Obama ready to hand off a healthy U.S. economy to his successor

IMO, I believe the economy is better off than when first received, but in no means healthy in the respect of what our economy could have probably looked liked if we had not had the economic disaster we had.

PO1 John Crafton - I think you and I had the same point just mine was not in so many words. I posted two links of economic monitoring non profit orgs which give good comparative views of the economy if one is wanting to do a bit of poking around.
The information contained within the article itself is what made me post for discussion as it was an interesting viewpoint and it is always good to get multiple viewpoints from my fellow RP'ers.

Makes sense to me. If the election was a gauge of employment then it spoke loudly that employment is not as good as it may seem. At the grass roots level too many people's lives are disrupted due to lack of employment. BLS and all the rest can massage it but people are still definitely hurting. It's not just the inner cities but the suburbs. Enough people have either lost their home and are living with relatives or are in debt to their ears trying to hold on to it, that they were willing to roll the dice for change. The stock market averages are a farce because Quantitative Easing has artificially propped them up. As you say this has caused devaluation of our currency. There is no such thing as a free lunch and he idea of economic boom based on market indicators is a false notion. The can spout PPI/CPI and all the rest but that doesn't change the reality that the good paying manufacturing jobs are mostly gone. All that remains are low paying jobs in the service sector and people can barely get by, and IMHO that's the reality of it. Certainly people with post-grad and professional degrees can still find a job that supports relative stability, but at what price? They are several hundred thousand $ in debt and will be for years to come. They also have to live in areas where median home prices start in the half a million $ range, and that's being conservative. The only people that have enjoyed any real prosperity are the fraction of the top 1% that are raking in 100's of millions a year. The rest are barely getting by or their lives are already in ruins.

SPC Kevin Ford - Last example- http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/madam-president-newsweek-copies-for-sale-but-beware/ar-AAkYQov?li=BBnbfcL

Newsweek jumped the gun- Truman and Dewey style. When watching the election results- they actually showed this on one of the stations I had on- which I found strange because the West Coast had not even reported in yet. CNN I believe and the Clinton News Network wanted their candidate.

Maj Marty Hogan - Of course news sites have bias, but you need to be careful of running into a part for the whole fallacy. Your more interesting point was, is the number of lawsuits unusual for a person in his position? It's a great question because it is one that is hard to answer. It is safe to say the articles don't exist simply because he is running for president. Those type of articles have been pervasive for years, long before he announced any presidential aspirations, but is it unusual?

It is certainly unusual by the fact that they exist and for the most part don't exist for other people in similar positions. But that could simply be explained the fact that he is an entertainer, a well known personality. That's harder to say other than the stories go back to long before he was a well known personality. Having said that it gets really difficult to do media research prior to 2003 due to when the shift to online. After that date there are quite a lot of stories about Trump Lawsuits, more than I can find for any other figure but The Apprentice started in 2004 so...

The B-School example is also an interesting one. While I never encountered a case study for Trump, you conclusion is probably somewhat similar to mine where you say, "ethics not so much" and that's pretty much the core of my point.

SPC Kevin Ford - Wow we argued and came to the same conclusion. Ethically I don't believe anyone in higher business can be and be successful- just law of nature I think. Where my projection was going is we rely on the media for info and the info is not reported without bias. My point is what is always posted using watered down or skewed data. I am tired of reading the sensational headlines with a lead of a Trump supporter. I voted for him- supporter not so much, but I am a change guy and the broom rider was not change and status quo. I am passionate about passing on information- but from sources I trust. .Gov sites can't lie so... Keep up the questioning of authority- it is what makes us great in the end. Appreciate not only your candor in your replies, but the respect as well.

Maj Marty Hogan - I prefer to consider these discussions. :) I've also found a lot more can be learned from discussing something with someone who disagrees with me than discussing in the echo chamber.

One of the largest challenges today is we have people who fundamentally disagree with each other on reality. What I mean by that is that since their is so little shared trust in media, people tend to just accept that which agrees with them and there are very different realities presented if you choose different sources.

To pile on to that, even the reliability of fact checking sites has been brought into question. Not so much because they are wrong, but because people trying to sell a particular narrative can do so much more easily if there is no easy way for people to verify the narratives accuracy; so they attacked the fact checking sites and brought those into question as well (one of the best things the fact checking sites do is pull in the source material). To make it even worse, the source material isn't always easily available, nor do many people have the time or capability to do that type of verification. It's a bit of a mess and I believe it was purposely created by those people trying to sell one narrative or another.

That's part of the reason why I try not to get too bent out of shape. Many of the people I talk with are operating in a different reality, fueled by different information. Remember the old saw about, "You are entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts."? While it is true, it is significantly less useful if people disagree on what those facts are.

I posted links to two pretty good economic non profit orgs for comparative views of each. There is some good info in there.