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Barack Obama and the Progressive Dwarfs
Lion
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
This thread is for those of us on the left to bitch about President Obama. I’d like it if we could hurl valid criticism about his Presidential agenda but not forget the good things his administration has done. Let’s talk about his tactics with Congress. Let’s talk about his tactics with the American people.
We can even use this to gauge the enthusiasm for Obama’s re-election campaign as it pertains to the Penny Arcade Forums.
Round 1
Lilly Ledbetter vs. Libya.
Healthcare vs. Homosexual Acceptance.
Corporations vs. Other Corporations.
Round 2
Alliterations vs. Melosingagainstalitterations
All This
And more! Like how I don’t really know if I want to volunteer for the campaign again like I did in ‘08.
We can even use this to gauge the enthusiasm for Obama’s re-election campaign as it pertains to the Penny Arcade Forums.
Round 1
Lilly Ledbetter vs. Libya.
Healthcare vs. Homosexual Acceptance.
Corporations vs. Other Corporations.
Round 2
Alliterations vs. Melosingagainstalitterations
All This
And more! Like how I don’t really know if I want to volunteer for the campaign again like I did in ‘08.
PSN: WingedLion | XBL: Winged Lion
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Will that decade ever come? Someone needs to slap some sense into the political system at some point. It's not going to fix itself.
I was thinking he's a few decades late more than our system will magically become far better. He's just trying to unity pony with a group that has openly declared they don't give a shit about any stance other than him failing. What I don't get is how an obviously smart man doesn't say "huh, that wasn't just a tough political soundbyte, they actually just want to kill anything my name is on, even if I try and make National Reagan Month" and stop trying to play nice with them.
Oh, I'm FAR more upset with the children in congress and their idiotic honor systems and current desire to just see how much they can fuck up the system in order to prove it can be fucked up.
I was just being on topic for the thread. The worst thing I can really say about the president is the unity pony shit just isn't going to happen, no matter how much he wishes it would. Beyond that? I pretty much got what I voted for, he's a pretty driven centrist who is willing to push some seriously good things through when he can get the political capital to do so(what the ACA wound up as), or find a loophole to maul it (Hi DOMA)
Yeah, I think the biggest problem is Obama is the wrong candidate for the current political climate.
He's better than what the other people put up, but warrantless wiretapping and state secrets? And the right to assassinate American citizens outside of a battlefield without even trial in absentia? Fuck you Mr President. If I'd wanted the office of the president to make power grabs and shit all over the constitution again, I'd have voted R.
Which is why we should be really goddamn careful about what authority we allow them to have, because once they get it it's never going away.
But we're such a bunch of sissies that we freak out and hand the President all sorts of powers everytime there's a minor crisis, and then we wonder why our civil liberties are eroding.
Because we fucking handed them over, that's why. And once they're gone, we're never getting them back because a strong majority of the electorate (on a bipartisan basis) wants a Monarch, not a President. They just want to make sure it's their guy/girl so they can throw extra powers at them, and then bitch up a storm when the position changes hands and now the other team has gobs and gobs of power because they were incredibly shortsighted.
Churchill was right; the best argument against democracy is a 5 minute conversation with the average voter.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
I still really dislike the guy, but he's done things I approve. Sadly, he's kept a pretty tight grip on plenty of Bush and Bush like initiatives. For a socialist, the guy sure is a very Nixonian Republican.
In the future (i.e., when the elderly holy-rollers and bigots die off), I can see Obama's politics defining the new Right Wing.
Obama is the quintessential 1960s Republican, outside of the whole being a Black democrat thing.
What is disappointing is that obama's (apparently) willing to use his office to continue bush-esque security policy, but not to end DADT or bring this debt extension fight to an end or manage economic policy in a way that makes sense.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
I'm sorry, but this is just a load of crap. Barack Obama is not, in any sense, a liberal - and in every sense, an abysmal right-winger who is simply killing your country at a slower pace than the lunatics on the fascist side of the aisle would.
Who was, until he finally had to leave because he couldn't be kept from beaking-off at the people who got Obama elected in the first place, Obama's staunchly defended chief of staff? Rahm Emanuel. Who's his treasury secretary? Timothy Geitner. Who was hand-picked as the director for Obama's National Economic Council? Larry Summers. Who did Obama re-appoint as the head of the Federal Reserve? Ben Bernanke. Who has he retained as the head of the DEA? Michele Leonhart. Who has he brought-in as the head of the CIA (replacing Stephen Kappes)? Michael Morell. Who has he retained as the director of the FBI? Robert Mueller.
I name these particulars because they can't just be waved-off as the result of senate dickery - they were his decisions and, in many cases, they were made in a very proactive manner. So, how can you justify these appointments, ebum? If he's such a liberal, why are his appointees all right-wing fanatics and demagogues? Why are his economic advisors & policy makers somehow all coincidentally Friedmanites who staunchly believe in the Invisible Hand of the free market and it's ability to sculpt paradise?
Iraq's Green Zone remains as insane as ever, Guantanamo Bay (which illegally sits on the soil of a foreign country) still retains it's unlawfully held 'guests' of the state, the domestic surveillance programs continue unabated, Obama seems to agree with the notion that Julian Assange and his collaborators are somehow 'terrorists' because they dared to bring the public information on what the government that they pay for is doing... what was there to like about any of his policies, again?
I guess I can agree with the No Fly Zone being imposed over Libya in order to support the rebels, but that wasn't Obama's plan, so he can hardly take credit for it.
Your progressiveness is only as functional as the people you compromise with. Obama just happens to be stuck with an incredibly obstinate Congress that would rather set themselves on fire than make rational concessions to advance a mutual goal.
Can you name those things? The 'lot of things' (presumably positive things) he's accomplished?
Most of the problems aren't going to be fixed by a mere change in power and would require reforms to the political system. For example, turnout is resulting in many more extremist members of Congress due to the crazies voting in droves compared to the ordinary poor people and moderates. The possible solution of mandatory voting like in many other countries would be immediately killed by Republicans because it would harm them.
That was due to COngress preventing him from having the funds to do so, wasn't it?
He's a state capitalist. Nothing Left about him.
It's still open so I don't know how to give the guy credit for closing it.
This is one area the Tea Party has been extremely effective. They've flat out put on notice that any Republican who doesn't shift to the right is going to get their ass primary'd no matter the cost or the risk, and as such they are getting what they want.
He quickly demonstrated that he thinks hes on a reality show. Hes the Paris Hilton of presidents (Sometimes Parez Hilton). Half the stuff he says is just to get attention cause hes a total attention whore. The first two years of his presidency i was more worried about congress then him because he seemed to just be enjoying the spotlight and signing whatever congress did. When the Dems got kicked from the house and lost supermajority he started taking center stage but most of his decisions have been downright stupid politically. (Trying to save that pedophile/child killer from execution in texas, ignoring the debt problem until the last minutes, Keeping Guantamino open etc).
Granted his policies have been heavily liberal, a stance im generally against anyway so im still curious how someone with a conservative background would act in these times...but generally he certainly hasnt given me a whole lot of hope that we could one day stop making 'political dynasties' and go back to people who did actual work before choosing to work for the government as a service.
However, it's not the public's fault that the perception of Obama was "progressive". Let's not forget that huge HUGE PR campaign painting him as "different". Hope and Change. Remember? We were a country that was governed from center and center right positions. What was the "change" supposed to be, then?
I don't understand how his policies were really any more "Liberal". He increased funding for lots of federal programs. That's about it. He still opposes gay marriage. He's publicly said so. That doesn't help the national debate on DOMA much. As mentioned above, he's been more than happy to crack the whip at the DEA and reinstate it's draconian laws, despite publicly saying otherwise. He's deported more illegal immigrants that Bush. He's shut down online poker.
That's not liberal in the slightest.
Guantanamo's going to be a hideous mess to resolve and nobody wants to deal with it. Closing it means figuring out what to do with the detainees, which means either trying them or outright releasing them. Trying them in any reasonable court is going to result in an awful lot of acquittals, and just sending them back wherever they came from (to the extent we even know) looks even worse.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
The Democrats and Obama are coming off of a disastrous mid-term election. Did you expect him to make a hard left turn after what happened last November?
Rigorous Scholarship
Change was not supposed to be a move to the left. I didn't read it as that ever. I read the change as in stopping the gridlock and the arguing between left and right and the partisanship. Which is what he campaigned on.
He didn't campaign on progressive squat all. He gave a good speech, great way to permanently lock up the black vote, didn't have the stench of the war on him, wasn't a Clinton thus creating another dynasty, and was a change from Bush.
But he never really said "change means we change to progressives" ever. KOS and other liberal blogs claimed that, and that he'd turn progressive in office, but those guys are all morons. He turned out to be exactly what he ran on, a centrist that was going to try to end partisanship and bring people together.
He hasn't done a good job of that either, and it's not entirely his fault.
I mean I get that when we come to actual legislation, Congress bears most of the responsibility. I don't blame Obama for not getting the perfect health care bill through congress, for example.
But not everything the president does has to be approved by congress, and the executive's policymaking apparatus hasn't exactly been a font of liberalism under obama either.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Whut? He's taken incredible steps to stay out of the spot light for his entire administration. Frustratingly so, when simply stepping up and throwing his weight around a little bit would accomplish what a dead locked Congress could not.
Oh, I see. Another conservative that claims to have voted for him, and now regrets the decision. It's amazing how many of you are coming out of the woodwork.
3DSFF: 5026-4429-6577
Yeah, you'd have to be an idiot not to realize that he meant the the change was from the bullshit practices of "the decider."
Plenty of people during the campaign said Obama was less of a liberal/progressive than he was getting credit for. Most of them (including me) just underestimated the extent of his less-liberalness.
ed: also saying that he didn't campaign on progressive issues is a bit of a stretch. His signature issue positions in the campaign were 1) a more government-oriented health care bill than clinton was proposing and 2) ending the iraq war.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
It isn't even true now, really. Americans are just as statist as any other western country, and in a lot of ways we're more socially permissive. But that doesn't align with our mythos about ourselves so we mostly ignore it.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget