patrick.net

YesYNot says

2) Health care - many more people can afford it thanks to the ACA.

Even more that had it lost it.

Thanks ObamaClaus!

YesYNot says

3) Unemployment - went from 10% just after crisis to below 6%.

Well if I were to place carpet over my yard I could claim there is no top soil.

YesYNot says

7) Natural gas and oil prices - nice and low

Thanks Sheik Obama!

YesYNot says

8) Osama bin Laden

Obama aint afraid of no Ghost, he can lay claim to killing a dead man because dead men don't tell the truth. And of course Bush doesn't need another lie on his legacy.

How do we give thanks to Obama?

Oh let me count the LIES!

Captain, you're the other side of bgamall4's coin.

1) is a low bar since it was like $1.7T in FY09.

and had the tailwind of the recovery along with monumental Fed money creation:

ACA is a legit accomplishment but by itself it only moved the ball 20-30 yards towards the end zone of national universal single payer.

Getting out of Iraq was a done deal in 2008. The way ISIS took over though removes this as a feather in the administration's cap. They fucked that up.

America in decline is just conservative bullshit. That's their main worldview, when they're not in power at least.

Cheap energy arguably has a lot to do with the GOP "Drill Baby Drill" mentality eventually paying off.

OBL dead is a nothing burger anyway. He wasn't some cartoon criminal mastermind, AQ is just a loose confederation of islamic nut jobs.

The electorate ripped the tiller from Obama's hand in 2010, when the Dems lost the House. Since then we've just been enjoying inertia aside from the repeated attempts of the GOP to sandbag the economy, and the above Fed money pumps.

Bellingham Bill says

ACA is a legit accomplishment but by itself it only moved the ball 20-30
yards towards the end zone of national universal single payer.

The question is whether the drive will stay alive or if there will be turnover on downs.

is evidence of where things still suck.

blue is full time employment and red is 75% of the population age 25-64

Relatively Good Times are when we're above that dotted line.

Bush put us on the hook for TRILLIONS thanks to his idiot warmongering.

Plus of course he never missed an opportunity to vacation.

Q: Is it true that George W. Bush took more vacation days than Barack Obama?

A: Yes. Before his two-week trip to Martha’s Vineyard in August, Obama’s count was 125 full or partial days and Bush’s total at the same point in his presidency was 407.

http://www.factcheck.org/2014/08/presidential-vacations/

Why the fuck is everything the conservatives on this site write a lie? Are they just trolling us, or are they really this far gone?

Call it Crazy says

I'm sure he has earned and will enjoy the $4 Million vacation he's taking in Hawaii that YOU'RE paying for!!

I guess I'll have to pony up my 1.3 cents, assuming that my income taxes are about average. Most people will have to pay much less since most people pay zero or nearly zero in income tax.

Bellingham Bill says

blue is full time employment and red is 75% of the population age 25-64

That's a good graph. It clearly shows we are still in the toilet, but it shows how crappy things were after the Bush recession. The pubbots like to sweep that part under the rug and say that the unemployment figure is a lie. 10% to 6% is pretty good.

B Bill, you point out that much of these successes are not the direct result of Obama's actions. That is true, but it is also true of most CEOs and presidents. Much of the successes and failures of leaders is determined by chance. We tend to attribute these successes and failures as indications of performance, because we don't understand statistics well. But, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. If we want to attribute failures to performance, then we have to also attribute the successes.

Getting OBL would have been a nothing burger if we didn't blow 9/11 out of proportion and start two very costly wars. But, since we huffed and puffed and spent 4 to 6 trillion, we would have looked like impotent nit wits if we couldn't even kill enemy # 1.

Bellingham Bill says

Getting out of Iraq was a done deal in 2008. The way ISIS took over though removes this as a feather in the administration's cap. They fucked that up.

ISIS is a result of leaving a power vacuum and trying to set up a democracy in a country where 60% of the country are one religion, 35% are another religion, and these people have a history of fighting each other. Most of the work in this nation-building effort went on under Bush, who had about 7 years to 'fix' the situation.

That said, in the name of crediting both successes and failures to the dummy in charge, I'll give you that this one is a black eye for Obama.

#2 with 6000 deductible? really?

#3 including the people who gave up looking and the underemployed? really?

#4 even if true, hampered an important part of the business cycle.

#5 little quick to say that, not to mention the fact that he created ISIS.

#7 without Keystone... But he had nothing to do with this, if anything tried to prevent it.

#8 right...

In time when the ACA and Frank Dodd and Common Core become the undoing of this country, I would say O is one of if not the worst president ever. To think otherwise is laughable.

indigenous says

#7 without Keystone... But he had nothing to do with this, if anything tried to prevent it.

He wanted $7 a gallon gas, so I guess that didn't go so well.

indigenous says

I would say O is one of if not the worst president ever.

The one place that he out did all the other presidents; he IS the worst president EVER.

^^Post before last = Poe ^^

Call it Crazy says

Bush going to his ranch over and over again, where there was a complete communications center and secret service command center, also called The White House South, is an apples to oranges comparison to Obama's vacations!

Time once again for another of your finger-wagging lectures to the partisans here who are all alike, always bending over backward to defend their guy.

Don't forget to add that you are a libertarian, and intone that "both sides are the same."

sbh says

And while you're at it research how much you paid for Bush's White House South.

Money spent for Republican presidential vacations creates jobs, and actually generates more tax revenue than was spent - same as tax cuts.

Another angle: $4 million for an Obama vacation is an outrage; $4 trillion for pointless wars creates jobs.

For those Republicans who were too busy sassin' the math teacher in HS:

4,000,000,000,000 / 4,000,000 = 1,000,000.

HydroCabron says

Money spent for Republican presidential vacations creates jobs, and actually generates more tax revenue than was spent - same as tax cuts.

This is certainly the meme that is passed around by the Keynesians...

HydroCabron says

Another angle: $4 million for an Obama vacation is an outrage; $4 trillion for pointless wars creates jobs.

This is the broken window theory.

"The parable of the broken window was introduced by Frédéric Bastiat in his 1850 essay Ce qu'on voit et ce qu'on ne voit pas (That Which Is Seen and That Which Is Unseen) to illustrate why destruction, and the money spent to recover from destruction, is not actually a net benefit to society. The parable, also known as the broken window fallacy or glazier's fallacy, seeks to show how opportunity costs, as well as the law of unintended consequences, affect economic activity in ways that are "unseen" or ignored."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

Republicans can't get any respect on Wikipedia - it must be a conspiracy!

IHydroCabron says

Republicans can't get any respect on Wikipedia - it must be a conspiracy!

Has nothing to do with the Rs.

1) Obama presided over the largest reduction in the deficit since the end of WWII.

How much did debt increase? Also, if you look at the deficit it includes a lot of gimmicks such as the Federal Reserve paying 80B a year to the Treasury. This money comes from the Fed owning bonds that the Treasury issues.

2) Health care - many more people can afford it thanks to the ACA.

How much did prices rise and why do we still not have a single payer?

3) Unemployment - went from 10% just after crisis to below 6%.

How many people are out of the workforce? How many kids are still hiding out in school taking on enormous amount of debt?

4) Tarp ended up being profitable. Helped save banks and auto companies without costing a dime.

Really? You think there was no costs to financial bailout and that's why interest rates are still at zero eight years later?

5) Iraq war ended. Could have been quicker, but at least we went in the right direction.

Afghanistan. Gitmo. Lybia. Syria. ......

6) Decline of america? - we have not been hammered by the young whippersnapper countries like many of the dire predictions around here.

America has been the main driver and leader of globalization. You can't give any specific president credit for it since they all support globalization.

7) Natural gas and oil prices - nice and low

They've only been low for one month and very high during most of Obama presidency. The jury is still out on this one.

8) Osama bin Laden

Yes. He gets credit there.

tr6 says

How much did prices rise and why do we still not have a single payer?

Because Obama's vote in the Senate went from 1 to 0 in 2009, not 100.

As for price rises, depends if you make a lot of money or not. People who qualify for subsidies are paying a lot less, people who don't aren't necessarily paying all that more for similar/same coverage -- although one of PPACA's big changes was removing separate rates based on sex, so men are paying more than before since our costs are lower (but this is a wash for opposite-sex couples of course).

The only people actually screwed by ACA are those getting hit with its Medicare tax on high investment incomes. 3.8% ! That left a mark, and is what was driving all the "repeal, replace" talk from the GOP.

http://www.irs.gov/Affordable-Care-Act/Affordable-Care-Act-Tax-Provisions

You think there was no costs to financial bailout and that's why interest rates are still at zero eight years later?

I don't see the connection there. TARP was a Bush thing anyway so I don't see why it's on Obama's plate.

The events of 2008-2009 were SO FUCKING EXTREME that it's stupid talking about this stuff, really. This is because the fiscal abuses of 2003-2006 were so monumental:

my thesis then was we were all fucked like 1929.

And we were! But intervention (Fed, Fiscal) was a lot bigger in 2009-2011 unlike the 1930s where the system just let everything slide into the abyss.

>Afghanistan. Gitmo. Lybia. Syria. ......

Afghanistan was not a cut and run opportunity. We just can't release the people in Gitmo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Horton for why) and moving those people somewhere else isn't that major an improvement anyway.

Helping the rebels take out Gadhafi was enough for us to do in Libya. Mission Accomplished there. What the rebels do after that is their own damn business.

Syria is fucked and we've got to work with the international community to unfuck it.

>[Natural gas and oil prices] have only been low for one month and very high during most of Obama presidency.

Wrong.

Oil prices were just at 2008 levels until recently, which is understandable as China has been taking up the slack thus far:

Natural gas is in oversupply here and low prices are no anomaly. We've got decades of the stuff still. Prices are too low for drillers to even bother trying to get the gas to market.

YesYNot says

That's a good graph.

yeah, it's probably the most useful thing I've posted on the internet over 20 years. Yet it got 2 dislikes, sigh

Bellingham Bill says

Wrong.

I should have been more specific as I was talking only about oil. Your graph supports my point.

Bellingham Bill says

As for price rises, depends if you make a lot of money or not.

Healthcare prices are rising way above inflation and have been for a long time. You can't argue that.

Bellingham Bill says

Afghanistan was not a cut and run opportunity.

You are starting to sound like Republicans did in 2003.

Bellingham Bill says

I don't see the connection there. TARP was a Bush thing anyway so I don't see why it's on Obama's plate.

I was just saying that you can't simplify 2008 to just TARP. The bailout was huge and you can't just point out that banks paid back TARP when they are being subsidized for over six years.

Bellingham Bill says

Wrong.

Also, can you make your oil graph go back to 2001 as it will illustrate the point of high prices during Obama's presidency better.

tr6 says

as it will illustrate the point of high prices during Obama's presidency better.

How the fuck can Obama turn back time to 2001??? 2002-2008 we gave China $2.3T of our money to buy oil with!

Prices in his term weren't any higher than the year he won the election. I don't understand what else he's supposed to do here.

tr6 says

Healthcare prices are rising way above inflation and have been for a long time. You can't argue that.

Actually, I can.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/erp_2014_chapter_4.pdf

Health care is a can of worms but ACA takes on the big cost-driver, which is uninsured people presenting with conditions that would have been less expensive to treat earlier had they been in the system.

Hospital costs are the long pole in the tent here, and it's going to take decades to unfuck what it took decades to screw up in the first place.

You are starting to sound like Republicans did in 2003.

Obama did not run on leaving Afghanistan, quite the opposite. I thought it was a mistake going in as we did in late 2001, knew our successes there in 2002 were going to be ephemeral, and don't have anything intelligent to say about the theatre other than that. Well, well over my pay grade, yaknow?

The bailout was huge and you can't just point out that banks paid back TARP when they are being subsidized for over six years.

Obama is treated like he's some bomb-throwing Marxist by the right, when the truth is he's another conservative (center-right) Dem like all the others we've had since KennedyCarter.

I don't find much to criticize him about. Pointing the figure at him failing to clean up the Augean stables he was left with raises the question about how about first prosecuting the motherfuckers in 2002-2006 Bush Admin who allowed all this to happen in the first place?

These were the same operators who gave us the 1980s S&L Crisis, too.

Our political situation is not mature enough for us -- Obama especially -- to fix anything. Optics matter too much. Inaction is safer, and more politically beneficial, than action.

WTF we have been hearing about rising healthcare costs forever.

Your graph says they have been declining since 1980

This does not pass the smell test?

If this is true why did we need the ACA in the first place?

WTF?

indigenous says

WTF we have been hearing about rising healthcare costs forever.

Your graph says they have been declining since 1980

This does not pass the smell test?

If this is true why did we need the ACA in the first place?

WTF?

The rate of increase is declining not the cost. You have a lot of trouble with the whole rate of increase thing every time you run into it.

ACA was never sold as cost reduction, it was sold as getting people coverage. Didn't you pay any attention at all?

"If this is true why did we need the ACA in the first place?"

Because we had tens of millions of people who could not afford coverage, some at any price since their preexisting conditions made them radioactive to carriers.

I was one of those people in 2006, I applied to BlueShield for an individual plan but was denied since I had seen a knee doctor in 2004 (for a pain/tear that went away in a couple of weeks).

We needed to get rid of the preexisting exclusion thing, but that then opens up the system for people gaming the system by signing up just when they need treatment.

Thus the liberty-destroying "mandate" that everyone sign up for at least catastrophic coverage ($5000 deductible),

But that of course is a tough row for about half the country who don't have two nickels to rub together. Thus the subsidies that make it "affordable" for poor people, plus the Medicaid expansion that avoids indignents just sticking paying customers for their hospital care.

This all makes sense, which is why the Dems and Republicans in Massachusetts implemented this same approach first.

You know, that guy the GOP chose as its standard-bearer back in 1912 or whenever.

“The key factor that some of my libertarian friends forget is that today, everybody who doesn’t have insurance is getting free coverage from the government. And the question is, do we want people to pay what they can afford, or do we want people to ride free on everyone else. And when that is recognized as the choice, most conservatives come my way.”

bob2356 says

The rate of increase is declining not the cost. You have a lot of trouble with the whole rate of increase thing every time you run into it.

Don't sound so smug at least half the time I disprove your proselytizing or scolding.

bob2356 says

ACA was never sold as cost reduction, it was sold as getting people coverage. Didn't you pay any attention at all?

How does that work with a 6k deductible?

Bellingham Bill says

And the question is, do we want people to pay what they can afford, or do we want people to ride free on everyone else.

How is that going to work with a 6k deductible? It has not changed anything.

Bellingham Bill says

Actually, I can.

I love how you use statistics. For oil prices you chose 2006 as the start year. For healthcare costs 1960. Care to zoom in on 2008-2014? Care to add the total above CPI that healthcare costs rose in those years?

I've read the book that Patrick recommends on "How to lie with statistics". I am not saying you intent to lie, but your choices of starting points do not address my arguments.

Start oil in 2001 and all of the sudden oil prices during Obama administration look really high. Start healthcare CPI graph in 2008 and the rise of healthcare costs seem a lot more dramatic.

bob2356 says

ACA was never sold as cost reduction, it was sold as getting people coverage

Actually it was. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66bgpRRSDD4

Bellingham Bill says

Obama is treated like he's some bomb-throwing Marxist by the right, when the truth is he's another conservative (center-right) Dem like all the others we've had since KennedyCarter.

I completely agree with you here. Notice that I never call Obama anything. I only criticize his policies and how they did not live up to expectations. I feel like Bush started his presidency with his advisers running the show and finished as his own man. It does not excuse all the bad things he did. Obama started as his own man but is now completely relying on advisers. It's funny when conservatives compare Obama to Carter. They are nothing alike.

Bellingham Bill says

2002-2008 we gave China $2.3T of our money to buy oil with!

That's way simplifying what happened. The trade deficit with China is even higher now but that's not keeping oil prices up.

tr6 says

The trade deficit with China is even higher now but that's not keeping oil prices up.

my graph of China's consumption rise is an important part of the story of high oil prices.

as is Japan taking their nuclear fleet offline in 2011 and moving to bunker oil to power their country

I don't pretend to understand oil prices -- the swings of 2008-2009 show there's a lot of volatility and market manipulation going on at some level -- but if we had a GOP president now they'd certainly be taking credit for oil falling like it has recently.

>but that's not keeping oil prices up

what is then?