Social Security and Medicare are part of the social contract. Now the politicos want to renegotiate it.

Obama and the others hate the game, so they want to change it by hook or by crook... privatization or cuts or something else. For me, I hate the players who do not need and will not miss SS becoming concern trolls with power over it.

I don't know about your age, Kdog, but SS will be there for me if i live. But if i die, then i still want SS to be there, without the changes proposed or that they, the elites, are trying to bring in through other means.

Good policy would ensure a strong SS/medicare.  Bad policy says privatise it, or just as bad, cut the inputs to it.

His statement was that Obama's approval rating is only at 50% because times are hard for many people. That isn't an attack on Obama, it's a fact. Despite correlation not being the same as causation, presidents are always, always linked to current events. It doesn't have to make sense, and it goes both ways. Bush had 80% plus ratings right after 9/11, and that attack happened on his watch. Where's the sense in that?

So, a better counter argument might be to compare Obama's approval ratings to other presidents at this point in their tenures. He comes off pretty well. You could also compare Obama's 50% to the 11% approval the GOP led congress is getting. This would support an assertion that while folks aren't happy, they know who is really the most at fault. Or mention that Obama's approval numbers are up nearly 10% this fall  - 44% in Sept to 49% now, and couple that with the improved employment reports.

Just another example of how you impute to others things they never said - and then proceed to build an entire argument around it.

I would think most people would agree that high rates of unemployment have something to do with the percentage of people living low-income or in poverty, so there's a connection there that cannot be denied.

What has Obama done to get people back to work?  What has he done to support those who don't have jobs?  In cases where he cannot unilaterally do things to reverse the trend, what has he done with the Congress to spur action that will help people?  

In instance after instance, it is programs for women, children and the poor that have been offered up for cuts and reductions, both on the state and federal level.   Economic policies championed by this administration have largely not affected the quality of life at the top of the income spectrum, but the same cannot be said about how those at the bottom have been affected.  

Obama's focus has been on the deficit - and it's nearly impossible to improve the lives of the least among us when your goal is deficit reduction, because programs for the poor, who have almost no one to advocate for them, seem to hit the chopping block very quickly.

And let's not forget how dismal his response has been to the housing/foreclosure/mortgage crisis - and how much he has done to protect the banks, and push to give immunity for fraudulent activities by banks, lenders and mortgage servicers.

If you read about poverty in the U.S. at Child Trends Data, U.S. News, Brookings Institute, NY Times, etc., their analyses show:

• Yes, there has been a trend toward increasing poverty in the U.S. since 2000.
  
• There has been a continuing uptick in poverty since 2007
  
• There has been an uptick in the decline in the middle class in the U.S. in the last few years, with the largest number of once middle class families falling into poverty in the suburbs surrounding some of the larger metropolitan areas.
  

McCain and others bitterly accuse Obama of not trying harder on a SOFA.

But so what.  All troops are out.  Are we not to judge based on results rather than intention?  The anti-Obama faction here want it both ways.  The antis here argue that it is wrong to say Obama tried but could not get more done.  Intention does not matter, they say, only results.

But Obama gets a good result, and so the antis have nothing to criticize, so they invent a new line of attack:   Obama' inentions were not pure.

Heads, antis win; tails, Obama loses......

And, all the antis nod in unison at this point.

The problem?  It is FALSE.

How many troops was Obama trying to keep in Iraq?  40,000? 30,000?  Try 3,000.  As established by the link provided by jeffinalabama.

Jeff states that 3,000 was inconsequential, and as I recall, he is a veteran....

So, the true facts are, without the distortion of the antis here, is that Obama only wanted to keep an inconsequential 3,000 troops in Iraq, far fewer than he said in 2008 he would leave, but the Iraqis would not agree to immunity for the troops, so Obama said eff it, and pulled them all out.

Good on Obama!  I love what he is doing in foreign policy.