It's the empty drum that bangs the loudest. Amazing how quickly those surfaced to demean and trash the people who support Obama.
I am an Independent who can't help but notice the distinct difference in how low Romney supporters will stoop to attack the Obama supporters. Your mother would be proud of you.

Lady D! :-)

I was in the Military when Carter replaced Ford and when Regan replaced Carter. I remember those days well and was thinking the same as I listened to BO’s speech. I remember fuel was around 17 cents a gal, soon after Carter took over it jumped 3 fold. Also, I remember him signing the Chrysler Corporation Loan Guarantee Act. Bailing out the Chrysler Corporation and canceling military pay raises at that time. Those were tough times for a lot of people.

1. The president SETS the policy(ies) -- the Executive Branch, populated with POTUS appointees, sets and enforces administrative policy. That's why when POTUS speaks his mind in public forum, his cabinet scrambles to align with his words -- that, btw, got us into the first Gulf War. GHWB mentioned off-hand at a BBQ that Saddam's aggression in Kuwait "Will not stand." Bygones. What does BHO mean when he says something is "unacceptable"? Nothing, nichego.

2. Congress has no obligation to the Executive Branch. They are obligated to their constituents. If they succumb to lobbyists and idealogy, who's job is it to call them out? Joe Citizen, and POTUS should have the most influence since he is Joe Citizen #1. My point: an ineffective Congress is the result of an ineffective POTUS. This one cant articulate his policies and his agenda only comes to light by executive order or departmental regulation.

3. I just caught that part about "annual budget"...I nearly spit coffee out my nose!

stay off the catnip...."temporarily increased deficits"? You have crystal ball or some sort of clairvoyance? Or you mean temporary until proven otherwise, like in November?

I know the first three people in the picture, and they all have been quite gainfully employed for years. Shame on you for your ignorant stereotyping!

Note that there are far fewer federal employees, both military and nonmilitary, under Obama than Reagan and HW Bush had at any point during their entire administrations.

The number of employees only started to drop under Clinton.

GWB also reduced federal employees, but made up for that with massive expenditures on contract staff, which proved to be far more expensive than direct hires.

The number of employees now is nearly the lowest it's been in the past 50 years, and by now may be at the lowest since the data I have only goes to 2010, and many agencies have downsized since then. As a percentage of population, it's been plummeting.

Federal employee pay (nonmilitary) has been frozen for the past two years.

It's all available here: http://www.opm.gov/feddata/HistoricalTables/TotalGovernmentSince1962.asp

You can blame Obama for lots of things (and you have), but by this measure the federal government is leaner than it's ever been.

I watched Biden and was shocked at the depth of his hyperbole...truly a display of disregard for his audience.

He narrated the scene in the situation room, when POTUS didnt hesitate to say the mission was a go to get UBL.

Now wait a minute: the 160th SOAR had just dropped off the SEALs in the compound. The op is hot, and Obama says, "let's do it"? So if I understand the VP, "courage" is not getting wobbly in the WH SitRoom when the Special Forces are already engaged 12K miles away? BS

the VP is a blowhard at best, a liar at worst, and considering the context of his "profile in courage," anything he says is loosely based on real events.

Maybe in another decade, after our economy has (hopefully) recovered, we'll be over Bush. But for now his shadow looms large.

Are you saying he DIDN'T speak at the convention? REALLY? How interesting.

Looks like the republicans are trying to get over Bush in a big way. Is he still a member of your party? Or have you exorcized him?

Now, you were saying something about Biden's "depth of hyperbole"? That's interesting too. Perhaps you should rewind you VCR back 4 years to VP-candidate Palin's speech, if you really want to see 'depth'. But I'm guessing you'd like to 'get over' her, too, one way or another.

At least Biden, and even Palin, generally avoided bald-faced lies during their addresses. Ryan, on the other hand... You would think that a young gen-X'er like him would realize that there's this thing called the internet that can produce actual facts if you ask it nicely. He should try it sometime.

Now they're holding Clinton up as some sort of ideal---Obama's leaning on his "reputation" as hard as he can, and the rest of the nation remembers him as some kind of saint, apparently: Highly ironic, that he'd be the hero in any kind of personality contest, which is what these things are anymore. It speaks (loudly) to a dearth of ideas, a complete lack of substance.

Wren, I agree heartily with what you've said here, just about every word.

It's interesting to me how nasty and vitriolic the POOFs who control these threads have gotten---Ironic too, that they're parroting what is essentially a national marketing strategy applied to politics: Call Obama out for whatever vague leftist leanings they can get a toe-hold in, which isn't much (Obama nets out considerably to the right of Richard Nixon and even Raygun); thereby shifting the national conversation to a field that is completely on the right, and shouting that anything towards even the center is "far left."

Then there are the mental gymnastics those on the "left" demonstrate, trying to justify a vote for Obama, acquiescing to their virtual attendance ring-side on the weird pro-wrestling match our politics have become...and there's some acid dripping there too, in some of them----In a playground, rockfight sort of way... (the POOFs make them look reasonable by comparison)

Yeah, I get it: There are some real issues, most of them social window-dressing (on which the dems have allowed their supposed rivals to completely steer the discussion for years), like abortion, and gay rights. And yeah, it's symbolically important that the youth vote swept an African-American into the oval office.

What have those young people, now four years older, learned? That, stunningly, Obama has not been that different from his predecessor.

Democrats who want to hold their noses and vote for him anyway should keep in mind that, actually, as regards the Constitution and executive power, Obama is slightly worse: He's reserved to his office the right to unilaterally assassinate American citizens, based on a non-judicial definition of "terrorism."

In this Hollywood/Madison Ave. style politics we've allowed to mushroom into our living rooms every night, most of us just cheer that the military "got the bad guys," the "terrorist" label being more than enough for the viewing audience...Never mind when we get to the point where we really ARE fed up at this hijacking of our democracy, and the "bad guys" suddenly become us.

Ironically the Tea Party ends up with the most valid point in this, if you can find it through all of their "God-and-Corporation" nonsense, which the political marketers have managed to successfully harness: Throw the bums out.

Talk about holding my nose! We've been manipulated ruthlessly into a situation where our only viable option, as regards our vote, is anti-incumbency: Vote out whoever is in office, and keep doing it until politicians get the message.

It won't be enough, but I think it's the best way to use our vote, and there are crumbs here for both "sides": Yeah, get rid of Obama (not that it matters in Alaska, as Lat. pointed out), AND Young. But also, vote for the under-dog, vote against the money, vote for the outsiders: And when they continue to get bought, KEEP DOING IT UNTIL THEY COME TO HEEL---Until the money follows the vote and not the other way around.

Lat,
Good info..thank you.
Did you actual see the numbers you posted? What about the 200,000 person increase from 2008 to 2009?

Also look at those numbers and compare it to if a Republican or Democratic President is in the WH…They almost always go up or stay the same with the Democrat and almost always go down or stays the same with Republican. The state of the economy has a slight effect on the numbers except for during the Obama Administration.

D Lyndon Johnson…way up
R Nixon…way down..
R Ford…same
D Carter…Same or Down a little., but so was the economy
R Regan…Same or up a little…but so was the economy
R H Bush…Down
D Clinton…same
R W Bush..Down
D Obama…Way up AND WITH the economy way, way down!

From 2004 to 2007 the federal employment numbers went down while the regular UNemployment rate stayed the same (adjusted)..but then from 2008..to 2010 the regular Unemployment rate went from 5.0 to 9.8 and the federal employment rate went way up.

Labor Department: http://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet?request_action=wh&graph_name...

http://www.dilbert.com/

How was your coffee today? By the looks of it, you had a double-shot.

I'm not sure how your anti-incumbency strategy will prove effective. But it does have a lot of appeal. Look at the tea party. They threw a lot of bums out during the primaries. And that's forced the remaining incumbents to recalibrate sharply to the right to appease their base. It's had the effect of widening the partisan divide, making compromise on issues totally untenable.

But I haven't seen any evidence that it's reduced the money in politics. In fact, it has 'tilled the soil', providing lots of new opportunity for corporate interests to sow their weed seeds. In one respect, an incumbent who has a strong constituency (Saint Ted, for example), is somewhat more immune to corporate control, than an incumbent or challenger who is in a fight and needs lots of money for ads and such.

The answer is to remove money from our electoral process. That'll require amending the constitution, most likely, and that's a long row to hoe. The entrenched political powers will resist it entirely.

But we normal citizens can take responsibility for our own part, and it's pretty easy. Kill your TV. It's the noose around your intellectual neck. Kill your TV, free your mind.

Bush has certainly been baited enough over the last 31/2 years. One would think he would come out to defend himself.
I have noticed, though, that Republican Presidents do not hitch their rails to the dog and pony show of national politics after they have served.
It is not just a Bush trait.