Fondly Remembering Obama – 4/5/2017

As Senator on way to work

Wondering why a few conservative friends are less than impressed.

22 thoughts on “Fondly Remembering Obama – 4/5/2017”

  1. From Jan 2005 to Oct 2008, Obama missed 314 of 1,300 roll call votes, which is 24.2%. This is much worse than the median of 2.2% among the lifetime records of senators serving in Oct 2008. (www.govtrack.us/) In 2007, CNN reported that Obama had missed nearly 80 percent of the votes.
    Obama missed more than 64 percent of votes in 2008.

    My question is;
    Why is he running, it’s not like he was interested in his job as a Senator?

    1. Thank you, major.

      John F. Kennedy was slammed for the same thing in 1960. He just made fun of the issue. The charge was made by those who did not campaign in primaries, but just relied on party bosses. Seems it’s hard to be in more than one place at the same time. He made the important votes.

      Same with Obama. He was there when it counted.

      By the way, your comment seemed extraordinarily early. What is the time difference between here and Budapest?

      1. I don’t know, why don’t you check in with your friend George Soros?

        I knew John Kennedy and Obama is no John Kennedy.

        1. Yeah, I do wish I knew Soros.
          Maybe hit him up for a big enough loan to get a new car.

          Kind of glad I don’t know Putin.
          Some of his associates end up fabulously wealthy.
          But others have a way of getting fabulously dead.

          I was alive when JFK was President.
          Tremendous loss that November Friday.
          And it’s true. Nobody is Jack Kennedy.

          1. Agreed, JFK was the last great democrat President. Today he would be called a conservative by current liberals.

          2. Thank you, major.

            I have heard that about many historically liberal figures: Lincoln, Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy. Conservatives seem to hate them with a white-hot fury until they are gone and therefore no longer a threat to conservative standards.

            Haven’t heard compelling evidence from conservatives that Kennedy would not be well regarded by today’s liberals, or hated by today’s conservatives. My excellent friend T. Paine made a brief attempt recently. He either gave up after a while or, more likely, he has a meaningful life outside of the internet.

            Perhaps you will be able to provide a convincing argument about JFK.

  2. What liberal policies of the 1960’s that Kennedy supported are now within the domain of the republicans and derided by liberals?

    1. Well, yeah, actually.

      It’s one reason most Americans, in most tax brackets, had a lower tax rate at the end of President Obama’s time in office than when he was first inaugurated, in fact substantially lower than at the end of the disastrous final term of President Bush.

      It’s basic Keynesian economics.

      My good friend T. Paine and I covered some of the same ground a few weeks ago.

        1. Oddly enough, I don’t recall saying that.

          In fact, liberals, like most Americans, would be more likely to support the sorts tax cuts achieved by Presidents Kennedy and Obama than those imposed by President Bush and suggested in the meandering musings of President Trump.

          Targeting tax benefits toward the extremely wealthy is widely regarded by the public as immoral. But economists also say that strategy is much less effective than having benefits going to middle and lower income people. We can see evidence nationally in the Bush recession and in more local experiments such as the terrible results of state tax cuts for the wealthy in Kansas.

          My good friend T. Paine and I covered some of the same ground a few weeks ago.

  4. Oh I see, liberals only want tax cuts for the 45% of us who already don’t pay federal income tax. Now I get it…BTW JFK cut taxes across the board.

    Liberals will be against a tax cut like JFK’s…watch and see.

    Mr. Critter,
    Did yiou reas the link I provided? It out lines the JFK tax cut.

    1. Pretty much sounds like liberals supported tax cuts for those 45% then, right?

      So you anticipate what President Trump will do.
      Well, that seems reasonable.

      Then you anticipate what liberals will do.
      Well, that’s okay by me.

      Then you anticipate that the reaction you anticipate from liberals to what you anticipate from President Trump will be unreasonable.
      That’s okay, too.

      Then you get indignant about how unreasonable you feel the reaction will be from liberals to what you anticipate from President Trump.
      A sort of preemptive indignation.
      That strikes me as a little weird.

      Just saying.

    1. Thanks for the question, major.

      That would be tough, were it true throughout everyone’s working life.
      And the 45% figure has been batted around for a long, long time.
      I came across it during the Romney campaign, and it was going around for a while before that.

      Unfortunately, that 45% includes young folks who are not yet in the workforce.
      It includes retirees who are no longer in the workforce.
      The story originated during the great recession and includes those who were involuntarily unemployed.
      And it includes people who have payroll taxes taken out of their paychecks.

      If you correct for those factors, the proportion carrying federal increases substantially.
      The Obama strategy of tax cuts for middle and lower income folks really does work better as a stimulus than the Bush cuts for the wealthy or the presumed Trump cuts for the wealthy.
      The Obama cuts had the additional virtue of being morally justified.

      1. So who becomes “voluntarily unemployed”?

        Let’s try this again, will a tax cut as purposed by Trump get liberal support? A middle class tax cut like JFK’s?
        Are saying that those who have payroll taxes taken out of their paychecks, that when they get their refund for those taxes paid, they are paying taxes?

        1. Your first question is a good one. “Voluntarily unemployed” is largely a conservative myth, with the exception of early retirees, college students, and those who make similar life choices. T. Paine once explained how a relative in an unemployment office regaled him with tales about folks she had encountered who could work but preferred not to.

          Whether President Trump gets liberal support pretty much depends on whether he changes his mind and makes a very different proposal than what was recently rejected. The core of proposed Obamacare replacement was a tax cut that would mostly benefit those of extreme wealth. On the other hand, it could be President Trump had no idea what Paul Ryan had put into that bill.

          You may want to look up what payroll taxes are. They generally don’t get overpaid or refunded. I suppose there could be some rare exceptions, but I have never heard of any.

          1. “Voluntarily unemployed” is largely a conservative myth…..show me where a conservative has used that term. I’ve only seen it here.

            BTW, will liberal support the JFK tax cut if Trump uses it

          2. Always willing to help out, when I have time.

            Here is a good place for you to start. You might try google. Just enter “voluntarily unemployed”

            Your next question has already been discussed. If tax rates were at the level they were when President Kennedy proposed his cuts, I’m inclined to think we would. Probably not today, though, since they would result in pretty much nobody paying taxes.

  6. I can think of two times in particular when I unequivocally agreed with Senator Obama. Sadly, he changed his mind as President Obama.

    While sitting as Illinois’ Senator during the Bush administration, Obama said, “The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here’. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.”

    The other time was this, back in 2004 after just having won his U.S. Senate seat, he was asked if he would consider running on a national ticket. His wise response back then was, “I am a believer in knowing what you are doing when you apply for a job, and I think that if I were to seriously consider running on a national ticket, I would essentially have to start now before having served a day in the senate. Now there’s some people that might be comfortable doing that, but I am not one of those people.”

    The video at the end of the post shows him in his own words.

    http://savingcommonsense.blogspot.com/2011/07/obamas-trading-of-wisdom-for-power.html

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