What Are the Consequences of Obama Failing?

[AnnaG]

"Dumbya" has an ivy leage university education, and he got better marks than either of his presidential election opponents (Gore and Kerry).

Yep. But he's still denser than a fencepost. You'd have thought he could put sentences together a little better than he does with all that edimication. Or was it that his schools were paid highly to pass him and get the dolt out of their hair?

 

[AnnaG]

Spending per person (most recent) by country

I wonder how much Joey figures they need to spend before he considers them involved.

More:

Per capita government expenditure on health in international dollars statistics - countries compared - NationMaster

 

[Cannuck]

A little off topic but that is an interesting site. I checked tax contributions for the top 30%, middle 40% and bottom 30% in the US and Canada.

In the US it is (from top to bottom) 65.3%, 28.4%, 6.3%

In Canada it is 60.4%, 33.4%, 6.2%

I guess those left leaning Americans have shifted the tax burden from the middle class to the rich.

 

[AnnaG]

Yeah, hubby found it quite a few years ago. I think it must be the most comprehensive source of stats there is.

Taxes have been like that for quite a while there, Cannuck. What surprised me was that Canadians and Americans are so close in percentages in our tax brackets.

 

[Extrafire]

Yep. But he's still denser than a fencepost.

Obviously only a matter of your intense dislike for the guy. You don't even get admitted to one of those schools unless you're fairly bright.

You'd have thought he could put sentences together a little better than he does with all that edimication.

You'd think. Unless you also happen to know someone else who is quite intelligent but can't speak well without a teleprompter.:lol:

Or was it that his schools were paid highly to pass him and get the dolt out of their hair?

I would believe that about Gore.

 

[AnnaG]

Obviously only a matter of your intense dislike for the guy. You don't even get admitted to one of those schools unless you're fairly bright.

You bet I dislike the creep. He's right up there with that other war-mongering creep- the "acting" prez. I used to think they only let bright people in, too. Then along came junior Bush.

You'd think. Unless you also happen to know someone else who is quite intelligent but can't speak well without a teleprompter.:lol:

Harpy?

I would believe that about Gore.

Me, too. lol He's another creep.

Anyway, I'm still waiting to see what happens with the Big O. He seems to be better than G Dumbya, but that isn't saying much of anything.

 

[Cannuck]

The ability to speak eloquently in public has little, if anything to do with intelligence.

William Archibald Spooner - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[AnnaG]

The ability to speak eloquently in public has little, if anything to do with intelligence.

William Archibald Spooner - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I know. It's just a bug of mine. lol
Either way, G Dumbya mighta figured out that sooner or later Tthe lie that he, Cheney, etc. spewed about Iraq would be found out.

Still waiting to see what the Big O's major booboo will be.

 

[Extrafire]

You bet I dislike the creep. He's right up there with that other war-mongering creep- the "acting" prez. I used to think they only let bright people in, too. Then along came junior Bush.

I don't like him either, but that's no reason to believe he's stupid. Incompetant as prez, yes, but not stupid.

Harpy?

YouTube - Obama Speech - Teleprompter Goes Out

Anyway, I'm still waiting to see what happens with the Big O. He seems to be better than G Dumbya, but that isn't saying much of anything.

Still waiting to see what the Big O's major booboo will be.

By now it's a matter of which booboo will be the big one .

 

[AnnaG]

I don't like him either, but that's no reason to believe he's stupid. Incompetant as prez, yes, but not stupid.

So then he figured out that people would find out the Iraq thing was based on a lie and ordered the invasion anyway? Sorry, but I don't find that particularly bright. And I guess maybe he never did figure out that Cheney is sewer slime to an extreme.

YouTube - Obama Speech - Teleprompter Goes Out




By now it's a matter of which booboo will be the big one .

lmao Good clip. He should have had his speech messaged to him on the Blackberry. lol He'd probably have done ok.
Yeah, "which booboo will be the big one" is what I meant by the "major booboo".

One of the neat things about having a dark complexion is that it's hard for people to see you blush. I'd have died a long time ago if it was that easy. lol

 

[JLM]

Spending per person (most recent) by country

I wonder how much Joey figures they need to spend before he considers them involved.

I think we should take a close look at Ethiopia to figure out how we can cut health care costs.

 

[AnnaG]

Someone dropped a nuke or two on Ethiopia?

 

[JLM]

Someone dropped a nuke or two on Ethiopia?

I would have thought that might raise the costs..............:lol::lol::lol:

 

[AnnaG]

lol Dead people don't need healthcare.

 

[JLM]

lol Dead people don't need healthcare.

That's very true Anna, but I figured the $4 per person was just for living people............now there's an idea, if we counted all the people in our cemetaries we could get our health costs down. :lol::lol:

 

[AnnaG]

Or at leasst the stats would look better. lol

 

[SirJosephPorter]

The problem is that the fundemental sickness in the Us economy hasn't been addressed. In fact, with Fannie Mae handing out those 125% mortgages it would seem that they haven't learned a thing from this crash. The total debt load of the average US household is approaching $700,000 (combined personal and government) and there's no way that can ever be paid. It will have to be accounted for somehow, and that's why the foundations of the US economy are crumbling. Anything they do that doesn't address this problem is only prolonging the inevitable. I fear (and so do some ecnonomists) that the current uptick is merely the stimulus bubble, and it will burst, leading to a crash that makes the last one look like a picnic.

That being said, I fervently hope I'm wrong. I'd much prefer a recovery and I'd happily give full credit to Obama if he can pull it off. But don't hold your breath; if he's dumb enough to implement that cap and trade tax, the result from that alone will be catastrophic.

It sucks being a pessimist.

You make a good point, Extrafire, debt (and deficit) indeed is a big problem, and that is where the unstoppable object may hit the immovable wall. Deficit problem must be tackled at some stage. However, now is not the time to tackle it.

There are tentative signs that economy may be stabilizing, the worst may be over. Once the economy is roaring ahead, Obama and the Democrats must do something to get rid of the deficit. Paying down the debt comes later, once the deficit is under control. Perhaps Obama could appoint a ‘deficit czar’, Clinton, since he has experience in eliminating the deficit.

But you are right, if deficit is not brought under control, USA is strong trouble for itself.

But don't hold your breath; if he's dumb enough to implement that cap and trade tax, the result from that alone will be catastrophic.

Now here I disagree with you. First, there are no indications that cap and trade will pass, I understand it is in trouble in the Senate. Second, even if it is passed, I don’t’ see anything catastrophic about it, it probably will stimulate green jobs. Incidentally, even if McCain had been elected, cap and trade would still have passed, he was a supporter of cap and trade.

 

[SirJosephPorter]

Not the USA? Really! Yet the US government spends more per capita on health care than the Canadian governments (Federal and provincial combined).

Government spends more than Canada? Do you have a link to that? My understanding is that total health care spending in USA (government and private) is more than that in Canada (government and private).

I don’t think US government spends more than Canadian government.

Never mind, Extrafire, I saw the link down the thread. Nevertheless, I find it very surprising that US government spends more (per capita) than Canadian government. Then when you add what private citizens and private companies spend (and that is a substantial amount in USA), the total must come to a really huge amount.

 

[Extrafire]

So then he figured out that people would find out the Iraq thing was based on a lie and ordered the invasion anyway? Sorry, but I don't find that particularly bright.

[...]

I know that a lot of people like to believe that "Bush lied, people died". But it's well known he didn't. His reasoning for the invasion was based on intelligence gatherings. And it wasn't just him, all western intelligence agencies believed he had the WMD's. Of course, that in itself isn't a valid excuse for an invasion but it did give him an excuse. And while WMD's weren't found, lots of evidence was found that he was working on them.

And Saddam himself believed he had them.

It can now be said with reasonable assurance that Saddam Hussein did not have any significant stocks of nuclear biological or chemical weaponry when the United States and allies invaded Iraq. Huge puzzles remain about the disposal of what he was known to have before he kicked U.N. weapons inspectors out in 1998. But what David Kay's 1400-man U.S. Iraq Survey Group has found would cast doubt even on the theory that dangerous materials were exported to Syria or elsewhere.
Mr. Kay's retirement from his post last week and appearance before a U.S. Senate committee and TV talk hosts this week has provided the occasion for a provisional reckoning of the issue. The whole truth has yet to emerge but its shape is now discernible. And what seems to have happened is far more ludicrous than anyone on any side of the controversy ever anticipated (except partially Lee Harris in an Internet column last Sept. 9th).
For -- wait for it -- Saddam himself did not know he lacked weapons of mass destruction. The analyses of documents interrogations and searches conducted by Mr. Kay's teams paint the most extraordinary picture of a regime that had self-compressed into a general state of paranoid psychosis around the same key year of 1998 and functioned like an unstaffed mental asylum.
Saddam put himself personally in charge of all the weapons programs and trusting no one except the people running them for him allowed them to pocket huge amounts of oil money for projects that never bore any fruit. Copious hypothetical plans were drawn up and again and again the Kay teams found the paper equivalent of a "smoking gun" only to be unable to pair it with real-life evidence. That was because Saddam's weapons programs -- except for some progress in illicit missile-making -- existed only on paper.
The result was every senior person in Saddam's regime sincerely believed that while he did not himself have access to "WMD" almost everyone else had. Indeed as the invasion progressed many captured officers in the Iraqi Army and Republican Guard declared that chemical or biological weapons had been deployed to the commanders on either side of them but not to themselves. And it seems that Saddam himself actually ordered the deployment of the WMD he did not have as the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division marched north from Kuwait. It was a shell game all right but the pea had been lost.
Western intelligence reports are therefore easy to explain for they depended entirely on intercepted communications easily-misinterpreted satellite pictures and the reports of Iraqi defectors. All these sources tended to confirm that the Iraqi regime was trying to hide big things; none could guess it was trying to hide big things that didn't exist. For even if Saddam had the fondest inkling what was up he would still not have come clean with Hans Blix or George Bush for he needed to maintain the illusion of being lethally armed in order to keep his own people scared into submission to aggrandize himself as leader of the Arab world and in his own strange little mind to persuade the U.S. and Britain that he could inflict too many casualties to make a war against him worth having.
Strange but true. Having myself been convinced (as also Mr. Kay was convinced until quite recently as also almost every pacifist was convinced who warned that an Iraq war would lead directly to Armageddon) -- that Saddam had what he and we thought he had I'm in a position to show a little sympathy to the Western intelligence agencies who made the same mistake. They had no agents in position within the regime and they will take a lot of criticism for that failure from people including me.
But to be fair even if they had had a few agents on the inside they would probably have come to the same mistaken conclusions: for no such hypothetical agents would have been in a position to see the whole picture. It would have taken a reckless as well as ingenious leap to bet a million lives on the proposition that Saddam was not in reality seriously armed and dangerous (and could have been pushed over with a fraction of the force).
For think it through and you immediately see that the Iraqi defectors were not trying to mislead anyone either. Many had heard very plausible stories and some had actually worked in the paper part of the WMD programmes. The intercepted communications likewise tended to confirm that much was happening. And the experience of the past especially in the years 1991 through 1995 was of an Iraq which then did have real and fairly impressive weapons programs was in fact concealing them did in fact get caught repeatedly and did in fact own up only when it was caught.
Unnoticed to the gliberal media in North America Mr. Kay's reports have cleared the Bush administration of the charge of "sexing up" threat assessments in the same way Lord Hutton's inquiry into the suicide of David Kelly have cleared Tony Blair. It is clear as day after both inquiries that the respective governments acted sincerely upon intelligence assessments that were as disturbing as they were wrong. Moreover they could only be proved wrong because of the invasion of Iraq. Had that not taken place Mr. Kay's massive search for the truth under every discoverable desk and rock would have been impossible.

David Warren

 

[AnnaG]

Yeah, I've seen papers that conflict with Warren's, though.

John Chapman: The real reasons Bush went to war | World news | The Guardian

The real reasons America is invading Iraq - theage.com.au

WMDs & The "Axis of Evil":

The <I>real</I> reason for invading Iraq

But, perhaps Dumbya did really think there were WMDs in Iraq and it was simply intelligence failure (seemingly a common problem). How about the other excuses like the one about going after Bin Laden? According to this bit, the inasion was to appease Bin Laden, not go after him:

(DV) Amr: Invading Iraq to Appease Bin Laden