Obama's Rhetoric is the Real Catastrophe
 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123457303244386495.html

Pretty optimistic article regarding the economy... definitely made me think. It does seem as though people are making this seem like a much bigger deal than it is which decreases consumer confidence and eventually hurts the economy even worse then it should.

I don't watch or listen to his speeches. People gassed him up as some great orator and it has gotten way out of hand.

I wish they could make him do Powerpoint presentations with the main points and less rhetoric and dramatic speech.

Geesh.

Anybody who says that this is, or is going to be, equivalent to the Great Depression clearly isn't paying attention. At the same time, an important fact to keep in mind is that we aren't at the worst point of this particular recession yet, so it's useless to be comparing statistics right now. This recession will certainly last longer than the one in '81-82, and numbers are probably going to continue getting worse. (It's still too early to see which will end up worse than the '81-82 statistics and which ones won't.) Recovery will probably take longer too. A lot of the problems contributing to our current recession are more complicated than those in previous ones, and will require more intensive fixes in order to avoid long-term damage to the economy--and in that sense, it has more in common with the Great Depression than, say, the recession of the early 80s. But they'll be thematically similar, not similar in degree.

Especially if the press and the administration keep telling us they will.

Things are not good. Further nationalizing - first banks, now medical records, and whatever's next - and government pork are not the answer. But they can't get the American people to bow down without convincing those taxpayers there is nothing else to do.

LOL It's funny when hateration rears its ugly head.

Just glancing at the article, I really hope they are not accusing Obama of fearmongering. Certainly not after this last administration...Not to mention that people all across the board have been saying the same thing they are accusing him of saying. Why try to single him out? Hypocritical much?

Good job.

There's enough fearmongering to go around. This is an article about politics (and the media) and the presentation of the current economic recession, as well the historical comparisons being made. Obama is the current POTUS who is making a lot of statements to the American public. So this article would be about him.

Were the same things being said and written before he became POTUS? Yes. Have other people made several statements to the American public concerning this economy? Yes. So this isn't unique to him.

Good grief, some Obama supporters are way too sensitive.

People think the game has changed just because Obama is POTUS. Presidents are almost never the first and only one to say things. The same goes for many of the things Bush was blamed for. Being POTUS means that you have a powerful and unique platform. Presidents' words and actions are scrutinized much more because they have a much bigger impact. That's how it has always been so Obama doesn't get treated with kiddie gloves.

Don't you think the scale is unique to him?

Perhaps.

However BO was elected on his profound message of change. Not being Bush is not good enough any more.

How are medical records being nationalized?

LOL, it's cute when people chalk up criticism of their favorite politician as "hateration." There are lots of smart, well-educated people who disagree with certain things Obama has done, and who aren't big fans of his policies. That's not "hateration," it's life.

When the person you support gets elected, you kind of have to realize that he's going to be open to criticism. As noted, he's being singled out because he's the President...."the buck stops here" and all of that good stuff. Just because you support the guy's policies and statements doesn't mean everyone else does

Also, as Cooramor noted, just because he's "not Bush" doesn't all of a sudden make everything he does positive. At some point a Presidency has to stand on its own, not in comparison to the work of others.

Exactly. Every President has members of Congress, political pundits, and experts in the various fields who agree with his policies and vocally support them. But, at the end of the day, if people have concerns, or if things don't work out, it's not the political pundits, experts, or even members of Congress who will get the brunt of the criticism or blame; it's going to be the President.

??

I was more commenting on the office of President (specifically the current sitting President) . . . actually I think we more agree than disagree, so I have no clue about the "however" portion, or how this affects the specific topic in the OP. I'm confused.

Where is this point? Is it before the first 30 days that a presidency should stand on its own? Not many presidencies stand on their own and not in comparison to others. Obama/Bush. Bush/Clinton. etc. Those that do stand on their own (and even these are debatable) are typically Presidencies that happened during extreme situations. (ex: Lincoln & FDR)


FEAR MONGERING: spreading discreditable, misrepresentative information designed to induce fear and apprehension.

^ This is the definition of fear mongering that I usually use. As per this definition I would not claim that President Obama is a fear mongerer. The information he has spread about the economy is not particularly discreditable nor is it misrepresentative of the situation. The purpose of telling the American people about the economy doesn't seem to be to induce fear. It seems to be to increase the spread of information and to educate the general public. As far as the great depression goes. It is possible. The great depression happened because of a stock market crash and because the American people withdrew from the financial sector. If, today, people started to withdraw all of their money from the banks, the credit system fails, the dollar becomes worthless that would cause great depression # 2. Though it may seem farfetched and scary to many people the fact of the matter is that the dollar only has value because we think/say it does. If enough people are unemployed and have lost trust in the "system" we could see a major failure. Pointing this fact out isn't trying to incite fear. It's trying to keep history from repeating itself. At the current rate I do not believe that the American people will lose faith in or stop trusting the "system", but that does not matter much if these people have no money and no understanding of what is going on. Worst case=Great depression. Best Case=Happiness and free rainbows for all!

I agree with your point to a certain extent, and I should have clarified my own point a bit better. You're correct in that, in many ways, Presidencies are judged based on comparisons to others; how did this President deal with this situation as opposed to previous Presidents, etc.

My main point is that what you hear from some Obama supporters is "Well, you can't criticize Pres. Obama because Pres. Bush was terrible." I think that's where the comparisons have to stop; we can't give Obama a free pass because of the perceived shortcomings of the Bush presidency.

Really, no one can criticize President Obama because it hasn't even been a GOOD month yet and to judge now based on a few weeks in office I think is a sad mistake.

To be quite frank, even 'the First 100 days" at this point with what we have to dig ourselves out of is not a good enough of a measuring stick to judge where this is going and we are in quite a different position than what we were in when Bush first took office.

I honestly believe it will take a year before anyone can adequately gauge where Obama's presidency will stand.

And I agree no free passes but being negative just for the sake of being negative is a mistake also.

Frankly, anybody can criticize Obama any time they want and that's the beauty of free speech. Isn't it great that people can disagree and criticize our leader without fear of being tossed in jail?

I don't expect most Republicans to like or agree with Obama most of the time and it's cool with me if they want to verbally express that it in a mature way.

Ok...so, then does it follow that it's too early to say he's doing a good job as well? There are posters who have applauded his early moves (regarding the stimulus, abortion, etc.). If it's too early to criticize, it's probably too early to start patting him on the back as well, correct?

I agree that, to judge his Presidency as a whole, we need to wait. I'll even give you that we can't say whether his measures will be ultimately be successes or failures. But I don't see a problem with preliminary applause or criticism for something like the stimulus bill, or for the public face he's put on the issues through his news conferences.

ETA: Not everyone's being negative just to be negative; people have real problems with the stimulus bill, and his early approach to the economic crisis, for a variety of reasons.

Agreed, whole heartedly...I have applauded SOME of what he has done right now but I won't be the first one to say **think back to the Lexus Christmas commercial** He is the BEST President.......EVER.

This is why I said we have to give it time before we have a handle on the OVERALL job.

Signing a few bills and reversing some of the former admin. bills doesn't mean shyte to the overall job performance.

It's just like a relationship, in the early part, they do everything right and say the words we all want to hear but in the back of our minds we have to be vigilant because sometimes years later those things do not hold up and people change....heh

It's not just the stimulus bill that people have problems with....and well...no need to run down that ball of wax again, suffice to say some people hate Obama just because, and let's just leave it at that.

Kisg...that reminds me, peep this: Historians Rank the Presidents

The hypocrisy of FANS of presidents
 

Yep. We all have to sit on the fence until some obscure moment in time. :)

That would make sense IF the presidency had a grace period. It doesn't. We won't know the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of policies yet but we know some of what happens at the front end.

And, technically, the effectiveness of many administrations' policies can't be assessed in terms of effectiveness until years later, sometimes after that president is out of office. It's just like the effectiveness of other social policies and programs. You can't assume they were effective and you can't assess the effectiveness too soon.

And some people LIKE Obama just because.

Just saying. :D

Maybe she's referring to electronic medical recordkeeping? If so, she should know that that's something many people in the medical community have been wanting for quite a long time. It's not only an efficiency/money saving issue, but it's a huge safety issue as well. Do you realize that right now, people can go from hospital to hospital with no trace of which drugs they may be taking or which procedures and conditions they've had in the past? It's a great way to enable prescription drug abuse. Furthermore, if you were taken to the ER, unconscious, the medical team these days might have no idea which medications you were taking, which drugs you might be allergic to, whether you've had your spleen removed, etc. By keeping medical records in one database, doctors attending to you whereever you may be know your medical history, which just might save your life. Of course, there are security issues that need to be addressed with such a system (we don't want people hacking into it), but overall the idea is sound, I think.

Right!

I saw the Yahoo story, pretty interesting. It's on par with what one of my college professors (Robert Dallek) always said, as he consistently mentioned FDR, Truman and Lincoln. I personally think FDR gets way too much credit, and people gloss over some of the serious issues with FDR as a President, but that's a whole other discussion...

I completely agree that it takes a number of years to assess a President's legacy as a whole. Part of this is the time it takes to release the Presidential papers, and part of it is that certain high level decisions don't take full and final affect for a number of years. We won't be able to fairly evaluate the Obama presidency, as a whole, for many years, and I agree it's premature to even start that discussion.

That said - I don't see anyone here saying that he's the "WORST PRESIDENT EVER!" People have concerns about some of his decisions regarding economics, and while time will tell whether those decisions are correct, I see no issue with people criticizing those individual decisions now. If it's ok to applaud some of what he's done now, then should be ok to criticize some of it.

I wondered about that, too (and remembered that George Bush was advocating it before Barack Obama), but I haven't heard any proposal about EMR that could accurately be described as "nationalization" of medical records. Have I missed that part?

This is why I had such a huge problem when people like Limbaugh and the ilk just straight came out and said I hope he fails.

It had a lot of sore loser saltiness attributed to it.

I mean no matter whether you like a *new* POTUS or not, instead of hoping for abject failure, it's best to just hope that they do well enough to not affect your bottom line.

No matter how much I disliked Bush, I was hoping somewhere somehow that he would do some things to not come off as a complete and abject failure, but in my eyes, it never happened but I didn't sit back and WISH him to fail.

Be nonplussed and unsympathizing yes...hope for failure...no.


That is an issue that we as citizens especially those that are not used to being in that position has to understand how to take. As they say, "When given lemons, make lemonade."

As we have said so many times already, it's way too early to tell how things are going to talk about it's going to turn out.

Another report I was trying to find is how NOW critics of Clinton are all over him stating that his economic decisions from his administration are the reason why we are where we are today.

It seems like everyone wants to point fingers of blame instead of doing something about it. Sure, we can go back and blame Bush and Clinton and Congress that met back then on things that are happening now but it's not like we can force them to change what is as it is.

What we have to deal with is what this present admin has the ability to do in the present day to fix at least a part of it.

It's cute when people don't realize that some of us actually can read between the lines and discern the difference between legitimate criticism and hateration. I don't think I ever said that criticism of Obama is automatically hateration. When the criticisms are objective and focus on the actual policy issues, it is more likely that the criticism is honest, legitimate criticism. Comments that are subjective in nature and hinge on personal attributes tend to lean more towards being hateration.

Also, I don't recall anyone saying that because he's not Bush, everything he does is positive. And a presidency can stand on its own, but also must stand in comparison to others.

Ksigkid, this type of criticism comes off as hateration and sour grapes. If someone feels he isn't a great speaker, that's their opinion, but to express it in this way, to this extent...that speaks to something else.

Not if you've actually paid attention to the content of DrPhil's posts.

What "else" does it mean, past the stated point of "the speeches have too much rhetoric and I'd prefer the points distilled"?

As much as I like the concept, I reserve the right to make shit up (including words) in support of any and all of my future arguments, so I'll have to move to table this proposal.

Second that motion...only because if I'm posting after getting home from class at 11 pm, or, worse, at 2 in the morning after hours of studying, I'm likely to include some words in my postings that don't make a whole lot of sense.

My motion did not include all made up words, only "hateration" (mainly because it has been overused, and it's becoming annoying)

...case in point:

pick a flavor everybody!!


http://phillyist.com/attachments/phi...l/haterade.jpg

consent...

I can't find a polite way to tell deepimpact to shut up.

ASTalumna did a pretty good job. :)

On an ALLEGEDLY less subjective and haterationalistic note, I appreciate the fact that the 787 billion stimulus package has been signed into law.

And, luckily for me, 1) I didn't have to hear him talk about it and 2) there is this website (http://www.recovery.gov/) that SHOWS Americans where the money is going without all the colorful language and hooplahas. See..... Rock on!

Obama is good for some websites.

More websites. Less hateration and holleration in this dancerie.