The Bucknuts Hot Spot

Even though our "stuidity knows no bounds", let me give some of your lauded Obama "accomplishments" a shot...

- Unemployment is back up to 9% in February and "underemployment" is at 19%, http://www.gallup.com/poll/152753/unemployment-increases-mid-february.aspx . Those are the types of numbers I hope yourself and the administration extol up through election day. Additionally, if you're truly interested in understanding the unemployment situation best, there was another thread which capsulizes things perfectly, http://ohiostate.247sports.com/Board/125/Abbott-Costello-discuss-Obamanomics-7779527/1 .

- The DOW is over 13K (or very close) and that is a good thing for America. However, the DOW all time high was 14,198 in October of 2007. The crash occurred in the last 14 months of Bush's presidency so Obama picked the market up at 8,776. Therefore, his starting point was ~40% off the high which one could argue presented a lot of opportunity for a positive correction. Of course the liberals will argue that the collapse was Bush's fault (then again so is cancer, rainy days, and world hunger to them). However, the housing and credit bubble which were at the root of problem cannot be laid at the doorstep of GWB. Regardless, there is no question a strong stock market is an enormously powerful asset for Obama and his re-election. However, a few Sajjil missiles from Iran into Tel Aviv could change things drastically if that were to occur (something I would hope everyone is praying does not happen).

- The decision to act on intelligence and take out Bin Laden was a good one. However, this could not have been possible without the information gathered through "enhanced interrogation" methods under Bush and his continued pursuit of this mass murderer despite the false narratives liberals attempt to create otherwise... http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/05/05/bush_led_bin_laden_dead_--_wheres_the_credit_109757.html .

- First, it's "Gaddafi" international scholar... Second, Obama has done such a spectacular job with Libya that the Muslim Brotherhood is poised to win their upcoming elections in June. That is replacing ants with a rodent infestation.

As for your "LOONEY", "SCARY", and "HATEFUL" references, I might suggest that you read what you write. It's great to have you back as you are a campaign machine for conservatives that money simply cannot buy. It doesn't "make our blood boil" at all to have a "(half) black man" as POTUS. It does to have someone who is mortgaging ours and our children's future and who would have our country become as much of a socialist nation as Congress will allow, http://blog.heritage.org/2011/07/28/the-truth-about-obamas-budget-deficits-in-pictures/ . However, clearly your "blood boils" frequently and you've got a Gibraltar sized chip on your shoulder when it comes to race. That's really too bad for you... Go take a Xanax.

Sadly most of the people who will vote for Obama are too stupid to understand that this chart is complete BS. It's unfortunate how many people in our country lack basic math skills.

Wow!

Just because I would rather have my money than the government re-distribting it to immigrants makes me racist???

I dont expect to have an intelligent discussion with people who think that Clinton is responsible for 9/11.

You Cons are half right. The debt is a huge problem, but what makes you a bunch of racist ass holes is that it only counts when Obama is President. It's true. None of you said a peep when we were spending 2 billion a WEEK in Iraq. And for what? How much oil did we get boys? It was a gift of public money to war profiteers.

And I'm smart enough not to put faith in ANY political party. You suckers would follow Republicans off a cliff to rail on Democrats. They're both the problem.

..didn't mean to make this VIP, I wouldn't want Eddie MusterBuckeye to not be able to respond with a unintelligent run-on sentence.

Do you want to source that or should I assume Jesus told you?

Thanks for posting... This is too good to not cut and paste the entire article as the liberals won't bother to click on the link.

A bogus chart on Obama and the debt gets a new lease on life
Posted by Glenn Kessler at 06:00 AM ET, 09/29/2011

There’s a saying attributed to Winston Churchill that goes something like this: "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."

Try as we might at The Fact Checker, we find that no matter how many times we clearly identify an untruth — such as a ridiculous e-mail on Obama’s health-care plan — it still keeps popping up, months later.

So imagine our surprise when we found in our Facebook feed this week a chart, purporting to show how Republican presidents — Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush — had increased the debt by a significantly greater percentage than either Bill Clinton or President Obama. Pretty impressive chart, “liked” by at least 7,000 people on a posting by the liberal group MoveOn.org.

But this chart, originally created by the office of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, is as phony as a three-dollar bill. Our friends at PolitiFact did a pretty thorough takedown of it in May, giving it their worst rating: “pants on fire.” They even caught the Pelosi people in a bad mathematical error, based on the fact that the Democrats calculated the numbers as if Obama took office a year later than he did.

That error greatly reduced Obama’s supposed percentage increase (from 35 percent to 16 percent) and boosted George W. Bush’s increase (from 86 percent to 115 percent). Pelosi’s office corrected the math error after it was spotted by PolitiFact, but amazingly, the chart that turned up in several places in our Facebook feed was the old chart.

But even with the corrected number, this is still a Four-Pinocchio whopper. Let’s explain why.

The Facts

The person who posted this on Facebook noted: “From the US Treasury Dept — any questions?” But it actually is not a Treasury Department calculation, just manipulated data taken from the Treasury Web site.

The chart has some basic conceptual flaws. For instance, as the debt keeps getting higher, the possible percentage increases will keep getting smaller. Under the mixed-up logic of this chart, a person can go from 10 to 20, and that would be a 100 percent increase. If the next person goes from 20 to 30, that’s only a 50 percent increase, even though the numerical increase (10) is the same.

The chart also cherry-picks the data that portray Obama in the best light by claiming to show “public debt” but in actuality using the statistics for gross debt.

Gross debt includes intergovernmental transactions such as bonds held by Social Security and Medicare, but public debt is the more commonly used figure of national indebtedness, at least among economists.

If the chart actually used public debt rather than gross debt, it would have put Obama and George W. Bush virtually in the same league — 60 percent increase (as of September 2011) for Obama versus 70 percent for Bush — even though Bush served as president much longer.

But the biggest problem is that this is just dumb math. What really counts is not the raw debt numbers, but the size of the debt as a percentage of the gross domestic product. The GDP is the broadest measure of the national economy and directly indicates the nation’s ability to service its debts. In fact, the White House budget office historical tables portray much of the data as a percentage of GDP, because that is the best way to truly compare such numbers over time.

If the chart were recast to show how much the debt went up as a percentage of GDP, it would look pretty bad for Obama after not even three years in office. In fact, Obama does almost twice as poorly as Reagan — and four times worse than George W. Bush.

Reagan: plus 14.9 percentage points
GHW Bush: plus 7.1 percentage points
Clinton: down 13.4 percentage points
GW Bush: plus 5.6 percentage points
Obama: plus 24.6 percentage points
(Note: We derived most of these data from table 7.1 of the budget office historical tables, which gives end-of-fiscal year figures, so they do not quite match up to presidential terms. Obama’s figures are based on the GDP: public debt ratio as of June 30, 2011)

Update: David Clayton, one of our dedicated readers, crunched the numbers for calendar years and shows that, in the transition from Bush to Obama, adjusting the dates makes a difference in the result. His math shows that a more accurate figure would be plus 11.6 percentage points for Bush and plus 19.7 percentage points for Obama. The shift doesn’t change the overall result but divides up the responsibility for the debt more accurately. In a later column, we also posted other ways that readers suggested to look at presidential debt records.

One can offer reasons for why Obama’s performance appears so poor, including the fact that he is battling a recession. An improvement in the nation’s economy would boost the gross domestic product, which would certainly begin to reduce his ratio. But the fact remains that under basic economic measures, not phony ones, his record on the growth of the national debt is the worst of recent presidents. (We make that statement using the logic of Pelosi’s office, which pins all of the growth of the debt on individual presidents. In reality, many factors, including the economy, wars and congressional actions, contribute to the rise of the debt.)

The Pinocchio Test

If MoveOn.org or Pelosi’s office had any sense of shame, they would have quietly removed the links to this chart from their websites when PolitiFact gave it a “pants on fire” rating four months ago. The fact that an outdated version is still floating around — and that people are still deluded into thinking it to be correct — is doubly shameful.

Four Pinocchios

No. You being a racist pig makes you a racist.

Way to pay attention. The second link shows it based upon GDP.

Yes, your math is correct. Where did I say otherwise? However when comparing 1980 actual dollars to 2012 actual dollars you also need to go through all kinds of correction stats for inflation, value of the dollar, etc. Comparing relative changes by comparing percents of change during each time is a statistically valid way of showing such a comparison. We do it all of the time. For example, when discussing unemployment we always compare percentages of different times and sizes. If it was 10% in June of 1981 and was 10% June of 2011 is reported to show a relationship between Reagan and Obama. The numbers of people the 10% represents will be much greater in 2011 because the population has gone up millions since 1981. If we used the actual number of employed and number looking for jobs (the way it is calculated not the real number unemployed), then the comparison would be meaningless.

Of course, you don't want a real comparison, you want whatever will make Obama look bad.

The Heritage Foundation? BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Saved us from a depression is made up BS. That's complete political BS
and nobody in the media challenges him on it. I contest that if he would have done
absolutely nothing, the free markets would have corrected itself and we would
have been further along to recovery. The bankruptcy laws would have taken
care of GM and Chrylser as they normally do and the housing burst would have
self corrected itself. We just prolonged the housing problem. The gov't forced
the banks to make loans to people that cannot afford them. As usual, Gov't gets involved and it gets worse. The auto bailout was a bailout to his union supporters and the guarenteed stock holders got the shaft. Too big to fail is a crock of sh&t.
Just for instance...The worlds largest retailer - Wal-Mart... Are they too big to fail? If they were a union shop then yes but since they are not union then no. Other retailers would pick up the slack if Wal-mart goes under and in the auto industry ford, toyota, nissan, honda would have picked up the slack as chryler and GM
go thru the normal bankruptcy procedure and dig themselves out of the hole. Gm and Chrysler are far from out of the hole. They're pensions and future obligations are going to cripple them again. And we will have to bail them out again.