You’re not really going to say that I should be grateful that he passed the PPACA? If I’d wanted Bob Dole’s health care plan, I’d have voted for Bob Dole in 1996. Now we have a system that addresses none of the structural problems in our system, but makes every American a healthcare consumer.
Suppose I wanted him to hold to the principle that raising the debt ceiling to pay for items already appropriated id the responsibility of Congress, and not an opportunity to obtain political advantage. I didn’t want the president to negotiate, because now every debt ceiling vote will become an opportunity for political mischief.
So I not only have to eat shit, I have to say it tastes good? You seem to think that you belong to some other party that has no use for internal debate, or expressing thoughts that don’t contribute to the interests of the party, like the Communists or the Republicans.
So not only are you under the impression that bowing out of the crisis resolution was a viable and appropriate option for the President, you believe it was Obama who seized an opportunity to obtain political advantage here, rather than the Congressional caucus which engineered the artificial crisis in the first place?!
I’d say that’s industrial strength idiocy except I’d be insulting industry and idiocy by making that comparison.
Nobody’s saying you have to eat shit and like it. We’re saying you look like a whinging little self involved twit when you pout and stomp about the guy who slapped that shit sandwich out of the hands of the people who were trying to forcefeed it --to you and the rest of the country. We’re saying, no little buddy, the stupid ol’ poopyhead Pwesident Ohbomma couldn’t have turned it into cake and ice cream. The best he could do is drop the crap casserole under the table and chew like crazy to make the bullies think we all got some, yum yum.
And even the bullies weren’t really fooled about it; they settled for the gesture because they recognized they weren’t gonna get more than that. Because the President happens to be a lot smarter than they are. But apparently some bystanders were fooled. So I gotta wonder, how does it feel being more gullible than the Tea Party?
Well, as you’re too stupid to figure it out, I’ll explain it further. When the Republicans used the same tactic on Bill Clinton, he called their bluff, and they passed the debt ceiling. Because that’s the only thing they can do, once Congress has appropriated the money. It was not an opportunity to negotiate for either party, and the president should have made that clear. Instead, I’m being asked to admire him for negotiating so well.
Are you an idiot, or illiterate? That’s exactly what the quote I responded to said.
Yes, because it’s childish for a Democrat to expect the Democratic president he voted for to promote Democratic policies. Or to object when he substitutes Republican ones.
Wow. So you actually don’t care about the country, just about who won? Is that why you voted for Obama? Cause I’m pretty sure that’s the exact opposite if what he ran on. Do you really think they would have failed to vote for the increase if Obama had demanded it? There’s no way to know, because he didn’t. Now everyone agrees that the debt ceiling is a political football, and that a minority of congressmen can hold the country’s sovereign debt hostage for ideological concessions, exactly what the 14th Amendment was trying to prevent.
saoirse, You puling little fucknugget. This isn’t the 104th Congress -who were bluffing and bloviating, and the country isn’t in the middle of an economic boom as it was in 1996. Clinton had a much more pragmatic pack of robber barons to deal with and Obama has the Tea Party, double digit unemployment and a much different international financial context than Big Dog Clinton had.
Ironic that you attack my literacy while demonstrating your lack. The quote to which you responded said nothing about accepting unpalatable outcomes, much less about praising them. Heinman was saying liberals should work to elect other liberals, and they’ll find that more productive than attacking moderates for not being liberal enough.
Are you shitting us, or are you just this fucking stupid? Yes, Clinton vetoed their stupidity, but in doing so it shut the entire fucking government down. But more importantly, what it didn’t do was threaten a DEFAULT at the time. Not to mention, back then, the Republicans were BLUFFING. They had no genuine intention of allowing the government to default on our debts, and everybody in their fucking brother knew that.
This time, they were not bluffing, and this president had no choice but to take these radicals seriously.
Not to mention, are you really contending that economic circumstances were even remotely the same in 1995 as they are today in 2011? Are you that ignorant of economic and political history? In 1995, the economy was roaring. The unemployment rate in 1995/1996 when this battle took place was 5.6 & 5.4 percent. Do you just not get the significance of that distinction?? How the bloody hell could you not?
Are you an idiot or just illiterate? It’s not just childish, but goddamn ignorant to be butthurt that you got the president you elected. Barack Obama always has been, was heavily marketed as, and always will be, a negotiator and a conciliator.
Always.
Did you have your eyes closed and your fingers in your ears during the entire election season?
Obama, you know, the guy who captivated American with his 2004 Democratic Convention speech proclaiming, “There’s not a liberal America and a conservative America; there’s the United States of America… The pundits, the pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue States: red states for Republicans, blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don’t like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states. We coach little league in the blue states and, yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the red states.”
Did you ignore all of that, or did you just somehow conveniently forget it?
No, not “everyone agrees that the debt ceiling is a political football,” especially after having turned it into one, the damage that the extremists in the Republican Party wrought is clearly evident. There’s no way in hell they’ll ever pull this shit again. Ever.
As for not caring about the country, that would be you, dear. Frankly, your image of Barack Obama as a shit sandwich is one you’re free to hold. But if you hold it, and you don’t swallow that “shit sandwich” and campaign your ass off for him and vote for him in 2012, then you subject the rest of us to losing our reproductive freedom, our voting rights, our bargaining rights and whatever health care rights we did manage to extract from the less-than-perfect Reform Act, like not being dropped when we get sick, having access to coverage even with pre-existing conditions and the guarantee that at least 80-85% of our premiums have to be spent on actual health care.
If you aren’t willing to swallow a “shit sandwich” to maintain those rights for the rest of America then you are no true Democrat, you’re actually a traitor to the cause.
So yes, I fully expect that if you give a good goddamn about where this country is headed, that you fucking swallow that shit sandwich. You don’t have to say, “Mmm, yum!,” but you damn well better get it down your throat. Because if you don’t, you’re basically telling the rest of us that we have to live in a shit ocean because of your goddamn selfishness.
You don’t know that, because no one tested them. When the president refuses to say plainly that it’s wrong to take hostages, I’m not going to congatualte him on the deal he negotiated with the terrorists.
Huh, that seems to be exactly what it says, shithead. Also, I shouldn’t be working for Obama, I should be holding my nose and voting him because, even though he won’t keep his campaign promises, the Republicans will.
Yeah, well now I did tell him that he needs to eat a shit sandwich, if that’s what he views the sandwich being made of. He does. And I’m not afraid of telling him as much. I give a fuck about my country more than my own personal disappointments. And I damn well expect that fuckhead to start doing the same.
Perhaps, one day, we shall have an opporunity to elect the perfect liberal politician, who can assert his will even over the Troglodytes. Those of us who are still here after the Rapture, of course.
I’m guessing **saoirse **is as mad at me as at that 10th grade English teacher for marking down his/her three page report on Animal Farm for “poor comprehension of themes and use of allegory.”
Well that’s an important lesson to learn, and I can’t say I disagree with your point. I just don’t think the poster understands what we got nearly well enough to have formed the opinion he did. My little brother and I thought broccoli was a shit sandwich when we were growing up, but we failed to impeach our mother over it. (Actually Supreme Court Dad quashed the effort.)
But it’s good to disabuse complainers of conclusions based on ignorance in any case. I believe those of us who can think and politic at the same fucking time need to be directing merciless, viscious derision at the colicky titty-babies, the know-nothing ideologues and the naïve but vocal political zygotes just to get them to shut the fuck up for a minute at a time and pay some attention. Just to get the freaking signal to noise ratio to a point where actual information can get passed. The kind of jackassery that makes a hobby of hacking away support for our best positioned and most skillful advocate in US government is poison to our politics and kryptonite to GOTV efforts. Stupidity kills political progress.
You are 100% correct. But I only have so much energy to keep providing evidence to flat-earthers who are so married to their wrongly-formed opinions that they won’t even look at it, let alone attempt to comprehend it. At some point, I have to allow for the fact that I’ve supported my opinion with enough backup that nothing further will break through the dumbass barrier and just boil it down to the simplest common denominator. Eat your shit sandwich or we’re all screwed.
You were hiding behind a button on my computer browser that I stopped clicking on for some time. Duh.
Required reading. No, I’m not the author of this, but I damn well wish I’d written it. It’s uncannily appropriate to this thread, because this same inane “battle” is being fought all over these internets.
Absolutely fabulous! Thank you so much for sharing that, xeno. I think this was my favorite part: I hear the phrase “Obama’s playing chess while the rest of us are playing checkers,” which sounds good. But the fact is, Politics actually IS checkers. It’s pure common sense; it’s not full of difficult concepts; it’s actually very simple. The problem is, because many on our side don’t understand the game, and they feel the actual game is beneath them, they attempt to move their pieces to avoid a checkmate, but keep getting jumped by the moron who doesn’t know much, except that he’s playing checkers.