Russians

[Jim]

WHAT PROGRESS ??????????

Here's a little list: http://pleasecutthecrap.com/obama-accomplishments/

[Gusto10]

Being an outsider also, I'm also surprised by the statements without prove that the Russians would have influenced the elections. If such would have been true, the elections should have been ennuled in my opinion and a new round with only paper ballots.
As to the candidates, neither was acting during the campaing as one may expect from a future president.
As indicated by CR, the way to get the facts sorted from the opinions is indeed being critical towards the info provided. Teletext is one of the available means which is due to the need to present matters compact mostly just facts.
Being critical and investigative, never statified by the answer that you have to take matters for granted, does make life tough at times. But still, persisting in not accepting this escpeccially when a specilist says that he is right for reason that he is the specialist (and thus often narrowminded) is a no-no in my opinion. It is also ood to inuere towrds the regulations by which organisations ahve to provide their reports, especiially when they might be damaging for once persona. Recently I succeeded in having a number of reports invalidated as they had breached protocol. At times one might feel like a Don Quichote, but it isn't Always in fain.

[crfriend]

Here we go again
For those on the outside looking in there are those of us on the inside who feel that we have been bearing the brunt for the last eight years,. And that things can only get better. If the republicans acted this way when Obama won we would have been crucified. For the sake of the country stop whining and give the man a chance.

There's no point in spouting dogma here, let's instead look at statements of intent and results.

We don't see any results yet from a Trump presidency, but we've seen the results of the past 16 years (the last 8 being a mere continuation of the prior eight), and those results have been an economic disaster. I have no reason to suspect that the upstart emperor will alter that path. What is likely to happen, however, is a hardening of the social aspect of things, and the US of A is going to become an even more unpleasant place to call home. Of note is that there has not been even one hint of rhetoric for toning down the xenophobia and general intolerance of anyone "different" and the general neo-Nazi behaviours that that can engender. If he'd send out a twit even just once telling the thug wing of his supporters to "Cool it! This is not acceptable behavior." I'd be encouraged, but that hasn't happened and I sincerely doubt it will.

Other things we have seen is how his cabinet is shaping up -- and it's full of economic elites and generals. One type only knows how to rape and pillage and the other only knows brute force. It's shaping up to be a really pleasant 4 years. And we are all powerless to do anything about it. We also see the inane use of Twitter as a means of communicating with the public. Here's a hint Donald: You can't communicate a cogent thought in 140-odd characters.

[Pdxfashionpioneer]

"what progress?"

For one thing, 20 million Americans who had no health care insurance now do. By percentage we have the highest health insurance coverage ever. Carl has no use for Obamacare because it didn't go far enough. No Carl, it didn't. But did you notice how hard it was to get even this half-measure passed and that there are so many people, such as Oldsalt1 and the majority of the Congress, who are so sure they want to unravel that achievement?

While we're at it, what exactly is so wrong with getting an additional 20 million people covered? (Don't give me this business about we should have let the market take care of it because 1) we don't have anything that resembles an open market when it comes to healthcare in this country and 2) it's been left to the "market" since Reagan eviscerated the labor unions in this country and the percentage of the population with health insurance has steadily declined) What is so wrong with ending the exclusion of preexisting conditions? (No one, not even The Donald, can get the insurance companies to end that without requiring everyone be insured.) What's so bad about putting some minimum requirements on what the insurance companies have to provide? (Don't give me that crap about distorting the markets, again the "unfettered markets" have failed the vast majority of us. Furthermore, for all of the Republican and AMA bellyaching about medical malpractice settlements, the inconsistencies of insurance coverage and forms costs healthcare providers four times as much. A typical medical practice has as many people coordinating coverage [trying to make sense of patients' insurances] as doctors.) It was said pre-Obamacare that we couldn't have created a more dysfunctional, inefficient healthcare system than the one we have if we had tried. The Republicans tried 60 times to repeal Obamacare, but have yet to offer a complete, coherent replacement.

The President at least attempted to practice bipartisanship; it's what kept Obamacare from becoming much more than it is. Trump's version of bipartisanship is "Get on board or get run over!!!"

Pres. Obama didn't get us into any new, wasteful, unnecessary, endless wars similar to our Iraq invasion. (And don't tell me about the CIA's intel; it was so bad even W asked the CIA Director, "Is that all you've got?" before reversing his own judgement. He based going to war on the Director's assurance that the evidence Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction was "a slam dunk!" Well now, why didn't he say so? If you can shoehorn a sports metaphor in there it's got to right. Right? Well, in fact, NO! Not only didn't Hussein have any weapons of mass destruction, he didn't even have any capability of producing them.)

In addition, Pres. Obama made serious strides in the long, hard process of restoring the world's respect for us as the great nation we are. With the election of Trump I expect the world holds the US in dread and fear as simply a great big nation whose power is at the whim of an immature, ignorant, thin-skinned bully. You said you didn't think that Iranian gunboats would buzz our warships anymore with Trump at the helm. Who cares? That kind of crap is right up there with athletes trash-talking each other before a game. Yes it's unnerving for our sailors, but they're professionals all of whom would prefer to put up with such annoyances on a daily basis than get into a live-fire war.

Let's not forget the advancement of civil rights; gay marriage, etc. How many of us were willing to be seen in public in skirts in 2005 vs. 2015? How much do we fear that our public acceptance will be compromised by Trump's election? I do. I plan to buy a whole package of jumbo safety pins so I can put one on each of my top coats and still have plenty to pass out. I want to make sure the yahoos can see that there are more of us who support people being whoever they are than there are bigots who will try to build themselves up by bullying others.

Most importantly, unemployment is lower than it has been in decades, certainly lower than it ever got under either of the Bushes. The Dow is at a record level. Even the average American and the poor have seen their real wages increase since the Bush economic debacle. Trump complains that the growth isn't fast enough because it's only 2.5%. Perhaps, but we've had an unparalleled run of growth in the total number of jobs from one month to another. And we have more jobs than we did just before the Bush bubble burst.

If nothing else, Pres. Obama was exactly the kind of role model we expect of a President. Even-tempered, eloquent, intelligent, highly-educated, a great family man. Honestly, would you want any of your kids to have grown up to be like Donald Trump?

What more can you ask of a man who had to work with a hostile Congress and Supreme Court and put up with the baseless lies of his now-successor about his being a natural born citizen?

Oh I know, Pres. Obama should have done all that using the Republican playbook ... that created the Great Recession and nurtured the divides. Right?!

I'll stop now because I'm beginning to get angry and that never leads to good things.

[dillon]

Beginning to get angry? LOL, love ya, Dave, but I don't want to see you when you're really angry... But I sympathize with you. I just want to grab Trump by the lapels, shake him harder than a British nanny, and shout "WTF, dude? Get real!"

[oldsalt1]

Lets see now
I am making more money than I was 8 years ago hmmm nope
My house is worth more than it was 8 years ago hmmm nope
Health insurance is cheaper than it was 8 years ago hmmmm nope
race relations are better than the were 8 years ago hmmmm nope
We are safer from terrorist attacks than we were 8 years ago hmmmm nope
The entire middle east is in a more stable position than it was 8 years ago hmmmm nope
There are less people on food stamps and welfare than the were 8 years ago hmmmmm nope
Obama is a president that we should look up to HMMMMMMMMMMMM NOPE

[crfriend]

Lets see now [...]

Let's look at a few facts here:

1.) You are in bottom 99.995% of the population when it comes to wealth (all of us here are),
2.) you weren't born with a billion dollar trust fund (that's for the privileged few),
3.) correct the eight years for inflation (this is a compounding penalty),
4.) consider your entire cast of peers (you'll find quite a few unemployed).
5.) It's not going to get any better -- by design.

That you are not better off than you were 8 years ago is entirely unsurprising, as that's the intended direction. It's called "wealth-transfer". If the sums were really done it'd be shown that the slide for the general population started 35 years ago. This is a long-term game -- and always has been. It just went unnoticed early on. We're only seeing the full flowering of it now.

This has nothing to do with "right" versus "left" or "conservative" versus "liberal"; it has everything to do with unchecked and unrestricted class-warfare prosecuted by the economic elites against the middle class. No matter who "won" the most recent "election" the ultimate outcome was going to be the same -- the extinction of the middle class in the United States by 2020. Hillary wasn't going to change that, and neither is Trump.

Face up to it: the US electorate got suckered -- decades ago.

Enjoy it -- and your new status. You have no say, no decision, in the matter. The deal is done. And it was HUGE -- "big league", even.

[oldsalt1]

I am 71almost 72 a lot of the other members of the cafe are up there in years.I wish us all a long life but face it we aren't going to be around that much longer. No matter who won or who eventually wins I feel sorry for the younger generations. I have a 26 year old son I fear for what it is going to be like for him. I sometimes wonder if what we are going thru is unique or did our parents and prior generations have the same fears.

[crfriend]

[...]I sometimes wonder if what we are going thru is unique or did our parents and prior generations have the same fears.

This is new. If your son is 26 he will never have known or understood the altogether-too-brief period of relative prosperity in the US from the end of the Second World War to the 1980s. Perhaps this is good, as it will save him a whole lot of angst and anger; he'll just accept it as something that "is", much in the same way that understanding that a bullet to the R-brain is quick and painless.

Personally, I'm mad as hell because I watched the thing unfold before my eyes. I knew, pretty much from the get-go, that I was not going to be as "well off" as my parents were -- and I was OK with that, because my skill-sets were different from theirs; where it really went off the rails was "trickle-down economics" and the "service economy" -- frauds on their faces -- that the 1980s brought in. Yes, I have a long memory; I don't necessarily hold grudges in many things, but in bald-faced lies and blatant fraud in high-stakes endeavours I do. The populace in the USA has gotten royally screwed by the elites -- and the damage started accruing in 1981.

I have good personal friends with children anywhere between 8 and 20. I worry about those kids who will "enjoy" a shortened life-span and an existence in what will amount to a third-world country -- in spite of all the hype. It's the smart ones I feel worst for; they'll be able to figure the mess and lies out -- and they're going to blame their parents. Needlessly and incorrectly.

[oldsalt1]

This is getting tooo depressing Especially for this time of year. I think I will go try on another outfit and post it on my My many Minis blog this way you guys can all spend time on important things like complimenting me on my great legs and fashion sense Have a good holiday.

[dillon]

Lets see now
I am making more money than I was 8 years ago hmmm nope
My house is worth more than it was 8 years ago hmmm nope
Health insurance is cheaper than it was 8 years ago hmmmm nope
race relations are better than the were 8 years ago hmmmm nope
We are safer from terrorist attacks than we were 8 years ago hmmmm nope
The entire middle east is in a more stable position than it was 8 years ago hmmmm nope
There are less people on food stamps and welfare than the were 8 years ago hmmmmm nope
Obama is a president that we should look up to HMMMMMMMMMMMM NOPE

I don't know about your income, but I am pretty much in that boat as well, but I don't see it as Obama's fault; the GOP congress had a say-so in it as well, for three-quarters of Obama's tenure. Where is your rebuke for them? As for your house, maybe you should start by asking yourself if your house is worth more than it was eight and a half years ago. Because the housing bubble burst under Bush, in 2007, if you will recall recent history correctly. As did the Wall Street bailout.

Health insurance isn't cheaper, but the rate of increase is now proportional to the rate of inflation in the healthcare industry, which is way too high. Do you think all insurance executives are Democrats? And how would you answer your own question if you had been sick and uninsured eight years ago, but now had been able to obtain insurance? Or does your moral compass allow you to disregard those who suffer? Either way, you'd be paying more in insurance to cover the bills of the sick folks in the US, because they would be treated as indigents, at the far higher ER costs. And your costs would still be rising as a result of that. Plus, if your political party had allowed a public option in the ACA, the point would be moot.

The number of Americans who have died in terror attacks under Obama is far, far less than those who died under Bush, so I have to call you out on that one. Bush, like Trump, couldn't be bothered with intelligence briefings, for which he apparently lacked the intellect and initiative to comprehend. Are you smart enough to predict the next attacks? If so, I'm sure you will be hired.

If you want "stability" in the Middle East, then you do not want either freedom or democracy there, because in that theater, stability usually means a brutal strong man ruling with an iron fist. The Arab Spring resulted from Bush's phony promises extolling America's commitment to freedom in the region. But what Bush really meant was America's commitment to the security of Arab Oil. And the fact is, had we not done the unnecessary and lie-based invasion of Iraq, ISIS would not exist. It evolved from the ashes of Al Qaeda in Iraq, an arm of the main Al Qaeda organization which formed in 2004, after our invasion. Al Qaeda destroyed the WTC, as you surely recall, on Sept 11, 2001. Despite his promises, Bush failed to destroy Al Qaeda, even with the prime opportunity in the battle of Tora Bora in Dec 2001... when Donald Rumsfeld decided a US offensive would be "over-budget." Osama Bin Laden escaped. Bush never again found him. But since Bin Laden was a relation of the Saudi Royal Family, maybe Bush just didn't look very hard for him. President Obama's support for our intelligence agencies, which Donald Trump now calls "liars", resulted in the action that killed Bin Laden.

So, you're reviving the old GOP whining about "welfare"? Let me give you the facts to counter your claims. This is from a report in the Washington Post from September 8, 2015:
The core welfare program remains what is now called TANF. That was created in the welfare overhaul signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996, replacing what was known as AFDC — which dated to the New Deal legislation in the mid-1930s. AFDC was intended to provided financial aid to children whose families had low or no income, but concerns grew that some recipients had become too dependent on it, so the new law placed time limits on benefits.

A 2010 report for the House Ways and Means Committee shows that in 1965, there were 4.4 million recipients of AFDC (slightly over 1 million families). The report shows that the numbers, which had spiked as high as 14 million recipients in 1993, dramatically declined after Clinton signed the law.

As of March 2015, the number of TANF recipients is just over 3 million, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.

In other words, the number of recipients in this core program has declined about 30 percent, even as the U.S. population has increased by 60 percent.

Care to rethink your beliefs? Yeah, I didn't think so... Reality has little weight against a good lie.

With regard to your opinion of Obama, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But here's how I see my own admiration for Barak Obama: He is the first "black" man ever to win the presidency, though others have run for the office. He did that with WHITE votes. He was vastly more articulate and intelligent than his predecessor. He pulled us out of the worst economic crisis since 1932. No, he didn't get us back to the rising income levels that we had in 1999, under Bill Clinton. But considering the inexplicable obstinance of GOP opposition, he still rates as a miracle-worker. He hasn't gotten us totally out of the Bush-Cheney Oil War yet, but the American death rate is nothing like it was in 2006. And gas prices are a lot lower, regardless. And he got healthcare to twenty million Americans who were excluded from it before. And he has enhanced liberty for excluded minorities, especially gay, lesbian, and transgender Americans, who paid the same taxes and bore the same legal responsibilities as any straight, white-bread Republican, but could not share equally in the blessings of liberty. And he has acted to protect the planet from human greed-induced climate change, and also protected many wild and natural areas form the destructive profiteering of Big Carbon, including the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of my own state. But, for me personally, he was cathartic. His very election made me proud to be American again, which was something I had not felt since 2003. In 2003, I felt nothing but betrayal, anguish, and shame in our national knee-jerk reactions to wartime propaganda. I will see what Trump makes me feel, but I am not encouraged so far.

[Pdxfashionpioneer]

Right on Dillon!!!

Oldsalt1, you know I like u lots; but I have to call you out. You didn't respond to a single one of my points. It's not always all about you. No sir, just because he didn't advance your personal agenda doesn't mean he didn't accomplish anything or that they're not progress. Until you explain why the items on my list and Dillon's list and list on that link aren't progress, you have as good as conceded our point; the man made PLENTY of progress. All your arguments show is that he didn't solve all of our problems.

As to your gratuitous jab at how admirable a President Mr. Obama was or wasn't, again you ignored my question; I asked about the man's character as a man. Again, who is the better role model for our children? We just elected an ignorant (He didn't know that Russia had invaded the sovereign nation of the Ukraine and is occupying Crimea.), blustering, lying (look up the Politifact #'s) bully to the Presidency. In the past, Presidents were held up as role models. How would you prefer your grandkids turn out, as people, like Donald Trump or Barack Obama? And why?

[oldsalt1]

I can't cover everything so I will start with healthcare. You say increases in health care is proportionate to increases in the health care industry.. So what you are saying is our increases in cost for the product are reasonable because the cost of the product went up. An average increase in premiums of about 35 % is an increase in premiums of about 35% no matter how you try to double talk it.

Yes we helped get rid of some very bad people in the mid east. But can you say the people are any better off now..

And in one breath you say we have bring freedom and democracy to the mid east. Than you castrate Bush for starting the commotion.

Sorry I can't keep up with your novel length postings . Lets work on short stories.

Just remember one more thing

Remember to have a good holiday Dan

[crfriend]

An average increase in premiums of about 35 % is an increase in premiums of about 35% no matter how you try to double talk it.

All of which is gravy to the insurance companies. Contrary to the commonly-held perception, the money in "health care" doesn't go primarily to the providers, most of it goes to the for-profit "insurance" industry which is largely parasitic and the pharmaceutical companies (also for-profit). Doctors, practitioners, hospitals, and the like are frequently fairly well strapped for cash. The mere fact that those parasites profit from the suffering of people I find reprehensible.

Yes we helped get rid of some very bad people in the mid east. But can you say the people are any better off now.

There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein was a nasty piece of work, but removing him by force needlessly precipitated vastly worse things. Those things were going to happen eventually anyway, but why make it worse now?

And in one breath you say we have bring freedom and democracy to the mid east. Than you castrate Bush for starting the commotion.

The curiously Western European ideals of "Freedom and democracy" will likely never find a place in the Middle East; the local cultures have no understanding of the notions. The same holds for sub-Sarahan Africa. As far as Bush was concerned, the disaster in Iraq was caused by an infantile need to one-up his old man. At least Senior had the brains to listen to his advisers who informed him that there was no exit-strategy and unless they got out while the getting was good all Hell would break loose -- and it did, just as Senior's advisers said it would, and it was Junior's doing.

Remember to have a good holiday

May the joy of the season be with you. Always.

[Pdxfashionpioneer]

Carl, I feel you've given as good of a nutshell analysis of how we got into the Iraq quagmire as any.

However, you give Bush the Elder too much credit. Gen. Schwarzkopf wanted to continue the war long enough to destroy the Republican Guards as an effective combat unit. The Pres.overruled him because he liked the ring of a 100 hour war. He later failed to support the Iraqi rebels to the extent required because he overestimated their capabilities and underestimated Saddam Hussein's. Those errors were compounded by two crucial errors by the US military. First, they allowed the Iraqi's to fly helicopters in the No-Fly Zone, expecting they would be used solely for liaison, command and control. Yeah they did that, but they threw in troop transportation and using gunships for good measure.

The US also failed to retrieve and secure the abandoned Iraqi heavy equipment (tanks, artillery, personnel carriers, etc.) so the Iraqis retrieved it from no-man's land at their leisure.

Were it not for those omissions there probably wouldn't have been a Saddam Hussein to fight w/ in the second war.