JRE 1671 - Interesting Interview

My Thoughts About the Chauvin Trial

The Derek Chauvin trial concluded a couple weeks ago, and I was honestly shocked and discouraged to learn that the cowardly jury had convicted him on all 3 charges of 2nd degree murder, 3rd degree murder, and manslaughter.  If I had been on the jury, I wouldn't have voted to convict him on any of the 3 charges, not because I agreed with what Chauvin did, but because to me it is pretty clear that George Floyd died from a drug overdose and not from Chauvin's knee.  There's tons of reasonable doubt that Chauvin caused Floyd's death, so any manslaughter or murder charge would get a not guilty vote from me.  If Chauvin didn't kill Floyd, he shouldn't be convicted of murder.  Other lesser charges could have been considered.

Why do I think that?  Well, unlike 99% of people, I have actually watched all available videos, read the medical examiner's report, have a basic understanding of what could or could not cut off someone's airway or blood flow, and have seen multiple re-enactments of people going though the same neck restraint for 9 minutes and while reporting it was definitely not comfortable, it's almost impossible to have caused someone's death.  The subjects going through the re-enactments said they could breathe fine the entire time.  You can't really suffocate someone by putting pressure on the back of their neck, unless you press down with so much pressure that you damage their windpipe on the front of their neck by pressing it against the ground or a hard object.  There were no signs of that in the autopsy.

First things first, lets review the videos.  Here's a YouTube video where they have spliced together up to 4 different camera views at a time in sync, between body cams, store security cameras, and bystander cell phone videos.  This gives the best view into exactly what happened.

Before going into further detail, the shorter summary of what happened is that George Floyd was high on drugs, hanging with his drug dealer (the other man in the car with him who should be arrested with 3rd degree murder charges right now), and had tried to use counterfeit money at a store.  Floyd seemed to be in an altered state and was very slow to respond and obey officer's commands.  He resists slightly when being handcuffed, but they walk him over and he sits down on the sidewalk with his back against the wall of the outside of the store.  A couple minutes later, they walk him over to a police vehicle, frisk him, and try to get him in the back of the police vehicle.  Floyd resists, saying he's claustrophobic and is going to die in the back of the car.  They eventually force him into the vehicle where Floyd thrashes around actively resisting, begging to be let out of the car and onto the ground.  They finally decide to allow him to go on the ground on the other side of the vehicle.  By this time 2 more officers have arrived.  Chauvin and the first 2 officers restrain Floyd while Thao does crowd control.  Floyd talks loudly for the first 5 minutes or so, but then quiets down, and then appears to lose consciousness for the last 4 minutes before he's loaded into an ambulance.  Chauvin applied a neck restraint on Floyd the entire 9 1/2 minutes Floyd was on the ground.

Now lets go into more details at some crucial points.

The first 2 officers walk up to talk to Floyd right around 4 minute mark in the video.  Floyd is sitting in his car and does not appear to be claustrophobic at all.  Floyd is slow to responds to officers commands and show his hands, so at 4:15 Officer Lane pulls out his gun and later re-holsters it at 4:55 when Floyd finally puts his hands on his head.  At 4:18 in the video, it appears that Floyd has a white pill on his tongue, indicating he likely swallowed more drugs around this point, as there is no point where he appears to spit it out.  Around 6:15 in the video, right after being cuffed, Floyd has trouble standing up.  They get Floyd to move over to the sidewalk and he sits against the store wall.

At 8:50, they have stood Floyd back up, and they start taking him across the street back to a police car (actually SUV). The cops ask him if he's on something, saying he's foaming at the mouth, and Floyd responds that he was hooping earlier.  Originally I thought he must have meant he was playing basketball, but it didn't make sense why that would make him foam at the mouth at this point, just because he played basketball earlier.  But then I learned that "hooping" is slang for taking drugs up your butt.  It's also possible the foaming was partially caused by the pill that was just in Floyd's mouth from 4 1/2 minutes before, if he had kept it in his mouth dissolving instead of swallowing it right away.

It quickly becomes clear Floyd knows he's at risk of dying from an overdose.  Already at 9:09 in the video, as they are walking over to the police car, Floyd says, "God, don't leave me man!  Please man!  Please man!  Please don't leave me man!  I'll do anything!"  Then Floyd stumbles at the curb at 9:17, then starts saying, "I'm claustrophobic man! I'm claustrophobic! Please! Please! Please, let me talk to you man!  I'm claustrophobic!  Please man!"  And he continues saying that several more times over the next minute.  At 10:33, Floyd again pleads, "Please stay with me, man!  Thank you."  At 10:55, Floyd appears to start resisting getting in the car, falling down again, with Officer Kueng asking, "Why are you having trouble walking?"  At 11:13, referring to the police car they want him to sit in, Floyd says, "Y'all I'm going to die in here! I'm going to die, man!

Now let me break for just a second to remind you that at this point the officers are just trying to detain Floyd for using a counterfeit bill and get him to sit in the car.  Everything you've heard up to this point is BEFORE police used any force beyond handcuffing him, walking him to the car, and frisking him.  And Floyd has already for OVER 2 MINUTES behaved like he thinks he is going to die if he is left alone in the squad car!

At 11:47, Floyd says, "I'm scared as f**k, man!  When I stop breathing, when I stop breathing, it's going to go off on me man!"  As the first 2 officers continue to try to get him to sit in the back seat of the police car, he repeatedly goes back to franticly saying he's claustrophobic (though, again, he had no complaints being in his own car, & it was only when he got about 20 feet from the police car that he started saying that).  At 12:18, he asks if he can get in the front, please.  Again, an odd request if he's claustrophobic.  It appears he's doing anything he can to buy time before he's left alone in the car, like he knows he's at risk of an overdose.  Officers Lane and Kueng actively try forcing Floyd into the car.

Chauvin is first seen in the body cam video around 12:35 and by 12:50 is trying help get Floyd into the back seat.  It's worth noting that when Chauvin arrived, Floyd was already actively resisting getting into the car, flopping around, and at times kicking.  The perspective Chauvin would have had arriving on the scene was of a very resistive Floyd.

At 12:40, while officers are now struggling trying to force him into the back seat, but are not restraining him anywhere near his neck, Floyd first exclaims, "I can't choke!  I can't breathe, Mr. Officer!  Please! Please! Ahhhh!"  Floyd continues to actively resist and begs at 12:51, "I want to lay on the ground! I want to lay on the ground! I want to lay on the ground! I want to lay on the ground!  Ahhh!  Ahhh! Ahhh!  I'm going down! I'm going down! I'm going down! I'm going down!"  At 13:12, as officers are still trying to keep Floyd in the car and are not doing anything to stop him from breathing, Floyd exclaims again, "I can't breathe! I can't breathe!".  At 13:22, Floyd says, "I've had COVID, man!  I can't breathe!  I can't breathe!"  At 13:39, Floyd continues to expel a lot of air, exclaiming, "I can't f**king breathe man! I can't f**king breathe!

I'm going to break again to highlight that up to this point, the officers have done nothing that could possibly have stopped Floyd from breathing.  At this point, Floyd has already said all of the above.  For 4 1/2 minutes, he's been begging for officers to stay with him & not to leave him alone in the back of the car, stating he would die if left in the car, starting claiming repeatedly he was claustrophobic, predicted he was going to stop breathing, and has exclaimed at least 7 times that he cannot breathe over the prior 65 seconds.

It is at this point the officers grant Floyd his repeated request and let him lay on the ground at 13:47.  By 13:52, Chauvin has applied the neck restraint, and Floyd immediately exclaims 5 more times (and many more times later), "I can't breathe!"  However, the fact that Floyd had already said he couldn't breathe 7 times in the prior minute before the neck restraint makes it hard to believe that the neck restraint or the other 2 officers holding his waist and legs would have been what was causing Floyd to continue saying that he couldn't breathe.  Also, the fact that Floyd was loudly talking almost constantly seemed to be strong evidence that he could breathe.  You cannot speak without expelling oxygen past your vocal cords, and you would have no air to expel if you couldn't inhale and get air through your airway and into your lungs.  The MPD-approved neck restraint is applied with a knee on the upper shoulders and back of the neck of the suspect, purposely avoiding putting pressure on the front of the neck, on the head, or on the chest (or back directly above the chest) which is much more likely to cause issues breathing.

At 14:22, Lane calls for medical.  "320 Can we get EMS code 2, for one bleeding from the mouth?"

At 14:37, Floyd still appears to have plenty of air to talk loudly, and says, "Mom, I love you. Reese, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead. I can't breathe or nothing."  Chauvin responds, "You're doing a lot of talking, man."  This seems to indicate Chauvin takes the fact he's talking as evidence he can breathe.

At 15:33, Officer Thao has arrived and asks, "Is he high on something?"  Lane responds, "I'm assuming so."  Kueng adds, "I believe so, we found a pipe."  A few seconds later, Thao says, "Do you have EMS coming code 3?  Lane replies, "Uh, code 2, we can probably step it up then.  You got it?  Thao turn and walks a few steps away, appearing to make a call on his radio.

At 15:38, it sounds like Floyd exclaims, "I ate too many drugs!" It does not appear any of the officers heard that or responded directly to it.

At 16:25, Lane says, "He's got to be on something."  Thao asks Floyd, "What are you on?"  At 16:43, Lane adds, "We found a weed pipe on him, there might be something else, there might be like PCP or something.  Is that the shaking of the eyes, right, is PCP?  Where their eyes like shake back and forth really fast?"

Floyd has been talking loudly almost non-stop the entire 3 minutes he's been on the ground up to this point, with Chauvin applying the neck restraint.  At 16:57, he says, "I'm through. I'm claustrophobic. My stomach hurts. My neck hurts. Everything hurts. I need some water or something, please.  Please, I can't breathe officer."  Chauvin replies, "Then stop talking, stop yelling."  Floyd says, "You're going to kill me, man."  Chauvin says, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."  It is apparent that Chauvin does not think what he is doing is causing Floyd's breathing issues.

At about 18:10, Floyd sounds like he's starting to fade.  He has been talking loudly pretty much non stop since 13:52, almost 4 1/2 minutes, since Chauvin started the neck restraint.  But now his talking starts not being as loud.

A crowd has gathered and starts getting very vocal.  This is the main part of the cell phone video that sparked the massive riots when it came out.

At 18:22, Lane asks, "Should we roll him on his side?"  Chauvin replies, "No, he's staying put where we got him.  Lane says, "OK, I just worry about the excited delirium or whatever."  Chauvin says, "Well, that's why we got the ambulance coming."

Floyd continues to groan, but continues to fade.  He appears to stop moving at at 19:20, Lane says, "I think he's passing out."

This is the part to me that is inexplicable on Chauvin's part.  Even after it is apparent that Floyd has passed out, Chauvin keeps the neck restraint for nearly 4 more minutes, all the way up to 23:18, and never bothers to check his pulse or show any concern like Lane had several times.  This is the part that everyone saw and what sparked the riots.

At 20:13, Lane asks again, "Roll him on his side?" and again Chauvin says no.

At 20:26, Kueng checks for a pulse and says at 20:35, "I couldn't find one."

So why do Chauvin and Kueng continue to apply restraint to Floyd's neck & waist at this point?  Lane hasn't been doing much at all to hold Floyd's legs for a while at this point, just keeping a hand down on Floyd's right calf.  Kueng appears to continue checking for a pulse, and there's some chatter about the status of the ambulance.  At 21:59, Kueng takes his knee off of Floyd's butt.  The crowd is getting VERY agitated at this point, and yet Chauvin keeps the neck restraint (the focal point of their anger) in place all the way up till they load Floyd onto the stretcher to go in the ambulance.

The ambulance first pulls up at 22:10, and a paramedic comes and checks Floyd for a pulse at 22:15.  But then it takes them another minute to get the stretcher out before they start loading him at 23:18.  Lane rides in the ambulance and starts CPR and assists the 2 medics try to revive Floyd, but they could not.

The medical examiner's report found Floyd has 11 ng/ml of fentanyl in his blood, when levels as low as 3 ng/ml have been found to be fatal.  The ME said that if he had not seen the video or known the circumstances surrounding Floyd's death, based on the actual physical autopsy itself, he would have ruled it a drug overdose.  There was no damage to Floyd's neck or airway found.

And this makes sense, because again, Chauvin was using an approved, non-lethal neck restraint that is designed to avoid significantly harming the suspect.  I have not seen anything that would prove to me that it was Chauvin's neck restraint that caused Floyd's death, rather than a fentanyl overdose on a man with advanced heart disease and who recently had COVID.  I'm 95% convinced the fentanyl overdose was the cause of Floyd's death.  Fentanyl overdoses kill by stopping the victim's breathing. Doesn't it make a LOT more sense that a fentanyl level over 3X a lethal amount caused Floyd's death rather than an approved neck restraint designed not to affect breathing?

Having the benefit of hindsight and multiple video angles from before Chauvin arrived, I don't think the neck restraint was necessary at all.  Floyd was not resisting much before they tried to put him in the car.  They could have had him go back and sit on the sidewalk again, which I wish Lane and Kueng would have suggested, since Floyd was mostly cooperative before when just sitting on the sidewalk.  However, given the active resistance from Floyd in the back of the car that Chauvin observed when he first arrived, I cannot blame Chauvin for restraining Floyd at first, for the time that Floyd was most actively resisting.  Where I vehemently disagree with what Chauvin did was after Floyd passed out and Kueng couldn't find a pulse.  At that point, Chauvin should have been rolling him on his side, checking for breathing and pulse, and uncuffing him so they could roll him on his back and start CPR until medics arrived.  And the neck restraint after Floyd was passed out was excessive force, not in the manner of restraint but in the length of time it was applied, and for it to continue to be applied when it was clearly unnecessary, and when it was preventing medical attention from being given.

So I have plenty of criticism for Chauvin, and for the other 3 officers for not urging Chauvin to stop the neck restraint and not starting CPR earlier.  I just don't think that those mistakes rise to the level of murder.

When it comes to the Chauvin trial, I have a huge problem with a few things about what the judge allowed regarding the charges.

1. I don't think one action should ever be allowed to be charged as multiple crimes.  In this case, the neck restraint is one action and should have either been 2nd degree murder, 3rd degree murder OR 2nd degree manslaughter, BUT NOT ALL 3.  An unintentional killing fits a manslaughter charge the best.  In Minnesota law, an unintentional killing can rise to the level of 2nd degree murder in 2 specific scenarios.  But in my view, the jury should HAVE TO CHOOSE one or the other.  It can be 2nd degree manslaughter or 2nd degree murder, but the same killing should not result in convictions on multiple counts or degrees of murder.  This can make a huge difference in sentencing if multiple charges are ordered to be served consecutively instead of concurrently.  It could be the difference between as much as 40 and 75 years.  (Update 6/25/21: It turns out Chauvin was sentenced concurrently for 22.5 years.)

  2nd degree murder = 40 years max

  3rd degree murder = 25 years max

  2nd degree manslaughter = 10 years max

2. The 3rd degree murder charge does not even fit.  In Minnesota law, a 3rd degree murder charge is defined as: "Whoever, without intent to effect the death of any person, causes the death of another by perpetrating an act eminently dangerous to others and evincing a depraved mind, without regard for human life, is guilty of murder in the third degree".  It's meant to cover cases such as shooting into a crowd causing danger to others without regard for human life.  It's not supposed to cover a case where action is taken against a specific person that leads to their death, which falls under other statutes.  The judge actually removed this charge months before the trial but some knucklehead MN appeals court reinstated it in a departure from precedent.  If 3rd degree murder is going to be interpreted so widely, then it's hard to think of any case charged as either unintentional 2nd degree murder or as manslaughter that couldn't also be charged as 3rd degree murder too.

3. The 2nd degree murder charge is completely bogus and should be thrown out on appeal.  The only 2 scenarios in Minnesota in which an unintentional murder can be charged as 2nd degree murder instead of manslaughter is when it happens during the commission of a felony or when it happens while trying to physically harm someone who has a restraining order against you.  In Chauvin's case, the restraining order scenario clearly does not apply.  The way they charged him with 2nd degree murder is to claim that the neck restraint was also a felony assault.  I think this is utter B.S.  A police officer while carrying out his duties has to decide when to use force.  Are we saying every time they use force that a prosecutor and jury decide is unnecessary, the police officer is now committing felony assault?  That's a dangerous road to go down.  We can hold police officers accountable for excessive use of force without creating a 3rd party subjective review of whether police officers are justified or committing felonies when using department approved restraint methods.  It also violates my item #1 above where you are charging two different crimes for the same action.  Including the felony assault underlying the 2nd degree murder charge, Chauvin was convicted for 4 different crimes for the exact same action (using the approved neck restraint).  If this is now the standard, it's hard to think of many cases of manslaughter where a felony assault could not also be brought, and every manslaughter case would also rise to unintentional 2nd degree felony murder.  Of course, this is not at all what the felony part of the 2nd degree murder charge is for.  It is supposed to be when someone is committing a felony like armed robbery and they accidentally kill someone.  Killing someone with one action (e.g. firing a gun) while already committing a felony with a separate action (e.g. armed robbery) is what the statute is for.

I have a huge problem with the jury instructions the judge gave about the 2nd and 3rd degree murder charges.

However, it probably didn't matter, because it's hard not to think that at the end of the day, that jury was full of biased individuals and/or cowards who were going to vote for conviction of all charges that were brought, to avoid their home city from being trashed by mob violence again.  Joe Biden, Maxine Waters, the Minneapolis mayor, and the Minnesota governor were just some of those subverting justice and making a fair trial in Minneapolis impossible.  Obviously, I was too hopeful that justice would prevail.  I honestly thought there would be at least one reasonable person on the jury who would not go along with the 2nd and 3rd degree murder charges, and they may only convict on manslaughter, or have a hung jury on all 3 charges.

Border Wall Status

We are 11 days into the Biden Administration, and for now, this link still works, although it's labeled at the top as Archived from a previous administration.

https://www.cbp.gov/border-security/along-us-borders/border-wall-system

Here's a screenshot of the Border Wall Map, with the Red lines marking the New Border Wall system, most of it replacing the grossly inadequate fencing that existed there previously.  This Map unfortunately does not differentiate with different colors which parts of the wall were Completed vs. Under Construction vs. Under Pre-Construction.  The border is about 2000 miles long.  About 450 miles of New Wall was completed before Biden foolishly stopped the building.  I think another 290 miles was under Pre-Construction or Construction.  The little gaps you see in many places below are where the mountainous terrain created a natural barrier.  The New Wall would run up to the mountain and then start again on the other side.  It would be easier to climb the 18-30ft. fence than climb over the mountain.  The biggest gap along the Western 2/3 of the Texas/Mexico border is a very mountainous section where the Rio Grande runs between large cliffs on either side.  A wall is not needed in hardly any of that section.  Again, scaling a 30 ft. fence is far easier than traveling through a remote mountainous area for days and crossing that treacherous terrain.  Other areas of the Rio Grande further East in Texas which are not near any roads are much better suited to use aerial surveillance to spot people and stop them if they try to get across the river at those points.  All in all, the 450 miles of completed wall is a huge accomplishment and greatly helps our Border Patrol's ability to control the border.  The question is whether Democrats will even try to control the border or not.

UPDATE:

As of October 23, 2020 (4 months before this post was written), construction of the wall system breaks down as follows:

• FUNDED: 738 miles
• COMPLETED CONSTRUCTION: 386 miles
• UNDER CONSTRUCTION: 195 miles
• PRE-CONSTRUCTION PHASE: 157 miles

https://www.dhs.gov/news/2020/10/29/border-wall-system-deployed-effective-and-disrupting-criminals-and-smugglers

This site below has another map which tries to break down each section of the border wall project by construction phase.  I'm not sure how up-to-date all the information is.  But it also has a great picture to help people understand the benefit of this New Wall system vs. the previous fencing it replaced.
https://www.trumpwall.construction/

Best Resources for COVID-19 Stats

CDC - United States COVID-19 Cases and Deaths by State

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker

COVID Tracking Project - 2 Metrics 7-Day Average Curves

https://covidtracking.com/data/charts/2-metrics-7-day-average-curves

John Hopkins - Cases Trends for all 50 States

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/new-cases-50-states

Our World in Data

Graph of selected Countries Deaths Per Million

CDC - COVID-19 Vaccinations

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations

WashPo - Vaccine Distribution

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/health/covid-vaccine-states-distribution-doses/

Masks Appear To Do Little To Slow Spread Of COVID-19 (graphs)

Hat Tip:
https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/29/these-12-graphs-show-mask-mandates-do-nothing-to-stop-covid/ 

Here's some of the graphs of COVID-19 cases in different localities along with when Masks were requiered.  I see no pattern in these graphs or others I've studied that indicate Masks make much difference at all in slowing the spread of COVID-19.  There are various theories on why, but the data seems pretty clear.  Mask mandate proponents cannot seem to point to anything more than cherry-picked data (e.g. Austria) to try to claim that they are helping.

The Scientific Method

Facebook post from a friend:

The term "anti-science" or "science denier" is hilariously misused. The act of science is the questioning and testing of falsifiable statements. Taking a fact in faith as an accepted truth is true anti-science.

My responses:

Exactly! Another term that is almost always an oxymoron is calling history class "social science". History is a VERY DIFFERENT field of study that has very little to do with science.

sci·en·tif·ic meth·od

/ˈˌsīənˈtifik ˈmeTHəd/

noun

a method of procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses.

"criticism is the backbone of the scientific method"

Science is about what we can observe, measure, experiment on, and test in the PRESENT. We also have to be very careful when we try to extrapolate from current scientific observations and apply them to the past, future, or phenomena we don't have enough information about yet. The further we extrapolate away from solid scientific observations to make theories (which so many try to pretend are solid conclusions), the weaker the theories are and less and less credence should be given to them. Examples:

PAST

The debate about the age of the earth is a classic example. SCIENCE CANNOT DETERMINE THE AGE OF THE EARTH! Science can only measure the present and try to extrapolate back to the past, and has to make many assumptions. For any age to be calculated, some measurement of change at present rates must be calculated, and then one has to assume how it was in the beginning, and that the rate has been constant over time, and then the present rate is extrapolated into the past. And it's prone to WILD error. It's like saying when the score is 6-0 only 1 minute into an NBA game, that the final score will be 288-0. When it comes to age of the earth, any evidence like a fossilized tree (which normally would have decayed in small number of years) being buried and preserved through multiple geological layers that were supposedly were laid down over millions of years must be ignored, because the "scientists" don't like evidence that contradicts their theories. But a wise person can trust far more that the current scientific measurements are reasonably accurate without taking it on faith that unscientific extrapolations about the distant past have much validity at all.

FUTURE

Global Warming / Climate change is a classic example of extrapolating into the future (and of corruption of the recent data itself, but that's another topic). Climate has always changed and variability is natural. Sometimes average global temperatures trend up and sometimes they trend down. Since the late 1800's they have trended up overall. But when they trended down from 1940-1970, many "scientists" extrapolated that present (at the time) rate of cooling and proclaimed humans were causing a new Ice Age. Less than 10 years later, after temperatures trended upwards again, some of these same "scientists" did a 180 and extrapolated the last 5-10 years (at the time) rate of warming and boldly and hypocritically proclaimed CO2 emissions were going to destroy the planet. They've been pushing that line ever since, even when global average temperatures didn't go up between 1998 and 2015. The predictions made in the late 90's by most of the computer models at the time of rapid warming by 2020 were falsified by the current temperatures now in 2021 being below even the lower bounds of most of the models' predictions. So no wise person should put any stock in predictions about 2050 or 2100. There's just as much chance that temperatures may be lower by then than they are now. We can trust that scientists can predict fairly well the path of a hurricane over the next 2-5 days, but we'd be fools to trust at all they can predict average global temperatures in 2050. That is wild extrapolation of the current science.

PHENOMENA WE DON'T HAVE ENOUGH INFORMATION ABOUT YET

No one knows what the long term effects of a mRNA vaccine will be.

Updated Employment Chart for Post WWII Recessions

Here is the final chart before employment for the 2008 recession finally got back to where it was in November 2007.  As you can see, it took about 6.5 years for employment levels to finally recover.  Part of that could be blamed on the severity of the financial crisis in the summer of 2008, but the policies of Obama and the Democrats severely extended the downturn, as Hoover and FDR did during the Great Depression with their government intervention.  Employment recovered after every other post-WWII recession within 1-4 years, most within 2 years.  If government would let the business cycle play out, we would have much shorter downturns.  And while it's true that Obama was elected at month 12 and took office at month 14 on this graph, I don't think any credit can be given to Obama for turning the economy around when that is what it naturally does after every recession.  That's the important context this graph gives, that recessions are usually brief.  Obama's actions probably extended the natural recovery time by 3-4 years.

Hat tip: Calculated Risk