's been a delay and a decline in this kind of policies. How come during Osama's period there have been some states that have passed anti-immigrant policies carried out by the republican party with no control whatsoever of the government and Obama has not even acted! Texas joined the ranks of states like Arizona that have passed anti-immigrant bills allowing police to question anyone who is stopped, including witnesses to a crime, on their immigration status.

(I have a lot more points but I'll stop the rant here hahaha :blum: :blum: )

Some thoughts:

1) Much of the private sector growth during Bush years were based on that thing called speculation Almost and I mentioned above. In particular, homeowners were borrowing against assests (such as their house) in order to fuel increased personal spending, and the artificial housing bubble buoyed this home equity extraction process. Everyone knows that bubble burst in 2008. If you subtracted the speculative numbers from the Bush years, the GDP under his tenure actually only grew by 1%.

2) How would you propose to "act" to deal with corruption in the financial system? What type of legislation would you enact? These are individuals who have been bred in a culture of greed and high-stakes gain, who have given themselves billions of dollars in bonuses just 2-3 years after receiving billions more in government bailout, and yet also (paradoxically enough) happen to be some of the most "intelligent" individuals in the financial world, and who altogether form the foundation of the world economy.

3) Obama has already repealed 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell". That's a win for gay rights. It also has nothing to do with same-sex marriage. I have absolutely no idea what you're trying to make with this point, because with unemployment at 9.1, even Pelosi's shut up about social issues.

4) I'm not sure how much knowledge you have of federalism in the United States. If individual State legislatures want to enact either pro or anti-immigration policies, that's their perogative. Obama hasns't pushed through other legislation because he's been hamstrung by the Economy and Health Care. I think he really, really fumbled with the latter, and how he can't move on any of the other issues, like immigration, environment, gay rights, etc. But you can't fault someone for not being able to do everything at the same time. The American Congressional system was designed specifically in order to be divisive and to possess numerous checks and balances on each organ. If you want to play the "what if" game and speculate on what other issues Obama would have moved on had he not been so compromisingly weak on his health care legislation then you're welcome to do so.

Personally, my approval of Obama has definitely declined after the whole health care ordeal, and unlike Americans, I felt no "bin Laden bump." However, until I hear more from Romney and now Huntsman there isn't a single other person whom I would rather see in the White House than the current President. It's a telling stat that in theoretical head-to-head, the only Republican that can beat Obama is a faceless, generic one; every single possible/declared Republican candidate would lose to him. American likes some of the economic ideas of the right, but they do not like any of the people who are saying them. That's why Obama is a centrist; he's all-too compromising.

[URA BOAT]

as my title suggests, do you or do you not support obama? and why? there is a high possibility that he could be USA's next president, since he is in the lead right now. but do you think this could change in the next second? whether you want to admit or not, racism still exists now, esp in USA, where each and every race blends. do you think people could be so shallow that they will not vote for him merely for his skin color? i recalled my former English teacher told the class that one of his friends said," America is not ready to have a black president yet." do you support his saying or do you have a different view? please leave your comments because i'm so eager to hear them!! thanks

first of all that n**** is the president...second my personal opinion is that Americans voted for him because he is black(instead of voting against because he is black)...the ignorance in Americans is amazingly overpowering the higher society.. living here i see that people are really stupid...i know some people that had ib and then dropped out and now are in regular classes...all of them say how much they regret it becase people are really stupid now days.. also the more he is in the office the more im convinced that what he is doing is to please the people(to get re-elected)but not what is right for america...for ex. he had this bill that would of sent all of the non-legal people out of US but when a lot of Mexicans started protesting he pulled the plug on the bill...he knows that most of the white people wont vote for him, so he tring to win the respect of the black, Mexicans, OWTTE. (ps "owtte" is from my chem book, it stands for "other words to that extant"...i didnt even know that it was a legit abbreviation haha)

Edited October 29, 2011 by URA BOAT

[Hexa]

He seems to wants to help the people, at least comparatively with most politicians, but he's really bad at his job. If he were competent I would support him, but as he is I definitely don't.

[Ezak]

Much talk, less action. That he got the nobel prize of peace is just a shame as he didn't prove anything, they just handed it out purely on populistic demand. I agree with his foreign policy, but unfortunately he hasn't really done what he promised. Of course this probably has a lot to with politics and what not but I still feel he could have pushed the question further. Imagine how much money the US would have gotten to spend on other stuff, or to lower taxes with if they cut the military force.

[URA BOAT]

Why complain about the man cleaning up the crap in your bathroom? It is not his fault all that crap got there.

Blame the guy who could not control his crap.

Great metaphor, right?

why would you run for presidents if you don't what to clean up the crap. he knew what kind of crap he was getting in. so do you expect him to leave the crap on the walls and now lets live in our own crap...when he got elected he was saying that he will bring change...not putting more crap isn't helping much...if he want to bring change, clean up the mess....i understand that their is so much to clean up and that you cant do it all in four years but at least attempt to do so....good thing the elections are coming up...maybe we will get someone that will not only take but will do something!!!