>BTW, re your cynicism about employment and financial good news: those pinkos at the Federal Reserve keep pretending the economy is on the up and that employment is improving.

>
>Waiting for somebody to say "thanks, Obama." Waiting, waiting...

And you're still going to have to "wait". :)

Fourth quarter GDP numbers are out today, and they are certainly not promising - validating what the analysts said about the 5% spike in Q3 (that ACA payments were taken out of the 1st quarter because growth was bad anyway, and spread out further into the year)

This is really simple - when people buy more durable goods and certain services, GDP genuinely goes up. That's not really what's going on here. We have been, and remain, in a slow and tepid recovery. It's worse than going backwards, for sure - but still a far cry from the more legitimate recovery in the 1980's. We are not even close to being there yet.

I generally don't blame a president for all the economic issues. Though I will say that some of the growth we've seen in certain areas has been "in spite of" the president, not because. (e.g. drilling on private lands vs public lands). The media really should force Barack Obama to eat his words when he downplayed the role in domestic drilling a few years ago - we're seeing some of the benefits now. There are people to thank for the drop in gas prices, and I would not really list the president as one of them.