blocked any attempt to improve on any of those issues.

"You're goddamn right we're better off than were were four years ago.
Jesus Christ, doesn't anybody remember for years ago?
The stock market fell to half it's value,
Home prices were falling 5-10 percent per month,
We were losing almost a million goddamn jobs a month,
We didn't know if the banks would stay solvent or fail,
We could have slipped into a depression worse than the big one back in '29.

Now,

the stock market is up about 90 percent under Obama,
Homes are gaining value every month, Phoenix is leading with 13% growth.
Instead of losing a million jobs a month we're gaining 100,000 or so.
The banks have stabilized and Obama prevented the Greatest depression."

Yes when BO took office the Unemployment was 7.8%. But we were bleeding 500,000 to 800,000 jobs per month thanks to Bush and the right wing policies. The unemployement went to over 10% before BO and the Dems were able to stop the bleed and it has grown back to an 8.3% unemployment. We also have had unprecedented (Public sector) layoffs in the last 3 years. The private sector job growth under BO has been much better than any of ther Bush years.

and those you are debating will not want to be fair. But to use January of 2009 as a start, when ALL of Bush's policies were still in place is incorrect.
Look at the employment rates as Obama's policies took effect.

[img][/img]

[img][/img]

Tell them about Robert Draper's book that reported that over a dozen Republican leaders -- including GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) -- held a dinner meeting on Jan. 20, 2009 (while President Obama was being inaugurated), to plan how to block Obama's agenda and help defeat the president in 2012. Here's a link from an earlier post here about this.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/04/jean-schodorf-kansas-republican_n_1855033.html

All of those numbers are a direct result of Republican obstructionism that began the very day the President was being sworn in. They blocked every effort they could to help turn the economy around. They didn't care about how many people were hurting from lost jobs or homes, they were so bitter that they lost to President obama they were willing to take actions tantamount to treason to regain power. Tell them about this meeting, in fact, pass this information on to everyone. The country should be aware of how this Republican cabal plotted to stop every bill introduced by Democrats and the President designed to help the economy recover because they wanted power back and were bitter that they lost the presidency.

Thanks for the toon, n2doc. It shows what happened in one quick visual.

Most of the layoffs took place in states with one-party Republican rule. Their idea of austerity, in contrast to the President's policies, bled jobs faster than any Federal policy could help replace them.

In other words, the repukes are blaming Obama for something beyond his control.

I did grab some quick Bush comparison figures. But the obvious difference is less in the levels of any of these indicators (some of which, like gas price, are not good ones) than in the direction things are going. The implicit gripe is a bit like having the pilot of your plane slump over the wheel (perhaps after choking on a pretzel?), sending it into a nosedive, wresting control and leveling out of the dive, and getting criticized for bad flying because you're at a lower altitude than when you took over.