Campaign stop: President Obama woos 'Hoos

If gifted public speaking equaled meaningful and socially responsible policy creation, fiscal responsibility and Bipartisan cooperation...this man would be as big as legendary as any other office holder....

Voting for this hack in 08 will go down as one regrettable mistake for me....I drank the Kool Aid but not again.

Our debt is embarrassing and his lust for more revenue without huge meaningful budgetary cuts is sickening..

Wonder how much money we will borrow from China to pay for his little trip yesterday?

Blame Bush for whatever you want. At least he wasn't campaigning as the flood waters were rising.

Reminds me of my favorite line from Ryan's speech last night:

"college graduates should not have to live out their twenties in their childhood bedrooms, staring at fading Obama posters and wondering when they can move out and get going with life."

Current Hoos: You are now warned what's coming if Obama is reelected!!

The financial crisis was caused by people (democrats too) borrowing money that they they should not have borrowed and spending it on things that they should not have bought. The crisis was triggered when too many people reached their limit and people who borrowed easy money could not repay their loans. George Bush's spending fueled this but that is a debt issue that Obama is adding to, not reducing. Once the people that borrowed the money stopped repaying their obligations, people who were owed the money could not repay their obligations and the house of cards failed. Most of the debt was from people using thier home equity like an ATM and you cannot blame that on George Bush, It was Clinton who made home loans easier and the Bush administration tried over a dozen times to reign in fannie mae and freddie mac only to be thwarted by Barney Frank and Maxine Waters repeatedly. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMnSp4qEXNM

The US government never defaulted on any debt, only consumers and busineses who suffered losses because 1) people and other businsses didn't pay them and 2) the reduction in demand from the resultant loss of liquididty. So basically we had a ballon caused by easy money provided at the hands of Clinton and greedy americans who bit off more than they can chew and choked.

George Bush didn't stop it and that is his fault. Congress encouraged it and that is their fault. Barack Obama wants to excuse it and eep spending and that is HIS fault.

You can blame Bush for a couple of trillion wasted in Iraq and that is fair, but that money spent in the economy did not cause our current woes. it just made our total debt higher.

There is one undeniable fact and that is that while people were looking for work and a way out of this recession Barack Obama expended all of his political capital and time fighting for Obamacare which decimated any chance of recovery because of its enormous cost projections and unfunded obligations that job creators KNOW will fall on thier shoulders to pay. He fiddled with his socialist experiment while the economy burned. The argument that Obamacare is not socialzed medicine is irrelevant because everyone knows that single payer is 1) what he wanted but knew was unobtainable and 2) was a platform that he created with Obamacare so that when costs skyrocket that will be the only alternative for survival.

Barack Obama will; go down in history as a myopic egomaniac who delayed the recovery by a decade with his participation trophy agenda.

The recovery will begin in earnest when he levaes the White House and investors once again have the confidence that they will be rewarded for risk.

Geek's comments re taxes paying for a college education make NO sense at all.

The current students who have unemployed sisters/brothers who are recent college grads will realize what a total load of you-know-what Obama is shoveling in their direction.

lets pull all government funding from all colleges and univesities for about 15 minutes and we will quickly see how heavily it is subsidized.

The problem is that tuition was jacked up right along with the availability of loans and grants and all campuses became "grounds" with all kinds of new atriums, marble granite and stone for the kids to puke on into the wee hours. Get back to preparing people for the real world with knowledge and insight and costs will drop dramatically.

dawg, the reason the "stonewalled" is because the mans ideas won't work. The man has an agenda to fundementally change the american route to success...

In Amerca the rich need to take care of the poor and the infrastucture and provide liquidity so others can make money too. The middle class is supposed to cover the day to day costs of running the middle class. So the rich pay for the buildings and free lunch program and the middle class pony up for the teachers and electric bill. Barack obama wants the rich to pay it all , and he is such mental midget that he does not realize you can milk a cow everyday but you can only kill it for steak once. He wants to do both. It won't work. He is too stubborn to recognize his own failings and so we need to push him aside and let a businessman get us up and running again. Once everyone is working and the budget is under control we can then try and find ways to give free sex change operations to all of the released illegal immigrants who want one.

Barack Obama is in over his head. Her couldn't organize a senior prom.

"Willing to credit Obama for preventing a skid into depression after the disastrous economic policies of George W. Bush and the mortgage and financial meltdowns?" Seems to me we have skidded into a depression, either in spite of, or because of Obama's policies. I will happily give Obama credit for making the situation worse or, at least, making it no better. And it took a lot of borroweed money to get where we are.

"I wonder if he's willing to credit Obama for decimating al Qaeda and terminating Osama bin Laden?" Of course Obama deserves credit for the decision to launch the operation. Any sitting President would have done the same, so Obama gets credit for choosing the glaringly obvious correct choice. But credit for the decimation and terminating belongs to those who did the actual work.

("Credit for) . . .the millions of jobs that were saved and created under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act? The act created little beyond a stimulous program which has had little impact aside from creation of more debt.

Etc., etc.

Say what you will, and blame whom you will, for the recent history which has contributed to the very difficult economic times we face. But the assumption that these things may have been the exclusive creation of his antecedents does not somehow show that Obama is an effective leader. One might pardonably conclude, based on the experience of the past 4 years, that Obama is unequal to the task at hand.

But Obama has at least, and finally, perfectly articulated his view of those who build and who support our economy: "you didn't build that." He says credit should be shared with the public works of government. That's true. However - it was the taxpapers who provided the money. So, in fact, we built BOTH. Obama, at no time in his life, created a direct, material contribution to the nation's economic vitality and strength or the material benefit or prosperity of any single person. His success has been based on other people's work and creation of wealth.

This kind of approach cannot, by nature, sustain itself. We can either try to stop it, or wait for it to collapse under its own mass.

@Tom D:

One other item Obama deserves credit for is increased gun sales. Personally, I never owned a firearm in my life (though as a vet, I'm obviously knowledgeable in that area) until just after the Nov 2008 election. Along with MANY other Americans, it was a race to buy one for fear our Second Amendment rights would disappear.

I'd like to pose an honest question to all the haters on this forum. I am not personally an Obama supporter, so it has nothing to do with him...anyone could be in the White House for this question.

What do you think would have happened to our economy if all the banks that were failing went under and the auto industry went belly up? Do you think there was any other real, viable choice in the matter? Do you think ANY other president would've had a choice but to do whatever was needed to right a sinking ship...

Look at the Chrysler and Gm dealers that were left out in the cold.You will never get any of these people to vote for Obama.
One
Big
Ass
Mistake
America

Hmmm...so letting GM go under and the banks having a fire sale would've saved the economy? I'm no expert in macro-economics, but that seems a bit simple to me. I don't think the banks would've survived long enough to auction off anything. That may have taken place in bankruptcy, but what of all the money those banks held for people like me? If my money goes up in smoke, I can't buy sh!t, no matter how nicely priced it is at a "firesale"...you may argue that's what the FDIC is for, but where does that money come from? The government ends up bailing out someone...right?

@Dawg...you have forgotten that Obamas first 2 years he had a democrat majority...passed health care and the stimulas...how did that work out for you?

the banks wre giving money to help homeowners right? I mean there is a bank on every corner in c'ville right

Oh poor Bill Marshall, who just keeps slinging the right-wing unsubstantiated (and wholly inaccurate) right-wing rant. He prevaricates almost as well as Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan (or Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh).

Marshall says that the financial and mortgage crises were "triggered when too many people reached their limit and people who borrowed easy money could not repay their loans. George Bush's spending fueled this but that is a debt issue that Obama is adding to, not reducing.” Now it is true that debt has grown under Obama, but let's be fair, and accurate. As CNN/Money reported on Jan, 20, 2009, the day on Obama's inauguration, "The scope and intensity of problems facing President Obama are similar only to those that Franklin D. Roosevelt faced in 1933." Worse, Republicans pledged to obstruct him at every turn, even if it hurt the nation (and it did). Indeed, his stimulus bill was watered down with tax cuts, still, virtually every study concludes it saved and created between 3 and 4 million jobs. In 2010, after taking control of the House, Republicans said "jobs" were their first priority, yet they failed to produce a single "jobs" bill and they've killed those submitted by Obama.

Marshall says “It was Clinton who made home loans easier and the Bush administration tried over a dozen times to reign in fannie mae and freddie mac.” This is one of the favorite lies told by Republicans. Facts do not agree, and "Federal housing data reveal that the charges aren't true, and that the private sector, not the government or government-backed companies, was behind the soaring subprime lending at the core of the crisis." Indeed, "between 2004 and 2006, when subprime lending was exploding, Fannie and Freddie went from holding a high of 48 percent of the subprime loans that were sold into the secondary market to holding about 24 percent." Moreover, "Federal Reserve Board data show that more than 84 percent of the subprime mortgages in 2006 were issued by private lending institutions; Private firms made nearly 83 percent of the subprime loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers that year; Only one of the top 25 subprime lenders in 2006 was directly subject to the housing law that's being lambasted by conservative critics."

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2008/10/12/53802/private-sector-loans-not-fan...

So, if conservative criticism of Clinton (and Fannie and Freddie) lacks any foundation, why did the financial and mortgage crises occur? As the New York Times reported, "There are plenty of culprits, like lenders who peddled easy credit, consumers who took on mortgages they could not afford and Wall Street chieftains who loaded up on mortgage-backed securities without regard to the risk. But the story of how we got here is partly one of Mr. Bush’s own making." Bush "pushed hard to expand homeownership," and "As early as 2006, top advisers to Mr. Bush dismissed warnings from people inside and outside the White House that housing prices were inflated and that a foreclosure crisis was looming. And when the economy deteriorated, Mr. Bush and his team misdiagnosed the reasons and scope of the downturn."

Bush not only " insisted that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac meet ambitious new goals for low-income lending," but also he "he pushed to allow first-time buyers to qualify for federally insured mortgages with no money down," and he "leaned on mortgage brokers and lenders to devise their own innovations...corporate America, eyeing a lucrative market, delivered with a proliferation of too-good-to-be-true teaser rates and interest-only loans that were sold to investors in a loosely regulated environment." Even worse, "Bush populated the financial system’s alphabet soup of oversight agencies with people who, like him, wanted fewer rules, not more."

As a well-placed Republican bank expert and adviser noted, "“This administration made decisions that allowed the free market to operate as a barroom brawl instead of a prize fight.” We know the result, even if conservatives like Marshall refuse to face the facts and admit that it was their policies responsible for the debacle. Chasing stupidity with insanity, the Republicans want even more of their disastrous supply-side, trickle-down, laissez-faire nonsense.

See: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/business/21admin.html?adxnnl=1&pagewan...

Finally, in a fit of conservative consternation, Marshall makes the ridiculous claim that "Obamacare which decimated any chance of recovery because of its enormous cost projections and unfunded obligations.” Most of the Affordable Care Act has yet to kick in. And, the Congressional Budget Office says that it will REDUCE the deficit (by more than $230 billion), not add to it. The General Accountability Office agrees, warning that if the act is repealed, "spending on health care grows much more rapidly." In other words, more debt.

But conservatives don't care. They just make things up as they go. No matter how hard they can run from the facts (as Marshall and Romney and Ryan do), they cannot hide. Conservative presidents and policies piled up deficits and debt, broke the economy, undermined and severely retarded the general welfare of the nation, and transferred enormous sums from public treasuries to very private bank accounts in the process.

The fact that Republican legislatures and governors across the country are using every effort to suppress voting –– the core element of democratic governance –– is testament to this truth.

Democracy, you like to attack me but it is obvious that have never run a business, studied history before the term of Goerge W Bush or opened an economics book.

The banks should have been given liquidity and not a bailout. The private lenders should have been allowed to fail along with their investors that is the way NATURE redisrtiributes wealth.

You TWIST the truth, George Bush pushed for private lending to STOP the Democrats push for The federal Governemt guarantees provided by the fast and loose ways at fannie mae and freddie mack . Raines left in disgrace from fannie mae and the fraud was rampant. That was AFTER Bush tried more than a dozen times to get congress to do their job and straiten them out.

I have no problem with Blaming Bush for increasing the debt and the deficit but the US govt did not default on its borrowing consumers did.

As for my comments on Obamacare the CBO does not do anything but crunch sterile numbers provided by Obama to get there. They are NOT ALLOWED to specuate. So when I "speculate" and say that a lot the people getting free coverage will use the system to get vicodin and the foriegn Doctors will open clinics for the government financed bonanza I am saying that the bills will have to be paid and that money will need to come from the taxpayers. Look at how blaoted every government program ever made is. The CBO is wrong more than it is right.

In a capitalist society there is a risk reward ratio that makes it work. Capitalism is not a lottery ticket where you gamble a dollar and get 50 million. It is a calcualted risk based on facts, logic and speculation. People took risks when they bought things on credit. Consumers defaulted and triggered the crisis because they got as greedy as the people peddling the mortgages. Those who were more careful were SUPPOSED to get an opportunity to buy at the firesale but OBAMA tried to "save" people and spent trillions failing miserably.

The problem we have right now in america is that nobody wants to tighten their belt, they want every government service and then some. They want free health care, rent subsidies, food stamps, free college, free birth control, free free free. Well the fact is that each and every man woman and child currently owes 50,000 dollars in their share of the debt. If you divide it by the taxpayers you get 140k and if you divide it by the number of taxpayers that actually pay INTO the system it is 250k EACH. and that is just federal. It cannot go on and Democarcy can cry a river about how we got here but none of that whining will stop the financial freight train coming down the track.

The fact of the matter is that as much as people like to hate the rich bankers it was investors who went to pittburgh and put together the money to build the steel mills that took the anthrcite coal, the iron ore and the St lawrence seaway and made american steel the most desired steel in the world. It worked fine for 100 years until the Unions fought modernization to try and "secure" their jobs and ended up losing everything to foreign competitors. It was Republicans that built the steel industry and Demorcrats that destroyed it with their Union rules and excessive regulations.

We cannot have a thriving economy without risk and we cannot keep raising taxes and giving people everything they want. California tried that and are on the verge on bankruptcy. Look at greece spain italy and portugal and you will see where we are headed. Look at all the islamist countries where lending is restricted due to religous doctrines and you will see how far we have come by allowing it.

It is simple. Obama spent two years fighting to give people healthcare instead of jobs and he screwed up. There is two trillion sitting on the sidlines waiting for erkle to get fired and once he is gone they will get back in the game.

The rich have theirs and can afford to wait another 4 years if they have to. There are about 25 million with no job who do not have that luxury.

Obama blew it. He is more interested in green jobs and social justice then providing opportunity for people to be self sufficient. He thinks just because he got where he is by not building anything of value that nobody else did either. If he loses it will be good riddance to a failed experiment. Social justice should be handled at the state and local levels. Obama should not be getting involved in case slike Travon Martin or some cop and some professer breaking into his own house and being mistaken for a criminal.
There are "santuary" cities for almost everybody.... San Francisco welcomes gays, Maryland welcomes hispanics, Denver welcomes pot smokers... Let that evoutiary process be dealt with locally and get back to work on real issues like Iran Afghanistan and an EPA that has to be sued in court on a wekly basis for overstepping its bounds.

Obama needs to go back a few notches and become the mayor of a small town... he is simply not ready for the big leagues...

You can hate George Bush all you want but its been almost 4 years and you are beginning to sound like a bitter ex wife who can't let go....

omgpaul

Did you not read all I wrote?I said that if they had let peoples houses go we would be through it BY NOW. It does take time. My point is that Obama spent all of his time and politcal capital on obamcare instead of the economy and made things worse.

He should have given businesses direct investment tax credits to moderniize their facilities. This would have allowed them to take care of their buildings at a time when labor is cheap and these jobs would have been truly "shovel ready" because he could hire a painter plumber hvac or electrical contractor tomorrow since he doesn't need to spend years on public hearings and debates. (unless of course you are trying to work wiith Albemarle county or The charlottesville ARB. )This would have probably paid for itself in savings on unemployment benefits paid out as many marginal companise could have survived the recession with the work generated.

Face it.. The problem is not that Obamas ideas need more time... they are bad ideas.... that is why the money is on the sidelines... that is why the stock market is so violatile, and that is actually why the stock market numbers are up.. it is because the companies are playing it safe because the risk reward ratio is too low. These companies are borrowing money at 2% and buying back their own stock so they don't have to pay out a 3% dividend. So the stock rises because they borrowed money and bought stock. That is a bubble waiting to burst.

Obama has an agenda to make life "fair" life ain't fair and he can't make it so no matter how many terms we gave him.

He needs to go, he failed.

Poor Bill....he simply cannot give up his conservative dogma and face facts.

Bill Marshall repeats the conservative lie that the Affordable Care Act will destroy "any chance of recovery because of its enormous cost projections and unfunded obligations" even though I pointed out to him that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the General Accountability Office (GAO) – both with sterling reputations for analysis – say that it will REDUCE the deficit, with the GAO warning that if the act is repealed, "spending on health care grows much more rapidly." Marshall sweeps away the analyses with a simplistic "The CBO is wrong more than it is right." No citation or evidence. Just Bill Marshall's dogmatic opinion.

Marshall says this about the financial and economic crises: "The banks should have been given liquidity." He seems completely unaware that they were....lots of it. Bush gave them more than $700 unrestricted taxpayer dollars. The Federal Reserve followed up by giving them huge low- and no-interest access to funds. Try abandoning those conservative websites and Fox fake "news," Bill.

Marshall accuses me of twisting "the truth" (as if he'd know what that is). But I keeping feeding him a healthy dose of facts and just keeps retching them up. The fact of the matter is that George W. Bush's policies –– policies utilized by every Republican president since Reagan, and policies that are heartily endorsed by Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan –– are directly responsible for the mortgage meltdown, the financial crisis, and the broken economy. And yes, Bill, it does in fact matter. If a patient has been severely weakened by the quackery of bloodletting, it makes no sense to take more blood...conservative Republican supply-side, trickle-down, laissez-faire policy is economic quackery. It has not worked, and it won't (except for the rich).

Marshall claims obtusely that President Obama has "failed." Hardly. As I pointed out earlier, CNN/Money reported on Jan, 20, 2009, the day on Obama's inauguration, "The scope and intensity of problems facing President Obama are similar only to those that Franklin D. Roosevelt faced in 1933." Worse, Republicans pledged to obstruct him at every turn, and they did. And yet Obama prevented a skid into depression and his stimulus bill (even though watered down by Republicans) saved and created millions of jobs and provided needed financial aid to states and localities. When Obama took office the DOW was at 7949, and a day or to ago it was 13,041, an increase of 64 percent. If Obama's policies are so bad, why, dear Bill, has the market performed so well?

Bill Marshall seems to think that Obama should have had no opinion or have offered no statement of the Travon Martin case...he should have just stayed out of it. But Obama's terse statement about Martin's shooting death hardly compares to what Republicans and George W. Bush did in the case of Terri Schiavo. After cardiac arrest, Schiavo had massive brain damage and was in a persistent vegetative state (confirmed later in an autopsy). Her husband, with multiple levels of state (and later, federal) court approval, opted to have her feeding tube removed, pursuant to Schiavo's own wishes and state law. But the party of "limited government" and states' rights" interceded, passing dubious legislation, which Bush signed after flying back to DC specifically for that purpose. According to a Republican memo, they saw this as "a political issue" to exploit to energize their conservative base. Can you say "hypocrisy." Bill?

Linked below, Bill, is a list of Obama's top 50 accomplishments, achieved with virtually no Republican support.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/march_april_2012/features/obam...

Happy reading, Bill. Oh, and lay off the Fox, it's bad for your brain.

Note the absence of John Douglass on the stage with the President. They totally dissed him. And now he's also running 18% behind in the polls.

One reason John Douglass is so far behind in the polls now (18%) is that he struck a young man videotaping him at his own Public Forum at the Public Library in Farmville, Virginia recently. His big problem is that he has not apologized for the assault - the videos can be seen on youtube - and these videos have been viewed on youtube alone by over 9,000 people, and are posted on over 100 different sites and blogs where there are no counters. This public relations disaster seems to have caused the Obama and Kaine campaigns to uninvite him to their rally in Charlottesville shortly after the incident. Needless to say, his arrogance and ill temper are not well-suited for the office of Representative to the United States Congress. See videos here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48RDHSkaJDE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSeIH4I_Bv8