Obama has failed. Badly.

I just read on the news that the new GOP strategy is to blame Obama for gas prices in 2012.  You must have read it too and are now doing your part.  The only problem is that Obama has very little if nothing to do with gas prices.  I'm pretty sure that it's the oil companies that are "gouging" at the pump.  The oil companies will not let the solar power or wind power industries get off the ground and you think that they aren't going to stand in the way of bio-fuel?

The newly weakened regulations in place this year allows for Goldman Sachs to own 25% of all the oil on the market.  When the prices were last really high, 80%+ of the available contracts were bought up by just 2 firms.  I'm sure this is all a coincidence though.  Something something free market.

If people are reacting to Obama's lack of accomplishment by either voting for a Republican (ANY of the Republicans now still trying to get their party's candidacy) or are going to stay home on election day because they can't bare to vote for anyone,  then we need to get a different, more effective Democratic candidate ASAP, or we are screwed.  That is just the sad truth at this point. 

If the politicians would have taken energy seriously when President Carter brought it up many years ago we might not be in the current situation we're in. But just like now the same players just laugh it off while they keep right on screwing us at the pump and any other way they can.

I'll be the first to go out on a limb here and say I think it's time we considered nationalizing the whole frickin energy industry within our reach. Just as the economy shows signs of improving these bastards are raising their prices while at the same time they are selling off excess fuel to other countries. If that isn't giving us a good old fashion screwing I don't know what is.

Side note. Expect gas to hit $4.25 / gallon in April, and $5.00 over the summer.

Generally, rigel, I have attempted to engage with you as an intellectual equal but this comment and your most recent posts on education have sealed in my mind that you are not a very bright person at all...

What this thread comes down to is that rigel is trying to say Obama has "failed" by basing his analysis on a single issue.  Conservatives may be single issue voters but progressives generally are not.

1.  Osama Bin Laden is dead.

2.  We are out of Iraq.

3.  The economy is improving.  Almost a year of positive job growth in the private sector and unemployment is down.

4.  Lybia was liberated.

5.  Don't ask don't tell was repealed.

6.  Massive Health Care Reform was passed which included the removal of preexisting conditions and allowed people to keep their children on health insurance longer.

7.  New regulations on creditors are making credit offers more transparent.

8.  He saved the US auto industry.

9.  His stimulus bill focused on infrastructure spending to some degree and I have new roads, etc. in my town because of those funds.

10.  While gas prices still fluctuate, they are more stable now than they ever were under Bush.

11.  Opened up new trade agreements with Brazil.

12.  He won the recent debate in public opinion about the payroll tax and Republicans reluctantly passed a 10 mo extension due to the pressure he and the Dems applied.

13.  He outsmarted the Catholic Bishops and the Conservatives on the contraception issue and now women have contraception covered at no additional cost in their health insurance.

I'm sure I forgot a few but that is the short list.  You know what Bush had accomplished by his 4th year?  9-11 and two wars.  I'll take Obama any day of the week and twice on Tuesdays.

Ah2 don't forget this achievement—which I still can't wrap my head around:

14. He signed NDAA, allowing any American citizen to be killed without a trial.....I mean, um,  be detained indefinitely, without legal representation.

Why?  He's a Constitutional scholar!!!?

My thought on the original point is that bio-fuel only changes who owns the companies making the product being put in our vehicles (anything burned in an internal combustion engine adds CO2 to the atmosphere).

My thought on the list:  Reminds me of the last group who wandered further off the reservation after they started believing their own press.

1)  Illegal, albeit accidental.

2)  Are we?  and by who's time-table?

3)  Words - take a good look around.   Numbers game, robbing Peter to pay Paul (public vs private sector).  Unemployment claims are down - more due to eligibility expiration from over-long term of unemployment.

4)  By whose hand?

5)  By whose hand?  How did Mr. Manning make out on that?

6)  Which was done so competently that it's back on the table as if the issues were never really decided in the first place - in spite of the fact that Mr. O had majority in both Senante and House at the time.

7)  Words.  Still waiting to see any measurable results or prosecutions for the fraud.

8)  The Auto Industry (including its workers) saved the Auto Industry - Mr. O just managed to keep from getting in the way.

9) "to some degree" says it.  Had majority in Senate and House at time, but this was best could do?

10)  Completely untrue.  Download gas price history (AAA).  Look it over &  compare what you see to your statement.

11)  If looking at Trade Agreements - look at ALL of them and report back.

12)  Doing the NeoCon work of weakening the Social Security Turst Fund is an odd thing to call a "win".

13)  He performed another of his trademark, preemptory capitulations, and solved nothing (as the continuing debate on the matter shows.

He may be playing chess, while others are playing checkers - but unless there's something wrong with my vision - that chess board is full of pieces from a monopoly set and aren't following any of the rules.

Got to lose the Tribal mentality and see what's really in front of us.

OK rigel, I and others have tried to treat you as an honestly misguided inquirer instead of a lousy shill and provocateur.  Go play with your GOPimp attack dogs and congratulate them on getting in the way of anything serious Obama has tried to do.  We will grant that Mr. Obama is a moderate or what was once a responsible conservative, and that it is not sufficiently partisan and polemical to slap down Congresscritters.  He may have been waiting for you all to show clearly who you are and what lengths of unpatriotic corporate lapdog crap you are willing to put out for your masters.  You may feel attacked by this response.  But you and your ilk can sit on it until it hurts or you learn who is doing it to you.

Had there been a loyal opposition, had Republicans owned policies they once authored, and had there been any rationality other than the defeat of this President in their gameplan, we might not be so totally pissed of at your feeble attempts to justify either GOPimp behavior or your hate campaigns against an elected President.

The real complaints about Obama come from the Left, and are about the imperial Presidency and the continuation of Bush/Cheney policies.  The politics that makes this reasonable in the short term are clear enough.  Many of us feel that Obama ought not let them stand because that will give bipartisan cover to crimes against democracy and fail to hold your criminal GOPimps accountable.  But, and this is a big one, we also know that had he done any of this, your side would be screaming about it and the media would be making Obama's image nothing but darkness.

Blame the ones who do the damage.  Stop trying to convince us that that idiot from Texas, and this time I mean RP, is the answer.  He is certainly better than the previos idiots, but they were the worst ever.  Grow up, grow a pair, find some decency or go away.

Well, according to government data, one agency says housing construction is down. The Labor Dept. says housing construction hiring is up.

Evidently, it now takes more construction workers to build fewer houses.

Retail sales hiring is up. However, the amount of goods sold adjusted for inflation is down. It takes more clerks to sell less goods. 

Either business is saving our fannies by hiring more employees than they have to and losing money, . or there is some fiddling with the Labor Dept. data going on. just in time for an election year.

Probably had Obama instilled Universal Health care and living wage pensions as European countries have (which benefits their auto makers AND workers), the workers in the U.S. auto industry wouldn't have had to be screwed to keep the auto makers alive.

A new U.S. auto worker is hired in at $14 an hour. German new hires are paid $60. Competing at 1/4 of  the wage is called a victory. Going all the way to slave labor would have been a slam dunk.

Retired Monk - "Ideology is a disease"

I think he has done about as much as has been politically possible.  That is not 'success,' but it is not abject failure either.  State government firings and cutbacks under GOPimps is the real problem.

Smeared by the GOPimps and the bogus "Solyndra scandal" perhaps.  Or, tubed by McConnell and Boehner in Congress.  Then there are the Climate Change Deniers who ridicule anything "green."  Once again, the utter dishonesty and hypocrisy of the Right amazes me.  Obama has actually said that ending the petro-subsidies would be a good idea.  No help from the Right, of course.  Only Koch head smoke.

You keep blaming Obama for not being Superman.  How about dealing with the real problems in Congress and on K St.?

If by Biofuels you mean ethanol, that was a disasterously failed experiment. It raised the price of food by converting cropland to corn and diverting corn from pig feed to ethanol production. In addition the growing of corn and the waste products of that growing actually increased the amount of greenhouse gasses. If however you mean biodiesel you have a definite point.

I paid $4.15/ gallon for regular 87 yesterday in Los Angeles.

I'd appreciate a link to this article.  I've no doubt that it's true, and that's the key.  Obama's actions with TARP, Geithner, unleashing and reappointing Bernacke, FASB's mark-to-market rules (is there evidence of pressure?) all are to blame for the speculative frenzy in all markets, not just commodities.

Energy policies require the passage of laws and the allocation of funds.  Who does that?  Now you know why you don't have bio-fuel.

Example:  Wisconsin was set to change a bunch of energy facilities over to bio-fuel the last few years.  One of them was right across the street from where I work and it was being subsidized by some of the stimulus funds, in part.

When Walker was elected, all of those projects were converted backto dirty coal.  In addition, he and the legislature passed their budget bill which included giving Walker the ability to unilaterally sell off state assets (including power companies) with no bid and no approval from the legislature.  It is pretty much common knowledge at this point that we are updating these facilities only to have them sold off to the Koch brothers when they are finished.

Now is that Obama's fault?  No. 

Reminder to chilidog, TARP was not Obama.  He saved the auto companies with loans that are being paid back and saved jobs.  He inherited the gifts to the banksters, and while he did not kick their asses, it is incorrect to lump that one in with his record.

Don't buy gas in California.

I would buy a Mits electric car over a Volt and I could just go over to the local Mits dealer and get one or order one today.  It would suffice for local driving and I would keep my Forester for trips.  About half as much as the above quoted price for the Volt.  To me the American car manufactures dug their own grave with this idea of "planned obsolescence" or cars that fall apart just outside the warranty.  People are understandably leery to buy them.  And many foreign company vehicles are now built in the US to avoid shipping costs.  My Forester was built here. So that says that American workers can build good cars, if their bosses let them.

I see a coming "polar" shift between the US and China.  Remember how we were told if you dug a hole deep enough you would pop up in China?  Well I remember an America full of drive-ins and sock hops where the transportation of choice was any one of many American hot rods.  Gas was cheap, dinner and a movie was cheap.  China on the other hand was full of people wearing glasses and riding bicycles or rickshaws wherever they went.  They were more like watching ants in an ant farm when compared to the good ol USA way of living.

Now I'm beginning to see China building drive-in restaraunts, more and more people driving cars or taking trains to travel and work and people in general striving hard for a better life.  "The Chinacan Dream"?  I see in the very near future Americans riding bycycles to work, the destruction of the drive-in, and a society that more resembles watching ants in an ant farm.

Obama was a Senator when TARP was proposed and he voted for it.  Hillary voted against it.

And I supported the bailout of General Motors.  I didn't support cash for clunkers.  Neither of which has to do anything with the speculative fever in trading markets.

Candidate Obama (shortly after Clinton dropped out) said he would impose a windfall profits tax on U.S. oil companies and use the money to help families pay their skyrocketing energy costs and other bills.

Election happens.  No W.P.T. (of any kind).

Now that he's campaigning again, the subject resurfaces.  Why would we expect a different result?

The tax generated about $80 billion from 1980 to 1990.  Much less than the projected $400 billion, but that was because the behaviors which had resulted in the windfalls were dicontinued because of the tax and oil prices got lower again.  W.P.T. had already shown it works.

Add it to the heap of woulda, shoulda, coulda of the Majority Senate/Congress 2009-2010.

Don't tell me he had no way of knowing what the Senate rules were at the time.

Vote for him or don't vote for him, but don't base your decision on false or flaky press releases.

I suspect it won't be long before the "hold-your-nosers" remember his initials and come up with a slogan like:  Did someone just take another massive dump on the working class or is that just B.O.?

To the meat of the matter, the ethanol movement has no beginning with Pres. Obama. Corn state Senators and Congresscritters are behind that move. And this goes back at least 15 years, I know, 2 of my brothers and a brother in law have been welding stainless steel at ethanol plants for at least 15 years. Obama has only been President for 3 years.

Furthermore, the rightwing's push for a war on Iran, and their anti life endless wars against brown skinned folks, now includes an embargo in Europe, against Iranian oil. Take one of the largest suppliers out of the market, and suddenly, what will happen to prices? Let me think, constant demand for oil for transportation, less supply, the prices goes... up!

And who do the warmongers blame? Yeah, it is all Obama's fault.

poly replies:  I supported the GM bailout. However, government should have sold the stock to the workers of GM...on credit... with payback out of their GM profits,,,rather than selling it off to financiers with a payback out of their GM profits.....financier's temporarily reduced dividends.

Ooops. Direct worker ownership of their workplace is nasty socialism. Maybe I shouldn't say that.  It could give U.S. workers unhealthy ideas.

What was that old saying from American history, "Those who work at the mill should own the mill". Memories are short.

Retired Monk - "Ideology is a disease"

.

You would have more credibility if you were taking on the real petroheads on the Right.  Cf. Solyndra and all the flack about nothing.  Help create what you want instead of just bitching about Obama being compromised.

Look, you can admit that the petro-heads who don't want bio-fuel or any clean alternative to their crap are throwing a lot of money against what Obama wants.  If the government is frozen in neutral, who is icing it up and who wants it to be better?  You could be part of the solution instead of complaining about the impotence, but blaming the wrong parties.  You could also be an advocate for a better form of drug research and development than we get from your industry.  Then you would not have to be a self-confessed "evil Pharma worker."  Get some self-respect.  It does not come in a pill.

If the government is to move forward on things such as bio-fuel then they must do so in unison and at the cost of their "backers".  Good luck with that.  Just to be honest here, "The only thing that I can create is life saving drugs - for people who can afford them".  Nothing personal but if someone can't afford a life saving drug then they cannot have access to it.  Tyranny?

Not to worry. Obama opened up the fragile arctic for oil drilling...so we can increase our export of gasoline.

5 years left to address global warming before its irreversible. According to some, that probably isn't the wisest move he's ever  made...accelerating global warming by burning even more of the stuff.

Bg profits to be made with the global warming induced collapse of agriculture and food production.. There's always money to be made in a crises and shortages. The bigger the crises and the greater the shortages in those things required to sustain life, , the greater the returns. Invest wisely....like the Big Boys.

Obama is giving us a once in a lifetime opportunity to make a financial killing. How can anyone call that a failure? It makes the bankster induced financial collapse and their billion dollar bonuses look like the work of amateurs. An environmental collapse and empty supermarket shelves is a once in a lifetime golden opportunity to make a bundle. How can anyone call that a failure?

It depends on which side of the table you're looking at the issue from. The interests of the few and the interests of the many are on opposite sides of the spectrum.

As to Big Pharma....legalizing pot would probably cut into their bottom line from the sale of mood-altering drugs. A nation of people alienated from one another and struggling to survive needs a way to cope..We gobble down more of their mood altering pills than any people on earth.

Retired Monk - "Ideology is a disease"

I was wrong.  Hillary also voted for TARP.

I was thinking about the Telecom Immunity bill, which Obama voted for and Hillary voted against.

Uh, has anyone done any actual research on alternative energy under Obama?

It seems he turned around the entire automobile industry - Ford even now makes a care that has higher mpg's than the Honda and more HP. And I think it is a bit cheaper.

Bio fuels? Maybe not. But he is going to have military bases put more alternative energy. This plan may have been suggested after what was written above.

You just said the government has nothing to do with Ford's success, that capitalism was the reason for cars with higher MPG and in the same breath demanded that the government steal the reins of capitalism and make higher MPG cars available to the general public.  How does that work exactly?  If you really champion capitalism then you need to quit complaining about the government's success or failures in the world of energy and just let good old capitalism work.  Why complain about no bio-fuel?  When it is financially productive then the world of capitalism will make it available.  Capitalism reins supreme and will always work in the best interests of mankind.

Probably by the time alternative energies become competitive,, it will be too late. to reverse global warming. The time frame is five years.

It isn't likely that the clean energy power from Hoover Dam would have  been lucrative enough for a private firm to construct it..Ditto electric power generated by the Tennesee Valley Authority Dams..

If it was, private firms would  have done it. They didn't. According to market ideology, the electrification of the U.S. was a mis-allocation of capital. Returns would have been much greater investing elsewhere...in a much shorter time frame....doubling,  and doubling again....quickly by comparison..

I liken converting to Green Energies to the original electrification of the U.S,...and the unsurpassed prosperity generated from the government investment..

Retired Monk - "Ideology is a disease"

And my guess is that that was why the NAWAPA project was never allowed to be accomplished, despite that Kennedy was very keen on it. It is preferable to divert oily mud into the USA, rather than clean water, since the water would only help Main Street...

Such projects open the potential for profitability by those taking advantage of the completed project. Look at what electric power from Hoover Dam and the Tennesse Valley Authority opened up.

 In themselves, however, they are unprofitable for a private firm to initiate.Such infrastructure development is left to government,,,free market ideologues to the contrary.

Retired Monk - "Ideology is a disease".

Define Whiffed. 

Define Whiffed. 

Are you effing kidding me?  Look at the title of your thread....  You better get your face looked at, it seems you have a mouth on either side of it.

Check out Raj Patel's THE VALUE OF NOTHING for a fine indictment of "economic man" of which "consumer" is part.  You are on the right track and steaming full speed ahead.

And that is the idea behind the Hamitonian credit system and reinstituting the National Bank. Someone without billions will be happy to initiate that type of long-term project that will instantly create jobs and will have the long-term effect of developing & enriching the states it touches and consequently the whole nation.

The goal of the international private firms is definitely NOT to create jobs, develop & enrich the states and the whole nation. The goal is ... MONEY, MONEY, MONEY !!!

We are now generations who don't know how to think of ourselves. We are not "patriots' or "citizens". We have been taught by our corrupted culture that we are CONSUMERS ! 

I hate that word. It does not promote self-respect or self-confidence for any child growing up in today's world.

DRC—I made a correction and didn't see that you'd already posted. Now I'm behind your post...ooops!

I don't believe it was a coincidence that Ford started doing better MPG at the same time Obama raised CAFE standards and became a part owner of GM. I know that Obama gave Ford a loan - or maybe Bush did.

I think the VOLT has a huge tax credit with it.

If I wasn't so lazy, I would look all this up.

Probably history will look at Obama as the failed, last opportunity turning point.. We know we have only a 5 year time frame to reverse global warming. After that, it will increase for a century or more regardless of what we do..or .until the break-down of the Gulf Stream generates another ice age . making the U.S. and most of Europe uninhabitable without plenty of energy to warm homes and businesses Agriculture, of course, will be dead.

We know we're heading for an energy collapse. Time-frame 10 years.. We know we're heading for a resource and agricultural collapse concurrent with a break-down of reasonable cost energy. It seems if you want to know the truth about anything today, you have to be a Univ. student engaged in the sciences. Univ. of Colo. lecture:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY

It takes energy to convert to renewable energy. Lots of it. It takes energy to reverse global warming by developing  green technologies and revamping transport systems. Lots of it...The longer we wait, the less  comparatively cheap energy there will be available to make the transitions. After the break-down, it's too late.Resources won't be there to do anything..

Instead of engaging in a "Manhattan Project" to save the nation and most of the planet, we bemoan that there isn't enough paper currency available to address the problem. It's stupid.

Resources are still there to do it, idle labor is there to do it. There is still enough energy left at reasonable cost to do it. Just not enough paper to pay for it. Stupid thinking. Government can simply spend the money into existence to pay for that sort of thing without borrowing and without inflation. Money spent productively isn't inflationary. It creates its own real product value to back it.

Obama's failure will ultimately be seen as the greatest single failure in human history...effecting more human beings and a larger area  than the leader of any previously collapsed society in the history of the planet.

I hearily recommend forming Chris Hedges' self-reliant communities...or at the least taking steps to provide for ones own basics outside of current structures...while working fervently to reverse course of this suicidal nation. You may have to bail water from a lifeboat, but its better than going down with Obama's (and the next President's) sinking ship.

Now, instead of discussing the survival of the nation and a large chunk of the human race, let's discuss something really important. like who can marry who.or how to best lower taxes on financiers so they can place more derivative bets..

.Retired Monk - "Ideology is a disease".

Do you feel the same way about quality health care, college education and healthy food?