5 Comments

  1. violetwisp on April 17, 2013 at 1:29 pm

    I believe most the problems you mention here not as a result of the world financial crash that happened before Obama came into power. As a result, every country in the world is suffering from high levels of unemployment, deficits, lowered national credit ratings, higher gas prices and immigration problems – and in fact, the USA is doing pretty well comparatively. So, all in all, he must be doing a good job after inheriting a TOTAL DISASTER from Bush. Which begs the question, what is your problem with Obama? Stronger welfare, better healthcare for the most vulnerable in society – do these things really go against the teachings of Jesus? Not in the Bible I read.



    • quinersdiner on April 17, 2013 at 5:07 pm

      Hi Violet: Barack Obama has been president going on five years. When will he and his apologists stop blaming President Bush for every ill? Aren’t you embarrassed even bringing that up? When do you think Mr. Obama should start taking responsibility for the sorry state of this nation, and especially the economy? After five years? Six? Seven? EIGHT??

      If you look back to the economy Ronald Reagan inherited in 1980, things were worse than in 2009. Reagan and Obama took different approaches. Reagan cut taxes, Obama increased them. Reagan moderated federal spending, Obama dramatically increased it. Reagan cut government regulations, Obama dramatically increased them.

      How did it all work out? Well, when Ronald Reagan took office, the misery index (the unemployment rate added to the inflation rate) stood at a staggering 19.33. By the time he left office, it had fallen to 9.72.

      When Barack Obama took office, the misery index stood at only 7.83. In his third year in office, it had risen to 12.67.

      The Reagan economic recovery averaged 7.1% per year compared to Mr. Obama’s 2.8%.

      Unemployment fell 3.3 percentage points during Reagan’s first seven quarters compared to 1.3 for Obama. Even worse, under Obama, the employment rate, the percentage of people 18 and older participating in the workforce, has decreased to its lowest level since, surprise, the Jimmy Carter years.

      Mr. Reagan inherited an economy that was arguably in worse shape than did Mr. Obama. Reagan staked out an approach that was the exact opposite of Obama’s, including lower taxes. deregulation, and tighter monetary policy. It far outperformed the Obama model.

      What is my problem with Obama? We have more people living in poverty than anytime since the mid 1960s. Healthcare costs have skyrocketed since the passage of Obamacare, and is expected to get dramatically worse, according to government actuaries, when it is fully implemented next year.

      Even worse, Obama’s unrestrained deficit spending increases the amount of interest we’re paying on the national debt. This number keeps climbing and will soon threaten to crowd out dollars we currently use for our safety net. The army of folks now living on welfare will HAVE to find a job, because we’ll have to re-allocate more revenues to paying the interest on the debt. [For the record, I don’t pin all the blame for the national debt on Obama; Republicans deserve plenty of blame, and this blog has given it to them.]

      Regarding Jesus, we may be reading different bibles. I humbly suggest that Jesus would not support taxpayer dollars going for abortion. I don’t believe Jesus would support an erosion of our religious liberties as inflicted on us by the HHS Mandate, which mandates that the faithful violate their consciences by providing abortifacients, contraception, and sterilizations in their insurance plans. I humbly suggest that Jesus would not advocate for so-called same-sex marriage, as Mr. Obama does. I humbly suggest that Jesus would not support an Obama budget that requires our children and grandchildren to pay this generation’s debts. This is a budget, Violet, that will necessitate them to scale back their standard of living compared to what their parents once had, because they’ll be paying off their parent’s debts.

      Violet, I respectfully submit that Barack Obama’s budget is terribly hurting people in this country. We can be so much more. We see things very differently. Nonetheless, I thank you for reading and writing.



    • Shawn Pavlik on April 19, 2013 at 3:39 pm

      Christ would have us help these people of our own free will, i.e. CHARITY. Government instead imposes that requirement in the form of taxation, and often takes away our ability to help these people ourselves. I know of one Christian couple, the husband says “I gave at the office. They took 30% of my check!” When taxes were lower, and government smaller, Christian charities took care of people in need.



  2. xPraetorius on April 17, 2013 at 9:17 pm

    I remember having said probably a hundred times in 2008: “It’s a LOT more important to elect a GOOD President, than to elect a black President.” People would respond, “But think of the history!” I’d say, “The Depression was historic; it’d be nice not to see THAT again!”

    Now that Obama’s been President for more than four full years, only one important economic indicator is better than when he took office: the Stock Market…the thing he campaigned most vociferously against in 2008.

    Some HYPER-important indicators are at their 20- and 30-year worst values. Labor force participation — an incredibly important indicator — is lower than in Jimmy Carter’s Presidency! This indicator is important, because it’s a harbinger of the economic future. The longer the unemployed STAY unemployed, the less employable they become and the more they guarantee hard economic times ahead for the whole country.

    Even the stock market, once an indicator of good or bad times ahead, is, under Obama, divorced from its traditional predictive role, as companies prosper, piling up cash and stock value, but holding off on hiring people.

    How ironic that in the time of Obama, the rich are getting much richer, the poor are getting much poorer, and Obama and his supporters are calling that a “recovery.”

    Yep. Obama loves poor people; so much that he’s busy making millions and millions more of them.

    — xPraetorius



    • quinersdiner on April 18, 2013 at 7:37 am

      Well said. Thanks for writing.