The State of the Union Address

[galacticmonkey 5,000+ posts]

@ one time this summer i spent $1.41 a gallon for gas
with bush i was paying $4.00 a gallon for gas

So whats your point? You think that Bush set the gas price at $4+/gallon? No. The government doesnt set prices.

If your problem is with energy prices, what about cap and trade? If Obama passes that, your energy bills will go up by $4,000 yearly. On top of that, EVERYTHING will cost more, as every business has to make up for the costs that they will incur by this bill passing.

 

[theMessenjah44 10+ year member]

Look at what other countries are paying for gas....$4/gallon is relatively cheap.

 

[galacticmonkey 5,000+ posts]

My point is, at least he's trying. He's brave enough to stand up to us and do what he can to pull us out of this depression. Bush was basically flying blind, I can honestly compare bush to a monkey.

Trying? This is the United States of America. Trying doesnt cut it. We need results.

And Bush was flying blind? He cut taxes which created jobs which gets us out of this slump. All Obama does is spend spend spend money on jobs bills, bailouts, buying companies, paying off bank CEOs and paying off senators to vote for his bills.

Bushs economic policy was pretty crappy, but Obama takes the cake.

 

[galacticmonkey 5,000+ posts]

Look at what other countries are paying for gas....$4/gallon is relatively cheap.

Exactly. Even at the highest price we ever hit, its still about 1/2 the price of the world wide average.

 

[Rmsanger 10+ year member]

To be honest all it was to me was just words. He gives some many good speeches and has so many updates/townhall meetings throughout the year that the state of union really is just another speech.

I heard very little substance last night and just high generalities when it comes to policies.

 

[Ohioguy 10+ year member]

you don't have a say in anything political. you know why? because you blame the government for crude oil prices. you obviously are uneducated. your post is 110% untrue. idgaf who youre for. bush, obama, dead kennedy's.... you need to get your facts straight before you begin to even think about posting something that has a debate stand point in politics.

 

[versatilechild 10+ year member]

gas prices are higher in other countries because unlike our lazy *****, many people in other nations carpool, ride bikes, scooters, walk, or use public transportation. were too good to do all that....lol

 

[denim 5,000+ posts]

I loved how he did a great job of pointing the finger at congress and Bush any chance he could. I wish him all the success possible, but in different approaches to the problems he is trying to attack. Based on the speech last night, health care seems to have gone to the way side, and he is going back to jobs. The funny part about that is the two stimulus bills meant for creating or saving jobs, that have been spent, were wildly unsuccessful so he is asking for another spending bill for jobs......

 

[Enellz 10+ year member]

I just want him to create jobs within our infrastructure, bridge building, rail and etc. Make jobs to where they can't be exported because of cheap labor, and get people to start using cold hard cash again instead of credit. To where we can sustain the country from within, instead of relying on imports. Americans are lazy, point blank. We lack leadership and convidence. We're an external country. I just hope he suceeds because this recession shit isn't cool son.

 

[audioholic 5,000+ posts]

I agree our infrastructure needs a lot of help, but that alone wont bring us out of this recession. In a global economy, we cant expect to maintain a self-sufficient economy of our own by simply building roads and bridges. We need to rebuild our manufacturing base we've let trickle out of this country and into places like China and India. The value of the dollar versus the Yen etc is a big problem in overcoming this, but ignoring that problem wont make it go away. In a world where 5 American dollars a day (or less) is a good wage in other countries, we have big big problems. The US govt printing more money for personal political success only exacerbates the problem, and ignoring that fact is merely rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

We are letting our politicians destroy this country for their own personal gain. They are too blind to see it cant continue forever, and we are too blind to see they are doing it. Yes, lets vote in a Democrat or Republican based on a campaign of "change"... maybe merely switching popular parties next election will make some real progress, unlike the last eleventy billion times we've accepted that rhetoric. Hey, maybe a gay Asian Republican with good public speaking skills spouting 'change' next election will really set us in a whole new direction... right? Sheople.

 

[denim 5,000+ posts]

I agree our infrastructure needs a lot of help, but that alone wont bring us out of this recession. In a global economy, we cant expect to maintain a self-sufficient economy of our own by simply building roads and bridges. We need to rebuild our manufacturing base we've let trickle out of this country and into places like China and India. The value of the dollar versus the Yen etc is a big problem in overcoming this, but ignoring that problem wont make it go away. In a world where 5 American dollars a day is a good wage in other countries, we have big big problems. The US govt printing more money for political success only exacerbates the problem, and ignoring that fact is merely rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
We are letting our politicians destroy this country for their own personal gain. They are too blind to see it cant continue forever, and we are too blind to see they are doing it. Yes, lets vote in a Democrat or Republican based on a campaign of "change"... maybe merely switching popular parties next election will make some real progress, unlike the last 11ty billion times we've accepted that rhetoric. Hey, maybe a gay Asian Republican with good public speaking skills spouting 'change' next election will really set us in a whole new direction... right? Sheople.

Very well said. Can I be the band leader? //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wink.gif.608e3ea05f1a9f98611af0861652f8fb.gif

 

[audioholic 5,000+ posts]

Very well said. Can I be the band leader? //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wink.gif.608e3ea05f1a9f98611af0861652f8fb.gif

Its just so exhausting to see so many people expect any real change from a politician from one of the two same popular parties who have run this country into the dirt for decades. He's black, so what. He's a good public speaker, so what. He's still playing the same game by the same rules as all the other politicians. Its going to take this country falling down around its own ankles before people wake up and kick the bums out, apparently.

 

[denim 5,000+ posts]

Its just so exhausting to see so many people expect any real change from a politician from one of the two same popular parties who have run this country into the dirt for decades. He's black, so what. He's a good public speaker, so what. He's still playing the same game by the same rules as all the other politicians. Its going to take this country falling down around its own ankles before people wake up and kick the bums out, apparently.

I saw a great picture the other day, but did not save it. It was a huge check list called "How's That Change Working For You?" And it was a listing in two columns of Bush and Obama, with all the things Bush did and Obama extended or expanded.

 

[audioholic 5,000+ posts]

I saw a great picture the other day, but did not save it. It was a huge check list called "How's That Change Working For You?" And it was a listing in two columns of Bush and Obama, with all the things Bush did and Obama extended or expanded.

They are two sides of the same coin. We need a whole new coin. But when you have black people praising the day they dont have to pay rent anymore because a black man was elected president, or a white person claiming their newly elected leader will 'save God' in this country, the problem isn't going to go away. We, as a nation, need to wake up and see we are feeding those corrupt vultures in D.C. everything they want. Change? From a Republican or Democrat? Riiiiight.

 

[ahole-ic]

First of all, to all of you saying you hope he improves the economy... Denim already said it pretty well but HE WON'T. obama is a far leftist.He believes that temporary government spending can create jobs and get the economy going.

ANY ECONOMIST can tell you that this cannot work. You can figure it out too if you think about it.

The government receives a portion of our paychecks in the form of taxes. It's a certain percentage. It's about 33% for me.

The recession started with the housing industry. LOTS of people were given loans that they could not afford to pay back and the bank foreclosed on them. This caused the banks to be sitting with depreciating assets and no way to sell them. Under normal circumstances, the banks would have filed bankruptcy and gone to bankruptcy court. Bankruptcy does not mean you go out of business. It means your assets are frozen and your debtors are shit out of luck because you do not have to pay them. They can go into what is called "restructuring". They must submit the changes they will make to the judge and he will legally wipe their debt. They will come back out of bankruptcy but with a better plan. In this particular scenario, the "Community Reinvestment Act" required banks to give low or 0 money down loans, to people with poor credit or no credit history checks. This allowed poor people to move into a home and have a really low rate under their "arm" or adjustable rate mortgage. The federal reserve chairmen had been artificially lowering interest rates so those "arms" were very affordable. Unfortunately the interest rates came up a little and people's "arm"s did too. This caused them to not be able to afford them and the banks had to foreclose... IN HUGE numbers.

Congress decided the banks were "too big to fail". They used your tax dollars to artificially prop up the banks. This did not repeal the legislation that caused the problem in the first place but rather just threw money at the problem. It has failed and to divert your attention from it, they have tried to get you angry at the CEO's of these companies getting bonuses. Why would you get mad at the CEO's when they wouldn't have been ABLE to get bonuses if the government hadn't given them YOUR money? The very people trying to anger you at the CEO's are the ones who gave YOUR money that the CEO's received. You should NOT be mad at the CEO's. They should have been allowed to enter bankruptcy and restructure. The government should have repealed the CRA. The housing mess wouldn't have immediately corrected, but as we have seen, NOTHING can immediately correct the housing market. It must be allowed to run its course, not artificially injected with our money and allowed to remain at the status quo only to fail even BIGGER at a later date. They just prolonged the inevitable.

Next, we have spent money to stimulate the economy in much the same way. The government took our tax dollars and set it aside with no stipulations other than "stimulus". They did a little roadwork here and there. They claimed it would be transparent and there would be a website you could go to see where the money went. To this date there is no such site and no transparency. The roadwork that was supposed to "create and save jobs" went to state employees that would have a job regardless. It neither created nor saved jobs. The stimulus remains largely unspent and is actually just an executive branch slush fund.

The government intervening in everything like this is defined as socialism. We warned you about obama. He has failed in everything he has done. Last night he still blamed Bush and congress for everything. Bush has been out for over a year and it came out that once elected, obama was running the show within a few weeks to "transition". So obama has had plenty of time. He has signed plenty of bills, spent more money, and caused more harm than any president since fdr. He is plunging us deeper into this recession while lying and saying we're coming out. We're showing no signs of recovery but he is doing one thing. He is causing more and more Americans to see democrats for what they truly are and there is a SURGE to the right. Economics simply prove Conservatism to be the only way to prosper. obama is doing a great job of proving that his ideas are bad. They have been tried and failed over several centuries. Conservatism and capitalism have been tried and proven successful over the centuries. We need to get back to them if we want to recover.

The government keeps saying they want to spend tax dollars to get us out there and spending again. That is backwards. Take less of my paycheck so I have more to spend. THEN I will get out there and start spending. This is tried and true.