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The Official Obama Scorecard Thread


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oh, he definitely is pro-foreign aid. That is something both parties seem to love.It's a bit tragic, really, the drug war under Obama. Inject him with truth serum and I bet he would tell you all about how the drug war is dumb and he wants to decriminalize soft drugs. Most law professors know the stats on prison overcrowding and what not. But, I am sure he feels that he cannot get his healthcare plan done if he has to fight the right on drugs and fend off accusations that he is soft on crime. Sadly, he should be putting the healthcare stuff on the back burner and going after drug policy which would be true change. It is pretty much a given that ending the drug war would have positive effects (save money on law enforcement, court costs, jail costs, end the fighting in Mexico, tax revenue, and on and on and on).....whereas the healthcare nonsense seems destined to stall (perhaps for the best---thanks abortion!) and would be just trading one kind of suck for another if it passed.
Why does it seem that more and more people are thinking like this, yet we still have retardedly draconian and racially motivated drug laws? If the 'right' was responsible for things up to now, where are the dems trying to reverse that course like they're doing with healthcare?
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President Obama ordered the cabinet to cut $100,000,000.00 ($100 million) from the $3,500,000,000,000.00 ($3.5 trillion) federal budget.   I'm so impressed by this sacrifice that I have decided to

Why does it seem that more and more people are thinking like this, yet we still have retardedly draconian and racially motivated drug laws? If the 'right' was responsible for things up to now, where are the dems trying to reverse that course like they're doing with healthcare?
Because once the "think of the children" crowd gets going and they combine with the "soft on crime" crowd to form a superstorm of dumbassery........and the Dems are way too soft willed to stand up to that. Say what you want about Republicans but they will stand united even in front of the firing squad (aka the 2008 election).
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Holy crap, please tell me you guys read this:

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration let North Korean leader Kim Jong Il save face by releasing two jailed Americans to former President Bill Clinton. The payoff — maybe not right away — is likely to be renewed dialogue with Pyongyang about its nuclear weapons program.
This is the most biased reporting I have ever witnessed in my life.
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Holy crap, please tell me you guys read this:This is the most biased reporting I have ever witnessed in my life.
Wow! Obama must be a superhero! Obama single-handedly ALLOWED a communist dictator to release political prisoners.One question, though, why didn't Obama ALLOW this release immediately?
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Wow! Obama must be a superhero! Obama single-handedly ALLOWED a communist dictator to release political prisoners.One question, though, why didn't Obama ALLOW this release immediately?
Bill Clinton was the real super-hero. Over/under on how many North Korean babes he tapped while freeing those journalists?While the yahoo article is basically hilarious nonsense, I think you can make the argument from this entire episode that contrary to what Bush/Bolton/Cheney would have you believe, negotiation and diplomacy are very useful tools. North Korea made greater strides on its "nuclear program" during the GWB years than during any other presidency.....and perhaps cutting off diplomatic ties was a big reason why.
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Bill Clinton was the real super-hero. Over/under on how many North Korean babes he tapped while freeing those journalists?While the yahoo article is basically hilarious nonsense, I think you can make the argument from this entire episode that contrary to what Bush/Bolton/Cheney would have you believe, negotiation and diplomacy are very useful tools. North Korea made greater strides on its "nuclear program" during the GWB years than during any other presidency.....and perhaps cutting off diplomatic ties was a big reason why.
Yeah, I was amazed at The Slick One. Seriously, if I had to vote for any of the candidates from the Dem's or Repub's since Reagan, it'd be Bill Clinton, AINEC. Also, he gave a speech at TED that was inspiring and amazing, and really raised my level of respect for him.Second paragraph: ding ding, correct answer!
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http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10422Even a popular president like Barack Obama cannot win arguments against two forces: God and mathematics. While the president has openly shared his reverence for the former, he has decided to take on the latter. It's a fight that he will lose. Upon taking office, President Obama decided to postpone his campaign promise to implement a true cost-saving reform of Social Security and Medicare. Instead, he's trying to expand the nation's entitlement offerings with massive new government spending on health care. The Congressional Budget Office's mid-July "score" of the main House health-care bill puts the price tag at about $1 trillion over the next decade; the Blue Dog Democrats managed to shave off only about $100 billion. But ten-year budgets, as even the CBO has warned in the past, are not reliable for assessing entitlement programs. Most of the spending in the House plan is phased in over several years, making the ten-year cost look deceptively small. Extending the budget window by just three years doubles the And that's just a start. The most comprehensive view of a program's projected shortfall comes from calculating the present value of all of its future outlays and subtracting any new revenue sources. The House plan has a present-value shortfall of $13.6 trillion. That's the amount of additional money that must be set aside, in today's dollars, to put this program on a sustainable course. This estimate optimistically assumes that health-care costs will eventually grow with the general inflation rate (they're currently growing much faster). This enormous shortfall is equal to about 1.6 percent of all future projected GDP, or 3.5 percent of all future payrolls subject to Social Security taxes. From those numbers, this additional burden might actually seem manageable. But President Obama promised that he would raise taxes only on those in "rich" households. That's where the arithmetic gets especially interesting. Funding the new health-care plan on the backs of households making $200,000 or more per year would require permanently increasing their annual total tax payments by about 50 percent. So, for example, a household that currently pays $50,000 in federal income taxes would need to pay another $25,000. Remember, however, that Social Security and Medicare already face enormous shortfalls. Shoring up these programs — another Obama campaign promise — would require collecting 328 percent more tax revenue from the rich. No, we didn't forget a decimal point: That is three hundred and twenty-eight percent. Most households making between $200,000 and $500,000 per year would not have enough money to pay their federal, state, and local tax bills, much less eat. Rich households in California or New York would not be able to pay their tax bills regardless of their incomes. And a family of four living in a low-tax state (South Dakota) would need to gross almost $900,000 per year to have enough income left over to reach the poverty line. In fact, there is no mathematical configuration of taxes on the current rich alone — including additional levies on the "super-rich" making more than $1 million per year — that is compatible with putting the nation's entitlement programs and the new health-care plan on a sustainable course. U.S. federal income taxes are already very progressive. The top 10 percent of income earners pay the majority of federal income taxes. The top 1 percent of income earners pay a quarter of all taxes. But can't we expect the rich to pay even more? Maybe for a few years — but not without disastrous consequences to America's future. A major tax increase causes the tax capacity of the rich to shrink gradually as two factors kick in. First, many of the households falling into Obama's "rich" definition are married couples in which both partners are working professionals. When tax rates rise, the lower-earning spouses in these couples tend to work less. Often, they quit work entirely. Second, many of the "rich" are budding entrepreneurs and small-business owners. They finance their operations using their own after-tax income, or with after-tax resources from family and friends. Small-business innovation is the fuel for long-term economic growth. In fact, many of the largest companies in the United States today were either small or nonexistent just 25 years ago. Killing small business kills the American economy. We cannot allow federal health-care subsidies — mainly Medicare and Medicaid — to continue to grow faster than inflation indefinitely. The challenge is to find ways to make the nation's commitments to retirees and others sustainable without harming economic growth prospects. In this regard, the Obama administration is charting a course in the wrong direction — expanding entitlements on the backs of our nation's job creators. The math will work against the Obama administration and, eventually, against us all.
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From here.

With Barack Obama's birthday earlier this week, let's take a moment to revisit the claims of the "Birther" Movement afoot in the Republican Party today. It revolves around a conspiracy theory that President Barack Obama's birth certificate from Hawaii is a forgery and that he is not in fact a U.S. citizen, but a citizen of Kenya.To begin with, it's extremely irritating that the Palin wing of the Republican Party has become so enamored by this Birther movement after it gave the Ron Paul campaign so much abuse for being a hive of conspiracy theorists and 9-11 "Truthers."It's especially irritating when you note that Ron Paul himself adamantly and unequivocally denied any belief in such theories, calling them "preposterous" and "bizarre" (like here at 35:45 - this is near the end of a Glenn Beck interview. You should watch the whole thing whenever you get a chance).If you want the truth about 9-11 or Barack Obama's birth, I've got it for you: 9-11 was planned, organized, and executed by Al-Queda at the direction of Osama bin Laden on the premise of a Holy War against America for its strategic alliance with Israel and troop occupation in lands that Muslims consider holy and use for their pilgrimage to Mecca.Oh yeah, and Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, making him a U.S. citizen. Sorry- that's just the truth. You can even ask my friend, Occam. He'll tell you. These explanations fit the facts best and are the least problematic. Al-Queda orchestrated the World Trade Center attacks and Obama was born in Hawaii. Period.To see the Republican Party fall prey to the alluring political trump card of Obama's non-citizenship on the premise of so many different, false, and often contradictory claims about his life and birth, is frankly embarrassing when it's not outright irritating because of the Party's disdain for 9-11 "Truthers" and erroneous association of them with Ron Paul.But there's a deeper issue here, and it's related to the Republican Party's failure to fight the battle in the ideological arena, which is the reason why it is rapidly losing its own soul and identity (in addition to elections everywhere). That issue is the GOP's entire approach to President Barack Obama.Why shouldn't he be President according to the Palin Republicans? "Because he's not a citizen of this country!" they say, which isn't even true. But if we delve into the world of ideas and challenge Obama's very ideological premises, then we can produce an even better reason why he shouldn't be President (and it helps that this one's true): Barack Obama is not a citizen of reality.That's right. He shouldn't be President because he's not a citizen of this universe. He doesn't live in a world of cause and effect, where you can't just go spending trillions of dollars that you don't have and expect an economy to recover. Obama doesn't live in reality, where you have to produce something before you can consume it.He's a citizen of the Big Rock Candy Mountains or something, where "handouts grow on bushes" and "where they hung the jerk that invented work." He lives in a socialist Twilight Zone where bizarre and inexplicable things happen, where you can really have your cake and eat it too. Unfortunately the rest of America lives in the real world and has to suffer for Obama's attempt to live out his contradictions and force us to live them out with him.My problem with President Obama isn't that he isn't a citizen of the United States. It's that he isn't a citizen of planet Earth.
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Washington -- U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner asked Congress to increase the $12.1 trillion debt limit on Friday, saying it is "critically important" that they act in the next two months. Mr. Geithner, in a letter to U.S. lawmakers, said that the Treasury projects that the current debt limit could be reached as early mid-October. Increasing the limit is important to instilling confidence in global investors, Mr. Geithner said. The Treasury didn't request a specific increase in the letter. "It is critically important that Congress act before the limit is reached so that citizens and investors here and around the world can remain confident that the United States will always meet its obligations," Mr. Geithner said in a letter to lawmakers. Mr. Geithner said the that it is "clearly a moment in our history" that requires support from both Democrats and Republicans for the increase. "Congress has never failed to raise the debt limit when necessary," Mr. Geithner said. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said Thursday the federal government's budget deficit reached $1.3 trillion through the first ten months of fiscal 2009, on track to reach a record high of $1.8 trillion for the 12-month period.

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you know, the debt itself doesn't bother me that much. it'll be costly to service it, and yeah it might suck to be a rich person for a while, but it's not THAT terrible compared to the rest of the world.it's the overwhelming apathy on the issue that bothers me.

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you know, the debt itself doesn't bother me that much. it'll be costly to service it, and yeah it might suck to be a rich person for a while, but it's not THAT terrible compared to the rest of the world.it's the overwhelming apathy on the issue that bothers me.
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Why 'clunkers' program won't take some of the most polluting carslinkOh, big surprise. Some special interest group lobbied and got a provision in the CARS program to exclude older vehicles.
Thankfully our Very Special President has protected my 1983 Ford Escort from the passage of time.
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http://blogs.abcnews.com/johnstossel/2009/...-you-trust.htmlDid you see the little girl who spoke at President Obama’s town hall this week? Eleven-year-old Julia Hall asked the President about all the signs outside “saying mean things” about his health care plan. The Boston Globe provides some context: Julia's mother was an early Obama supporter and donor in Massachusetts during the presidential election, so she had previously met First Lady Michelle Obama, the Obama daughters Sasha and Malia, and Vice President Joe Biden. Michelle Malkin has a list of what she calls “Obamacare human props”: Malkin writes that Kathleen Manning Hall, Julia's mother, is an attorney whose Facebook page, posted on Malkin’s site, has a picture of Hall with President Obama. Manning Hall has donated thousands of dollars to Obama, as has her law firm. But, you know, um, like Obama said: “I don’t want people saying I just have a bunch of plants in here.” Ms. Manning Hall did not respond to a request for comment from ABC.
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WTF is this? Commentary: War on drugs is over. What's next?Editor's note: Rudy Ruiz founded RedBrownandBlue.com, a site featuring multicultural political commentary; hosts a nationally syndicated Spanish-language radio show; and authored a guide to success for immigrants ("¡Adelante!" published by Random House). He is co-founder and president of Interlex, an advocacy marketing agency based in San Antonio, Texas. SAN ANTONIO, Texas (CNN) -- As the health care debate captivated America, a white flag was quietly raised along the violence-torn U.S.-Mexico border. In case you missed it, it was our nation's surrender in the war on drugs.Addressing the sixth annual Border Security Conference in El Paso, Texas, on Monday, the director of the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy, R. Gil Kerlikowske, said this administration's drug strategy will not be a war because a war limits what can be done."If the only tool is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail," Kerlikowske said. "That phrase -- war on drugs -- tells you that the only answer is, in fact, force. ... We want to have a different conversation when it comes to drugs."At the same time, President Obama pledged ongoing cooperation with Mexico on drugs and immigration, but the details were sparse and the timeline shifting and uncertain.As the war on drugs ends, what's our new strategy?According to the El Paso Times, "Kerlikowske said his visit to El Paso was part of a national tour to solicit ideas before making recommendations to the president. Once unveiled, Obama's drug strategy will probably include treatment centers, education, drug courts, more cooperation with Mexico and increased law enforcement, Kerlikowske said." I agree with all of the above, but since Kerlikowske asked, and since both he and the president have been somewhat vague and noncommittal on the topic, I would like to suggest some ideas regarding what "cooperation with Mexico" should look like to ensure our communal success in conquering the drug beast, regardless of the brand name attached to the campaign.If decreasing demand for drugs is one side of the equation, decreasing the ability and desire to supply those drugs is the other side. As the United States broadens its approach, Mexico must do so as well."Cooperation with Mexico" involves convincing our neighbors to change culturally entrenched social hierarchies and dynamics that date to pre-Columbian times.Unfortunately, it's easier and less disruptive to the existing power structure perpetuated by Mexico's ruling elite to wage a war against the cartels than it is to revolutionize a society that denies the vast majority of its members legitimate opportunities for socioeconomic advancement.Yes, the war on drugs in Mexico has resulted in over 12,000 dead since 2008 and turned border cities like Juarez into combat zones overrun by army trucks carrying machine gun-toting armored troops.But most of Mexico's wealthy and powerful families can still find solace in their foreign bank accounts, their well-appointed homes north of the border, their bodyguards and multigenerational business empires.Perhaps to them, the continuing crackdown on the cartels seems like the most effective way to react to the threats made to legitimate business-owners and affluent families via extortion and kidnapping.However, the Mexican government, the Mexican ruling class and the United States must also generate legitimate opportunities for Mexican citizens to advance in life, alternatives to achieving financial success without breaking the law.According to a study by professor Emilio Parrado of the University of Pennsylvania, "Occupational opportunities failed to keep pace with rising human capital in Mexico. ... Instead, entry and mobility into good jobs became more difficult to achieve and downward mobility more prevalent even among highly educated workers."At the same time, north of the border, politicians have increased pressure to close our borders and squelch illegal immigration since September 11.Where are hard-working Mexicans with a desire to improve their circumstances supposed to turn? Perhaps both nations should give these folks a little more love and a little less war.Let's make love, not war, on drugs. Although today's drug lords are beyond reform, this is a long-term endeavor. Our nations should collaborate to ensure that Mexico's youth can find viable, legal alternatives for their own development and advancement, both at home in Mexico and abroad in the United States.In Mexico, this will involve a cultural shift in which the ruling elite comes to terms with the realization that the nation will never fulfill its potential if broader segments of its population are not empowered to advance socially and economically via legitimate means.It means accelerated democratization of the educational and economic system and increased opportunities for entrepreneurship, access to capital, sociopolitical progress and upward mobility.On the United States side, it means further opening trade, stimulating foreign investment in Mexico and reforming immigration to allow for guest workers from Mexico to be legal, productive members of the economy and society.In the eyes of this border native, that's what "cooperation" should look like. Combined, our countries can channel the energies and talents of future generations away from the destructive and unsustainable allure of drugs and toward the enduring productivity and prosperity of our hemisphere.I'm not sure yet what we should call that process. All I know is, it takes a little love.The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Rudy Ruiz.

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WTF is this?
I thought it was perfectly clear. It just says that if we don't call it a war, and love our neighbors as we destroy them, the world will be a better place.Actually, I'm not sure what they are saying, but it doesn't look like either hope or change, except for the rhetoric.
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a new opinion on how to handle the problem of drugs isn't change?
The article didn't seem to indicate a new direction in policy, so I'd so no, polling is meaningless without an actual policy change. If it's a prelude to figuring out how to finally doing something sensible, then good luck to them.
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The article didn't seem to indicate a new direction in policy, so I'd so no, polling is meaningless without an actual policy change.
the director of the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy, R. Gil Kerlikowske, said this administration's drug strategy will not be a war because a war limits what can be done."If the only tool is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail," Kerlikowske said. "That phrase -- war on drugs -- tells you that the only answer is, in fact, force. ... We want to have a different conversation when it comes to drugs."
is this not a new direction?edit: i'm an idiot.
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I heard something today (have not verified it) that the NY Times ran an article praising the 1933 Nazi Germany and how they handled their own stimulus package and socialized medicine, then compared it to what Obama is proposing saying how great it worked then.

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is this not a new direction?
Well, I was optimistic when I read that part, but then the rest of the article basically says "more of the same, with a new name." As Neil Young said, it's a kinder, gentler, machine gun hand.
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