Here's reality:
<a bunch of ideological bullshit>"
Take your astroturf back to Fox News.
Please, do it. Fox News is irrelevant.
As if shooting the messenger is going to refute the argument.
You don't need to watch CSPAN to know exactly what is happening here: one half of one branch of the government decided they wanted to take the US economy hostage and run it back into recession if their demands weren't met.
Please launch your favorite spreadsheet and do a little work to understand the financial mess we are in. It really doesn't take that much work to speak from a very different reference frame, one armed with facts.
Go to Monster.com or the appropriate job board.
Find a job description for a CEO of a non-trivial business. Say, a manufacturing operation with thousands of employees, international reach, a complex supply chain and a well developed channel of distribution.
Now go back and find Obama's resume from 2008.
Objectively look at it and compare it to the resume of seasoned C-level executives who might apply for such a position. You can use LinkedIn for this purpose, find people who you think might be qualified for the job and, therefore, could be interested in applying.
I hope your conclusion will be that Obama was, in no way, qualified for such a job. Not even close. He had been on the job as Senator for two years and was a law professor before that. There seems to be nothing whatsoever in his life experience that could even remotely paint him as qualified to take on such responsibility.
His resume would go in the trash bin instantly and a polite email dispatched to inform him that he is not being considered. I could see HR going "Why is a law professor applying to run a business when he knows absolutely nothing about running any kind of a business and has no relevant experience?".
My statement is, without a doubt, factually correct. Perhaps it offends you. However, that does nothing towards altering it's veracity. In fact, it can easily expanded to declare that it would have been unlikely for him to have been qualified for C-level leadership positions at any non-trivial business. He simply wasn't qualified.
Yet, we gave him the largest economy in the world to run. During the first two years he could have done whatever he wanted. He had the House and the Senate. Any half-way-decent business person would have had a laser-like focus on the economy, jobs, reducing spending and facilitating economic activity. Not him. He didn't have a clue. He focused on anything but the many elephants in the room. That's a matter of record (and the lack of results). And here we are.
Want more proof? Remember what he said about the National Debt as a Senator? Don't remember? Here, I'll help you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kuTG19Cu_Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fUmFBMVWNI
And now we are at $17 trillion and he wants MORE!
And we have no budget.
And every bill being passed is chock-full of earmarks and back-end deals that would sicken most.
On top of what I said regarding his qualifications, he also happens to be a hypocrite and a liar. I'll leave it up to you to go back and review video records of the things he promised and compare them to what he's actually done.
When every union in the country is screaming bloody murder about Obamacare you know you have problems.
That said, this isn't about Obama and Obamacare. This is about the branches of our government having plunged us into a very dangerous position over the last, say, fifty years. Again, party affiliation isn't relevant here. These people are making bad decisions on both sides of the isle.
Regardless of whether you agree with me or not the fact remains that our kids are going to inherit a disaster of nearly unimaginable proportions. Perhaps you are OK with that and choose to look the other way due to party or other loyalties. Thou shalt not speak ill of our tribe! Or some such thing. Well, that's cool. I admire your loyalty. However, the one important detail is: This does not change where we are headed.
What's your limit for the national debt?
When do you say "enough!"?
We are at $17 trillion right now [1] (well, just shy). That means each tax payer would have to pay nearly $150,000 [1] in order to pay off our debt today. You and I are not paying it off any time soon. And, if we continue along this path even our children will not be able to pay it off.
How much is enough?
Senator Obama said adding $4 trillion to the national debt was "irresponsible" and "unpatriotic", his words, not mine. He was right. What, then, is adding another ELEVEN TRILLION [3] by the time he leaves office? He is on track to more than double the national debt with respect to what it was when he took office.
At what point are you willing to proclaim that our government is fiscally inept, irresponsible and, yes, unpatriotic?
Do you understand how important it is to bring things back to a more reasonable state? Surely you do. I can't imagine anyone not researching this at least to an extent where he or she can understand the numbers and their consequences. A couple of hours of Excel work and your jaw should be on the floor. And you should be angry too.
[1] http://www.usdebtclock.org/
I don't mean "I won't take you at your word". Being a polarizing political subject, I would take the word of not even myself - I can and have been wrong on such matters. Personal interest in reasonable arguments from both sides may lead me to entertain various arguments, especially if they're well conveyed, including on subjects which I do not feel personally affect me, but which do affect the rest of society.
In losing that interest, I've lost my only reason to entertain your suggestions as for what to look into, and so I shall not. Why would I be interested when you so willfully distract from the subject at hand -- that distraction being polarizing hyperbole about irrelevant fictional cookie baking, and arguments about how this is factual and relevant? This is not time well spent!
I will note presidential budget vetos can and have been overridden by congress. This budget hasn't even gotten to his desk, correct? If you wish to blame the presidency in this, you must also blame congress as a whole for failing to be able to build and reach the consensus necessary to override him, and you must also blame the electorate for voting for that congress. Your interest in hanging this albatross from his neck does not inform, entertain, or otherwise interest me -- discouraging me from informing, entertaining, or otherwise trying to interest you.
You mean since Bush slashed taxes to create massive debt?
Obama's at 811,417,118.8 Cps in Cookie Clicker - what have you done that's so great?
As to what I have done vs. Obama. Well, first of all, neither you or I should be the scale by which a President is measured. A President ought to be better than most of us in areas relevant to running a country, an economy.
You are an educated man. I presume you studied logic and know full well that shooting the messenger does not refute what the messenger might be claiming. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and suggest you might want to run through the exercise I suggested in an early post in response to similar criticism [1]. I would be very interested in your reasoning showing how 2008 Obama was qualified to become CEO of a non-trivial enterprise, particularly when compared to seasoned and tested C-level executives.
I am not going to engage in a "what have you done?" conversation. I'll simply say that I have been an entrepreneur my entire life. I have started businesses, employed people from varied disciplines and backgrounds --including software engineers like you. I have succeeded and failed. I have been bankrupt. More than once. And I have pulled myself up and out of such circumstances through hard work, dedication and a healthy dose of risk taking. My life, for better or worst, has given me a unique perspective. And, while I freely admit that I am far from infallible I really don't think I am wrong on this one. There's nothing in Barack Obama's 2008 history that even approaches the development of an understanding of how a non-trivial business operates, much less an entire economy of this scale.
A sailing analogy is apt here. As a long time sailor I can tell you that anyone can sail under typical benign Sunday-Sailor conditions. There are two conditions that separate the hobby sailor from those who really know what they are doing: the extremes. It takes a lot more work to sail a boat when there's very little wind and you need to waste nothing in order to move. It also takes a lot of experience and knowledge to sail a boat under heavy winds and dangerous swells. Neither of those conditions are suitable for someone who has no experience whatsoever at the helm. One does not give you enough feedback. The other could kill you and your passengers if you need to learn on the job. You want to hire an experienced skipper, particularly for the second scenario. A Sunday-Sailor is likely to get you killed. That's as close as I can get to explaining who we gave our country to in 2008 (and, arguably, in 2012).
Our government has been steadily and systematically destroying our country from the inside for the last fifty years. It is hard for me to imagine a way to refute this. Shoot the messenger if you must, but he message stands on it's own. Regardless of who I am.
Yet I am nobody. I'm just a bunch of words you read on this screen. Read them. Decide for yourself. The irony of all of this is that regardless what you or I say we will both have to live with the reality our government is creating. I can't possibly imagine anyone with a reasonable degree of intelligence and education thinking that this reality is one headed towards anything other than a disaster.
Here's reality:
Obamacare is a complete disaster. Don't take my word for it, go research what unions are saying, what businesses are doing an go figure out what you will have to pay and what you'll get for it.
This horrible law needs to be repealed.
We need a budget. Apparently we have not had one since 2008 or thereabouts. I guess when you have a president who isn't even qualified to run a cookie baking operation this is what we get. It is an absolute disgrace that we are plunging this country deeper and deeper into debt.
Finally, Congress has failed to provide our country with responsible governance for decades. Party affiliation does not matter here. It has devolved it into nothing less than a circus. Given that we are locked into this system of government the only conclusion one can reach is that we are doomed.
This govenrment shutdown isn't a problem, no matter how much of an economic impact it might make. Over the next 25 to 50 years this economic impact will be absolutlely dwarfed by the devastation that will be caused by the layers of irresponsible actions we will have to live with.
I say: Go for it! I hope people understand why it is important to take the pain now in order to right the ship for generations to come.