And George kept up with those "we are not in a recession" speeches, hilarious but tragic....nm
Posted By: Cyndiee on 2009-02-21
In Reply to: Economy was in very good shape, even recovered - from 911. Dems took over 2 years ago!.nm
nm
Complete Discussion Below:  marks the location of current message within thread
The messages you are viewing
are archived/old.
To view latest messages and participate in discussions, select
the boards given in left menu
Other related messages found in our database
George Soros is having "a very good recession". Made $2.9 billion.
So, this "man of the people" who funds the loony left and wants all the rest of us to be communists rakes in $billions from the recession. He's out there picking up stuff at bargain-basement prices just like JP Morgan and his kind did.
Disgusting.
Yes, tragic, isn't it?
conservatism only makes it so far. What a joke.
How tragic.
I can't help but wonder how many of them felt safer under the Hussein regime than they do under the Bush regime. 
Trying to make political hay out of this tragic criminal act
Anyone who would carve ANYTHING in human flesh is obviously mentally deranged.
George Bush HIMSELF makes it so easy to make fun of George Bush!!!! oh where would I start, so litt
nm
Question regarding possible recession?? s/m
With the "bubble bursting" in regards to the housing market and rising fuel prices, do you think a major recession is on the horizon in the US?
I definitely think so, but was wondering what others think?
The Whiner's Recession
Senator McCain and his friends no doubt still believe that the economy's fundamentals are strong, but Friday's jobs numbers clearly show how bad things have gotten. The 6.1 percent unemployment rate reported for August is almost as high as the worst levels from the last recession. A broader measure of labor market weakness, that includes people who can only find part-time work or who have given up looking for jobs, is higher than at any point in the last recession.
When the labor market weakens, workers have less bargaining power with their employers. As a result, wages are trailing more than 2 percentage points behind inflation over the last year.
Wages are virtually the entire income for most workers. If the purchasing power of their wages falls by 2 percent, this is the equivalent of a 2 percentage point increase in their tax rate.
This is worth thinking about. Most workers in the country have just seen the equivalent of a 2 percentage point increase in their tax rate, and it has gotten almost no attention. By contrast, Senator McCain is claiming that the economy will collapse if we increase the tax rate by 3.6 percentage points for people who can't remember how many homes they own.
It is easy to understand how a typical family experiences real hardship when their wages don't keep up with the price of food, gas, and heating oil. It's a bit harder to understand how the folks who can't keep track of their homes will suffer by restoring tax rates to the Clinton-era levels.
This brings us to the other important point about the Friday jobs numbers. The economy is in bad shape and getting worse. This disaster is happening while we are experimenting with the tax policies advocated by Senator McCain. We have an economy that is now shedding jobs at the rate of almost 100,000 a month. There is no prospect of turnaround in sight. We could have half a million fewer jobs by the time the next president is sworn into office than we do today.
This is the Bush-McCain economy. Senator McCain may have forgotten, but President Bush already tried his economic policies and the results are not good. We have just been through a business cycle in which the wage of the typical worker and the typical working family fell. This is the first time that has ever happened.
As bad as the situation is, it will surely get worse as the recession deepens. Wages and incomes will fall further behind inflation as the unemployment rate continues to rise. By contrast, the Clinton-era tax rates were associated with the most prosperous period since the early seventies.
As I have written many times, Clinton's policies do not deserve all the credit for the prosperity of the late 90s, and President Bush's polices do not deserve all the blame for the economy's poor performance in the current decade.
However, it strains credulity to argue that the Clinton-era tax rates are a recipe for stagnation, while the Bush-McCain tax cuts for the rich are the road to prosperity. When he pushes his tax cuts as a remedy for the economy's ills, Senator McCain is effectively imitating Groucho Marx's famous line: "what are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?"
At this point, McCain should be embarrassed to even say that tax cuts for the rich help the economy. Tax cuts for the rich help the rich, they don't help the economy. It's that simple.
This economic catastrophe was many years in the making. There is no painless way to recover from the collapse of the housing bubble and the correction from an over-valued dollar. We do know that Senator McCain's plan to keep giving the rich more money is not a road to prosperity because that is exactly what we have been doing.
We can't know exactly how Senator Obama will address the economy's problems if he takes office in January in part because we don't know exactly where the economy will be. However, a plan that focuses on supporting ordinary workers and promoting clean technologies, is likely to produce much better results than policies that are focused on redistributing even more income to the wealthy.
http://www.truthout.org/article/the-whiners-recession
That happened to me the last recession we had...
and it took a good 6 years to right itself after the economy straightened out. And when it did...money went right into a CD. I don't mind a little in the market but I am not young enough to wait several years for rebounding again. Sigh.
And you don't think this recession (soon to be depression)...(sm)
has anything to do with it? Hey, that's what republicans want, big business to grow fast--no regulation--me, me, me...
How about all those families that are going to suffer from this. Did they ask for it too?
I'm sure a lot of us knew a recession
was coming long before the "experts" knew it. All they had to do was to be Americans who were trying to fill up their gas tanks, feed their families and try to hang on to their jobs. I just read an article the other day where someone in the government finally admitted that we've been in a recession that they believe will last another 14 months. (Can't remember who said it; will try to find the link.) This is after months and months of denials, although most everday folks felt like they were in a recession long before hearing it "officially."
If they are only now admitting to a recession, that tells me that we're in the beginnings of a full-fledged DEPRESSION.
Add terror threats, a war between Iran and Israel and the USA, perhaps provoking a terror attack (real or "false flag"), people becoming so poor in this country that their fear is replaced with anger, and voila!! The US soldiers that are lying in wait for us to "misbehave" as tensions arise so they can keep us in line, just might have their work cut out for them...especially if we suffer another attack on our soil.
We've got crooks running the Treasury Department, all chosen from the same failing companies for which they worked.
The Wall Street "crisis" came on so quickly and so urgently that nobody knew what to do.
Well, Bush knew what to do. First, he hired Henry Paulson of Goldman Sachs fame, the company that received a $3 billion payout, who then went on to appoint Michael Alix to "oversee things." This is the same Michael Alix who was in control of "overseeing things" at Bear Stearns (we remember how well that whole Bear Stearns thing worked out.) Paulson then went on to appoint Neel Kashkari (another Goldman Sachs graduate).
Bush has selected these men, either personally or through Paulson, because he knows that THEY know how to play the system and accentuate the greed. He hired people who aren't on America's side at all. They're part of Bush's "Haves," and the rest of average Americans -- the "have nots" -- aren't even in the picture, except as it pertains to how much money has been stolen from our accounts. Bush has always has been about greed. He still is. When a government begins to buy banks, it's at the very least socialism (if not, more accurately, fascism). For all intents and purposes, this money could easily be in Bush's pockets. We don't and won't know this because this particular sweetheart deal came with NO oversight and NO transparency as conditions on the part of Bush. By the way, Bush bought a ranch in Paraguay.
Basically, Bush had a lot of knowledgeable, independent people who had NO conflict of interest from having been senior executives of the failed companies from which he could have chosen.
Instead, he chose those who were at the very top to the crooks (if not the crooks themselves.)
In short, Bush hired the foxes to watch the hen houses. No doubt in my mind that Bush's pockets are going to be pretty full soon if they're not already.
The arrogance with which these auto executives presented their testimony is reminiscent of all the arrogant people who surround themselves with the Arrogant-In-Chief.
In the middle of all this, though, I do see somewhat of a silver lining. The less money people have to spend, the lower prices will be forced to go -- all that supply and demand stuff.
Enter Obama's "bottom-up" theory. Once the lives of the least of us can improve a bit, that will hopefully trickle up to everyone else.
I also heard an excellent idea on TV recently: That every single CEO of a company should NEVER earn more than the President of the United States. I kind of liked that one. 
P.S. I apologize if this post doesn't make any sense. I'm very heavily medicated right now and probably shouldn't even be at the computer. I've tried to write this as coherently as I could. If I failed, I apologize.
Hope you all have a great evening. 
what "we" want is hardly the
issue. The "folks" are gonna vote based on the level of reasoning they use in their everyday lives. Will they vote from fear and the idea that the devil one knows is better than the devil one does not know. Will they vote based on reasoned assessment that the country is circling the drain after 8 years of republican rule and the only hope is to wrest control of the country from their incompetent hands? I am pleased with the way the polls are trending. They are more thinking americans than there are cowering americans. We'll try to save you even if you are dragged into the light kicking and screaming.
I meant recession, not depression. nm
Worried about a recession?? Here's the solution s/m
With Recession Looming, Bush Tells America To ‘Go Shopping More’
Today, President Bush held a news conference where he discussed the “way forward” for the economy in 2007. Renowned Morgan Stanley economist Steven Roach says the the “odds of the U.S. economy tipping into recession are about 40 to 45 per cent.” New York Times columnist Paul Krugman notes that “the odds are very good — maybe 2 to 1,” that the U.S. will teeter toward a recession in 2007. Bush’s solution? “Go shopping more.”
Michigan is in a one state recession. sm
The big 3 are tanking, our unemployment numbers are higher than the nation as a whole, jobs are leaving like the spring thaw, and who does Obama pick as part of his "Financial Advisory Committee"....none other than our wonderful governor, Jennifer Granholm. She can't advise her own state let alone the country. She now says that we have to cut the budget even more than last time. There isn't a whole lot left to cut. Our education system is absolutely the pits, Detroit is bankrupting us all, and she gets picked for part of the financial advisory committee. Makes me wonder what's going in Obama's head.
Oh well, at least I have a trade I can take with me where ever I go. The ultimate in healthcare portability.
"We have seen this movie before...
it's called Hugo Chavez and Venezuela." PERFECT comeback. And I got blasted for suggesting there were liberals in Congress who wanted to nationalize oil. So I will say it again...far left liberals like Maxine Waters, Barack Obama, Ted Kennedy to name a few...ARE socialists, just more sneaky about it...until she just got ticked and blurted it out. We better ALL hope they don't go there. That is the danger of voting in socialists. Good-bye America, hello Venezuela.
"We" know no such thing. Please do not
The scope of the issue is obviously beyond your comprehension.
"We've got them just where we want them." JM.
This is what we hear after being told JM would make a statement on the economy.
"WE" were never told about anything.....
That's the problem. We, the citizens of this country, the ones who the govt is supposed to work FOR, put this into law without even Congress being consulted....without congressional consent...PERIOD!
The only "objectives" are being pushed through quietly by Obama and unless people wake up and start protesting loudly and clearly, and taking back this country, we are going to be another russia.... for those that don't believe that, then ask yourself why Russian politicans AND European politicians are telling Obama he needs to stop what he is doing, that he is heading down the wrong path; the very one THEY have already been down! How telling is that?!
Recession, Suicide and Tips from the Government!
This isn't terribly reassuring! 
Government website now offers 'suicide warning signs' for victims of recession
John Byrne
Published: Tuesday March 31, 2009
When the government starts warning you not to commit suicide, you know things have gotten bad.
The US Department of Health and Human Services now has a webpage for the current recession, "Getting Through Tough Economic Times." Headlined under the Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration (www.samhsa.gov/economy/), the guide offers tips on "how to deal with the effects financial difficulties can have on your physical and mental health." The site went public Tuesday.
The remainder of the story is at: http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Government_website_offers_suicide_warning_signs_0331.html
My favorite is SR's "We don't know what plan is"
nm
I beg to differ, it IS about "we" people.
Yes, I am a middle class American. I still have healthy savings and the credit cards I have are not maxed, because of choices I have made. You cannot blame the Republicans for peoples' bad decisions. I am not a Republican; I am an Independent. Though I have to say...if any party has been hijacked it is the Democrats...might as well change the name to the socialist party, because that is what it has become. That is evident in the posts I see here. They have convinced you that the wealthy people/corporations in the world are evil. If you knew how corporations figured into the economy of this country, you would know that is just not true. Corporations employ millions of Americans. Small businesses employ most of the rest of us. Democrats want to tax them into oblivion and drive even more business offshore to get out from under the tax burden. We have a higher tax on our businesses than any other country...which makes us extremely noncompetitive. THAT is why we lose jobs overseas and jobs here. Because the Democratic party has put the rax rate so high.
I don't want more and bigger government...I want less. I don't want higher taxes. I want less. I want businesses to be able to open and operate and compete with business outside our shores rather than join that business to get out from under taxes. I would like for Democrats to follow the entire Constitution and Bill of Rights, not just the parts that serve their agenda. I would like to get back to the place in America where we are Americans first, and Democrats/Republicans second. I would like politics in Washington to change, and Obama is not the one to do that. He and his VP are the #1 and #3 most liberal senators in the senate. They are washington politics as usual. Obama's entire career has been washington politics as usual...as is Biden's...30 years in the senate in washington. They are exactly opposite of any change. That is simple fact.
As to Republicans not making country stronger...that is the one major thing I agree with Bush on. He HAS kept this country safe. He has kept us on the offensive. And that is why we have not had another attack. AL Qaeda is much weaker. We drove them out of Iraq. I have no reason to think McCain will not continue that. He has said he would, and with his military experience, I believe him.
Obama is scary to me for that reason. I think he is soft on terrorism. He talks about "factions" of radical Islam and how you have to identify the "faction." That says to me he doesn't get it.
I do not agree that all the kids want Obama. However...this election is about all Americans, young, middle-aged, older. We all matter in this election.
"We know" -- ouch I am being excluded.
I shall probably die.
or the other quote...."we will take them over from inside...
without firing a shot." I agree, "bombing everything off the map" is not something you would engage in with Russia...but being firm is essential. They have to know that any aggression would be answered. To put it in very base terms, they want to see if he blinks...if there is a chink they can exploit. Will reserve any supposition or comment until he responds...giving benefit of the doubt and all that.
who in the world are you referring to as "we"
I never saw respect for Bush coming from the opposing side.
I agree that this day shouldn't be about bickering at all... and I welcome the new President
but please who are you referring to when you say "we" because that is a nice comment that you made, it makes sense you didn't like his policies, that is okay, but you really dont believe for a minute that people defended up?
wait i just read it again and you MUST be being sarcastic...
When they have to cough up "we are bankrupt."
Nobody has the balls to say the word. We print Monopoly money because we don't have anything else. Try spending that before long.
Enough is enough already!
"we'll bury you???"...(sm)
You guys are wising up? ROFL...I would say you're just mad because you are going down the tubes with your party.
In case you haven't noticed (and I'm sure you rarely notice much of anything), intimidation and threats on message boards rarely work and serve only one purpose -- that is to make those who would use these tactics look like a fool.
Maybe you should change your threats to threats of torture ---- that worked soooo well for Bush...Yeah, he's going down, and it's about time!!! 
the best speeches by SP
Onward Christian Soldiers marching onto war..........................
|
What I have not done is by his speeches....
and not look into his history. I have looked into McCain's history as well. Because I want to make an informed decision. I don't want to see a socialist America. I want someone in the white house for a CHANGE who is there to serve the people who put him there, not serve his own political ambitions and agenda. Barack Obama is not that man. I cannot ignore he is a socialist. I cannot ignore his church theology of 20 years. I cannot ignore his Chicago connections and Bill Ayers, his wife's thesis and comments...any one of those things alone is not alarming...all those things together tell me I do not want that man in the white house. So you vote for him, and if he is elected, when you are driving around small town PA the sign in my yard will say "Don't blame me, I didn't vote for him." And I'm not. Have a great day!
did you see any of her speeches?
or even any of her "handler controlled" interviews? She's dumber than Bush. I'll take brains over "refreshing" any day to run my country.
Change recession to depression and I'll agree with you.
They just signed America's death warrant.
The Great Recession. American a thrift nation.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1891527,00.html?cnn=yes
Sometimes we change because we want to: lose weight, go vegan, find God, get sober. But sometimes we change because we have no choice, and since this violates our manifest destiny to do as we please, it may take a while before we notice that those are often the changes we need to make most. We ran a good long road test of the premise that more is better: we built houses that could hold all our stuff but were too big to heat; we bought cars that could ferry a soccer team but were too big to park; we thought we were embracing the simple life by squeezing in a yoga class between working and shopping and took an extra job to pay for it all.
Now we're stripping down and starting over. A platoon of TIME reporters and pollsters fanned out to every corner of the country to measure — anecdotally and empirically — what's changed in the way we set our priorities and spend our money since the Great Recession began. Most people think the pain will be lasting and the effects permanent: only 12% expect economic recovery to begin within six months, half believe it will be another year or two, and 14% believe we are at the start of a long-term decline. (See TIME's special report on how Americans have adjusted to the recession.)
Our institutions watch for economic vital signs. But maybe, for individuals, the sickness is what came before — the hallucination that debt would never need to be repaid, that values only rise, that bubbles never burst. When the markets collapsed, that fever broke. In our assumptions and attitudes and expectations, the recovery is already well under way.
Talk to people not just about how they feel but about how they're living now, and you hear more resolve than regret. Nearly half say their economic status declined this year, and 57% now think the American Dream is harder to achieve. And yet pain and promise are a package deal; even after all this, fully 56% believe that America's best days are ahead. It would be nice if it took something short of a heart attack to get us to work out, eat better and spend more time with our kids. But in the end, where we wind up matters more than how we got there.
Unlike any other downturn since the 1930s, this one has affected everyone, either the fact of it or the fear of it. Even when prosperity returns, 61% predict, they'll continue to spend less than they did before. Among people earning less than $50,000 a year — roughly half of U.S. households — 34% have not gone to the doctor because of the cost, 31% have been out of work at some point, and 13% have been hungry. At the same time, 4 in 10 people earning more than $100,000 say they are buying more store brands, 36% are using coupons more, and 39% have postponed or canceled a vacation to save money. Forty percent of people at all income levels say they feel anxious, 32% have trouble sleeping, and 20% are depressed. After a season of big news, of war and storms and swindlers, pirates and poison peanut butter, 43% are watching the news even more, taking the medicine even if it tastes bad because skipping it could be risky. (See the worst business deals of 2008.)
The calculus of life suddenly offers new equations. Insurance agents see clients raising their deductibles to lower premiums, or skipping collision coverage for older cars so that they bear more of the risks themselves. Twenty-seven percent have raided their retirement or college savings to pay the bills. Violent crime may not be up, but fear of it is: 40% of people say that since the downturn began, they are more worried about their personal safety. Gun sales at large retail stores have jumped 39% this year, according to the SportsOneSource, a research firm that tracks the sporting-goods industry, and shops are reporting ammunition shortages; they can't keep up with demand.
For all the reflexive analogies, this is not the 1930s, when Babe Ruth took a $10,000 salary cut (roughly what A-Rod earns per swing) and New York City Mayor Jimmy Walker told theaters to show only cheery films. And yet we're channeling our grandparents, who were taught, like a mantra, to use it up, wear it out, make it do, do without. Now, if you can make it, you don't have to buy it: just replace the lawn with a vegetable garden, eat your fill and then store whatever is left. Sales of canning and freezing supplies rose 15% during the first three months of the year compared with the same period last year. Cough- and cold-remedy sales are down 9% because you can make your own chicken soup; vitamin sales are up, maybe because you hope you won't need to. Common sense is back in style, meaning we're less willing to buy what we can have for free: bottled-water sales have dropped 10%. The 137-year-old Los Angeles public library system set record highs in circulation and visitors. And film and camera sales have plunged 33% this year, because who would want this winter in their album?
There's a natural longing to find the upside in the downturn. A college-admissions officer, watching families reassess their means and ends, suggests that maybe the insane competitiveness will recede. The yoga instructor says living more simply relaxes us, as if the entire country needs to slow its breathing. The buyer at the used-car lot feels both frugal and green: that hatchback isn't used, it's "pre-owned," and this counts as recycling. The discount shoppers view their task as a scavenger hunt and take a certain pride in finding the bargain, cutting the deal; 23% of us are haggling more, a profitable contact sport.
No one wishes for hardship. But as we pick through the economic rubble, we may find that our riches have buried our treasures. Money does not buy happiness; Scripture asserts this, research confirms it. Once you reach the median level of income, roughly $50,000 a year, wealth and contentment go their separate ways, and studies find that a millionaire is no more likely to be happy than someone earning one-twentieth as much. Now a third of people polled say they are spending more time with family and friends, and nearly four times as many people say their relations with their kids have gotten better during this crisis than say they have gotten worse.
A consumer culture invites us to want more than we can ever have; a culture of thrift invites us to be grateful for whatever we can get. So we pass the time by tending our gardens and patching our safety nets and debating whether, years from now, this season will be remembered for what we lost, or all that we found.
says "we're sorry...this video is no longer available...nm
nm
"we" did the right thing....no, you're wrong there.....a lot of
people, mostly young, were bamboozled.
"We" did not do the righ thing...
Unless you like total government control, and social medicine, and social economics.....
We may never recover from President Obama, at least not in my lifetime.
I did not vote for him. I wish him well, but his choices as he is leading up to his inauguration do not bode well for our country on a whole, especially our children and grandchildren.
Libs refuse to call it socialism.
But that's what we're putting into office.
Bush opened the door a crack.
Obama intends to play on our fears and take full advantage of them.
Maybe when all your rights are gone, when govt has total control over your healthcare, your mortgage, your loans, your 401K....maybe then, you will understand what is happening right under your nose, and finally see what you have lost.
"we" did the right thing....no, you're wrong there.....a lot of
people, mostly young, were bamboozled.
"We" did not do the righ thing...
Unless you like total government control, and social medicine, and social economics.....etc......
We may never recover from President Obama and his "change", at least not in my lifetime.
I did not vote for him. I wish him well, but his choices as he is leading up to his inauguration do not bode well for our country on a whole, especially our children and grandchildren, who will be left to foot the bill, and have less rights than we do now.
Libs refuse to call it socialism.
But that's what we're putting into office.
Bush opened the door a crack.
Obama intends to play on our fears and take full advantage of them.
The barn door is wide open, and the winner take all (Obama). "Never let a good crisis go to waste" as his team has recently stated.
He has, and will, take full advantage of our fears, as even he, Obama, was the fear monger today.
Maybe when all your rights are gone, when govt has total control over your healthcare, your mortgage, your loans, your 401K, (and other things I can't even imagine as of yet unveiled b....maybe then, you will understand what is happening right under your nose, and finally see what you have lost.
Have you listened to their speeches? sm
Because Jr. and Sr. both frequently quote the New World Order.
The NWO is not a conspiracy theory. This stuff was discussed in my family for decades because my grandfather was a high ranking Mason and city councilman. All of them are Masons, and their symbols are everywhere.
This was one of his stronger speeches.
I have great respect for Obama and I hope that his numbers pick up. He has a lot of work to do, but I like what he has to say.
I am a Hillary fan myself and I have to say at this moment if I had to vote tomorrow, I would probably vote for Obama in the primary. Even though I believe in Hillary's ability to lead the country, I think that Bill will be her downfall and I have doubts. Seems that Bill made a better president than a husband. Not sure how much I want him as First Man either. He just can't keep his mouth shut.
I am looking forward to future debates. John Kerry doesn't strike me as having enough passion or backbone to do well, but I like his stance on the environment.
This election is going to be so exciting! Gets me jiggy ~
In several of McCain's speeches, he's said
in the world", and yada yada yada. Yet I didn't hear him once say he was for fining or taxing companies that send American work overseas. If he thinks we're so great, why isn't he planning on doing anything about offshoring?
Spare me the speeches...(sm)
As far as I'm concerned there is no "reward" to be reaped. There is no he11. There is no heaven, and there is no god. I think what ticks you guys off more than anything is the fact that I am actually free to live my life without fear of that dreaded "after life" that you all aspire to. What will you think when you figure out at the very end that all you did was for nothing and all you could have done was denied? How will it feel when you realize you have done nothing but waste your life for the sake of a man-made fear-mongering religion? It must be miserable to be you.
"we" blame Bush for what he did wrong, sorry if you cannot bear to....sm
take the blinders off. I thought Bill Clinton was a great Preident and humanitarian, but a LOUSY husband, but the country did not marry Clinton, and the Pubs with Ken Star and his WITCH HUNT went after Bill for what he did in his private sexual life that had nothing to do with his job as President. Wow, we impeached the guy and spent millions of tax dollars doing it!!! Yay! But he still led us one of the most prosperous times in American History budget-wise, and if he is kinky in his bedroom, so what? Do you want someone in your bedroom? What do you guys use as a measure for success? Blind loyalty was what REALLY got all the people to drink the Kool-Aid down in Jonestown, and with all the denial about the Bush years, I feel like we are down there in that jungle.
Boy, that never gets old. Never. You should write Osamabama's speeches.
nm
Listen carefully to his speeches, in
by saying "we will change the world" and this is one of the things that puts a knot in my stomach about this man.
O is doing very well with the doom and gloom speeches
He doesn't need the pubs to help him. He's doing it all by himself. This writer can't make excuses for that so he attacks the pubs with his rhetoric. Another one-sided opinion.
Why Obama's speeches are good
Obama has better speech writers. That's it. While I give Obama credit for giving excellent speeches, you also have to know he does not write them himself. He is an excellent presenter and public speaker. Probably due to his years in law, where you have to be an excellent speaker.
The difference between Obama and Bush (imho) is that Bush is not a good speaker. It's the tone of the voice. Obama has a good strong, deep, calming voice (he'd be great in an emergency situation trying to calm someone down), however, he does not write his own speeches, he just presents them.
Also he depends too much on the teleprompter and not enough time reviewing the speeches before hand. I don't know if he is so busy and has himself spread so thin (what with going on all the TV shows - which by the way is just wrong, do we have a President here or a celebrity making the round on the local TV shows), but he really should spend some quality time reading the speeches. As we saw with the huge error when he was giving a speech and someone put the wrong speech up on the teleprompter and he was reading the other countries leader's speech instead of his own and he didn't even realize it, even when he was praising himself up and down.
war, depression, recession, collapse of financial system, people losing
homes, natural disasters unattended to, collapsing bridges, earmark bridges. Address those first, save flag for later.
Nation has lost 4.4 million jobs since recession began in Dec. 2007
Unemployment rate soars to 8.1 percent
Employers resort to even bigger layoffs as they scramble to survive
BREAKING NEWS
The Associated Press
updated 8:02 a.m. CT, Fri., March. 6, 2009
WASHINGTON - The nation's unemployment rate bolted to 8.1 percent in February, the highest since late 1983, as cost-cutting employers slashed 651,000 jobs.
Both figures were worse than analysts expected and the Labor Department's report shows America's workers being clobbered by a relentless wave of layoffs.
The net loss of jobs in February came after even deeper payroll reductions in the prior two months, according to revised figures. The economy lost 681,000 jobs in December and another 655,000 in January.
Since the recession began in December 2007, the economy has lost 4.4 million jobs, more than half of which occurred in the past four months.
Employers are shrinking their work forces at alarming clip and are turning to other ways to slash costs — including trimming workers' hours, freezing wages or cutting pay — because the recession has eaten into their sales and profits. Customers at home and abroad are cutting back as other countries cope with their own economic problems.
With employers showing no appetite to hire, the unemployment jumped to 8.1 percent from 7.6 percent in January. That was the highest since December 1983, when the jobless rate was 8.3 percent.
All told, the number of unemployed people climbed to 12.5 million. In addition, the number of people forced to work part time for "economic reasons" rose by a sharp 787,000 to 8.6 million. That's people who would like to work full time but whose hours were cut back or were unable to find full-time work.
Meanwhile, the average work week in February stayed at 33.3 hours, matching the record low set in December.
Job losses were widespread in February.
Construction companies eliminated 104,000 jobs. Factories axed 168,000. Retailers cut nearly 40,000. Professional and business services got rid of 180,000, with 78,000 jobs lost at temporary-help agencies. Financial companies reduced payrolls by 44,000. Leisure and hospitality firms chopped 33,000 positions.
The few areas spared: education and health services, as well as government, which boosted employment last month.
A new wave of layoffs hit this week.
General Dynamics Corp. said Thursday it will lay off 1,200 workers due partly to plummeting sales of business and personal jets that forced it to cut production. Defense contractor Northrop Grumman Corp., and Tyco Electronics Ltd., which makes electronic components, undersea telecommunications systems and wireless equipment, also are trimming payrolls.
"This is basically cleaning house for a lot of firms," said John Silvia, chief economist at Wachovia. "They are using the first quarter to cut back employment and figure out what they want."
Disappearing jobs and evaporating wealth from tanking home values, 401(k)s and other investments have forced consumers to retrench, driving companies to lay off workers. It's a vicious cycle in which all the economy's negative problems feed on each other, worsening the downward spiral.
"The economy is in a tailspin. Businesses are jettisoning jobs at an unprecedented pace," said Richard Yamarone, economist at Argus Research.
The country is getting bloodied by fallout from the housing, credit and financial crises_ the worst since the 1930s. And there's no easy fix for a quick turnaround, economists said.
President Barack Obama is counting on a multipronged assault to lift the country out of recession: a $787 billion stimulus package of increased federal spending and tax cuts; a revamped, multibillion-dollar bailout program for the nation's troubled banks; and a $75 billion effort to stem home foreclosures.
Even in the best-case scenario that the relief efforts work and the recession ends later in 2009, the unemployment rate is expected to keep climbing, hitting 9 percent or higher this year. In fact, the Federal Reserve thinks the unemployment rate will stay elevated into 2011. Economists say the job market may not get back to normal — meaning a 5 percent unemployment rate — until 2013.
Businesses won't be inclined to ramp up hiring until they are sure any economic recovery has staying power.
The economy contracted at a staggering 6.2 percent in the final three months of 2008, the worst showing in a quarter-century, and it will probably continue to shrink during the first six months of this year.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress earlier this week that recent economic barometers "show little sign of improvement" and suggest that "labor market conditions may have worsened further in recent weeks."
Consumers’ growing frugality has hammered automakers, among other industries. General Motors Corp.'s auditors on Thursday raised "substantial doubt" about the auto giant’s ability to continue operations, and the company said it might have to seek bankruptcy protection, sending its shares below $2.
Bill Hampel, chief economist for the Credit Union National Association, said his group’s members are reporting record increases in deposits. Government figures show the savings rate jumped to 5 percent in January from zero last spring. That’s the highest rate since 1995 and a much faster shift than he had expected, Hampel said.
Consumer spending makes up about 70 percent of the economy. It topped out at 71 percent in 2005, Hampel said, but will likely drop by 2 to 3 percentage points over the next few years.
Increased savings can actually lower economic growth. Economists call it the “paradox of thrift”: What’s good for each of us individually — being thrifty, limiting our spending — can worsen a recession when everyone does it all at once.
Hoffman said about half the 6.2 percent drop in economic output last quarter was attributable to lower consumer spending.
Well good for him. I missed all of his speeches about the hurricaine.
So you say he's been all over the TV before the hurricaine making speeches about it. I'll take your word for it.
Fact still remains he was on vacation, officially or unofficially. But I'd expect you to debate this point down to the end, so enjoy :)
O is "just words, just speeches", little substance.
nm
How do Arab leaders make their speeches? (sm)
If you could post a link to a video it would be appreciated. I really would like to see what you're talking about here.
You didn't watch Obama's speeches before the
He said "I will close Gitmo". All the O lovers were on here posting how wonderful that was; how glad they were to hear it. And now, you act as if you know nothihng about that? Obama wouldn't do such a thing? All he had to do was say, no, things will go forward, a trial will be had NOW, and there will be no freeze.
He didn't do that! And so it has started..
I do "cringe" when Obama makes speeches
nm
He was on the weather channel (his speeches were) constantly on the weekend. BUT SM
I am probably lying.
|
