Oh come on, Brad! You know that those graphics on the recovery of jobs lost and GDP simply reflect the impact of the Bush tax cuts and military spending. Obama is riding the coattails of Bush's successful economic policies.

Ah ha! Well that explains it, Soul Rebel! My mistake! I guess I'm just a tool of the "Liberal MSM" after all!

Soul Rebel, I sure hope thats sarcasm that I'm just having a hard time detecting over the internet, because otherwise that would make me very, very sad.

What I'm surprised about is that it even hit that fast, the only thing I can think of is that its in part to a residual uptick from cash for clunkers.
Saving auto industry jobs so those people can buy more other shit helps.
Now if we could get murcans to quit buying cheap Chinese crap so that big business will have to start producing back here again...

Do you REALLY believe the US economy recovered in the 3rd and 4th quarter ? If the economy recovered then why does the economy need an additional stimulus program ?

Anyone who digs deeper sees that the the numbers still are getting worse.

Yet the Obama administration increased the military budget by 4% and that equals to some 40 billion. The military budget is NOT some 680 billion but at approx. $ 1.2 trillion !

Another "jobless" recovery or simply the latest Wall Street bubble?

Willy2 said:

Do you REALLY believe the US economy recovered in the 3rd and 4th quarter ?

I believe what's discussed in the article above - that job loss has declined and GDP growth has begun to recover, yes.

If the economy recovered then why does the economy need an additional stimulus program

Because while things have improved from where they were, they are still in dreadful shape and the original stimulus bill should have been far broader in the first place.

The argument was not made that "the economy recovered" as you broadly put it, but rather that the stimulus and other emergency policies kept it (for now) from going over the cliff over which it was headed by the time Obama took office in Jan. of '09.

That wingnuts are genetically incable, it seems, of acknowledging that, is dishonest and unconstructive (though obviously they have no apparent concerns about being either of those things).

Yet the Obama administration increased the military budget by 4% and that equals to some 40 billion. The military budget is NOT some 680 billion but at approx. $ 1.2 trillion !

Not that that would have anything to do with the previous points discussed, as far as I can tell, but your evidence for that claim is? URL?

A military/CIA coup has taken place in this country…and I think it’s time we all start speaking in those terms. I don’t know when it began…with the Kennedy assassinations, Bush v Gore, or on 9/11/01. Ron Paul said recently:

"There's been a coup, have you heard? It's the CIA coup. The CIA runs everything, they run the military. They're the ones who are over there lobbing missiles and bombs on countries. ... And of course the CIA is every bit as secretive as the Federal Reserve. ... And yet think of the harm they have done since they were established [after] World War II. They are a government unto themselves. They're in businesses, in drug businesses, they take out dictators ... We need to take out the CIA."

It time for Dennis Kucinich (my choice for Pres.) to introduce articles of impeachment again…This time with the support of Ron Paul. I voted for Obama as the lesser of two evils..but I can’t believe how bad things are….

Here's a great rundown of 11 ways that you can take advantage of stimulus money right now. Pretty neat!

Brillant! Put us to work in the fields, grow'n some CORN!

Go 'bama

Last week, the Commerce Department reported GDP grew by 5.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009. Not mentioned widely in the press, 60 percent of this gain was inventory-related . . . but not even an increase in actual business inventories, just a slower pace of inventory depletion that doesn't add to industrial activity, real growth, or higher employment.
Instead, domestic consumption and real business investment, that together indicate the pulse of the economy, rose by merely 1.8 percent. And, much of this has been fuelled largely by government money and Federal stimulus.

Bloomberg

On Jan. 30, Recovery.gov posted a second report claiming 599,108 jobs were funded in the fourth quarter of last year. While the numbers from the two reporting periods aren’t comparable, the measures are so flawed and the job count so farfetched as to render them close enough for government work, and our purposes as well.

Between Feb. 17 and Dec. 31, the government doled out $57,864,901,449 in federal contract, grant and loan awards yielding 1,239,457 jobs (no inexact rounding for this administration!). That computes to $46,686 per job created, saved, funded or fabricated.

Why not simply write a check in that amount to each new job holder? It would be a lot easier and cheaper than funding a bureaucracy to orchestrate the effort.

OK, I hear you. A job is more than the money it yields. It gives us a sense of purpose, improves our self-esteem and provides a reason to get up in the morning.

The point is, government can always put people to work. It can hire teams of men with shovels to labor for weeks doing the work one earth-moving machine and operator can accomplish in one day.

The goal is to create permanent jobs, increase productivity and contribute to the wealth of the nation. Pyramids don’t cut it. But they’re a good place to bury dead theories.

Off The Grid -

Um, you're serious there, right? You quote a website that is trying to sell gold --- in no small part by scaring the shit out of everybody that the economy is in tatters and only those who own gold will survive --- as a "source"? Really?

And even *that* "source" notes that "the pulse of the economy" (as they chose to measure it "rose by merely 1.8 percent."

How much was that "pulse" rising when Obama took office?

You then go on to quote a report from an anti-Keynsian, pro-Milton-Friedman, pro-Ayn Rand Bloomberg editorial columnist to dispute Bloomberg's own published job numbers? (You'll note the source of those jobs numbers in the graph above.)

My original report does not suggest Obama's policies did anything more than the original report speaks to. But they are real numbers, facts, and directly contravene the bullshit being sold by wingnut media operatives and their tea bagger followers.

If you want to discuss what Obama *hasn't* done and/or has done *miserably*, that's fine, and well worth discussion as well. But until we call get back to sense of reality --- "You are welcome to your own opinion, but not your own facts" --- we're gonna have a helluva time getting *anything* positive done in this country, period.

And no, the "solution" is not to restore Republicans to power --- the very ones who got us into this mess in the first place, and suggest they have every intention of making things even *worse* --- if that's your best plan in response to Obama's and the Democrats' many failures.

Diane @ 8 said:

It time for Dennis Kucinich (my choice for Pres.) to introduce articles of impeachment again…This time with the support of Ron Paul.

For what? Because you don't like him? You realize there has to be High Crimes and Misdemeanors as the basis for an impeachment proceeding, right?

So what are they? (Not saying they don't exist, merely asking you what they are).

I voted for Obama as the lesser of two evils..but I can’t believe how bad things are…

I didn't vote for him at all. And so, perhaps, I'm not particularly surprised about how bad things are. Not sure why you would be.

#11 I quote a author that states:

President Obama has just proposed a $3.8 trillion budget for fiscal 2011 that projects the Federal deficit will balloon to a record $1.6 trillion following last year's $1.4 trillion deficit - and there is not much hope to bring the deficit down to acceptable levels in the next few years, particularly with a persistently weak economy, persistently high unemployment, falling tax revenues, and, eventually, rising interest rates that will push the Treasury's borrowing costs much, much higher.

Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve continues, as it must, to buy Treasury and federal housing agency debt and to hold its key Fed funds policy rate (the rate at which it lends to the banking system) near zero.

And, it remains very doubtful that the Fed can cease financing the growing deficit or withdraw funding the housing section or raise interest rates without economic activity falling sharply.

Our dysfunctional government lacks the ability to deal with America's economic problems . . . and the public lacks both the stomach and the wallet to take the painful remedies necessary to put America back on the right track.

If this isn't reality what is?

Gold is an asset with a real relation with it's competitors, fiat currency. You get to choose one, you can't eat either. Do you think the Chinese mined 300 tonnes of it last year for shits and giggles?

The numbers from the bloomberg article are from Recovery.gov. Obama's own published numbers conflict with the ones you site above.

I have never once supported a republican. Fuck. I voted for Obama. Hurl. Puke. Water. Uck.

How many jobs did Obama create with how much debt attached to it?

A million jobs with 2 trillion dollars, that's $200,000 apiece.

Counter-wingnuting the wingnuts is seriously having an effect here, if you want to get back to reality.

So you're suggesting that Bloomberg's own posted numbers are wrong, because Bloomberg's own columnist disagreed with some of them? Their numbers are wrong in regard to Bush's unemployment rates in 2008 as well?

I am no fan of either Obama's or the Fed's fiscal policies. If that's not clear, I don't know what to tell you. But when the wingnuts lie by saying the stimulus was a failure, etc., when that's just patently untrue --- at least in regard to what little it was hoped that it would do --- it seems to me that *someone* needs to correct the record. Maddow did so. So did I.

As stated in the article, there is plenty to complain about in regard to Obama --- both his fiscal policies, and all the rest. But lies are lies and they will be called out as such. If you feel that doing so "is seriously have an effect here" such that we need to "get back to reality", well, I don't know what to tell you.

You were just shown reality, and you don't like it, I guess. But it's reality nonetheless. And until that reality is recognized in the middle --- rather than the disinformation and derangement that leads to what we saw in yesterday's poll results --- it'll be even more impossible to deal, in any number of ways, with the realities that *you* have pointed out above.

On the approx. $ 1.2 trillion military budget:

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174884

The approx. $ 680 billion budget is the official Pentagon budget only.
Other military related expenses are:
- NASA (Spy satellites)
- Department of Veterans
- Department of State ("Foreign Aid", mainly or predominantly to be spend on US made weapons)
- Department of Energy (Nuclear weapons)
- Department of "Homeland Security" which includes the CIA. The CIA has a (large) military wing which is active in e.g. Afghanistan. Remember the attack on Camp Chapman on december 30, 2009 ? This was a CIA base which carries out attacks on Pakistan with predator drones.

http://www.tomdispatch.c...d_turse,_the_cia_surges/

- The costs for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which are "Supplemental" and "Emergency" budgets and therefore never included in the official military budget.

The recovery was due to the fact that companies started to rebuild their inventories (which were slashed to the bone in the 4th quarter of 2008) but that doesn't automatically mean that the consumer will buy that stuff.
If the economy is recovering then why are salestax revenues still shrinking ? Sales tax revenues are a VERY good sign of the health of the economy. Another GOOD sign would be that the amount of temporary jobs starts/continues to rise.

Obama proposed to budgetfreezes to the tune of $ 30 billion. And that's more than offset by the increase of the military budget. That was the point I was trying to make.(I should have provided more details).
But the flipside of all this spending is a rapidly growing federal debt (currently > $ 12 trillion) and growing in 2009 at $ 1.9 trillion.

Gold is traded to us scum with greenbacks (what did you buy it with, toothpicks?) and if you didn't buy 3 years ago you are screwed. Better get out soon if you just bought because it's headed down, just like the 1980's.
I knew quite a few that were suckered back then too.
Ever heard of a bubble? Ever heard of short selling? If not, Wall St. loves you again and again.
Also, does anyone else but me think that the Pukes are purposefully trying to break the economy for their own political gain? If they could pin this on the Dems if it all goes to hell...That's why they're sitting on their hands right now.

@Brad

Something I've learned from teaching CPR and First Aid for twenty years: It's one thing to stop the bleeding. It's another to repair the damage. What I teach only stops the bleeding. People with skills and equipment far in advance of my education have to take over and do the hard work.

It is thus with Obama. Sure, he's stopped the bleeding, but he expects someone else to do the healing. That someone else is the very group which did the damage in the first place.

I suggest correlating the job loss graphs with the jobs created data and then see whether or not Obama deserves the amount of praise you lavish upon him.

Realist @ 7 said:

he's stopped the bleeding, but he expects someone else to do the healing. That someone else is the very group which did the damage in the first place.

Don't believe I ever suggested otherwise in the article above, did I?

then see whether or not Obama deserves the amount of praise you lavish upon him.

That was "lavish praise"? Wow. Guess we have extraordinarily different definitions of both the words "lavish" and "praise".

I'd hardly describe anything that is said about Obama on these pages "lavish praise"

thanks 99

the hustle

#16- yes, I have heard of selling short....do you own a house in FL?

Both parties are trying to fuck you, it's easier without the constitution, so they got someone working on that, Wall ST.