Hmm. So Bush didn't have to lead either? Sure, Obama should do that if it is true, but GWB junior didn't need to did he? No, only Democrats get berated for not leading a Conservative Congress.

I'm going to translate into real people talk really quickly your last bit:

"Leadership is doing what I think needs to be done. Therefore, what Reagan did is leadership, but what Obama does makes him a weak ineffective Communist Kenyan."

Yes, we get that you don't like Obama. But your opinion has only the briefest acquaintance with facts or reality, as I think we'd demonstrated.

I actually feel really bad for the principled reasonable conservatives on this site (and elsewhere). Do they really have to put up with yahoos like you? Christ. And I thought we had it bad with the goddamn 9/11 Truther idiots.

Actually Storm Trooper the study by the Swedish Institute of Trade that Norberg referred to included the value of government services in the per capita income.

http://www.johannorberg.net/?page=articles&articleid=45

Jack, Reagan solved the problem and got 5.1% and 9.3% economic growth in the first and second quarters of his third year in office by getting legislation passed through a House of Representatives controlled by the opposite party.
Obama hasn't passed anything through the opposition controlled House and we have a 1.9% GDP growth rate in the first quarter of Obama's third year.

Reagan was an adroit politician who provided leadership to solve the problem.
Obama is proving to be an incapable politician unable to provide the necessary leadership at the crucial moment.

Define 'value'. That word can mean whatever you want it to.

You didn't reference per capita, sir.

But since you did now, you're still wrong. According to the CIA World factbook, the GDP(PPP) of Sweden is 39,100.

The GDP(PPP) of Mississippi is 32,967.

To put that in rankings, that would put Sweden between Florida and Tennessee for per capita GDP.

But don't let facts stand in the way sir. Stay the course!

"Jack, Reagan solved the problem and got 5.1% and 9.3% economic growth in the first and second quarters of his third year in office by getting legislation passed through a House of Representatives controlled by the opposite party.
Obama hasn't passed anything through the opposition controlled House and we have a 1.9% GDP growth rate in the first quarter of Obama's third year.

Reagan was an adroit politician who provided leadership to solve the problem.
Obama is proving to be an incapable politician unable to provide the necessary leadership at the crucial moment."

Read my first few posts.

All of those things are subjective.

You're still basically saying you hate Obama and like Reagan. We got that already.

And I for one don't care. You've proven to be a ideological purist uninterested in actual solutions or compromise.

You are part of the problem, and the only reason I'm even engaging with you is to demonstrate to anybody reading this thread how pointless and ineffective you are.

I'm interested in solutions, not meaningless slander. When you're ready to join the adult world, let us know. I won't be waiting up. (And with that, my late night dinner has arrived. You kids play nice. I'm sure I'll get a chuckle out of whatever TC posts next. If I didn't have some episodes of House to catch up on, I'd stick around for both dinner and a show)

Excuse me TC,

The Democrats of the Reagan era were willing to compromise.
Let's see if the Republicans of Obamaday are too.

What is compromise? Accepting part of the other side's wishes in a bid to make them accept some of yours. So let's see what the Democrats' wishes are.

1. Tax increases on the rich. Democrats believe that the benefits of taxing rich people more would outweigh the investment disincentive. Let's put aside the fact that tax increases on the very rich only won't count for much of the total budget shortfall, but what do Republicans say? NO!

2. Eliminating loopholes. That's a handy way to save money that doesn't involve much pain. But what do Republicans say? "Fine. But for every dollar you save in doing that, you have to reduce revenue by at least the same amount". You could say that would be compromise of a sort, but it's a meaningless compromise because it basically ignores the Democrat's underlying wish to eliminate loopholes in order to increase revenue.

3. Health-care reform. I agree that it was not done as well as it could have been. I would be happy if Republicans put out a list of suggestions of improvement to the bill. After all, there are good bits of legislation in there, like banning discrimination against people who are already ill. So the way to compromise would be for Republicans to accept that the bill contains some good bits, and allow the Democrats to keep them while trashing the unacceptable. But what do Republicans say? NO! REPEAL NOW!!!1!!!11111!

Now let's look at the Republicans' wishes.

1. No tax increase on the rich. Obama had wanted to cancel the Bush tax cuts the rich and keep them for everyone else; Republicans wanted the whole system to stay. Result? Obama extended the tax increase for everyone. Compromise.

2. 2011 Budget: Obama wanted less spending cuts to boost the economy with infrastructure projects, homeowner loan funds, etc. Republicans wanted the budget to cut a lot of spending in order to get the books back to balance. Result? Obama adopted most of the Republican demands. Compromise.

So Mr. TC, it appears here that Democrats are willing to compromise whereas Republicans are not. And if they are willing to budge at all, how should Obama lead them? Care to explain instead of just asserting that Obama is a fail leader?

Gobble, It looks like Reagan was an experienced executive who provided the crucial leadership, and Obama is an inexperienced leader coming up short at the crucial time.

It's funny how Obama supporters want to blame his failures on others.
It's like my favorite Democrat said "The buck stops here."
That was Harry Truman on the Presidency.
Harry understood that the President is ultimately responsible for what happens on his watch.
Obama and his supporters keep looking for excuses to avoid responsibility.
Not surprising at all.

Klein, you basically say "Regean Bad, Obama Good." How sophisticated.
I'll look at the performance of both and Barack comes away as Jimmy Carter Jr.

Obama has to become a Conservative.

"Klein, you basically say "Regean Bad, Obama Good." How sophisticated.
I'll look at the performance of both and Barack comes away as Jimmy Carter Jr."

I say both are shit, but Obama is slightly better than any current republicans.

We had another Democratic President who faced a sputtering economy.
Here is what he had as an answer.

""The final and best means of strengthening demand among consumers and business is to reduce the burden on private income and the deterrents to private initiative which are imposed by our present tax system; and this administration pledged itself last summer to an across-the-board, top-to-bottom cut in personal and corporate income taxes"

The Democratic President? None other than John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
He made those remarks and these at the Economic Club of New York in December of 1962.
"Corporate tax rates must also be cut to increase incentives and the availability of investment capital. The Government has already taken major steps this year to reduce business tax liability and to stimulate the modernization, replacement, and expansion of our productive plant and equipment."

Kennedy also didn't think that taxing the "rich" was good policy.

President Kennedy went on to say he favored tax cuts for the rich as well as the poor. "For all these reasons, next year's tax bill should reduce personal as well as corporate income taxes, for those in the lower brackets, who are certain to spend their additional take-home pay, and for those in the middle and upper brackets, who can thereby be encouraged to undertake additional efforts and enabled to invest more capital."

I remember JFK and Barack Obama is no JFK.
My apologies to Lloyd Benson for stealing his line.

JFK wanted the taxing to be reasonable. Across the board reasonable. The Republicans had made it unreasonable since then, and are refusing Obama's attempts to fix that. Please check the conversation between myself and Gunfighter.

Shocktrooper, I'll simply take JFK at his word in the quote over your spun interpretation,
" "For all these reasons, next year's tax bill should reduce personal as well as corporate income taxes, for those in the lower brackets, who are certain to spend their additional take-home pay, and for those in the middle and upper brackets, who can thereby be encouraged to undertake additional efforts and enabled to invest more capital."
It's pretty obvious JFK knew what his words meant.
Please check his entire speech. http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jfkeconomicclubaddress.html

Yes, JFK made it reasonable, the Republicans screwed it up. Obama wants to fix that.

TC, you're honestly trying to compare the U.S. Economy from 20 years ago to the economy we have today?

Reading through this thread, there's been little/no mention to what occurred from 2001-2009 and what mess that put us in today. It's hard to argue that George W. Bush didn't undo some/all of Clinton's economic surplus by giving tax breaks and fighting two simultaneous wars (one of which we were told the enemy had "WMD's")

All of this from a man who stated, "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem" was essentially the call for deregulation. Deregulating the banks didn't help us at all.

But to bring this back to Reagan, "Americans have the highest income inequality in the rich world and over the past 20–30 years Americans have also experienced the greatest increase in income inequality among rich nations. The more detailed the data we can use to observe this change, the more skewed the change appears to be... the majority of large gains are indeed at the top of the distribution."
- Economist Timothy Smeeding, Social Science Quarterly

I still don't understand what difference you guys see between the two parties aside from a proportionally tiny amount of domestic spending. The last Bush was pretty entertaining, so I'd vote for him again. I'm definitely glad Obama got elected, because it sparked an enormously funny "c-c-c-combo breaker" meme. Their presidencies haven't really been all that different, though.

MatMartin, If you bothered to really read through this thread you would realize the subject is the failed political leadership of Barack Obama, but of course if you are an Obama supporter ignoring that fact is job one.

oh, yeah. kennedy cut taxes on the rich ALL THE WAY DOWN TO 70%.

i like this idea, let's do that.

Kennedy's supply-side tax ideology is great to see isn't it. Cut the taxes of everyone across the board. He cut the taxes on the rich by 20%.

Reagan cuts the top tax bracket by only 10% in ERTA, but little details like that are ignored by the liberals wearing rose colored glasses to view history.

The key for both Kennedy and Reagan was they supplied leadership.

What are the specifics of Obama's deficit reduction?
Where is Obama's plan? All we get is Pelosi saying that entitlements are completely off the table. Pelosi sure provides leadership as wrong-headed as it is, but Barack provides none. Jimmy Carter Jr.

it's not as important to me that he cut the taxes by 20%, it's important to me that he cut them to 70%. corporations also had to pay taxes on money they made outside of the usa, instead of being able to file their losses here and their gains elsewhere.

"I actually feel really bad for the principled reasonable conservatives on this site"

I accept and appreciate your empathy, Jack_Klein

It's time for me to drop out of this one. This debate has turned into a clusterfuck. Everyone is basically saying the same thing over and over again.

Reading Tettleton's threads is like watching Fox News, only without the balanced approach to issues and the rigorous fact checking.

Alright Tettleton, I'm game. I'll bite, what exactly, may I ask, does "leadership" entail? What, specifically should Obama do in order to effectively "lead" the United States into prosperity and economic growth?

(Since another thread has revealed that Mr. Chew has absolutely no sense of irony I'll make it clear that the first part of this post is not entirely sincere.)

I'll +1 the similarities to Fox News. All that's missing is some old guy yelling, "Turn off his microphone! Turn it off!"

Oh god, TC is spewing his bullshit again.

We created a thread specifically for this, bro, so you could spew statistics without any context, and then maybe someone could come along and tell you how stupid you are. but you started another thread. Go back to your corner.

Oh, and TC, kid:

Read people's posts before replying. Klein has pointed out numerous times why you're a hypocrite and why the "economic increase" actually meant nothing.

Obama isn't great, but he's better than Reagan, especially since Reagan didn't have to deal with the religious zealots of the GOP.