I don’t care if you’re old enough to remember James Buchanan, Bush was the worst of the lot.
I think it was fear of a slippery slope, that ACA might lead later on to things like single payer, etc.
Gosh yes - I’m on tenterhooks to see which way it goes.
When this thread plays out, we could kick around another fresh topic, like whether or not the invasion of Iraq was a good idea.
Regards,
Shodan
Compared to Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, etc. Liberals are trying to have it both ways on ACA: laud it as if it’s universal health care, while denying it is because they really want single payer. However, ranking ACA among Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP, it would finish a distant 3rd in number of people covered. Medicare and Medicaid before the recent expansion under ACA cover more.
For those who think it will lead to single payer, you might want to read the recent news from Switzerland.
I may not like ACA, but it is what we’ve got, and it’s what we’ll always have. My dreams of repeal may be shattered, but so are the dreams of single payer advocates.
Good news, everyone – we’re going to have single payer someday!
Obama’s problems are the policies of Bush that he continued and expanded.
Bush tanked the economy so badly that it threatened a national and worldwide depression. Obama acted quickly and decisively to prevent the very worst of that and we only had a bad and long lasting recession because he did not get enough stimulus or seek enough. It was a truly bad time for millions upon million of people. The middle class, which votes, lost millions of homes.
Where in the world do you, and other Republicans, get this from? I have never met, spoken to, or corresponded with in writing any Democrat who believes Obama can do no wrong. In fact, most Democrats have criticisms of many of Obama’s actions, or inactions. What I see is that while most of Democrats’ criticisms of Obama are legitimate, too many of Republicans’ criticisms are fabrications and series’ of post hoc ergo propter hoc claims.
Was that *his *belief, or merely that of some of the more extreme worshippers he attracted, including on this board? We were told many things about how well he was able to get the Republicans in the Illinois legislature to do his bidding and would do it in DC too, but I don’t remember any of that from him. I agree with the rest, though. Obama remains startlingly naïve about the nature of his opposition, while a president with more backbone could have been far more effective. We discussed all of that, extensively, in the 2008 primaries, as you may recall.
But the biggest comparison is that Bush destroyed the economy and Obama restored it, and Bush started an evil and ruinous war and Obama pulled us out of it.
More than that, as a party cheerleader he’ll be crowing about how it was a Republican idea all along and it wouldn’t have been implemented nationally without Romney first showing the way. That will even be pretty much true as far as it goes.
He’ll then be stuck explaining why there are so many Fuck Obama states still refusing to expand Medicaid because, well, Fuck Obama.
You’ve previously acknowledged that it IS universal health care by US standards. :dubious: What changed?
You also obviously still can’t understand why anyone who welcomes ACA as a huge advance could think that an even huger advance would be even better. Puzzling, that, but consistent of you.
Are you now acknowledging that the “replace” part always has been and still is a simple lie by your party’s leadership? One intended to give an excuse to people to oppose Obamacare on the grounds that they had something better right behind it? Can you tell us now that that was the story all along, and you actually bought it? That you now understand you were lied to all along, and that you swallowed it whole?
Yeah, I didn’t think so.
It won’t happen immediately, certainly - the truth of Pelosi’s observation that people who’ve been conditioned to oppose it, by the Republican lie campaign, will come to understand what it really is through personal experience and thereby come to support it will take a few years to reveal itself. It will have to become as ingrained and cherished as Social Security and Medicare before the next stage becomes politically possible - which reminds me, how well has opposing those two programs worked for you guys lately? How well have your privatization/voucher schemes been accepted, for instance?
Just how long is ‘always’ to your way of thinking? The US won’t be able to buck the rest of the civilized world forever, no matter how fervently the trogs desire it, globalization trending as it is.
I like the OP’s use of ‘worst’ and I hope it was intentional. One of these two guys was the Worst. President. Ever. We get to decide which one.
I go back to Truman, and Bush is far worse than any of them. While Johnson had Vietnam, he also had the Civil Rights Act.
Nixon had Watergate, but he also had the opening of China and the EPA.
Bush had what exactly? His immigration reform proposal was not bad, but he couldn’t get his party to support it. And he was smart enough to get out if the way to let those who knew what they were doing address the financial crisis.
Even Bush knows this - notice how where Clinton is running around on talk shows Bush is staying at home painting selfies.
And for you greedy people, like me.
Dow when Bush took office on Jan. 20, 2001: 10587.
Dow when Bush left office: 7949
Dow today: 17,000 or so.
Were *you *the baby he was kissing in that picture?
One of these presidents nearly caused The Great Depression II.
The other president prevented The Great Depression II.
Who the hell do you think deserves to be called the worst?
Could have been. I was a year and 3 months old when he left office. But no, even though my parents were Democrats.
Hey now, at least y’all got *something *out of the war in Iraq (namely, private oil exploitation contracts and an outlet for obsolete war machines). That’s better than Vietnam right there !
Actually, I’m finding it surprising at some of the self-described conservatives in this thread who are speaking critically of Bush.
In my opinion, the Vietnam war was worse than the Iraq war by at least an order af magnitude. The Vietnam war makes Matthew White’s list of the 100 worst atrocities of all time, at number 24 with 4.2 million deaths. The Iraq war didn’t make the list at all.
Given this, I think there is no redemption for any presidents involved in this war, they are going to be the worst no matter what they else they did.
So my list of worst since LBJ would perhaps go:
- Nixon
- LBJ
- W
- Obama
.
.
Best: Carter
Well, you tell me- from a CONSERVATIVE standpoint, what did W. do that should please me?
The only positive legacy he left (from my standpoint) was two good Supreme Court appointments. But as I noted earlier, when openings arose, his first instinct was not to appoint a conservative! His first instinct (as always) was to appoint a PAL, Harriet Miers.
Look at his Cabinet- do you see a lot of conservatives, or do you see a lot of holdovers from his Dad’s administration? Apart from John Ashcroft, Bush never chose any conservatives for the Cabinet. And as soon as Ashcroft left, he was replaced by… another PAL, Alberto Gonzalez.