Yo, The Stimulus Worked – Thank You President Obama!

Common refrains from people who say it didn’t work:

But Obama promised that unemployment would be less than 8%. Horseshit on a stick. First, he didn’t “promise” a damn thing, if everything an incoming president says is turned into a “promise”, well then there has been a whole lot of promise breaking going on in our history. Second, the cautious prediction made during the transition was based on the numbers that the outgoing Bush administration was feeding the Obama team. They were flat out wrong and completely underestimated what was going on in our economy. Hey media, that’s called context. Buy some at the local C-store.

But soooo many people are still out of work. Yes, and that totally sucks. But that does not mean that the over 3 million people who did get jobs are insignificant or don’t matter. They do. If the measure for whether the stimulus worked is full employment, then those people will be waiting till the end of time — we’ve never had anything close to full employment. And you can damn well bet that those people still looking for work are encouraged by the fact that others are starting to find jobs, which of course increases the number of people looking and drives up the unemployment rate.

But the stock market has been falling…..oh, wait, it’s going like gangbusters. Nevermind.

But Fox News says we are still in a recession, the numbers are being cooked. The only thing cooking at Fox New is the meth that the anchors must be smoking during commercial breaks.

But, but, but….let’s just all say it together, the stimulus worked. And yes, we have more to do, but don’t let the Republicans and the compliant media make you think that cutting taxes for the rich would have been much better, that is a big part of what got us into this freakin mess.

February 21, 2012 - Posted by ExtremeLiberal | Accomplishments, Economy, Politics, President Barack Obama | Stimulus Worked

6 Comments

There are two sides to every news story and economic survey out there. When I look around and see that two out of every five of my friends are unemployed it seems that the real unemployment number is a lot higher than anyone wants to admit out loud. The high price of gasoline (which trickles down to inflate the price of just about every other commodity) is another indicator that screams out that we are doing things wrong.

I don’t know if we have a congress incapable of working with our president or if we have a president incapable of working with our congress but whichever it is I know it is not working. Clinton and a Republican congress worked together and pulled us out of a recession and into a strong recovery. Reagan and a Democrat congress worked together and pulled us out of a recession and into a strong recovery. For two years Obama had a Democrat congress and failed to pull us out of this recession. That Obama is now blaming the Republican congress for his failed recovery efforts holds no more water with me than his continuing to blame GWB for all that’s wrong with the world.

Comment by Andrew | February 22, 2012
- Ah yes, the mind of a Republican. Do you know what the actual definition of a recession is or do you just say shit for the hell of it?
  
  PRESIDENT OBAMA DID PULL US OUT OF THE RECESSION WITH THE HELP OF THAT DEMOCRATIC CONGRESS!
  
  And really, get over your denial that President Bush fucked up our country royally. 8 years of handouts to big business, easing of regulations (Wall Street and otherwise) and fucking up our reputation around the world is going to take a little while to repair. And we are making great progress with NO HELP from the anti-woman, anti-working class, anti-Girl Scouts, anti-minority, anti-education party.
  
  Comment by ExtremeLiberal | February 22, 2012
- Love your ANECDOTAL “evidence”, Andrew. I don’t know anyone unemployed but then I live in Texas which has been having a booming oil/gas economy these past couple of years. So whose ANECDOTAL evidence is more correct, yours or mine??? Also gasoline is as low as $3.15 a gallon in Houston today. I remember paying over $4.00 a gallon in July 2008 under George W. Bush when crude hit $145 a barrel, much higher than today. But we weren’t calling it all $5 a gallon gasoline then. Remember it’s only been ONE service station in Los Angeles (owned by a Republican???) that has gauged its pumps for $5 a gallon.
  
  http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0f/Brent_Spot_monthly.svg
  
  IF gas does go higher at the pump under Obama than it did when crude was higher under Bush, I might have to consider a conspiracy among oil company executives who tend to be Republican and dislike Obama even though there are more US wells pumping today than since 2004 under Bush.
  
  http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MCRFPUS1&f=M
  
  Are Republicans in Big Energy/Big Business/Big Banking doing their best to throw an election? The fat cats don’t suffer when gasoline is high priced, their chauffeurs filling up their Bentleys and Mercedes without pain. The mega-rich have already shown a contempt for millions of Americans keeping them suffering for four years now in order to turn the White House “white” again. The fat cats are not suffering and to hell with the common man! The rich still enjoy their country clubs, their yachts, bling from Tiffany’s, and building even bigger mansions. There have been no Republican “jobs” programs although the President has leaned over backwards to compromise, gone extra miles with Republicans in Congress only to be spat upon. I have lived under 13 presidents since FDR’s second term and never have seen such sabotage of a White House by an opposition party, not even Republicans under Truman. Seems the REICH is taking to heart, Soviet Leon Trotsky’s “the ends justify the means.”
  
  I know the Republican talking point du jour is $5 a gallon as Perky Elisabeth Hasselbeck on The View this morning condemned President Obama having fun singing in the White House yesterday “while the nation SUFFERS $5 a gallon gasoline” (the national average today is $3.57 BTW). Of course Elisabeth, like so many on the REICH, doesn’t think for herself but just reads the talking points she receives in her emailbox before going on air to spew so many REICH LIES.
  
  I know this is the talking point this week (besides Obama being a scary “Muslim”). The former Republican Sec. of State in Texas wrote an Op-Ed for the Houston Chronicle saying that Obama WANTS $5 a gallon gasoline to FORCE Americans into small fuel-efficient cars (Newt talked about “gun racks” in the Volt in right-wing Oklahoma so must be the popular talking point).
  
  http://www.chron.com/opinion/outlook/article/Soaring-gas-prices-by-design-3340333.php
  
  Yeah, that’s the ticket…anyone running for president WANTS high gasoline prices to possibly bring their defeat!!! It’s not like Obama can call up a Saudi Royals and order them to pump more, lower OPEC prices! To hear some, you’d think the President of the United States can just open his mouth and the world trembles.
  
  Comment by grantinhouston | February 22, 2012
  - Amen Grant, well said as usual.
    
    Comment by ExtremeLiberal | February 22, 2012
Houston is hosting the NAPE convention this week and of course the headlines today in the Chronicle are all about BIG OIL executives from the USA and Canada bashing Obama, blaming the President for high gasoline prices because he has restricted oil drilling on federal lands. I guess that current oil production (now at its highest level since 2004 UNDER BUSH) makes no difference for them. Who says BIG OIL executives won’t do everything in their power to defeat Obama in November, even if it means an ARTIFICIAL rise in prices at the pump?

http://www.chron.com/business/article/Oil-and-gas-leaders-slam-Obama-3354377.php

BTW, the four-week unemployment average, seasonally adjusted and which smooths week-to-week fluctuations, dropped again for the sixth straight week to 359,000 applicants. That’s also the lowest number since March 2008 after which the numbers began to zoom upwards
in the last 10 months of the Bush administration.

Comment by grantinhouston | February 23, 2012
Grant,

You are correct that part of the Texas growth is the oil industry but that is a very small part of the growth. Texas is growing because it is very business friendly both from a regulation and tax standpoint. Several companies have moved from business hostile states to Texas because it is business friendly.

The rise in gas prices is Bush’s friends raising prices to make Obama look bad. It has nothing to due with stopping exploration in the Gulf or refusing to allow the pipeline
to placate his environmental extremists.

Comment by skudrunner | February 23, 2012