I would argue he never stopped campaigning, but that has been painfully obvious over the last couple of months. This is illustrative of the disconnect between what comes out of the White House and what is really going on:

WH reporter: “Do you understand the optics when, at the economy event he was on the ground in Orlando for less than three hours, yet he spent roughly seven hours at these four different campaign events. The way this is viewed, you hear from Republicans…”

Jay Carney: “…I would challenge you to look at what the President does on any given week, including this week and many weeks going back, and not come to the conclusion that he spends a relatively small amount of time — at this stage — on campaign events. That’s a simple fact”: . . .

This is from last August:

President Obama has headlined 127 fundraising events for himself and others, significantly outpacing the fundraising activity of the previous five presidents during their first terms, new research obtained by USA TODAY shows.

By comparison, President George W. Bush had held 88 fundraisers and President Clinton, 76, at this point in their first terms, according to data compiled by Brendan Doherty, an assistant professor of politicial science at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. Doherty, who also studies presidential activity with the non-partisan White House Transition Project, examined fundraising going back to President Carter.

The upswing reflects the soaring costs of campaigns and politicians' abandonment of the presidential public-financing system that limits what candidates can raise from private sources in exchange for receiving taxpayer money, Doherty and other experts say.

Number of meetings with Harry Reid to come up with a budget?

Number of speeches over the last few months where he has not gone after Republicans?

Then again, he did that DURING the debates on healthcare. In that respect, he's done nothing but campaign.

Wait, so a political leader, during a political debate, attacked the positions of his political opponents.

Shocking!

American politicans spend an awful lot of their time raising money to campaign.
Thats the nature of the game. Until and unless there are sensible restrictions put on how much can be spent in a politcal campaign by candidates and PACs.....this won't change. And "constitutionalists" won't have restrictions will they?
You can't blame someone for playing game by the rules...
How much time have Republican congressional leaders been spending seeking donations?
Is it likely that any republican candidates are proposing a change to this circumstance? (Actually Buddy Rhoemer is.....but he ain't attracting much attention is he?)

If its unfair to complain about Mitt Romney playing the game of venture/vulture capitalist by the rules, (and it is) its unfair to compalin about the President playing the game of big money politics by the rules.

But it is interesting to note that after the State of the Union the election seems to be about "Whats fair?" and "Who can deliver on a fairer system?"
The same day Mitt shows he paid a 13% tax rate and the day after Gingrinch released his contracts for influence peddling with Fannie and Freddie.
Someone's being outflanked ....

rickyp wrote:American politicans spend an awful lot of their time raising money to campaign.

This was actually on target, then you "rickied" into a few other forums. Keep your SOTU and GOP nomination comments where the belong.

As to this idea that "everyone campaigns a lot," it misses the point.

Republicans in Congress weren't "campaigning" when they voted for Ryan's budget. They were taking political risk. They knew Obama and the Democrats were likely to demagogue the issue, but they did it anyway.

When has Obama taken a public political risk? Where has he said, "My party wants x, Republicans want z, I'm offering y as a compromise?"

He has not done that. Instead, he has lambasted Republicans, said they won't do what he wants, so he's going to go to the American people. That may be a legitimate political maneuver, but it is not a legitimate governing strategy. There is no "art of the possible" with Obama. There is his way or the highway. The only compromises he's ever struck are with Democrats.

We could have everyone pay the same at Mr Buffett and Governor Romney. A nice 15% would be fine. Perhaps that would be the most fair. The President wanted to have 30%, though. I guess that would be ok as well, as long as every citizen paid the same fair amount. No deductions, no fees, no hidden income dodges or foreign bank stashes.

The SOTU was just more of the same class warfare. Millionaires bad...

bbauska wrote:The SOTU was just more of the same class warfare. Millionaires bad...

Yeah, I didn't see that at all. In fact your last sentence seems to contradict your first paragraph. Promoting a graduated income tax with a top rate of 30% could hardly be construed as class warfare.

I am NOT promoting a graduated income tax. I am promoting a tax that ALL citizens and legal immigrants would pay the same. As I have always said, make it equal either by total amount, or total percentage.

Nothing sounds more fair than that.

Brad is very consistent in his position that everyone should be treated exactly the same by the government. I doubt, however, that a tax of 15% is going to produce enough revenue. Maybe 20% or 25%. But even if you agree on the same rate for everyone that does not mean "income" will be counted the same. If your "income" is in the Cayman Islands in some partnership arrangement does it even count as income? Do you have a company or investments in different countries and then claim all of the expenses deducted here while all of the profit was "there". And even if you say that we will prevent these tax dodges how you are going to enforce these things? The IRS typically shies away from confronting the rich and powerful--are they going start doing so now? The likelihood is the rich and corporations will be able to pay less of a percentage than the rest of us if the percentage is purportedly set the same for everyone (because most of the people do not have access to these tax dodges and changing the percentage rate will not change the fight over what income is)

I have a fundamental problem with treating income of millionaires (or billionaires) the same with poor people. First of all, it is clearly not true that everyone is in the same position as far as regards the acquisition of wealth. The upper-class and rich attend better schools, they can afford tutors, they can afford SAT prep courses, they have a better chance to get into Ivy League schools if their parents attended, etc. Entry into high-level executive positions in corporate America and Wall Street is clearly are not fairly distributed to all levels of society. But even if competition was completely fair why should the rest of society consent to a certain number getting most of the wealth of society? Their wealth is not created separately from society; there is no wealth unless it is recognized as such. I have a hard time understanding why we should confer such enormous financial benefits on people in business and Wall Street. Let's say a typical worker, rich or poor, puts in about 2,000 hours of work a year. At what level does compensation just become absurd? over $500 per hour ($1,000,000), $1,000 per hour (2 million dollars)? When? To me there should be a significant tax escalation at 1 million dollars, and more and more as you go up the scale, because no one deserves to receive that much of the wealth of a society. You don't say that someone cannot make more than 1 million dollars a year; you simply say that we are going to tax the income at higher and higher rates. With regard to investments, yes you are risking your money but on the other hand you are not having to work for it. So I do not see why investment income should be treated any differently.

The idea that someone deserves as much of the wealth of a society no matter what at low levels of taxation is one we simply do no need to accept. I am not certainly not accepting that when someone is getting ten milliion dollars a year that the milliionaire should pay 25 percent on the last $25,000 of his ten million dollars when someone making only $25,000 would also pay 25 percent (perhaps meaning that they cannot afford rent, food or shelter for themselves and their families) I think it is morally wrong to tax at the same percentage of income in those situations because the millionaire would not even notice of most or all of that $25,000 of his ten million in income while the poor person would be losing the ability to purchase vital necessities of life. So equality in taxation might be attractive on its face, but in practice is completely unjust.

Is this a slow recovery?



How bad is it?

Instead of a recovery, America has suffered the longest period of unemployment near 9% or above since the Great Depression, under President Obama’s public policy malpractice. Even today, 49 months after the recession started, the U6 unemployment rate counting the unemployed, underemployed and discouraged workers is still 15.2%. And that doesn’t include all the workers who have fled the workforce under Obama’s economic oppression. The unemployment rate with the full measure of discouraged workers is reported at www.shadowstats.com as about 23%, which is depression level unemployment.

Today, over 4 years since the recession started, there are still almost 25 million Americans unemployed or underemployed. That includes 5.6 million who are long-term unemployed for 27 weeks, or more than 6 months. Under President Obama, America has suffered the longest period with so many in such long-term unemployment since the Great Depression. . . .

Based on historical precedent, we should at worst be finishing the second year of a booming recovery by now.

Compare Obama’s lack of a recovery 2 ½ years after the recession ended with the first 2 ½ years of the Reagan recovery. In those years under Reagan, the American economy created 8 million new jobs, the unemployment rate fell by 3.6 percentage points, real wages and incomes were jumping, and poverty had reversed an upsurge started under Carter, beginning a long term decline.

While Obama crows about 200,000 jobs created last month, the most for a month during his entire Administration, in September, 1983 the Reagan recovery less than a year after it began created 1.1 million jobs in that one month alone. Under Obama, we are still almost 6 million jobs below the peak before the recession started over 4 years ago! In the second year of the Reagan recovery, real economic growth boomed by 6.8%, the highest in 50 years.

The chief excuse of the Obama apologists is that what we have suffered was not just a recession, but a financial crisis, and, they argue, recovery from a financial crisis takes a lot longer than recovery from a recession. But that is not the experience of the American, free market, capitalist economy.

The experience of the American economy is reported in full at the National Bureau of Economic Research, as cited above – recessions since the Great Depression previously have lasted an average of 10 months, with the longest previously 16 months, and the deeper the recession the stronger the recovery. That is the standard by which the performance of Obamanomics is to be judged. Which of those American recessions was a “financial crisis” that breaks the pattern?

Read it and weep, Obamafans.

But the crash was already the worst since the Great Depression when Obama was coming to power. You do realise that means comparisons with shallower and shorter recession are not appropriate, right?

Obama's campaign seems to be making head way. Todays He's now got an approval rating of 51% positive to 47% negative in the Rasmussen dailies... And is running 6 points ahead of Romney in head to head polling by Rasmussen.(Dr, Fate apporved since 2004)
The juxtaposition to his "campaigning " with the Republican snarkfest seems to be working out pretty well so far...

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_ ... ex_history

Perhaps the direction will change after the nominating convention. But there's seems to be an awful lot of money going to Liberal PACs this year who want to target Tea Party candidates.. I wonder if the right's general acceptance of PACS will change if they become a factor in a whiplash election? Like Clinton engineered?