Obama is a Republican; I expect him to announce it any day. It isn’t that he has consistently backed down and/or sold out to the Republicans; he has simply done his part to advance their agenda. Palin was offered to the US voters as a sacrificial goat to ensure that even more people voted for Obama, thinking they were voting for the future of our country. Palin has now proven her loyalty and will be rewarded in the next election cycle; Obama will be deified in the Reagan manner and will live in the lap of luxury from now on. Slavery, not the chattel version, but the wage type will be the new face of America; I expect to learn that only Republicans will be allowed to vote any day now. I’m sick; I’m disgusted; and I’m very much afraid. I hate to admit I was taken in the way I was. This will never end well.
I wouldn’t go that far. But:
-Guantanamo is still open;
-He has escalated the war in Afghanistan;
-The war in Iraq is winding down, it would seem, but the main beneficiary of this will be Iran;
-It seems virtually certain that the health care bill will be declared unconstitutional and/or repealed before it comes into full effect in 2014;
-The banks are at it again;
-Unemployment is still heading north.
So why did I vote so enthusiastically in 2008 and sit glued to the TV on Jan. 20, 2009? Will I even bother to vote in 2012? How much worse could McCain have been. Maybe Nader was right.
-The Bush tax breaks will be continued for two years, until they can be made permanent by a new Republican administration;
Wow.
I agree.
I am still glad we have a black president, but that only shows how race matters to me…
Everything you have both said is absolutely true.
No. Obama has accomplished some very progressive things, including the health care bill and the stimulus.
He’s not an ideologue, but he gets things done. We now have health insurance (and there’s nothing unconstitutional about it – the government had similar policies in place since the Adams administration), we managed to keep the economy from taking, and, given two wars he had inherited, he’s made the best of the situation (Afghanistan is always a quagmire). He couldn’t close Gitmo because no one wanted to take the prisoners.
It’s refreshing to have an adult in the White House who gets things done. Haven’t seen that in years.
What I took from the OP is that something very similar was likely to happen no matter if Kermit the Frog was in the White House.
However, I am not mad at Obama.
I just think what they said is true.
If John McCain were in the White House there is no way we would have had health care reform, in whatever form.
Even if you don’t think it went far enough, the fact that something happened in this area alone is enough to distinguish Obama from any Republican president.
To make my position perfectly clear, I do not believe that the health care bill will be implemented, even as flawed as it is. And I do expect SCOTUS to throw it out anyway. Clearly, they don’t see 100 year precedents as binding (campaign financing). In fact, I would go further and say that if someone sued over social security, I think it would have no more than a 50-50 chance of surviving.
And Obama cannot point to anything else, really, as an accomplishment of his regime. I was very impressed by Krugman’s op-ed piece Monday, saying that letting the entire Bush tax cut expire would be better than the “compromise” (= do it my way) arrived at.
No, Obama is a jewel thief. Boom, baby.
Well, in my opinion (as befits this board) the health care bill will not be thrown out by the SCOTUS. I guess we’ll see.
Jesus Christ. Obama agrees to extend the current tax rates for two years in order to prevent a middle class tax hike, secure unemployment benefits, and cause a little short-term stimulus and people like the OP are wailing about wage slavery. Obama passes the most important progressive legislation in decades and all liberals can talk about is the public option. Obama could personally deliver a gold bar and a milkshake to every Olbermann-watcher and he’d get complaints over the lack of cherries on top. Insanity.
I have no doubt that people like the OP will stay home in 2012. And it might cause someone like Palin to win. And then they will complain about Palin endlessly and wonder why the American people are so crazy.
Assuming this isn’t satire, I assure you it’ll end fine as soon as a competent psychotherapist cures your galloping paranoia.
Yeah, that “Recovery Summer” was miraculous!
Does not follow. For example, why doesn’t he just release them into the Federal Witness Protection Program? He’s the President; all he has to do is order it. And what happened to the “fierce moral urgency” that fueled massive worldwide protests? Nobody wants the prisoners? Allllllllrighty then. Never mind. :rolleyes:
Yeah, an adult who accuses his opposition of holding the American people “hostage”.
Wait and see. As for the American people being crazy (I prefer ‘naive’), did you not notice what was done to us in the last election?
I don’t watch Olbermann and I have no faith in gold bars or milkshakes, with or without cherries.
McCain was as much a sacrificial goat as Palin but he wasn’t informed by his overlords as to his status; his attention span is not strong enough to remember his lines.
As to health care, believe it when you see it: It ain’t over till it’s over.
I’m about as far-left as you can get. Well, maybe not THAT far left.
Olbermann embarrassed himself last night. Over the top. This, coming from a lefty.
Obama got the best out of a shitty hand of cards.
My paranoia isn’t what matters; what’s needed is a cure for the American voter’s naivete.
Some aspects of the new health care rule are already effective, and already make a difference in our health care plan. For example, we can now cover dependents up till age 26, and there no longer is a maximum dollar amount that insurance will pay for.
So I’m seeing it right now.
Please explain it to me in words that I can understand and prove to me that it will not be repealed, as I expect it to be.
You’re the one who’s saying an already passed law will be repealed. Isn’t it on you to show us why you’re right?
Obama is trying to close Gitmo, including ordering the purchase of a prison to house the prisoners who can’t be sent elsewhere for whatever reason. However, as long as there’s too many Democrats shying away from the idea of closing Gitmo, there isn’t a whole lot else he can do.
Anyone who didn’t know that Obama planned to focus on and escalate Afghanistan just plain wasn’t paying attention during the elections.
Besides the fact that this remains to be seen (I’ve seen many strong arguments for its constitutionality), I’m not sure what you think Obama could have done about this. I do agree that he could have handled the messaging in HRC a lot better but thinking that Congress was going to pass some single-payer system with 59 Senate votes (which is what they had most of the time due to the Franken recount and then Kennedy’s death) is just dreaming. And that’s pretending that none of the Democrats would have broken ranks.
As much as the great majority of this board is abhorrent to admit, sometimes the Republicans are right. What is going to make Obama one of the presidential greats isn’t that he towed his party line, but that he made well-though-out and researched decisions that, while often unpopular, are what he feels is best for this country (odd, I seem the remember hearing the same thing being said about George W. Bush).
That’s not to say he doesn’t play the political game, at which he’s actually very good. He’s given Republicans some things they want. The GOP will now have to back down on some of his agenda points as well as they will now be less equipped to say, “See, I toldya so!” in the future when things turn south. And when they don’t, he can hail it as a bipartisan victory.
Still unconvinced? Here’s an example: Obama states that he wants “don’t ask, don’t tell” repealed. He could easily do it by issuing an executive order, yet he doesn’t. Is it because he secretly doesn’t want it repealed? No. It’s because he was a constitutional law professor who understands that these things are meant to be done by Congress. He wants Congress to issue a law repealing DADT. He’s not a Republican. He’s a by-the-book stickler.