"The Case for Obama"

That was a great read. Thanks.

I think people forget that, your not going to get everything, and compromising isn't defeat.

And then America puts the Republicans into power in 2010 and 2012 and all of this gets erased.

Jesus wept. Orwell would've toned down those numbers.

That's a major failure on the part of Axelrod and ultimately Obama. They should have been shouting "WE CUT YOUR TAXES" to the skies.....instead they let the Lunatic Left & Right define this Election cycle in extremist terms.

It's gotten to the point where they could bring out a chart for each American detailing the taxes they paid over 10 years, show them EXACTLY on the chart where they paid less taxes under Obama, have a certified accountant picked by each American verify and a significant portion of the American public would STILL reply with "NUH-UH!"

We're past the point of facts mattering.

I think this line of thinking is acting as a major drag against the recovery. People are scared to death of the Health Plan, and until it's clearly demonstrated that it works well and cheaper than what we have now, no amount of argument is going to stop the sound machines.

I think if the Health Plan does do as promised, the economy will quickly recover. If not, well....Obama can write another memoir as they swear in a Republican on Inauguration Day.

The Obama administration has done a poor job of selling itself, it's true. Still, I don't completely fault them for this... I mean, the truth of things isn't that hard to uncover. Even if you pay casual attention to what's going on, you can sort through the bullshit -- there are no death panels, Obama cut your taxes, etc. At some point, The American people has to take responsibility for its own dearth of knowledge. This stuff isn't secret, you just have to give enough of a damn to know it.

The biggest threat facing America today is not the economy, big money or terrorism -- it's the nation's love of ignorance and apathy.

I really think this is a function of the mass media rather than anything the administration can be faulted for. Really, it's a horrible state of affairs in this country. American's perception on the government has become so unbelievably incoherent and disjointed, it's beyond politics: it's about the mass manufacturing of obfuscation and gibberish. Most people have no idea why they think what they think. Everyone says there's too much government, but if you go through and discuss the individual things the government actually does, the only thing that will really stick is "government regulation." Oh, and taxes. Now I wonder why that would be.

Barack Obama has been and always will be a savvy politician who, like he's mentioned many times before, is unwilling to let "perfect get in the way of good enough" when it comes to getting us from our low point to something better.

Unfortunately, in today's extremist society - where it's all or nothing to most people, and damn compromise, even if it'll be an improvement that can be built upon later (as the Administration calls it, "The New Foundation") - it seems like it's not enough to get people rallied. Which is a sad reflection on the nation as a whole, and how far we've fallen in terms of discourse and news digestion. We've become an elevator pitch society.

What do you guys think of this? I have to admit the Bradley Manning thing is a really sore point for me.

 

The treatment of Manning and the incredibly blasé way the Obama Administration is essentially happily letting this guy be driven insane for seemingly no logical reason may be my true and final rubicon moment for me and old President Barry. The whole PJ Crowley incident certainly seems to lay bare that not everyone in the halls of power are convinced that all is well and dandy with his treatment as well.

 

Here's a very good piece from an aussie website on the same issue from a few weeks back...

 

 

 

 

 

I have to admit, as horrible as the treatment of Manning is, that blog post lost me in the second paragraph.  'Psychopathic commitment to killing people'?  Really?  Coupled with the weird anarchist manifesto in the 'about me' column, it just generates this cognitive dissonance very much akin to what the Tea Party creates.

As important as the Manning issue is, that blog does it a disservice by rabidly frothing at the mouth with its hyperbole.

Obama's dithering on nearly every issue as it arises is painful to behold.  Remember when he used that metaphor of getting a car out of ditch?  Well, this guy put the damn thing in neutral the day after I voted for him!  Those Lincoln comparisons everyone was in a rush to draw seem even more childish now than they did at the time.

 

He's up against a hideous new breed of no-nonsense, no sleep, no retreat dogmatists whose minds are stuck in the glory days of the nativist, cold war paranoiac mid-twentieth century.  His limp resolve (the only 'resolve' I've seen has been in the transcriptions of his speeches!) in the face of the runaway hate priapism of the right and their leash-slipping brownshirts, the tea partiers, is disheartening to the point of sincere anger.

 

Where are the Andrew Jacksons?  All we're getting is another fucking Buchanan.  Get your goddamn hands dirty, Barry!

But what you call "dithering" is in large part the "adult" mentality that won Obama the White House. He doesn't go off half cocked, when he does go off it's very controlled (which, oddly is why many people think he's "cold"). Do you want him to go into a Bill Hicks like rant on Rush Limbaugh and the GOP? What good would that serve? And I'd note that everytime Obama has been  written off, he's come back and passed all the major legislation he cares about.

 

speaking of dithering, Obama just got the broadest consensus politically possible for a no fly zone in Libya...  thus avoiding any reasonable perception that the United States is unilaterally intervening in the affairs of another Arab country.  Had this occurred a week ago, when many suggested it ought to, that political capital would have been squandered.  I will grant that much suffering could have been avoided, but these are serious geopolitical issues, and assuming Gaddafi is unable to draw this out into a protracted conflict this was likely the best process through which to impose military intervention.

Scary that I find myself agreeing more with the last two posters than the first slew of replies.

ahem...

 

http://www.gallup.com/poll/146771/Worldwide-Approval-Leadership-Tops-Major-Powers.aspx?utm_source=tagrss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=syndication&utm_term=All%20Gallup%20Headlines

A strong case against him - all the foreigners think he's swell!

I don't support everything Obama does but I support Obama the President.  Take a good, long look at what the "conservative" governors are doing all around the country.  That's the alternative.  Obama is taking small, incremental steps against the 21st century monarchical model the "conservative" governors seem to be trying to effect.  Whatever he's doing wrong he's doing less wrong than anything they would have done.  Until corporate money is out of politics, we will never have a President Bernie Sanders, as much as I'd like that, so if you have a problem with the way Obama's doing things, the predominant fight should be against campaign finance, lobbying and the corporate monopolies that have consolidated massive amounts of power (especially in terms of the media) over the past 30 years. 

pretty much sums up my thoughts exactly.

Agree completely, its like we're living in the Guilded Age all over again. Ford, Rockafeller, Vanderbilt, and Morgan have been replaced by Wall Street Banks,corporations, and lobbyists who are real machines behind who gets to live in the White House. Alas, history repeats itself, once again. 
 

 

The USA is falling into ruin because the general public didn't storm the White House and put the Bush crime organizations collective heads on pikes when it was discovered that they had authorized War Crimes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, lefty liberal types, like myself, protested but do any of you really think that Bushco. was pissing in their pants at tens of thousands of morons singing Kumbaya? They were laughing at them. This is the reason why these fascist cocksuckers feel they can get away with anything now. It's the reason why the cunts on Wall Street didn't bat an eye at causing a worldwide economic collapse. It's because there is NO ONE in your country that will hold them accountable and they fucking know it.

 

Obama has proven himself to be nothing more then an atypical corporatist politician slime. It's obvious the man is a conservative that only ran as a Democrat because he knew the color of his skin wouldn't get him far in the GOP. In which case he's just a ladder climbing Uncle Tom asswipe who saw the Presidency, not as the opportunity to shape the future of the country, but as another notch on his resume. Or it could be that he knows that if he tried to change things, and hold people accountable, that he'd be dead in no time considering that there are plenty of redneck patsy's around to pin the blame on if he was killed. It would seem that the Presidency is nothing more then the hood ornament of an out of control vehicle controlled by corporations and the military. McCain only wanted it because he was a lifelong fuckup who wanted to out do his Daddy and Granddaddy, like like Bush Jr. . Fucking Hillary Clinton started crying, for fuck sakes, when she realized that Obama was beating her during the primary, like a schoolgirl blubbering that she wasn't made Valedictorian or Prom Queen.

 

I live in Canada and it fucking saddens me just how low the USA has fallen in the last ten years. But the clown show called American politics has provided much entertainment these last few years I have to say.

 

 

"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.
The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is
wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts
they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions,
it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ...
And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not
warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of
resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as
to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost
in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from
time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
It is its natural manure."

 

- Thomas Jefferson - 

 

 

 

 

You're well overdue America.

cc  

The problem is that quote supports violent revolt. That's why the right wing scumbags of the USA like to carry signs with "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from
time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants." on them at Democratic rallies with guns strapped to their fucking bodies. But then those mongrels don't give a shit about democracy and only want everything their own way while being fed bullshit by the Fox Propaganda Channel. They use violent rhetoric because they're knuckle dragging troglodytes. 60 million fucking cretins voted for John McCain and Sarah Fucking Palin!?! Doesn't that terrify anyone??? But when it comes to violent revolution, what recourse do Liberals, Progressives and the Professional Left have when the political system is a fucking joke with only two parties that represent two sides of the same coin. The Supreme Court is blatantly corrupted with right wingers who don't even try to hide their bias or ideology and 99% of the politicians are in the pockets of millionaires, billionaires and various companies.

 

Fucking face it man, the USA is an outright Corporate/Military Plutocracy today. Two thirds of voters put Obama in the White House because they were crying out for fucking CHANGE. And what did they get? Another lying fucking slime! THAT'S the reason people didn't vote Democrat in 2010. They have been soo burned by Obama that they just didn't give a shit and now the fucking right wingers are deliberately trying to drive the country into the fucking ground every second of the day. Just look at some of the evil fucking shit these bastards have been trying to ram through since taking over again! They want to drag the country back into the fucking dark ages. Now, I'm not one of those anarchist dipshits that wants to see everything crash and burn but the USA is looking like pre-revolutionary France with each passing day and the rich/powerful won't take their boot off the neck of the working class until they see people sharpening the guillotines.

 

Then it's really pretty simple. Something is gonna have to give and give hard - one way or another.

It will.....very soon........

Isn't this exactly the kind of rhetoric everyone was slating the right for after the Jared Laughner incident?

"Incident"?

I think fatalistic doomsday talk is part of the problem, frankly, because it's almost never accompanied by solutions.  Yeah, the US has plutocracy creep but we still have a system of laws that could and the right of free expression so they're surmountable.  It's not like we live in China where we could be arrested just for participating in this message board.  It's not like Iran or North Korea where we could be shot. 

 

That old line about the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn't exist is true of the incredible power the top 400 or so people wield.  The Ronald Reagan --> Tea Party rallying cry that government IS the problem dovetails nicely into that issue.  If government is what's so bad, then it goes away and the elite can fill the void.  That's at the rotten heart of Hayak and Rand and Alan Greenspan and the Koch brothers -- beneath all the window dressing is the idea that rich people are rich because they're better than regular people.  Therefore the rich/better should be the ones in control and everybody else should be neutralized.

 

People who belong in the "everybody else" category have been misdirected to believe they belong (or will someday) to the elite category.  I can't "punish the rich" because I could be rich some day.  When people are taught to identify with businessmen rather than workers, they can be tricked into subjugating themselves.

 

Anyway, back to the point of this thread and my problems with fatalistic doomsday posts like Burninhell's:  instead of focusing ire on Obama and calling him a Republican in sheep's clothing (which you only need to look at Walker and Kasich and Snyder or Boehner for that matter to know is BS), consider what can be done to change the system that has opened the way for this rot:

 

#1) the Sherman Anti-Trust Act is still on the books and enforceable.  If people understand that corporations have been allowed to grow too big and powerful (almost every problem this country faces, and many the world faces, can be traced back to this undeniable fact), then people can use their voices, feet and votes to pressure their representatives to pressure the Justice Dept. to break up the big corporations.  This includes the media, which has obviously consolidated itself into uselessness. 

 

#2) Campaign finance was already a disaster but is now even more of a disaster after the Citizens United decision.  Congress could pass a disclosure law that would help manage the fallout, but Republicans to a man (or woman) voted against it.  If you don't like the rich and big corporations controlling the government, don't vote Republican.  The best thing to neutralize Citizens United and a lot of constitutional issues involving corporate personhood is to lobby your government for a constitutional amendment declaring that the only persons protected under the constitution are natural persons.  A vote like this would require Republicans to vote for it, so if you have a Republican senator or representative, call, write, send emails, petition in person, etc.

 

#3) Trade policy.  The people of this country have had the rug pulled out from under their feet and watched their political power decline with their economic power.  Straight up, the reason for this is off-shoring of jobs.  50,000 factories closed under Bush.  Clinton drank the NAFTA Kool Aid.  Even Obama seems to be drinking the Kool Aid.  Tariffs on goods and services that are important for the US economy would help with this.

 

#4) Tax policy.  Hedge fund managers pay capital gains tax rates on their income.  That's around 15% (correct me if I'm wrong, The Closer).  Loopholes allow corporations like GE, Bank of America and Exxon Mobile to pay NO taxes.  To say nothing of the deficit issues, this incredible flood of free money gives them the impetus to fuel market bubbles like the mortgage crisis etc and also buy legislation that makes them even richer.

 

Our problems, in my opinion, come down to those four things.  We also still have a vote and every election is an exercise in frustration when people who claim to give a $#!& don't bother to inform themselves and vote.  Voting still works, which is why in California Jerry Brown's trying to get tax increases on a referendum ballot.  He knows the people will vote for that.  The dirty little secret is that most Americans don't agree with the "small govmint" types who like to take money from teachers and give it to bankers.  Most Americans understand that the health of a nation requires an investment on the part of its people. 

 

Anyway, Obama's not the problem.  We shoulder a lot of the blame for letting the system get this bad and finger-pointing at the president.  Sorry for the rant.

The difference is that the right wing just outright MAKES SHIT UP to stir the crazies and THAT is what caused the Jared Laughner "incident" as you facetiously put it.

 

Did George W.Bush not steal the 2000 election with the help of his Daddy's baddies on the supreme court? Was his criminal organization not asleep at the wheel during 9/11? Did he and his criminal organization not use that incident to start a war based on bullshit? Did he not authorize the use of TORTURE on human beings? Did his criminal organization not blow the cover of a C.I.A operative as political payback? Did his criminal organization not give a shit about New Orleans because it was a predominately Democratic leaning city with a large African American population? Was his criminal organization not responsible for the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression and did they not use that "incident" to rip off the American taxpayer to the tune of 750 billion dollars?

 

But not once did I ever see a Democratic voter at a rally for that piece of fucking shit with a gun strapped to his leg and a sign threatening him. In fact, you were likely to be arrested just for wearing the wrong fucking T-shirt or having the wrong bumper sticker on your fucking car if you were withing a mile of an RNC convention or a Bush rally. That's not even mentioning the "free speech zones" they set for protesters. 

 

So forgive me if I don't buy your false equivalency bullshit that the arguments or rhetoric between the Left and Right are equally balanced and based on logic and reason on both sides. The right gains it's power from FEAR. It whips it's simple minded, greedy, racist, sexist, homophobic and uneducated constituents into a frenzy over SOCIALISM, COMMUNISM, IMMIGRATION, GUN RIGHTS, GAYS AND ABORTION or whatever boogeymen people like the Fox Propaganda Channel or the Koch Brothers use to scare these fucking morons. They use this shit every election cycle and the fucking idiots come running to the poles like a thirsty dog to a toilet bowl. 

 

A serious question....what is the philosophy of the Right Wing besides fear, hatred and greed? Conservatives like to talk about how Liberals/Progressives are evil. Wanting people to have access to healthcare is Evil? Wanting the rich and corporations to pay their fair share in taxes is Evil? Oh, spending less on the military (so they have less money to build bombs that they drop on children and women and whole families half way around the world) and putting it into Education, Infrastructure and the development of renewable energy resources, that shit's Evil, right? 

 

At the heart of conservatism is fascism. They are not interested in democracy nor having reasonable, logical arguments based on facts to justify their demented dog-eat-dog world view. If you vote conservative, I have to assume that you are an undiagnosed sociopath, completely lacking in empathy for your fellow human beings. But I don't hate you. I truly feel sorry that your are incapable of caring about anything but yourselves.

You're not wrong on everything crazy guy, but you are crazy, guy.

 

Why do you think I'm crazy? Because I'm stating the blatant, obvious truth of what's been going on in the USA over the last decade? So much so that the usual right wing tolls on these boards can't even muster a defense! Not even Snaike who's a fucking pathological liar!!!

 

It's not the blatant truth, it's the seething rant of someone for whom it's easier to believe that our federal government is run by "criminals" than that they may just have a different worldview than you.  I think Bush is one of the worst, if not the worst President we've ever had.  But even despite potentially criminal conduct on his part I find it hard to believe that he was entirely disingenuous.  He just wasn't fit for the job.  With respect to Obama, I couldn't disagree more on his character.  You infer too much from decisions that you, personally, don't like.

 

 

 

Please don't give me that "The road to Hell is paved with good intention" bullshit, as though Bushco. was some sort of benign entity who's decisions just happened to aim the country towards becoming a Plutocratic Police State. "Different worldview"? Fuck you. Yeah, I have these quaint notions that the TORTURE of human beings and holding them without trial indefinitely is wrong, that illegally wiretapping people is wrong. Oh, and let's be clear, the wiretapping had NOTHING to do with searching for terrorists. It was so that they could spy on dissenters, critics and political opponents. This is the same shit that Nixon got busted for with Watergate. Fascist's only have soo many tricks and they are all soo obvioous.

 

Another thing, the idea that Bush wasn't "fit for the job" is laughable, as though that's a fucking excuse for the shit his criminal organization did. The GOP doesn't want a leader in the White House, what they do is groom some asshole, like Reagan or The Chimp, who's job is to spout platitudes while signing whatever legislation is put in front of them that will benefit the people and corporations that helped them. Now, I'm not saying Obama is any different. It's just that he's a much better liar then his fellow Corporatist's on the Republican side. He managed to sucker people into believing that he had the intention of changing the country for the better.

 

That brings me to yt. Now, I like the stuff you have to say but I think your wrong when it comes to Obama. Understand that I'm not one of those fucking retards who think "government is the problem". That's what Conservatives say because they have no interest in Governing and want to simply chop up the country's infrastructure and sell it off to the highest bidder. All they want to be in charge of is the military, so they can wage imperialistic wars on the behalf of American companies, and the treasury, so that they can steal money from the public and shovel it to their buddies on Wall Street and the Military.

 

Anyway, Obama, the thing that really fucking burns my ass is the way his apologists say "oh, he's got soo much on his plate, he can't do everything that the left wants". What I'm saying is that, as a Republican in Democratic clothing, he has done FUCK ALL to further progressive legislation and only offered half measures in every instance. Not to mention the way he has done nothing but bend over backwards to appease the fucking bastards who ran the country into the ground in the first place, all in the name of bi-partisanship. He is deliberately using bi-partisanship as an excuse for not pushing on progressive legislation while Bushco. rammed every single fucking evil piece of shit his corporate benefactors wanted. I knew there was something really wrong with Obama, literally, the day of his inauguration in that he let that fucking homophobic slime Rick Warren give the invocation at the ceremony.  

 

The people that voted for Obama wanted him to create a universal healthcare system, single payer preferably, public option in the worst case scenario. We wanted him to stop the fucking imperialistic warfare and cut the military defense budget. Now he's sticking his fucking nose into Libya when he didn't seem all that chuffed over Egypt, but then that's because Mubarak was a US backed dictator in a country with no oil (where as Gaddafi has been on the USA's shitlist for decades in a country that has oil and geopolitical significance to the US military) which is why the States sat on the fence until it was obvious that the uprising was going to succeed, at which point they said that Mubarak had to go.

 

We wanted him to enact progressive taxation, less we not forget that the US, overall, did better when the tax rate was at 90 fucking percent. Not that we want to go back to that, we just want the rich to pay their fair share. Now we have corporations that have received BILLIONS of tax payer dollars in bailouts and now, not only are they hoarding that money, they are also back to paying themselves outrageous bonuses for failure, posting record profits and not paying a single fucking cent in taxes due to offshore accounting all the while STILL getting tax breaks. Oh and the only fucking person who has been held responsible for any sort of massive theft has been Bernie Madoff and that’s only because he stole from the rich.  

 

We wanted him to get out of NAFTA and work to protect American manufacturing and the working class. We wanted him to shut down the Guantanamo Gulag and the Kangaroo Courts that they use to convict people (that have been held for years without due process) with evidence

that they're not allowed to fucking see. Oh and what we'd really like to see is for the useless motherfucker to get off his fucking ass and explain to the entire nation that, despite what the Fox Propaganda Channel and Koch brothers funded astroturf teabagging sock puppets say, IT IS NOT TEACHERS, POLICE, FIRE FIGHTERS AND CITY WORKER UNIONS THAT HAVE RAN THE FUCKING COUNTRY INTO THE GROUND!!! He should be unleashing indignate rage at these fucking assholes that DARE to say that those working class people are responsible for the economic crisis when it was really Wall Street who directly fucking OWN the Republican Party, the same people who ran everything they touched right into the fucking shitter!!!

 

Then, lest we forget, how he and his administration has done NOTHING but shit all over the “Professional Left”, Liberals and Progressives, you know, THE FUCKING PEOPLE WHO WORKED THEIR ASSES OFF TO GET HIM ELECTED, since the second he got into office. That’s why people were soo apathetic towards the 2010 elections, besides the general betrayal of EVERYTHING he campaigned on. Do you know how many young people, the fucking future of the country, got interested in politics and got involved because they believed in Obama? Now those same young people have been disillusioned because he revealed that he’s just yet another fucking lying politician piece of shit.

 

So fuck that cocksucker and the horse he rode in on. That’s all I’m going to write about No Drama Obama for now. I’m fucking tired of pointing out that he’s a corporatist conservative and a fucking worthless cuntrag who had the opportunity to shape the USA for the benefit of EVERYONE and not the top 1% which is exactly who he’s made it abundantly clear that he works for.   

So I didn't finish reading all that, but did it end with Obama choking The Penguin to death on the roof of the White House?

It's not even worth arguing with you, but I'll say a few words about Obama.  To say that he has betrayed us, those who voted for him, or that he is just another corrupt corporate shill is absurd.  Health Care is a huge step in the right direction.  I'm sorry you wanted more, so did I, but if you think single payer was politically feasible you're living on another fucking planet.  I mean really dude?  We're still fighting 50% of the country over the half-measure you consider a sellout!  What the fuck do you want?  The brilliance of Obama IS the step-wise halfmeasures, easing the country into programs they don't realize they need.  It was the same with the stimulus, and the same now with the battle over the budget.  Then there's the repeal of DADT, there's the intervention in Libya and the way in which he sought consensus, net neutrality (which, while imperfect, would be done-in completely if it were up to Republicans), the Consumer Protection Bureau, and a hundred other little things that don't even get noticed.  Have you not seen how fucking difficult it is to get anything done?  How every decision becomes a political liability under the lens of the 24 hour media?  If he doesn't ensure his own re-election then any progress he has made, however inadequate by your standards, will be undone. 

 

Politics is the art of the possible, and I really think Obama has fared well under those standards, as opposed to your unrealistic ones.

 

And I'm sorry but as much as corporations are a threat to democracy, they're the engine that drives our productivity.  They're still the guys that pay us.  You can't completely demonize corporations, or all of the people, some of whom are incredibly smart and talented, who work for them. Furthermore, the most retarded thing you can do, and a big ole red flag that you know fuck all about what you're talking about, is to treat corporate America as homogenous and monolithic.

The problem with Obama is that he goes for middle-of-the-road half-measures when there's nothing really stopping him from going whole hog. He didn't even try for single-payer, and he barely tried for public option, the latter of which came very close to happening even without him. He had the political will to introduce drastic measures from the start, and he honestly didn't seem to want them. Would single-payer or public option or any number of other ideas have been watered down in the Senate? Quite possibly. But a watered-down version of a strong bill would have been better than the watered-down version of a watered-down version of a watered-down version you got, and which has apparently convinced a small but vocal contingent of the public that the US has been taken over by communists. The stimulus is the same thing. A bold spending program would have quite possibly had the economy turning around enough by last year that the Dems wouldn't have suffered the defeats they did, and the Tea Party would have gone back to work instead of driving up the crazy factor.

 

It IS silly to ignore some of the advances Obama has made, even if they're the kind of things that can easily be overturned the instant Republicans get their mojo back. But the guy was given a huge mandate and a giant ringing bell and a loudspeaker voice blasting "STEER THINGS FURTHER TO THE LEFT, ASSHOLE," and he's tried to essentially maintain the status quo. He's been acting from the start like he's facing Clinton-levels of political opposition, and has turned it into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I think we disagree over what was politically feasible with health care and the stimulus.

 

 

 

BurnInHell is an alt-nick of Snaieke's, right?  Trying in some characteristically batshit way to prove that the radicalized Left is just as crazy as he is?

 

What exactly is "radical" about what I've said? It's not like I'm asking anyone to live in a fucking tipi and eat raw vegetables out of the ground. And even more false equivalency that what I've said is as insane as the shit that comes out of the right on a regular basis. It's typical Conservative projection to paint the left as being just as fucked in the head as they are. Is there anything I've said that would be considered unreasonable? Stopping wars? Putting money into Healthcare, Education, Infrastructure? Holding people responsible for the crimes they have committed? I thought that the GOP was the party of responsibility? Or was that bullshit like everything else Conservatives say?  
 

 

Painting Obama as a trojan horse for conservatism is pretty radical, and implies a ridiculous conspiracy.  It's reasonable to perceive him as a disappintment, or lightweight who is influenced and pushed around too easily.  That's reasonable, even if I think it's incorrect.

 

 

I don't even know what's politically feasible. The point is that he barely tried. He didn't open with a strong position and then compromise with the right, he opened halfassedly and then watered everything down even further, leading to quarter- or eighth-assed legislation.

 

On some level, yes, passing this stuff is a victory in and of itself, but realistically, the benefits are going to be far more diffuse than they might have been if these had been bold, well-designed initiatives.

I think as long as you mix his drink properly, Boehner's probably a lot of fun to hang out with, and I don't for a minute believe he buys into the "conservative" nihilists' urge to turn the US into Somalia.  I think he just likes to keep the money train rolling for himself.  This is the guy that handed out checks from the tobacco lobby on the floor of the House.  This isn't a guy who thinks Obama was born in Kenya. 

So now politicians should really hate each other, in public and behind closed doors?

The guy's a fuckin' cretin.