I find myself in agreement with both Bricker and The Second Stone.
ETA: this can mean only one thing…
THE END IS NEAR!!!:eek:
He made speeches and asked for passage of a reform bill, not the one he campaigned on. He campaigned on a public option. I saw a lot of work from Pelosi on the bill, and some ineffective work from Reid, but a lot of ineffective work from Reid. He promised a bill with a strong public option when he ran for President. He never once stood up for a public option as President. Granted, he came into an economy that required his full attention to avoid a collapse that would be worse than the Great Depression.
Candidate Obama promised us an end to the occupation of Iraq. We are still there. He promised to close Gitmo. Gitmo is still holding prisoners of indefinite status. He promised us transparency and just yesterday he sent anonymous zingers about unions being against his candidate, Blanche Lincoln, one of the people responsible for killing a public option, whom he backs.
His Justice Department policies have not retracted the torture memo or referred anyone to various bar associations for discipline for drafting them.
He has been painfully obsequious in his efforts to be bipartisan, and all of those efforts have been thrown in his face, making him look weak.
His great success is overseas, where he is viewed with great relief as not George W. Bush, and proof that Americans are not always racist.
Buyer’s remorse? No. But I have no enthusiasm left for the orator who gave the great 2004 DNC keynote speech. I would like to see him not run for a second term. If he gets the nomination (which he almost certainly will), I will almost certainly vote for him, but it will be to prevent the Republican doing disastrous things, and not because I think he will do great things. He won’t.
But on the bright side, at least he ain’t gonna cheat on Michelle.
America! Fuck yeah! I’m actually very surprised that Bricker voted for Obama. Just for the record, I have never voted for a Republican for anything, so Bricker is more bi-partisan than I am. I did vote for John Anderson in 1980, which I now regret, not because Anderson was in any way a bad guy, he wasn’t, but because in the review of history, Carter is not the man or politician I thought he was. Carter is certainly the most mature and unselfish man to serve as President in my lifetime.
Well, sort of. OTOH, speaking both esthetically and judicially, Diane has it all over Kagan. Certainly better hair.
But judicially, Diane would be a true Jeffersonian Republican keel in a largely Hamiltonian Federalist Court. I will predict with 99% certainty that Kagan will turn out to be another corporate hack with little regard for our legal rights.
Just had a thought, tho. Suppose, instead of being the career-minded toady she seems to be, she is, in fact, a “liberal” Manchurian Candidate. A committed populist/socialist, she goes into deep cover as a self-serving lawyer and worms her way into being a plausible and recordless SCOTUS nominee for Obama (Hmmm. Another LMC? These fucking communist are really clever.) to slam dunk.
If that’s the case, then I apologize for ever doubting you, Barack.
Interestingly enough, the three sitting unshakeable corporatists and executive expansionists including the CJ, are compliments of the Bush family, who also brought you Desert Storm, 9/11, Afghanistan and Iraq. And let’s not forget Iran/Contra and the S&L crises in which Neal Bush (remember Neil?) played a profitable part in Colorado. And then, of course, there was the 2000 election in which Jeb Bush railroaded the contest into, OMG, SCOTUS. Constitutionally, SCOTUS had no business getting involved but they did and here we are today. Did I forget to mention that a friend of a friend of the Bushes shot Reagan?
Some thought it strange that Bush 41 didn’t take down Saddam when he had the chance and instead left it to Bush 43. It may be pure serendipity, but it gave us time to weaken Iraq thru our embargo and Saddam time to use his WMDs on the Kurds who inconveniently sit of most of Iraq’s oil.
Call me a conspiracy theorist if you like, but to me, the dots connect themselves.
And, Obama=Bush in Blackface.
Unless my alternate reality offered above turns out to be the case.
Vegas has it at 10,000-1 against. I’ll bet the first 10 takers $5 straight up that it doesn’t.
Holy shit, you’re nuttier than a Pay Day bar.
For the sane people in the house, here’s the latest polling on Obama re-elect:
Obama vs Huckabee: 46-44
Obama vs Romney: 45-42
Obama vs Palin: 50-41
Obama vs Ron Paul: 46-36
Sweet Leaping Jesus, Huckabee? Goober as Goebbels. I admit, he has a talent for appearing likable as he spews some of the most venomous shit I’ve ever heard. As much as I might like to believe that a sense of humor signifies good character, ain’t so.
I find it more worrying that Palin is outpolling Ron Paul, although he’s a fucking idiot.
Put up or shut up.
Sorry kiddo but I never watch Fox and I saw the Daly Show when it was on. I have Naders site on my favorites and have followed Chomsky for a long time. You are miles off on this one.
I have railed on this board about the corporate takeover of our government, newspapers and Tv . They have very carefully changed America into a corporate controlled country.
Did you expect Obama to reverse that in 1.5 years? Obama is smart and I think he has surprises for you. But it would be stupid to think you have seen it all.
Una, I admire what you do, and I can understand your quixotic effort to define environmental conservatism to mean what you’d like it to mean.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that. Self-defined conservative politicians and those who vote for them get to define what conservatism means, on this and any other set of issues.
So right now and for the past 30+ years, political conservatism with respect to the environment has meant exactly what you note that the Republicans are with respect to the environment: being business advocates to the detriment of the environment.
That’s just life. They get to decide what ‘conservatism’ means, because there are a lot more conservatives like them than there are conservatives like you. It sucks, but it’s reality. The only way to grab back the label is for there to be more of you than there are of them. I wish there were a prayer of that happening in our lifetimes.
I know, I know. For what it’s worth, I consider you to be among the more politically hip on the boards.
Maybe I “expected” at least a public option, the reigning in of Wall Street and a move toward a more generous foreign policy. Too fucking much to ask?
I’ve seen all that and so far I’ve seen nothing. I would be stupid not to expect to see more of the same. I’d be happy to be surprised.
Big Banks Make Desperate Last Ditch Effort to Weaken Wall Street Reform | HuffPost Latest News Here is the battle to rein in the financial jerks who destroyed the world economy for their own greed. The battle is waging, but big money can influence us into another big financial mess. But there are efforts to fix the mess. In Bush, the efforts were to allow the financial industry free reign.
When Paulson came up with the idea to become king of finances with a free unfettered hand in the American taxpayers cookie jar, many people on this board bought it. They believed in something as stupid as having zero regulation because the Greenspan/Libertarian types claimed the financial sector is self correcting. They believed if left alone bankers would always do the right thing. How stupid was that?
Now the Obama Admin. is working on the problem. That should give some hope. But big money and the Repubs who work for them are fighting to gut the regulation. I hope they fail.
Go back to your conspiracy theories and Lenin worship.
Yada, yada. Call me cynical but I’m done with that “hope for change thingy” as Sarah so well put it.
But, as I say, I may be proven wrong.
Meanwhile, Ravenman, put up or shut up.
If you think anything that Palin says is put well, you’re not cynical at all. You’re very, very credulous, in fact.
Go to bed, old man.
Yeah! Go back to your PayDay bar and Lennon songs!
Wait, what exactly what the bet about? The end of the post said:
I assumed that referred back to:
Which has nothing to do with Obama getting reelected.
My reference to the sane people was to draw the discussion back to the OP, and I was citing the polls as evidence that the plurality of people still think Obama is doing okay.
I have a hard time figuring out what adhay talks about, ever, so I tend to avoid trying to respond to any specific thing he says. My baseline assumption is that anything he says is actually the ramblings of acid flashbacks or looney-tunes conspiracy theories, as opposed to a coherent argument.
“Is Obama doing a good job” and “would you vote for him again” are really two different questions. He’s not nearly liberal enough for me (fat fucking chance of finding anyone electable who is), but I’m almost certainly going to vote for him again in 2012. Of course, I also knew what I was getting into when I voted for him in 2008–I didn’t expect some magical party of socialist reforms, just someone better than the gut-wrenching alternative of McCain/Palin.