Also worth remembering:
The Obama strategy (training, support, airstrikes) - which ultimately worked - was dismissed, degraded, and mocked by a lot of conservatives....many of whom were implying or suggesting that Obama needed to put more "boots on the ground".
In other words, conservatives wanted to get us into another ground war in Iraq.
Hillary Clinton and the Syrian Bloodbath
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffr...b_9231190.html
I understand the anxiety, but what a joke to try to portray Obama as a poor economic President. If you look at the economy strictly in terms of where Presidents leave it, it's hard to remember the last time a Republican left it in anything but bad shape, and the last time a Democrat left it in anything but good or great shape. I know that's a simplistic way to look at it, but that's Trump's world.
Obama wasn't a "disaster" on the economy. He inherited an absolute wreck - an economy spiraling lower & lower, basically out of control. The stimulus was about as much as a government can do to alter that, and it worked. He gets credit for that, AND we were almost back to full employment by the time he left. Jobs & wages still leave much to be desired, but it's a sharp contrast to where we thought we'd be in 2009, and certainly compared to what many on the right said the stimulus would do to America.
Phantasmal (12-17-2017)
We are going to use the exact same performance standard as your hero Ronald Reagan did - are you better off than you were four years ago (under the previous president)?
That is the Reagan standard of presidential performance, and until the last couple years I have never heard a conservative even suggest this was the wrong performance standard, the wrong metric to use. It was the metric made up by your hero, Ronnie Raygun.
So, on balance, was the country better off economically when Obama left office, than when the guy your party supported left office in January 2009?
Ross Douthat called ISIS ‘the defining foreign policy calamity of Barack Obama’s second term’ in the OP. He also said ‘the defeat of ISIS began under Obama’.
Then Trump came along and finished cleaning up Obama’s ‘defining calamity’ by tweeking Obama’s strategy and adding a couple twists of his own.
None of that is really debatable.
My point was that it’s been over looked by the media, because the media is largely biased, and that Trump’s foreign policy is much better than ANY of his detractors predicted.
Coup has started. First of many steps. Impeachment will follow ultimately~WB attorney Mark Zaid, January 2017
George Bush Sr left a recovering and growing economy and Clinton left the dot com bust and a recession. The stimulus did not meet its proposed goals and did very little. It was largely political help for supporters.
There's no question Obama inherited an incredible mess. But he didn't push for economic growth. He passed Obamacare and Dodd Frank, both massive new regulations. It's why he's the first president since Hoover to not have 3% growth once during his term.
FUCK THE POLICE (12-17-2017)
absolutely. remember how ISIS was able to quickly over-run Iraq in PICK UP TRUCKS,
until they met up with Iraq troops who were horrified at the blitzkrieg and abandoned their weapons -
even tanks and artillery that ISIS trucked back into Syria..
Meanwhile Mr. Obama was dithering around with his "JV" talk instead of hitting the convoys in open desert
Last edited by dukkha; 12-17-2017 at 11:08 AM.
FUCK THE POLICE (12-17-2017)
Unemployment growth rose through June of 1992. So, you're giving Bush credit for an incredibly weak start of a recovery during his last few months in office. But technically correct, I suppose.
Clinton left a mild recession, but a completely revitalized economy with millions more employed and a whole sector of new business that would continue to anchor our economy well beyond his tenure.
And what you said about the stimulus is 100% inaccurate. It was never intended to create careers - it was intended to get people working again, even temporarily, so the private sector could take over. It did just that; it created or saved over 3 million jobs, and its mere passage turned the stock market around.
What you wrote about it is just a right-wing talking point. Kind of surprised you'd go that route.
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