Obama's idol

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I see 8:16, in other words, you're just a Democratic version of the teabaggers, uninterested in actual governance.

Thank you! Can we come up with a term for these de-railers? They're just hellbent on the destruction of anything the party does short of free BJ's for all of them...The hate any democrat who doesn't satisfy they're insecure need for crazy defeatist bravado. They are like impatient children stomping their feet for candy. You cannot reason with them; all demands must be met in full no matter the political suicide...*sigh* "Candybaggers"?

Can't reason with us? Who's trying to reason here? All you guys are doing is namecalling at us; you haven't presented any kind of reasoned response to our complaints.

How has the left derailed anything Obama has tried? Give one example.

What has Reid fought for, that was apparently just short of free BJs for all?

And BTW, have you noticed that it's now a huge portion of people who feel this way? Keep telling yourselves that we're the lunatic fringe, and see how the election goes.

You just made my point. You're going to tank the election with all this finger pointing. You're just this negative Greek chorus you don't want to govern really, you just live to complain.

Look, you get people out to vote by rallying them. By being a leader. If Obama's relying anonymous women on internet comment boards to harrangue his erstwhile supporters to vote for him, it speaks volumes.

Frankly, no, I'm not going to be particularly motivated to turn out to vote when unemployment is at 10%, and Obama's response is--rather than pursue policies which might lower that number and raise inflation by a point or two--he continues to implement slightly watered-down Republican policies, and fucking celebrate their passage.

He's supposed to be a leader. So let him use the goddamned bully pulpit to *lead* the damned country...to make a case for the policies we believe in. The fact that he doesn't leads me to suspect he does *not* believe in those policies.

Either way, if unemployment has not fallen significantly before the 2012 election, his presidency is doomed. The only question then is whether we'll get President Romney (who frankly might well be indistinguishable from Obama, and whose policies might be actually better for the country given that the GOP will also control the House and the Senate, so with a Republican in the White House, they'll lose their current incentives to sabotage the economy).

Calling people names because they won't rally around a series of pre-emptive captitulations won't help.

[Anonymous]

12:43 You seem very knowledgable if incredibly negative. Why don't you go get a job doing some of the things that you seem to so vehemently care about instead of dicking around on this site trying to rip the balls off of anyone who disagrees with you? These internet battles are bloodless--What have you ever done to effect positive change in the world except spout a lot of rhetoric and personally motivated attacks on the internet? Go into politics! I might even vote for you because I like a lot of what you say--I am a Dem--I just think it is a stupid mistake that Dems always make is they are too weak to support their own choices. You put a person in office just so you can whine endlessly and pull him down. It's pathological, really. I'd bet my left teat you voted for Gray in the last mayoral election.

Ohnooooes, there goes my left teat!

[Anonymous]

This thread is sounding like dcum before Fenty went down. If you people do this to Obama, I will just cock-punch all of you personally.

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I see 8:16, in other words, you're just a Democratic version of the teabaggers, uninterested in actual governance.

Thank you! Can we come up with a term for these de-railers? They're just hellbent on the destruction of anything the party does short of free BJ's for all of them...The hate any democrat who doesn't satisfy they're insecure need for crazy defeatist bravado. They are like impatient children stomping their feet for candy. You cannot reason with them; all demands must be met in full no matter the political suicide...*sigh* "Candybaggers"?

This is really unfair and suggests a very poor understanding of how the Obama administration and his Congressional allies have acted. In your defense, you can be partially forgiven because the media (along with Obama) has accepted the Republican framing of most issues. Therefore, the debate that is generally publicized is one between two Republican positions. Most of the recent policy disputes really haven't involved a truly Democratic alternative. I'll give one example: Healthcare reform. Obama, with much fanfare, brought all stakeholders together at the Whitehouse to present their positions. However, one group was not allowed to participate -- supporters of single payer health insurance (what Canada has). While Obama had previously hinted that he supported single payer, it was evident in this instance that he not only did not support it, but actively opposed it. As the healthcare debate ensued, the issue of a public option came to represent the liberal position. But, that was likely Letting the other team in a football game kick off from the 50 yard line. Predictably, the public option was bargained away. The resulting "compromise" was a plan previously proposed by Bob Dole and enacted in Massachusetts by Mitt Romney. In other words, the plan was not a compromise between Democratic and Republican positions, but actually actually a Republican proposal.

Democrats who were outraged were not upset because they didn't get blow jobs, but were upset because the entire debate was held on the Republican side of the field. I'm not made because we didn't get everything I wanted. I am mad because what I wanted wasn't even allowed to be considered and what I would have compromised for was bargained away. I feel that the resulting plan is not as effective as it could have or should have been. So, I criticize it on policy grounds. In addition, the individual mandate that forces the uninsured to become customers of AETNA and UHC, etc. is easy for Republicans to attack and seems unfair to many people. So, on purely political grounds the law is problematic. Obama's sacrifice of single payer left him short an important bargaining chip, it resulted in a weaker program that is being used to hurt him politically. Yet, Democrats are expected to defend this Republican law. I, for one, refuse and will never cast another vote for Obama (not that it matters in DC).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:12:43 You seem very knowledgable if incredibly negative.

Oooh, d'ya think, lady?

Why don't you go get a job doing some of the things that you seem to so vehemently care about instead of dicking around on this site trying to rip the balls off of anyone who disagrees with you? These internet battles are bloodless--What have you ever done to effect positive change in the world except spout a lot of rhetoric and personally motivated attacks on the internet? Go into politics! I might even vote for you because I like a lot of what you say--I am a Dem--I just think it is a stupid mistake that Dems always make is they are too weak to support their own choices. You put a person in office just so you can whine endlessly and pull him down. It's pathological, really. I'd bet my left teat you voted for Gray in the last mayoral election.

Ohnooooes, there goes my left teat!

The problem is two-fold: first, our government is set up to privilige rural, reactionary interests. So aside from wildly destabilized moments that come along every 30 years or so, it's impossible to effect positive change at the federal level. Second, the social conservative wing of the GOP has spent close to a half century creating a framework to implement their ideology at every level of government: from local school boards, to local, state, and federal government. All of this is supported by a lavishly funded media environment dedicated exclusively to pushing right-wing memes, framed as sympathetically to right-wing causes as possible. There's a lavishly funded pseudo-academic environment (i.e. think-tanks like Cato, Heritage, AEI, etc...) that operate to provide a fig-leaf of intellectual cover to the whole endeavor.

All the bluster about "the liberal Washington Post" or other nonsense aside, there's really no comparable mechanism on the left.

To make a long story short, it can be exhilarating to work for campaigns, or to work for a given office on the Hill, but the hope of engendering change through the typical routes is illusory. It's a collective action problem. And collectively, Americans are much easier to manipulate if what you're selling is resentment, fear, and ignorance. The only hope we have is to elect a progressive politician who has amazing powers of persuasion and get him into the White House where he can tirelessly sell an alternative agenda to the current mess. I thought we'd already done that, but that guy disappeared.

[Anonymous]

Oh, and no, I didn't vote for Gray, who was essentially the candidate of the disenfranchised underclass, angry teachers, and wooly-headed good-government idealists.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:12:43 You seem very knowledgable if incredibly negative.

Oooh, d'ya think, lady?

Why don't you go get a job doing some of the things that you seem to so vehemently care about instead of dicking around on this site trying to rip the balls off of anyone who disagrees with you? These internet battles are bloodless--What have you ever done to effect positive change in the world except spout a lot of rhetoric and personally motivated attacks on the internet? Go into politics! I might even vote for you because I like a lot of what you say--I am a Dem--I just think it is a stupid mistake that Dems always make is they are too weak to support their own choices. You put a person in office just so you can whine endlessly and pull him down. It's pathological, really. I'd bet my left teat you voted for Gray in the last mayoral election.

Ohnooooes, there goes my left teat!

The problem is two-fold: first, our government is set up to privilige rural, reactionary interests. So aside from wildly destabilized moments that come along every 30 years or so, it's impossible to effect positive change at the federal level. Second, the social conservative wing of the GOP has spent close to a half century creating a framework to implement their ideology at every level of government: from local school boards, to local, state, and federal government. All of this is supported by a lavishly funded media environment dedicated exclusively to pushing right-wing memes, framed as sympathetically to right-wing causes as possible. There's a lavishly funded pseudo-academic environment (i.e. think-tanks like Cato, Heritage, AEI, etc...) that operate to provide a fig-leaf of intellectual cover to the whole endeavor.

All the bluster about "the liberal Washington Post" or other nonsense aside, there's really no comparable mechanism on the left.

To make a long story short, it can be exhilarating to work for campaigns, or to work for a given office on the Hill, but the hope of engendering change through the typical routes is illusory. It's a collective action problem. And collectively, Americans are much easier to manipulate if what you're selling is resentment, fear, and ignorance. The only hope we have is to elect a progressive politician who has amazing powers of persuasion and get him into the White House where he can tirelessly sell an alternative agenda to the current mess. I thought we'd already done that, but that guy disappeared.

So, do you have an alternative guy or are you just going to abandon our guy and let loose the serious hellhounds of the Republican Party? Because that is the weirdest most defeatist thing I've ever heard. No wonder this country is in the pit it is in. Quitters.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:12:43 You seem very knowledgable if incredibly negative.

Oooh, d'ya think, lady?

Why don't you go get a job doing some of the things that you seem to so vehemently care about instead of dicking around on this site trying to rip the balls off of anyone who disagrees with you? These internet battles are bloodless--What have you ever done to effect positive change in the world except spout a lot of rhetoric and personally motivated attacks on the internet? Go into politics! I might even vote for you because I like a lot of what you say--I am a Dem--I just think it is a stupid mistake that Dems always make is they are too weak to support their own choices. You put a person in office just so you can whine endlessly and pull him down. It's pathological, really. I'd bet my left teat you voted for Gray in the last mayoral election.

Ohnooooes, there goes my left teat!

The problem is two-fold: first, our government is set up to privilige rural, reactionary interests. So aside from wildly destabilized moments that come along every 30 years or so, it's impossible to effect positive change at the federal level. Second, the social conservative wing of the GOP has spent close to a half century creating a framework to implement their ideology at every level of government: from local school boards, to local, state, and federal government. All of this is supported by a lavishly funded media environment dedicated exclusively to pushing right-wing memes, framed as sympathetically to right-wing causes as possible. There's a lavishly funded pseudo-academic environment (i.e. think-tanks like Cato, Heritage, AEI, etc...) that operate to provide a fig-leaf of intellectual cover to the whole endeavor.

All the bluster about "the liberal Washington Post" or other nonsense aside, there's really no comparable mechanism on the left.

To make a long story short, it can be exhilarating to work for campaigns, or to work for a given office on the Hill, but the hope of engendering change through the typical routes is illusory. It's a collective action problem. And collectively, Americans are much easier to manipulate if what you're selling is resentment, fear, and ignorance. The only hope we have is to elect a progressive politician who has amazing powers of persuasion and get him into the White House where he can tirelessly sell an alternative agenda to the current mess. I thought we'd already done that, but that guy disappeared.

So, do you have an alternative guy or are you just going to abandon our guy and let loose the serious hellhounds of the Republican Party? Because that is the weirdest most defeatist thing I've ever heard.

If you and I were "the voters" I might agree with you. We're not. Obama understands this, that's why he doesn't give a shit about pissing off "the professional left" (i.e. folks who pay attention and support progressive causes). It's all large corporate donors and "independents".

If it makes you feel any better, I've got one of those little American flag lapel pins around here somewhere. I can put that on.

No wonder this country is in the pit it is in. Quitters.

Yep.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So, do you have an alternative guy or are you just going to abandon our guy and let loose the serious hellhounds of the Republican Party? Because that is the weirdest most defeatist thing I've ever heard. No wonder this country is in the pit it is in. Quitters.

No, they're acting like TROO CONSERVATIVES were acting about Bush, but by 2007-08.

"Bush wasn't a TROO CONSERVATIVE! TROO CONSERVATIVE ideas were never given a chance!"

"Obama isn't a TROO LIBRUL! TROO LIBRUL ideas were never given a chance!"

But have no fear, the Latte Drinkers will be energized when Palin/Bachmann/Romney/whoever fails to reverse our economic course (*). Then the rallying cries will be "Save Social Security and Medicare for wealthy seniors!" instead of "No tax breaks for millionaires!"

(*) Of course, if someone figures out how to make nanotech or green energy the Internet of the 2010s, making everyone money, then Romney will be there to claim credit, as would Obama if he is re-elected, as is rather likely since the GOP is even more controlled by the inmates than the Democrats.

[Anonymous]

Tons of great stuff here...

Anonymous wrote:If Obama's relying anonymous women on internet comment boards to harrangue his erstwhile supporters to vote for him, it speaks volumes.

Actually, neither Obama nor the people in this exchange seem actually to want my vote; they just want to chastise me for my lack of mindless loyalty. Obama started that from go; like the people here, he's always saved his harshest words for the left.

Anonymous wrote:and fucking celebrate their passage.

Yeah, that's the insult to injury. There was like one week between him caving on the tax cuts and boasting about them as one of his greatest accomplishments.

Anonymous wrote:He's supposed to be a leader. So let him use the goddamned bully pulpit to *lead* the damned country...to make a case for the policies we believe in. The fact that he doesn't leads me to suspect he does *not* believe in those policies.

Yep. That's what I was saying before about his intelligence being to his discredit. I'd be more sympathetic to a fool than to a knave.

Anonymous wrote:The only question then is whether we'll get President Romney (who frankly might well be indistinguishable from Obama, and whose policies might be actually better for the country given that the GOP will also control the House and the Senate, so with a Republican in the White House, they'll lose their current incentives to sabotage the economy).

Yep, again. If Romney had won the last primary and then the election, we would be better off now b/c the right-wingers wouldn't have whipped themselves into this frenzy. Voting for Romney would actually be a more effective "compromise." How's that sound, die-hard Dems?

[Anonymous]

If Obama uses the bully pulpit and digs in his heels, then wha would have/will happent? No stimulus? No debt deal at all? No healthcare reform? No (fill in the future blank)?

BTW, Obama may well try and do a little immigration reform for 2012, there remains some Republicans who have come to terms with the browning of America and who don't believe non-whites are innately incapable of integrating into mainstream American society.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The only hope we have is to elect a progressive politician who has amazing powers of persuasion and get him into the White House where he can tirelessly sell an alternative agenda to the current mess. I thought we'd already done that, but that guy disappeared.

This is where I'll split from you. I didn't vote for Obama the first time* because I thought that he had made it very clear that he was a "moderate," aka about Nixon/Ford on the spectrum. He managed to disappoint even that very low expectation, but I don't think he's betrayed his voters beyond that. Millions were so desperate for some good news that they convinced themselves, on no evidence, really, that he was the great left hope.

* Little known fact: in this country, you can actually vote for anyone you want!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So, do you have an alternative guy or are you just going to abandon our guy and let loose the serious hellhounds of the Republican Party? Because that is the weirdest most defeatist thing I've ever heard. No wonder this country is in the pit it is in. Quitters.

Nah, we should keep going with your plan of voting for the guy very slightly to the left of the right-wing lunatics. So far, so good, right?

This country is in the pit it's in primarily because Clinton pushed the Reps far to the right by taking their ground. I'm sure you followed right along with him then, as you've followed every Democrat since who has cynically taken your vote and given you shit in return.

Let's continue with your approach for another 20-30 years. It can't get TOO insanely right-wing, can it? Can it?

I asked this a while back: at what point will the lesser evil be just too evil? If one of you could draw a line, I'd have a little more respect for you.

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:
BTW, Obama may well try and do a little immigration reform for 2012, there remains some Republicans who have come to terms with the browning of America and who don't believe non-whites are innately incapable of integrating into mainstream American society.

Yes, and it is predictable how it will go. Obama's opening position will be no amnesty for those who are already here. He will have a significant security component aimed at beefing up border protection, there will be little to no employer sanctions (at least on corporations, he may drop the hammer on nanny employers), and he will emphasis something along the lines of the Dream Act. During negotiations he will increase the emphasis on border security, accept draconian laws aimed at arresting and deporting otherwise law-abiding undocumented residents, and severely restrict those included under the Dream Act provisions. In the end, the bill will increase immigration from Cuba, Ireland, and a couple other favored nations, allow a handful of college graduates to get citizenship, and poor tons of money into border security and law enforcement. When immigration reform supporters complain, he will yell "MICHELLE BACHMANN" and call us tea baggers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No, they're acting like TROO CONSERVATIVES were acting about Bush, but by 2007-08.

"Bush wasn't a TROO CONSERVATIVE! TROO CONSERVATIVE ideas were never given a chance!"

"Obama isn't a TROO LIBRUL! TROO LIBRUL ideas were never given a chance!"

But have no fear, the Latte Drinkers will be energized when Palin/Bachmann/Romney/whoever fails to reverse our economic course (*). Then the rallying cries will be "Save Social Security and Medicare for wealthy seniors!" instead of "No tax breaks for millionaires!"

(*) Of course, if someone figures out how to make nanotech or green energy the Internet of the 2010s, making everyone money, then Romney will be there to claim credit, as would Obama if he is re-elected, as is rather likely since the GOP is even more controlled by the inmates than the Democrats.

Anyone reading this and the other threads can easily see that yours is the side that fails to address any arguments and instead relies solely on insults. As I said, you're the ideologue, more pathetic than the TPers because you blindly support a brand name and not an actual ideology.