You didn’t really expect hope and change, did you?
Lots of chatter about Taibbi’s latest piece. I basically agree with everything the guy says but with one big exception:
What’s most troubling is that we don’t know if Obama has changed, or if the influence of Wall Street is simply a fundamental and ineradicable element of our electoral system. What we do know is that Barack Obama pulled a bait-and-switch on us. If it were any other politician, we wouldn’t be surprised. Maybe it’s our fault, for thinking he was different.
Well yeah, it sort of is.
I honestly don’t know why a lot of folks ever really believed that Obama was the second coming of FDR when all he really ever aspired to be was the second coming of Bill Clinton. The guy always presented himself as a middle-of-the-road establishment Democrat who eschewed populism in favor of “post-partisanship” (whatever the hell that means). And c’mon, people: how much change could you really expect from a guy who chose Joe Biden to be his veep?
Now, I knew this perfectly well going into the 2008 election. And I was still incredibly enthusiastic about supporting the guy. Why? Because this country had been run for the previous eight years by sociopathic wingnuts and I didn’t want another sociopathic wingnut running the country for another four years. I didn’t want to go to war with Iran and I didn’t want to go to war with Syria. Also, I didn’t want to have a certifiable moron as vice president. These sorts of things are important to me.
And yes, I realize how sad it is that my standards have fallen so low, but that’s how things are. As long as my government is not actively trying to destroy the entire world, I feel OK about things. Others’ mileage may vary, but that’s sorta where I’m at.
I think the larger problem is that a lot of folks on the left seemed to think that electing a black dude with the middle name “Hussein” (and don’t get me wrong, that is pretty awesome) would magically overturn decades’ worth of propaganda aimed at getting Americans to believe that corporate America’s Big Money Boyz are our bestest friends in the world and that they’re being oppressed by a wicked government that doesn’t think it’s “politically correct” to sell toxic waste to school children. That’s something that’s going to require long-term siege warfare. And it also means that we need more folks like Taibbi who have the balls to stand up to people in power and fewer folks talking about Obama as a brilliant eleven-dimensional tactician.
Obama for all his faults is a welcome relief from having sociopaths run the government. But that doesn’t mean that anyone on the left should count on him to do anything they want done.
Yup, what you said, Brad. Especially “As long as my government is not actively trying to destroy the entire world, I feel OK about things.”
For now, it will have to do. Keep kicking the bastards, though.
Ambivalence is a heavy piece of luggage to carry around, but it beats worrying about VP Palin plotting to pull a Lucretia Borgia on President McCain. Not to mention the invasion of Iran, also.
For me, the key takeaway from the past 11 months is that politicians respond to pressure. We have to motivate a critical mass of citizens to be unpaid lobbyists.
I think he’s seriously working on a problem that no one talks about very much, and that people on the left should want worked on, if they think for a bit, and that is letting Congress actually do the heavy lifting on policy, especially domestic policy, which is what I’d expect from a former con-law prof who wakes up in the White House.
For a generation, maybe two, the role of Congress has been reduced to that of the old warrior assemblies of the Germans as described by Tacitus — to gather periodically and rattle their spears on their swords when the tribal chieftain goes to war. (We did have something of an interregnum — Clinton — where as Newt kept telling us there was no legitimate king, which is bad, because then the crops fail, and the ewes don’t lamb. And a post-Watergate year or two of actual Congressional government.)
Now the elected-monarch theory has been embraced just as enthusiastically by the left, post-2008, as it was by the right post-1980. One hesitates to nut pick, but my favorite example is a recent DemocraticUnderground post insisting that Obama should reform health care by a judicious use of signing statements and executive orders throwing open Medicare to everyone — simple, and no Congress necessary.
All the LBJ-arm-twisting nostalgia, and all the “All Obama has to do is…” talk is a mirror image of St. Ronnie worship, and the unitary executive.
I’m with Brad on this. Obama is a flawed president, much like Clinton, but I’ll take either of them over what we had before. Given all the scary shit that’s come out about the Bush Administration, I’m just glad that we have a guy in charge who’s not going to start World War III.
As for the Democrats in general…I think we know now that there’s not going to be any earth-moving change in the way they act. They are still spineless, and spineless people don’t make waves. They do, however, respond to pressure. If folks like Taibbi keep the heat on, then maybe we’ll see some change, but it’s going to take a while. In the meantime, I suppose we should be glad that the GOP is digging in deeper.
Obviously idiotic troll is obviously an idiot.
Brad just spent seven paragraphs describing how Obama is exactly as was expected of an establishment politician, and supported his election because of that (as did I), and troll translates that to “disappointed.”
Troll’s mission is to simply depress liberal voter turnout.
At the risk of being a blog whore, I wrote about this last September:
http://joemax93.blogspot.com/2008/09/nelson-muntz-maneuver.html
At the risk of mixing pop metaphors, begone, Troofy. Your mind tricks have no effect here.
Still better than the traveling freak-show that would have been a McCain/Palin administration.
Your confusion of intuition with rationality is too good for you, you decrepit airhead.
At the risk of feeding what is undeniably a troll, I’ll just note that the “Tea Party” is, per Rasmussen, more popular than the GOP, and that Sarah Palin is warm to being their standardbearer.
But I have to say I agree 120% with Brad. Obama isn’t doing everything I would like, but he’s so obviously not Bush that I’m enthusiastic about supporting him while keeping pressure on.
Let me lay it out so that even our trolls can understand it. I had a friend who used to say that if you were expecting a kick in the nuts and got a slap in the face, then you had a good day. That’s my philosophy on the Obama Administration.
if you were expecting a kick in the nuts and got a slap in the face
I usually have to pay for that sort of thing.
Remember when I was screaming that Obama is a looney leftist? Well, what I actually meant to say was that he’s throwing you libs under the bus. An easy mistake, I’m sure you’ll agree.
Well said! Me, I’m feeling very “meh” about everything…and I’m mildly relieved we don’t have a retarded sociopath in charge anymore. Yeah that bar is pretty low.meh.
Denial is the first step in recovery…
Just as a matter of curiosity, what’s the second step? I mean, as frustratingly conservative and beholden to corporate America as the Democratic Party is on a national level, it’s not like anyone with an ounce of progressive feelings will vote for the GOP, a group of venal, recidivist hypocrites and yay-hoos who, despite being basically unchallenged for the bulk of the past eight years, accomplished fuck all besides enriching their corporate overlords at the expense of the American people. The job situation and economy was crap under them, and god knows how long it’ll take sane people to fix the mess, and they couldn’t be bothered to even spend money to fix the infrastructure. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq could’ve been handled better by the Jerky Boys, and thousands of soldiers died for absolutely nothing because of conservatives just not giving a shit. Fuck, you losers couldn’t even pass a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and women can still get abortions. And the GOP faithful is abandoning sane conservatives for a television lunatic and a former beauty queen who can’t string a coherent thought together much less finish her duty as a governor.
So, yeah. Democrats and Obama aren’t perfect, but voting for the GOP or supporting conservative “causes” looks nothing more than just a way to show how much you hate everyone around you. I’ll take flawed over actively evil any day of the week.
I guess in fairness to the Obama apologists that “hope for change” is 100% truthful advertising.
Hopey should start worrying about a primary challenge in 2012, that’s all I’m saying. Just like Carter had in 1980. And we all know what happened after that!
I think the larger problem is that a lot of folks on the left seemed to think that electing a black dude with the middle name “Hussein” (and don’t get me wrong, that is pretty awesome) would magically overturn decades’ worth of propaganda aimed at getting Americans to believe that corporate America’s Big Money Boyz are our bestest friends in the world and that they’re being oppressed by a wicked government that doesn’t think it’s “politically correct” to sell toxic waste to school children. That’s something that’s going to require long-term siege warfare.
The only Americans who believe that propaganda anymore are in Congress and the Obama Administration. 2009 was THE progressive moment. Obama and company chose to let it pass.
Typical Democratic defeatism. Spend more effort convincing liberals you can’t do anything than you spend actually trying to do something.
Bob Cesca has a great post about the Tiabbi piece on his blog. It makes a lot of sense and may leave you really thinking about it.
http://www.bobcesca.com/blog-archives/2009/12/more_thoughts_o.html
There’s the link. Check it out.
Hopey is a facist dictator, the equal of Hitler and Stalin. That’s why he’s going to be unseated in a free and open election in 2012.
I knew Obama was a centrist, so I didn’t expect too much governance from the left, same as you, Brad. I wish he would be bolder with the ‘progressive’ stuff but I really wish he was one tenth the radical socialist that knuckledraggers say he is.
Woe is me. It seems that the centrist candidate that I voted for instead of turns out to not be the radical leftist that wingnuts bitch n’ moan that he must be. This will surely teach me to vote for Republicans. It’s the only logical conclusion one can reach.
At least when WE elect OUR candidates, they follow through with the right wing agenda more than Democrats do with their left wing one (Republicans are much more effective at blocking the agenda of the opposite party as well).
Obama never struck me as being particularly liberal. The president not being liberal enough for a liberal’s taste is a vast improvement over the president being wholly destructive. As much as the wingnuts are going nuts now, I have to wonder what they’d do if the president really was very liberal.
It’s important to note that Democrats, though often lambasted for being the party of idealists, are in practice, much more practical than Republicans. Progressives are willing to make concessions in order to achieve their goals. They legitimately believe that both sides want what’s best for the country and simply differ on the details. They negotiate in good faith with the implicit assumption that the other side does likewise.
The problem is that the other side doesn’t do that. They want to win. They don’t want what’s best they want what they think is theirs and they will lie, cheat, bicker, stonewall, scream and threaten to get what they want.
Am I pleased with the progress that the new administration has made, certainly not? But I think the problem comes from a certain idealism, that same idealism that got President Obama elected. The realities of the office hit hard, though. The Democrats thought that, with the greatest electoral victory in generations, a clear mandate from the population and a set of goals that were legitimately good for the country, that they could do some actual governing.
The truth is that the other side doesn’t just differ on the details. They’re obstructionist dirtbags that need to be dealt with as such. Hopefully the administration will figure this out before the midterms.
I’m not surprised by the bad things Obama has done or the good things he failed to do — he was clearly a corporatist in the Bill Clinton mold from the get-go. However, I am having a bit of fun saying “I told you so” to many liberals of my acquaintance who projected all kinds of nonexistent qualities onto Obama, and who wrote me off as a clueless pessimist for telling it like it was. They’re waking up now, and the harsh light of morning is very different than the dream.
Notice how he is NOT acting like a dictator?
…and using full sentences?
Goppers have demonstrated this is their greatest desire on an almost daily basis for the last 45 years.
Obama NOT dictating bullshit?
Getting exactly what I voted for…
there’s a great story about FDR, who after meeting some representatives from the left said basically “I agree with you, now go force me to do it!” The left is just one of several political forces in the country and if we want Obama to do something we need to use our political weight to make him do it. The teabaggers worry me not because they a majority, but because they’re a LOUD minority, and LOUD can get results.
Over veep runner-up Evan Bayh…
It’s our effing congress that has been a bigger disappointment to me, surprise-wise.
~
Yeah, the Senate has delivering one massive disappointment after the other since January. The House is at least a little less horrible, but that’s small consolations.
I don’t think that many people were “fooled” by Obama; I had him tagged as a corporate stooge right from the get-go, but I still would have voted for him if I could have (I’m not an American citizen) because he was a less horrible choice than the dangerously out-of-touch, senile old warmonger and the crazy grifter lady. And as disgusting as Bait ‘N’ Switch’s peformace in the White House has been, I still hold to that opinion.
Still, “less horrible” doesn’t exactly translate into “good”, now, does it? It’s mind-boggling to observe the wingnuts’ descent into full blown insanity over this guy. He’s continuing Bush’s wars, allowing the rich to keep on bleeding the country dry, and on a personal level, is bending over backwards to be as blandly inoffensive as possible. The hate-on they have for him is fucking psychotic.
Incremental change we can just barely believe in.
I’m one of the (apparently few) liberals who still think Obama still does have mostly good intentions. But I think he’s a political coward who is too dependent on compromise and deal-making, and I think there are a lot more structural barriers in his way than most people realize. I don’t know what Taibbi and his ilk were expecting, but building a strong, useful progressive coalition in American national politics is going to take more than a year’s worth of angry blogging, and jumping ship and screaming about betrayal doesn’t really help. Personally, I think Obama so far is the best president since LBJ, but I have to wonder what people were expecting of him in the first place that’s making them so angry now.
I have to wonder what they’d do if the president really was very liberal.
Shoot.
Yet another SA2SQ
As for me, I would rather live with an administration that isn’t openly hostile to my profession.
The idea that Congress should be a coequal branch and will be treated as such is also a welcome change. However, 30 years of scraping and space-filling cannot be undone in 11 months.
I honestly don’t know why a lot of folks ever really believed that Obama was the second coming of FDR when all he really ever aspired to be was the second coming of Bill Clinton.
If he fails completely on getting a health care reform bill in place he’ll be the second coming of Clinton but I don’t think that’s his aspiration. And FDR wasn’t even the first coming of “FDR.” That quote about him wanting to be pushed from the left is great and all but he made his own deals with assholes like Southern Democrats in order to get Social Security established for instance so they were only able to push him so far. If you were black at the time, no pony for you but I’m still glad he got something in place.
Understood. I still wish I could lock up some teabaggers in a FEMA camp and force them to make leather goods for liberals, however.
I still wish I could lock up some teabaggers in a FEMA camp and force them to make leather goods for liberals, however.
That doesn’t sound green OR animal-friendly! GASP!
Judas, I told you that I thought Barack was probably a good poker player in strictest cofidence. And now you bring it up in casual conversation! I’ll just have reveal something about you, like that I have a picture of you f**king the tailpipe of your pickup truck. Oh, and you’re still a clueless pessimist…and a moron.
I’m just waiting for Obama to deliver on one promise. Early on, he said something to the effect of “I give people a chance to engage me in good faith, but once they prove they won’t, I crush them.”
Would be nice to see that “crush them” side of him. Perhaps we’d see some change in the GOP for the better as a result of such a hammering.
All of the above is true, but its both strategically and morally imperative on this administration that this isn’t just a four year respite from wingnut rule.
So while I’m on-board with holding our noses for a certain degree of cynical corporatism, there also has to be a feeling of genuine good faith toward those who worked hard to support this President’s election or else you really will have Trolly McTroof’s ejaculatory fantasy of the base staying home and someone equal to or worse than Bush slipping in to victory, and this is where I think the Obama administration is strategically sinking right now.
It doesn’t help to just say “many were deluded by Obama’s charm, poor things.” That’ll be cold comfort if those same people don’t turn out for the next election. And I don’t think this “naive liberals” bromide is exactly a fair summary of the problem here, either. There are a lot of people who vote knowing that the person they vote for is going to be compromised to one degree or another or is going to backtrack on some key promises. That’s politics. But there’s a huge difference with that and sometimes what seems like this administration perversely and needlessly pissing off or antagonizing the base.
(continued)
At least when WE elect OUR candidates, they follow through with the right wing agenda more than Democrats do. Except for Bush, because we don’t want his failures associated with us. But twenty years ago, it totally happened. BOOKMARK IT!
1001% agree.
He is a centrist in a corporatist country. But he is competent and smart, and he likes to have competent and smart people around him. And he appears to listen to them but not follow what they say 100%.
I’ll take what I can freakin’ get.
Also, I do think some slack should be cut for him on the economic front. He is basically trying to hold things together and stop the bleeding, in the face of a total sit-down strike from the GOP.
I am dismayed that he has not done more to reverse Bush’s awful policies towards detainees. But, once leaders get power of any sort, they never ever relinquish it freely.
Tee hee, this is why there’s no abortion in the country, no more entitlements, a flat tax, laws outlawing naughty sex and divorce… Darn your* candidates and their relentless follow through!
* I know, but it still made me giggle like a little girl.
I was never on the “hope and change” bandwagon. I was actually leaning McCain for most of the campaign, not because I’m a Republican but because I hoped that he could turn the GOP into something other than Arkham Asylum. Of course, the last few months of the campaign dashed any hope of that, so I went back to my party and voted for the person the Democrats put up. I did not have high expectations, beyond a return to rationality after eight years of lunacy.
But actually, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by a lot of what I’ve seen. I expected (and approve) a refocus from Iraq onto Afghanistan, including a troop surge. But I was very surprised by his cautious approach to the Iranian elections (pleasantly so – an American President embracing the reform movement on global television would do nothing but cost them credibility among moderate and apolitical Iranians), surprised to see a strong condemnation of a right-wing coup in Honduras (after Bush backed two similar ones in Haiti and Venezuela), and surprised most of all to see him put as much pressure as he has on Israel, though it probably won’t be enough.
That’s only foreign policy. But suffice it to say that my experience has been just the opposite of most liberals’. I spend most of the campaign trying to temper the passions of people who expected a second coming, then voted for and expected a centrist – and then, found out to my pleasant surprise that the man actually is a liberal in a lot of ways. As much as I’d like? No, of course not. But considering how slanted the system is towards the other side, I’d say he’s not doing half bad.
While it’s hard to disagree that another 4 years of the wingnuts would be worse, Obama has been a big disappointment, and his Nobel “Peace” Prize speech was an Orwellian disgrace. George W Bush didn’t come in spewing wingnut spittle when he “won” his election, so maybe I was hoping that Obama was equally insincere when spouting his middle-of-the-road rhetoric just to get elected.
Isn’t it amazing how many wingnuts think this is true, and maintain that everything which disproves this is an exception? Which somehow gets dropped down the memory hole and is never seen again…
Reagan triples the national debt, and expands the power and scope of government, and has more criminal indictments of members of his administration than any other presidency to date – oh, and secretly sells weapons to our sworn terrorist enemy, Iran, to run an illegal war in South America which kills tens of thousands.
A hero of morality and small government.
Woo.
OH, and he also raised taxes.
I have only a little comfort knowing that Hillary Clinton would essentially be doing the same things.
Barry amazes me. He sells out his base in the hopes that the GOP bullies leave him alone. But in fact, they are poised to drive this country into the ground.
See the latest polls? Obama is tied with ‘Republican X’ in 2012. Doesn’t matter if it is Palin, Huckabee, Romney….he is tied with whoever right now. We have seen this before. We know he is doomed.
Where to begin? Do we start with his promise to Teh Gays three months ago to get things done regarding Don’t Ask / Don’t Tell? Do we start with his stimulus strategy of giving the banks cash, and hoping that it ‘trickles down’ to the middle class and minorities (such a smart guy should know -has to know- that it never works).
Beck and other wingnuts scream and yell that he’s a radical. A socialist. A tyrant. But in reality, he’s just a keeper of the status quo – even more conservative than a Clinton, IMO.
Clinton signed the last bill related to abortion – The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act of 1994. We had a doctor shot in the head in church this year. I and the National Abortion Federation asked that Congress step-up protections for doctors. Maybe making harassment and homicide of any doctor a federal crime. We were met with silence. And the other side is reloading.
Barry is the best thing the Republicans have going right now. They always run against the government to maintain power and keep the status quo. And when the face of the government is a chain-smoking, do-nothing, egotistical (let’s admit that, please) black man, they have all they need to win in 2010 and 2012.
We didn’t want to see this coming. We wanted a leader who would kick ass and know we had his back. Tax increases for the welathy? Push it down their throats. And end to torture and an end to Pentagon contractors? Ditto.
But when his chief of staff and the speaker of the House spend more time scolding and restraining liberal democrats and zero time investigating -let alone prosecuting- John Woo and Dick Chaney, we should know we are beyond fucked.
Say there, no-nuts dog, its really is the only Nobel Peace Prize, there were no air-quotes in its title. Obama has done more to bring peace in Iraq than the Surge or the peace plan that the conventional repubs devised and that Duh-bbya ignored. So you can eat Orwellian shit, Bow-fuckin’-wow.
Dhalgren, I agree that Obama’s handling of DA/DT is disgraceful and he needs to be shamed for that.
I don’t think he deserves to be lumped into the mess that Harry Reid is creating in the Senate. That body has always been a giant anchor on change and Harry Reid takes his role as a “Republican mole” very seriously.
(continued)
BTW, Trolly, I’d vote for a mop for President if it would prevent your wingnuts from being elected, but I can still vent my frustration and desire that this administration gets a wake up call about some of the pointlessly unhelpful things they’re doing.
Very recent case in point: Uganda proposes a law putting gays to death and imprisoning those who don’t turn in suspected homosexuals. Perfect opportunity for the Obama administration to show good will toward the GLBT part of their base (a community where for more reasons that I’m going to go into in an already long post, the administration already has a screwed-up, but fixable, relationship). No legislation required. No real political risk except from maybe extremists who like to kill gays. Use a minute or two of a speech to firmly state the President’s and our country’s moral disapproval of, like, state-sanctioned murder of gays. Not only does this let U.S. gays and lesbians feel like the President has their back, it also shows strong moral backbone.
Canada immediately condemns Uganda. So does Great Britain. Sweden threatens to cut off aid to Uganda if the law passes.
Cue the Obama administration…. [crickets].
Not until days after Uganda announces they’re taking out the “death penalty” part of the law (under European pressure) and two days after even Rick Warren, with his noxious ties to Uganda, finally denounces the law, does the Obama administration finally decide to says something. Only two days ago. Late on a Friday. When news stories are traditionally dumped when politicians don’t want the press to pay much attention. Then the administration finally decides its time to say something. Better late than never? Or what the flyin’ f*ck took you so long?
Sometimes this administration seems not just cynical, but strategically (and morally) inexplicable. Is this just three-dimensional chess, and I’m totally missing the point? Is Obama secretly securing the “kill gays” vote? I can handle pragmatic cynicism. But in cases like this, the administration just seems to almost perversely do everything possible to make their base feel they’re reluctant to even step forward with the minimal in good faith, unless they’re absolutely forced to, or unless its only after the barn door has already been shut. Is it naive to think that’s terrible election strategy?
See the latest polls? Obama is tied with ‘Republican X’ in 2012.
Specific candidates tend to poll behind imaginary ones, because of the lack of negatives for a Republican To Be Named Later.
We’ll see in 2012.
Moe Seisley spewed:
Uh-oh, somebody ran out of Metamucil again. And you’re projecting again, Moe unless, I somehow unknowingly acquired a pickup truck and you as acquaintance.
Incremental change we can just barely believe in.
Hidey hidey Hey! Hidey hidey Ho!
Sing it again, sing it again!
Incremental change we can just barely believe in!
Right. It’s sort of like Giulianni having the NYS seat in the bag. Sure–when he isn’t running for it. But Rudy the candidate is different then Rudy the abstract ideal.
It occurs to me that what Taibbi has largely done has sketched out a version of something a few social scientists have been studying for decades, that is exactly how (in terms of particular people, groups, and institutions) the economic upper classes intersect with the political leaders and institutions.
Yet, just because one is a ‘leftist’, or would prefer to reject and remake the entirety of the capitalist system, etc., one doesn’t necessarily know how to proceed within the actually existing world as we know it. The world doesn’t care how much we might prefer it to be instantly different, and the most venal of the uppermost classes will expend any amount of resources they need trying to keep us with such intentions from succeeding in doing so.
Even under FDR, the super-rich came out after the New Deal even wealthier. Under FDR, though, the vast majority of people generally had a better deal, but it certainly wasn’t the laborite or socialist paradise apparently many people retrospectively remember it as.
Hell, one of the main reasons we got social security reform passed — no matter how many righties and Republicans and manufacturers were screaming about “socialism” — was that in the 1920s the major capitalist wealthy corporate ownership thought that a federally administered pension fund would be much more in their interests than the mismash of private, state, and charity pensions which currently existed.
Rudy the candidate is different then Rudy the abstract ideal.
They may poll differently, but they nauseate me equally.
“I honestly don’t know why a lot of folks ever really believed that Obama was the second coming of FDR when all he really ever aspired to be was the second coming of Bill Clinton.”
Bush et al left the nation in a state of desperation for change. Obama presented himself as the answer to their prayers and many wanted to believe he’d be different.
El Cid:
Can you cite something that shows this? It’s not what I understood at all. Krugman discusses the FDR years in Conscience of a Liberal as “The Great Compression” – the robber barons were brought out of the wealth stratosphere.
At a local coffee bar, the proprietor is selling an “Obama Blend” coffee – a mixture of Kenyan, Hawaiian and Indonesian beans. (Not a joke).
The sign reads “OBAMA BLEND – BOLD”. I joked to the man that that’s what we thought we were voting for, and got Obama Blend- Mild.
He claimed I was the first one to have made that joke. Flattering, if true. But I would agree that I am not disappointed in POTUS #44. Given what we lived through for the last eight years, he would have to eat a baby on live television _not_ to be an improvement.
Trust me, just because we’re starting to realize that Obama isn’t the happy liberal warrior doesn’t mean that the right-wing is going to change their minds about him being a Kenyan-born muslim who’s out to destroy America and kill old white people.
If only for that reason alone, I’m going to continue to support President Obama with all my heart.
No matter what else, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
he would have to eat a baby on live television _not_ to be an improvement.
Depends on which baby.
Also, I fully endorse Zombie Preznit.
“Even under FDR, the super-rich came out after the New Deal even wealthier. Under FDR, though, the vast majority of people generally had a better deal, but it certainly wasn’t the laborite or socialist paradise apparently many people retrospectively remember it as.”
Tax rates were up to like seventy or ninety percent. No, I’m pretty sure the rich after the New Deal were objectively a lot poorer – still at the top of the pecking order, but they were no longer living in their own hermetically sealed world, and they were no longer above the law.
I don’t think anyone remembers the New Deal as a “socialist” paradise – it was a mixed economy, a Keynesian paradise if anything. What’s odd is that so many conservatives remember it so fondly, yet scream bloody murder when people like Clinton or Obama try to move us ever so slightly back in that direction.
Still, “less horrible” doesn’t exactly translate into “good”, now, does it?
And yet, you spoilt Yankees with your Kennedys and FDRs just don’t get that this is the normal state of things.
But that doesn’t mean that anyone on the left should count on him to do anything they want done.
Maybe the blogosphere should have told people that instead of “ONLY 60 VOTES FOR EFCA!!!” “UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE” and the rest.
To be quite frank, if we can’t rely on the party, then the party can’t rely on us.
Have fun living in mad-max land, moderates!
Really, all these posts like this from here, booman, TPM, Matt Y and the rest really just sound like: “Ha ha, Suckers! But you still have to for us m’kay?”
Sometimes I feel that if Joe Lieberman would just choke on his own jowls the country would be saved.
´
I was doing a crossword puzzle this morning, and had a few tough moments. I had nothing yet in the north central where one clue was “certain soloist.” The answer, which I later worked out, was “aviator.” But a different seven letter word immediately popped into my mind, that being “onanist.” Had the damnedest time pushing that out of my focus. I was, for a few moments, mentally doing a different puzzle in which onanist was the correct answer and filling in other, interesting words around it that were also amusingly incorrect. I couldn’t make a very good go of it however and just went with completing the actual puzzle.
This is an allegory for my feelings about the Obama admin.
PS – an allegory but it really did happen.
“I honestly don’t know why a lot of folks ever really believed that Obama was the second coming of FDR when all he really ever aspired to be was the second coming of Bill Clinton.”
Second coming of the Clenis? More like the sloppy seconds of LBJ.
hey Moe, a quick “fuck you” (also in quotes) in response.
QFT.
Obama made it clear during the campaign that he supported the bailouts. Sad but true. 95% of the political structure was for the bailouts. I was very pissed when he put Timmeh in office (Geitner), deluded myself for a month or two that he was giving FratBoy Barbie the rope to hang himself, but finally had to accept the truth. It’s the number one thing I dislike Obama for. And I still think he’s a WAY better president than the last one or the other guy.
Liberals were WAY behind the curve on the bubble. Sorry. When you’re that far behind, you don’t get to blame your leaders for fucking up. Get on top of this econ and finance shit, okay? And start showing up to protests when the Fed sells the country out for its friends on Wall St. There were protests in 2008 against the bailout of Lehman but liberals and progressives weren’t interested in them. They didn’t care until the market actually crashed.
Also, douchebags like Dobbs who took bribes (sure did–it’s documented) from sub-prime slime salesmen will stay in power until we kick them out. Where’s the loony left now? Too busy protesting cloned cattle and GMO corn? This guy committed a high crime and misdemeanor. He not only should have been booted out of the Senate, he should be in prison. Stop bopping to Rage Against The Machine and fucking pay attention for once.
Wankers.
Liberals were WAY behind the curve on the bubble. Sorry. When you’re that far behind, you don’t get to blame your leaders for fucking up. Get on top of this econ and finance shit, okay?
Right.
By the way, Lou Dobbs isn’t a Senator, last I checked.
~
And Lehman Brothers wasn’t bailed out either. Quit ‘ bangin’ yer head to Phish on yer Discman ya crazy grunge kid and maybe you’d know these things!
He meant Chris Dodd(I assume, anyway), but it’s not as clear cut as he makes out.
Sometimes I feel that if Joe Lieberman would just choke on his own jowls the country would be saved.
Not sure I agree, but doesn’t Lieberman owe it to the country to make the attempt?
Davis X, that’s a good insight about the role of the Congress, and restoring its clout.
We saw a glimpse of it in his response to Fox Nooz. As much as the wingers and the villagers bitch about it, Obama’s calling out of Fox did drive the Overton Window back to the left a bit. And as he said in the quote above, he gave them a chance to engage in good faith. Things only got worse.
During Bush the network had a varnish of respectability to the great mass of the usually unengaged “general public.” That’s gone now. They’re the subject of widespread ridicule (when both the Daily Show and South Park mocks you, you’ve crossed the line) and are now considered a suspect information source, even to that unengaged general public.
Unless you’re operating with a magical Unitary Executive, your POTUS is largely a rubber-stamp for measures already hashed out in the House & Senate. He can initiate, repeal or veto – & that’s about it. Right now there’s a big ugly anchor dragging the Democrats’ polling-numbers steadily downward, & contrary to the wisdom of Fox News, it isn’t the black guy with the Nobel Prize.
How many Democratic senators perennially run unopposed? Just like business, politics turns rancid with no real competition – if you want your Senate to be more than Animal House with nukes, you need to find candidates with decent track-records & use them to make the current pack of ossified satraps cry like jilted sophomores.
Clean up Congress & you’ve solved a good chunk of your political blueballs – with the added bonus of a less-dysfunctional government. The voting records of DINOs are not exactly state secrets – feel free to do some homework & kick some ass.
Lobbyists aren’t the only ones who can use a checkbook to get what they want in DC, you know – I seem to recall hearing that most Obama/Biden campaign donations last year were under $200, & one way or another, 2010 & 2012 are apt to go the same way … so how about getting together & collectively offering Obama the explicit choice of equal funds to what you donated in 2008 (if he dummies the fuck up) versus a smile & a wave goodbye (if he keeps spitting on the GLBT community & smoking that Wall Street pole)?
Petitions may as well be printed on plush 2-ply paper, for all the good they do – & as the Tea Partiers are learning to their chagrin, protests are essentially mass-picnics with signs & chanting … but the threat of cutting off the lolly ALWAYS wakes pols up real good.
Just Do It.
Yeah–Dodd. Was in a rush and didn’t have time to fact check my post.
He was given a mortgage at BMR which was worth tens of thousands of dollars to him… one of several who got these deals from The Tan Man. He was on the Senate Banking Committee. Quid pro quo. When exposed he mumbled that he wasn’t aware his “sweet deal” was any better than what anyone else was getting–which is total crap, because you could go on the intertubes at the time and get mortgage quotes in seconds. “Everybody” was refi-ing.
Dodd is a sad sack POS and in a just world he’d be
twiddling his thumbsdiddling hisself in country club prison right about now.Thunder, I will grant you Nouriel Roubini, but on the other hand, there’s the entirety of NPR, PRI, Air America and basically every moderate, mainstream, and (especially) progressive news source completely ignoring the CDS nuclear pile until it had already melted down.
Lehman wasn’t a bailout of Lehman per se, but it was a backroom deal to bail out playaz. The government (er, Fed) basically called time-out, got the Boyz in a huddle, and decided who was going to cash in and who was going to lose.
Repeated bailouts of bondholders, stockholders, and other Boyz with fistfuls of useless guarantees and notes. (While the little guy takes it up the ass and asks for another.)
Bear Stearns was allowed to collapse, however, in retribution for standing aloof during the LTCM meltdown.
Shit, forget about that shit–AIG. Direct cash payments to Goldman Sachs, through the vehicle of AIG to launder it. Whatta country!
Obama has done the cause of the left one invaluable service.
He has demonstrated once and for all that there is no dealing with the modern Republican Party. By putting every possible compromise to the test, he has proven that compromise will never succeed. By showing that centrist policies drive the right as crazy as it can go, he has killed off any fear of how crazy it might go over actual socialism.
Sure, he himself is too blinkered by the corporatist consensus to act on this: but maybe, just maybe, he has made it possible for his party to realise that they have nothing to lose by turning sharply left.
There were more than enough early indications of how Obama was going to govern from before the election. That whole FISA issue was a cold fish slap in the face to me. I saw trouble before that but that one issue alone painted the left’s new messiah as a less than ideal person to wear that title. To have a case of buyers remorse now is funny. I know people that still furiously defend him and yet are depressed that he’s turning into a centrist ‘blue dog’ leader. And yet now, post election, the right and the right-of-the-right and the religious screeching monkeys have been having a field day because the only way that an illegal immigrant black man could be elected is by stealing the election because everyone knows that a black man can’t lead a country seem to enjoy crucifying him at nearly every moment for the stupidest things but they are probably having an effect on his leadership/governorship by pulling him father to the right.
And the republicans in congress have lost all sense of sanity. Obama has bent over backwards 3,000 times and has dealt some pretty GOP positive legislation and opinions and yet they continue to behave like racist classist imbeciles.
I only fear for the future of the world as 2012 could elect a president light years more vindictive and childish than George Walker Bush and it could be the last year of the human species on this planet.
And I’m going for breakfast…
There are things I have been disappointed with, but the reasoning here by the author is pure bunk. What I want to ask him is, with all these straw men you’re setting up, aren’t you afraid they might gang up on you?
Real change comes from the middle, not the radical left or the radical right. All they do is lead us into intractable situations – just like Isreal/Palestine.
The radical right doesn’t change things? What planet did you spend the Bush Administration on?
Even if it were true that only centrists could change things, it doesn’t alter the fact that Obama’s got precious little done. (Still massively better than the alternative, of course.) Does “real change” come from not changing anything?
You know, for a while there, yeah, I really did.
Sadly, the only thing I’m feeling is gratitude that Sarah Palin is not a heartbeat away from the Presidency. The rest of it, sadly, is just politics as usual.Why did I think the Democrats would do anything?
Even if it were true that only centrists could change things, it doesn’t alter the fact that Obama’s got precious little done.
Name the last President who accomplished anything in the first ten months of his first term.
Bush? Not much. I’m not even sure he got his tax cuts passed in the first ten months, and certainly they had little effect on a sluggish economy.
Clinton? Apart from some executive orders (Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell among them) he got the Brady Bill & the 1993 Omnibus Reconciliation passed which raised taxes on the rich, while lowering them on everyone else.
Bush the Elder? The Dems in Congress forced him essentially to raise taxes, and apart from that, in ten months got nothing done.
Reagan? Broke PATCO, passed the tax cut that caused the 1982 recession but at the expense of welfare and the environment.
So maybe you can say Reagan passed his ideological markers in his first ten months, but that’s going back nearly thirty years.
Obama for all his faults is a welcome relief from having sociopaths run the government. But that doesn’t mean that anyone on the left should count on him to do anything they want done.
I sure hope by the next election he gives me some reason to vote for him other than “at least he’s not a sociopath like [whatever sociopath the GOP puts up]!”
To paraphrase Eric Ericson (ugh, I know): He’s got liberal tendencies but definately isn’t a liberal, and for me, in America, in 2008 that was more than enough.
You still have sociopaths running the government. Quite you you think that being in the hands of a less moronic sociopath is a good thing is lost on me.
Agree wholeheartedly w/ Bill Jones above.
Even if Obama isn’t himself a sociopath (it’s still early), he’s:
a) covering for sociopaths – See: John Yoo and executive branch arguments to drop pending prosecution
b) keeping sociopaths from the sociopath days – See: Robert Gates and the Rove prosecutors at the DoJ
c) keeping sociopathic policies – See: Iraq war and Afghanistan war. Someone mentioned war w/ Iran above… don’t rule it out, the saber rattling continues.
d) not prosecuting sociopaths – See: Iraq war
Really, what’s the difference?
Sad you mob just don’t get it. The reason so many lobbyists who normally support rethugs swung behind Obama is because he was the best chance of growing the empire. Another 4 or even 8 years of dickhead god botherers would have drained any support for the amerikan empire from around the world. I realise locked into your silly red herring arguments about whether you’ll support a pol who only gives $2500 per capita, per annum to the arms manufacturers rather than one who will try and squeeze $3000 a year for their employers outta the citizens, you don’t really care about whatever the rest of us living in fear of becoming the moronic bully’s next target for invasion are concerned with, however since the amerikan people appear to lack the wherewithal to stop this mad juggernaut, the rest of us are gonna have to do it.
By the time shrub finished his work, the amerikan empire was about as desirable as a fart in an elevator to the rest of us, the billions who live outside of the madness.
This had become a major problem for the empire, but by electing oblam blam the ninnies on the outside were easily suborned by the crooked pols outside amerika to back the change which they claimed had taken hold at the heart of the murderous empire, hence assholes in europe and england getting away with sending more murderers to afghanistan and probably pakistan opps sorry “afpak” as oblamblam likes to dehumanise the two countries where good people live. If you mob had made mccain and palin the killers in charge, the other nations would never have agreed to support an afpak crank up which means that amerika would probably have had to forgo it as well. That was the realisation which had hit George H and his team of sociopathic plunderers when they put together that Iraqi Advisory Group. Remember that? As exceptionalist as every amerikan pol would like you to be, in actuality one nation playing with itself is basically jerking off without anyone making a dollar. Which is why they are forever glad handing despots while they ignore their own citizens.
Now all of this was perfectly obvious before the 08 farce, yet people allow themselves to become convinced that voting for what they deem to be ‘the lesser evil’ is a way through it. Bullshit – you have to consider a bigger picture. I realise that many of you have been fully indoctrinated into football team style politics which holds that any dem is better than any rethug, hence peeps trying to claim the execrable Lieberman is not a dem. Forget that he has seniority in the party and that the party machine supported him in an election when he was running against someone selected by dem voters. Yeah right he’a dem because they said he’s a dem and as long as you mob blindly follow these pricks whose fealty is to everyone but you mugs, because they know whatever they do you will still vote for them, you will be whining in blogs for 7 more years.
Look! Here comes alla the party faithful wanna be pols who are gonna call me a troll because I don’t toe the line that is killing tens of thousands of humans a year, inside and outside amerika.
The party line of win the election worry about the rest later that will guarantee this planet is uninhabitable for humans within a century. That’s me, – a troll because I for one am sick of watching the same predictable plots unfold year after year while so called lefties, or liberals, or humanists, stand around wringing their hands and crying ‘woe is me’ and refusing to ‘rock the boat’.