President Obama gives himself a B-plus grade

[min0 lee]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_obama_oprah

Sun Dec 13, 11:43 pm ET
WASHINGTON ??? President Barack Obama, in an interview that aired Sunday, gave himself "a good solid B-plus" grade for his first year in office.
Speaking with fellow Chicagoan Oprah Winfrey, the president claimed progress on economic and international fronts.
Obama said the only thing that stands in the way of giving himself a better grade is the fact that some elements of his agenda ??? health care reform and putting more Americans to work ??? remain undone.
"The biggest burden on me right now is that economic growth has happened, but job growth has not happened," Obama told Winfrey on the ABC special.
On the plus side, Obama said, "We are on our way out of Iraq." And, he added, "I think we've got the best possible plan for Afghanistan."

 

[NeilPearson]

I give him a solid d-

The only reason it isn't lower is I do feel he is a good figure head for international relations.

His proposed health care is a joke.

His spending makes Bush look frugal.

His claim there has been economical growth is laughable. Pumping trillions into the economy will fudge the numbers for a while but I wouldn't call it real growth.

 

[dave 236]

I give him a D. The only reason it's not an F is he called Kanye West a Jackass.

 

[Dale Mabry]

I give him a C, he hasn't done anything remarkable, and we haven't fallen in to fiscal limbo yet. In fact, we are better off than we were when he came in. I would be very surprised to see this grade go up, though. The fact that he is trying to re-spend the money we printed up boggles my mind.

 

[T_man]

I give him an A*. He has roots in Kenya

 

[min0 lee]

I give him an A*. He has roots in Kenya

 

[lnvanry]

C-

He hasn't followed through on his promises
-Close GITMO
-Withdraw from Iraq
-Pass Effective Health Care Bill
-Create clean energy initiative

He hasn't improved much of anything IMHO...He's made things worse economically over the long term by creating another bubble.

He has improved foreign relations but thats about it...and soft power doesn't say much for so many of his fellow Americans unemployment.

 

[dave 236]

We are on a forum dedicated to people striving for personal excellance.We have people in this country that do not understand how important that is.There are people who are tired of being on the bottom,but do not want to put any effort into getting better so they want the government to bring everyone else down so they don't feel so shitty about themselves.Obama and Bush too to an extent pander to these people.By promising to take from them and give to us they try to potentiate power and stay elected.The way to help anyone is to inspire everyone to strive to be better,and QUIT believing you are victims.Until then it will just get worse

 

[Dale Mabry]

We are on a forum dedicated to people striving for personal excellance.We have people in this country that do not understand how important that is.There are people who are tired of being on the bottom,but do not want to put any effort into getting better so they want the government to bring everyone else down so they don't feel so shitty about themselves.Obama and Bush too to an extent pander to these people.By promising to take from them and give to us they try to potentiate power and stay elected.The way to help anyone is to inspire everyone to strive to be better,and QUIT believing you are victims.Until then it will just get worse

You can't possibly believe this. You do realize at one point that school lunches and college loans were considered "Socialist Programs". You can't crucify the 95% of people who follow the rules and use the system to their advantage because 5% of them abuse it. Although I think no one would mind if the gov't did it's job and made sure people weren't abusing the system.

 

[dave 236]

I don't accept the idea that only 5% of the people are abusing the system. I think every day a whole new bunch of people are being convinced that they have no hope of being anything or getting anywhere without govt intervention. I,m not against giving anyone a hand up. I am,however against that hand up turning into a never ending way to get people to vote for you because the othe side will take it all away

 

[KelJu]

We are on a forum dedicated to people striving for personal excellance.We have people in this country that do not understand how important that is.There are people who are tired of being on the bottom,but do not want to put any effort into getting better so they want the government to bring everyone else down so they don't feel so shitty about themselves.Obama and Bush too to an extent pander to these people.By promising to take from them and give to us they try to potentiate power and stay elected.The way to help anyone is to inspire everyone to strive to be better,and QUIT believing you are victims.Until then it will just get worse

Ha, you sound so much like me in my younger days. Let me ask you this, do those people magically become better once you cut off assistance? If you cut off assistance to those who really need it, you make things so much worse. I would imagine that if I came from a welfare family with nothing else to lose, I would have no problem cheating the system as much as possible.

Those people aren't just going to say "Well they cut off my welfare, I guess I'll get a job at McDonalds now" They will resort to crime. They will continue a life of ignorance, crime, and poverty. Poverty breeds poverty. Turning your back on the poor will come back on you three fold. The deal is, you either pay now, or pay with interest later.

The attitude of "I got mine, so fuck you" is toxic to a nation. Anyway, politicians don't pander to the poor. They pander to campaign contributors, and lobbyist. Maybe your news outlet has convinced you that the poor welfare mothers of America are what is dragging the nation down. Well, it isn't as simple as that. Rising health care cost, old fuck baby boomers, and dropping bombs is what hurts our budget so much. Defense, medicare/medicaid, and social security made up more than 70% of the budget back in 2004. I have no idea what it is now, probably pretty close to the same.

The social programs like Dale is talking about: welfare, pell-grants, student loans, school lunches, ect, make up less than 5% of the budget.

I'll put it in other terms. Without my student loan, I wouldn't have had enough money for college, and I would not be an educated productive member of society. That safety net was just enough to help me get there, and the rest came from working the entire time. It was enough help to keep me going. Welfare benefits might be just enough to keep many single moms off the street and out of prostitution. It might be enough to help a young male stay out of a life of crime. You can spend some money now to help people, or you can pay much more later incarcerating them later.

I think your anger is misdirected, and your facts are mixed up.

 

[GFR]

My stock is still down 30% so I give him a Fyou.

 

[mcguin]

Ha, you sound so much like me in my younger days. Let me ask you this, do those people magically become better once you cut off assistance? If you cut off assistance to those who really need it, you make things so much worse. I would imagine that if I came from a welfare family with nothing else to lose, I would have no problem cheating the system as much as possible.

Those people aren't just going to say "Well they cut off my welfare, I guess I'll get a job at McDonalds now" They will resort to crime. They will continue a life of ignorance, crime, and poverty. Poverty breeds poverty. Turning your back on the poor will come back on you three fold. The deal is, you either pay now, or pay with interest later.

The attitude of "I got mine, so fuck you" is toxic to a nation. Anyway, politicians don't pander to the poor. They pander to campaign contributors, and lobbyist. Maybe your news outlet has convinced you that the poor welfare mothers of America are what is dragging the nation down. Well, it isn't as simple as that. Rising health care cost, old fuck baby boomers, and dropping bombs is what hurts our budget so much. Defense, medicare/medicaid, and social security made up more than 70% of the budget back in 2004. I have no idea what it is now, probably pretty close to the same.

The social programs like Dale is talking about: welfare, pell-grants, student loans, school lunches, ect, make up less than 5% of the budget.

I'll put it in other terms. Without my student loan, I wouldn't have had enough money for college, and I would not be an educated productive member of society. That safety net was just enough to help me get there, and the rest came from working the entire time. It was enough help to keep me going. Welfare benefits might be just enough to keep many single moms off the street and out of prostitution. It might be enough to help a young male stay out of a life of crime. You can spend some money now to help people, or you can pay much more later incarcerating them later.

I think your anger is misdirected, and your facts are mixed up.

The only thing I'm going to say is I dont consider student loans to be a social program, you're borrowing money from private banks. If you receive federal loans, thats to be considered "social", since the money the government lends you is taxpaying money.

 

[Dale Mabry]

The only thing I'm going to say is I dont consider student loans to be a social program, you're borrowing money from private banks. If you receive federal loans, thats to be considered "social", since the money the government lends you is taxpaying money.

They are currently privatizing school loans, but when I went to college 90% of the loans given were federally funded because they didn't require a co-signer and typically had acceptable interest rates. Without the Federal school loan program, private lenders would have never entered the market. Regardless, 60% of graduates from a 4 year program borrow federal money, so you have to count that as a significant social program.

I wonder if people realize that less than 4% of the population is on full-blown welfare, so if 50% of that group were abusing the system (It's probably less than 10%), that means 2% of the entire US population is abusing welfare. Doesn't seem like a very large chunk of change to be concerned with, you certainly wouldn't want to punish the 98% of the population because of it. The logic behind this is that if you take it away no one can abuse it, but that makes as much sense as closing all department stores because there is shoplifting, or banning guns because criminals use them. It's funny how the same rationale can be used for one party's principle but against another party's. I know it's a big GOP talking point, but welfare abuse is a lot more rare than they make it out to be.

 

[KelJu]

The only thing I'm going to say is I dont consider student loans to be a social program, you're borrowing money from private banks. If you receive federal loans, thats to be considered "social", since the money the government lends you is taxpaying money.

I am not concerned with what you consider it to be. The fact is, student loans are social programs. The federal government subsidizes the interest of the loan for those who qualify. That potentially racks up to thousands per person who qualifies.

 

[T_man]

 

[danzik17]

I don't understand this railing against all public welfare programs as socialist and anti-American anyway. Have you people actually read the Constitution? Perhaps section 8 specifically?

The real issue at hand is that all social programs rely on a constant growth of both population and cash supply (inflation). If you don't have those, then the programs are not sustainable. Since the baby boomer generation is now retiring, we simply do not have enough young people in the workforce to be able to cover the needed expenses, especially since the government has been dipping their greasy hands into the trust funds that were intended for medicare and social security for the general fund.

It doesn't help that wages have been relatively stagnant whereas other costs (healthcare, fuel, food, etc) have skyrocketed. We need to address these issues now while we still have the ability to. If we wait until the crisis comes, we simply won't have the money or credit to be able to help the population. For reference, the interest on our public debt was 383 BILLION dollars last year. The only reason it was even that "low" was because rates are absurdly low. It's not unreasonable to see the day within 2-3 years that we are paying upwards of 600 BILLION dollars in INTEREST. If we don't address that one issue now, the country as a whole will only be able to afford to pay the interest within a couple of decades.

 

[maniclion]

My Social Program is based on what the Native Americans and many other tribal communities did/do, take young men out to the deep forest to have a vision and then find their way back to the tribe, if they don't make it back they are too dumb or lazy to be worthy to the tribe, also take your old folks out there and if they make it back they are healthy enough to not be a burden.....

Wait, then will have a forest full of lost dipshits and senile old farts, that won't make hiking fun....let's scrap that whole plan and instead take them to Africa....

 

[lnvanry]

I am not concerned with what you consider it to be. The fact is, student loans are social programs. The federal government subsidizes the interest of the loan for those who qualify. That potentially racks up to thousands per person who qualifies.

The gov't ONLY subsidizes some loans (un sub stafford) and those are only subsidized while the student is in school full time.

Its a 4 profit system...the Dept of Ed originates the loans from the FED. Its not a social program, although its not a high profit rate business.

 

[T_man]

It's an insane amount of money if it wasn't to be paid back though. 440,000 a year x £9.5k x 3 years average university would be 12 billion pounds a year drained into the universities and not all of them would make up for the money they took away. It's going to be higher in the US. It's not viable to be non-pay back. Besides it helps the economy.