You’re a sick fuck.

Only if you elect people who are competent when it comes to handling the economy.

If you elect people who think the Laffer Curve says, ‘Lowering taxes means raising revenues.’ then you will get into trouble like you did under Bush, Jr.

“The economy recovered from a recession in the early eighties when we cut taxes…”

Actually, I’m pretty sure the economy didn’t start to recover until Regan raised taxes.

“My only hope is that it waits until after November of 2010 to recover!”

Why do you hate America?

The economy will recover, but it won’t have much to do with the Democrats or the Republicans. The economy recovered from a recession in the early eighties when we cut taxes, and the economy recovered from a recession in the early nineties when we raised taxes. The economy has gone into recession when we raised taxes (early nineties) and when we cut taxes (early 2000s).

And the economy will recover whether President Obama gets his stimulus package through or whether we do absolutely nothing and let it heal on its own. My only hope is that it waits until after November of 2010 to recover!

Because the first step in fixing a problem is figuring out what went wrong in the first place.

No problem facing the United States right now was a surprise. NONE. Not the economy, not the terrorist attacks of 9/11, not Katrina, none of it was a surprise.

So we have to figure out…

A.) Who screwed up.
B.) How they screwed up.
C.) Why they screwed up.
D.) How to prevent further screw ups in the future.

People who call part A, ‘The Blame Game’ are usually to blame and just want to avoid the consequences.

Glad to help!

Why is the President significant? Where, pray tell, do you think the framework for the legislation congress passes comes from? The baby Jesus? No. That comes from the President, and for the last 8 years we had someone who was seat filling in the job of leadership.

“I don’t see how it would be reasonable to blame Obama for not ‘fixing’ them.”

Really? Then why do you bother voting for a president in the first place? I don’t think Obama can magically solve our problems overnight, but he’s got the best interest of Americans at heart, as opposed to the ideological crony-ism that defined the Bush II regime.

IMO, he’s got four years. Starting now. A good bench-mark to shoot for? A stronger monthly job-gain rate matched with lower and middle-class wage earnings than we had from 2000-2008. Or 2006 if you prefer.

I’m very excited to have Obama as our new president. This isn’t mutually exclusive of saying hell yes, I expect a lot from him. He’s got a mandate from the American people to turn things around, and I hope he takes the opportunity to do so.

Democrats are the “adults”? Really? With exemplars like Barney Frank and Chris Dodd? William Jefferson? Blagovich? I don’t see any of them displaying much in the way of accountability, so why would one think the Democrats in general have some kind of lock on adult-ness vs Republicans? (And seriously, “adults”? what a childish term to desribe people you disagree with. We’re adults and they’re kids! nyah nyah! Give me a break.)

I certainly would agree that Bush and the R Congress did pretty poorly, and can be pretty fairly be characterized as failures when it comes to domestic policy. (Though I imagine we would disagree as to the reasons.) But this tells me you have your priorities wrong:

>So yeah, if four years from now our economy is still doing incredibly badly, by all means blame Obama and his team.

Why is this blame game so important? The problems facing our economy are hard problems, and in some cases have roots that go back pretty far in time – I don’t see how it would be reasonable to blame Obama for not “fixing” them. Hell, I’d be happy if he accomplished nothing other than get gov’t spending under control – Bush and the R’s certainly showed they couldn’t manage it.

Funny bit of upside down speak there – how do you “return” money to someone from whom it was never collected from in the first place? (You probably got it from the article, to be fair.) And how dare those nasty Republicans ask whether it is wise to increase the number of people who don’t pay taxes yet receive money from the government! That could never lead to problems! What a dumb question!

Why couldn’t they do better than stagnant job growth in the service sector at best, and over the past few years, actual job loss? (As opposed to not “keeping up” in terms of job growth, which in effect can be read as “job loss” as well.)

So sure, let’s give credit where credit is due. Republican Presidency + Republican control of Congress = American economic decline. Simple as that.

Phil Gramm calling everyone “whiners” for a “mental recession” certainly doesn’t help as people I know lose their houses and jobs. People from all walks of live, i.e., relatively rich to working-class poor.

So yeah, if four years from now our economy is still doing incredibly badly, by all means blame Obama and his team. As I said in another thread, it amazes me that Republicans don’t understand how basic leadership works. When you assume responsibility as the president, you reap the benefits of your successes and you suffer scorn for your failures.

George W. Bush? Eight years of passing the buck. 9/11? Clinton’s fault. Disaster in Iraq? The Iraqis’ fault. Afghanistan? The Afghanis’ fault? Katrina? State of Louisiana’s fault. The economy? The banks’ fault.

And this is why Americans are breathing a sigh of relief right now. Come what may, we’ve got adults back in charge who realize they are accountable to the American people. We simply didn’t have this for eight years under Bush II, despite all his pissy-pant whining about “personal responsibility.” The guy was simply a coward. An incompetent one to boot.

Maybe the task is impossible, and maybe he will fail, but no one ever brought better tools to the job.

Unfortunately, Reagan made Ford look pretty sharp by comparison…

A new standard: These guys make Reagan look smart by comparison.

That’s a bet I’d love to take. Honestly, if you’ve got some cash you want to stake on this I’d be happy to take you up on it. E-mail through my blog if you want.

Fact is, Americans do better under Democratic presidents. Especially the younger ones (like me) who remember what a great job market it was during the 90′s, and how getting a significant annual raise wasn’t a rare surprise, but an expectation.

But we’ll all just have to wait and see, won’t we? It’s going to be tough, but thank God we’ve got Obama rather than Sarah Palin, would be too busy reading every newspaper and trying on new clothes from Saks to fix anything.

Fixed.

But Democrats, it turns out, are much better for the stock market than Republicans. Slate ran the numbers and found that since 1900, Democratic presidents have produced a 12.3 percent annual total return on the S&P 500, but Republicans only an 8 percent return. In 2000, the Stock Trader’s Almanac, which slices and dices Wall Street performance figures like baseball stats, came up with nearly the same numbers (13.4 percent versus 8.1 percent) by measuring Dow price appreciation. (Most of the 20th century’s bear markets, incidentally, have been Republican bear markets: the Crash of ’29, the early ’70s oil shock, the ’87 correction, and the current stall occurred under GOP presidents.)

According to almanac editor Jeffrey Hirsch, the presidential party figures are among the most significant he’s found. If the stock market were random, we’d expect such a result only one-quarter of the time. “I don’t know why people are convinced Republicans are good for the stock market,” Hirsch says.