Obama: Buyer's Remorse?

[ace diamond]

i did not vote for barry odumpa.
i am very proud of that fact.
i knew from watching the debates that he was full of hot air and didn't have a fucking clue.
but noooooooo, y'all said he was just soooo great, and that his
"change" platform was just sooooooo what the country needed right now,
and nothing else would do.

well, to all of you who voted for barry odumpa, i say this:

be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.

translation:
if you voted for him, you have no room to bitch.
you put him there.
you got what you asked for.
deal with it.

[bueno bob]

i did not vote for barry odumpa.
i am very proud of that fact.
i knew from watching the debates that he was full of hot air and didn't have a fucking clue.
but noooooooo, y'all said he was just soooo great, and that his
"change" platform was just sooooooo what the country needed right now,
and nothing else would do.

well, to all of you who voted for barry odumpa, i say this:

be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.

translation:
if you voted for him, you have no room to bitch.
you put him there.
you got what you asked for.
deal with it.

The question you have to ask very carefully is:

Do you think you would have gotten much different had you voted the other way - and the other way went all the way?

Aside from the health care business, my careful answer is honestly, no; but the end results would unquestionably be much worse.

[ace diamond]

The question you have to ask very carefully is:

Do you think you would have gotten much different had you voted the other way - and the other way went all the way?

Aside from the health care business, my careful answer is honestly, no; but the end results would unquestionably be much worse.

bob, i honestly don't think it really would have mattered either way.
this country is fucked after 8 years of the chimpministration as it is.
the only difference is since i did not vote for obama, i have every right to bitch, and i also have complete deniability.
i didn't vote for the winning candidate, so if he/she fucks up, it isn't my fault.
but it is everyone's problem.
either way, in the 1996, 2000, 2004, and 2008 presidential elections,
i have not voted for a winner yet.
not intentionally.

1996 and 2000, h. ross perot.
2004, write in vote of no confidence
2008, john mc cain.

maybe one of these days i'll vote for someone that actually wins,
but until then, it is what it is.

[LoungeMachine]

STFU ace

[Seshmeister]

I did wonder what sort of a fucking idiot would vote for Palin.

Now I know.

[ace diamond]

STFU ace

not in your lifetime.

[Hardrock69]

No remorse here. The first intellectual we have had in the WH in years.

Has the balls to take on the insurance and healthcare industries. Someone needed to do it. McCain would not have bothered, as they give him too much money.

And I, like everyone else, felt McCain shot himself in the foot by choosing that trollop as his VP/running-mate. McCain has a heart attack.....you really think ANYONE would want some idiot soccer mom to be PRESIDENT?

That would have been unacceptable by any measure.

Obama has accomplished more in his first year in office than many presidents do in two, three or four.

Too bad the Republicans are trying to destroy America by voting against EVERYTHING he is trying to do.

In the healthcare thing, it is not Republicans vs. Democrats.
It is not conservatives vs. liberals.

IT ACTUALLY IS THE HEALTHCARE AND INSURANCE INDUSTRIES VS. THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!

SOMEONE has to stand up for "The People". And Obama is actually doing that.

The Republicans are doing their best to insure that the healthcare and insurance industries CONTINUE TO ASS-RAPE THE AMERICAN PUBLIC.

The Republicans are acting in a quite ANTI-AMERICAN FASHION.

If they TRULY cared about this great nation and the people who live in it, they would be going out of their way to help reform the healthcare system, and to regulate the insurance corporations.

But NO! They are completely in favor of Corporate America (with Financial Slavery and Profits For A Chosen Few), and are in favor of making the poor and middle-class even POORER than they already are.

I was already disgusted with conservative asslickers.

And seeing the Republicans try to harm the American People in this manner makes me feel even moreso.

The Republican Motto is "Keep The Power Out Of The Hands Of The People, And Keep The Money In The Pockets Of The Corporations Whose Cocks We Suck".

So, no. I have no regrets.

In fact, I hope America sees how the Republicans are trying to destroy this country, and I hope The People Of The United States Of America revolt against their asinine efforts.

[Blackflag]

Has the balls to take on the insurance and healthcare industries.

. . .

Obama has accomplished more in his first year in office than many presidents do in two, three or four.

[ace diamond]

No remorse here. The first intellectual we have had in the WH in years.

Has the balls to take on the insurance and healthcare industries. Someone needed to do it. McCain would not have bothered, as they give him too much money.

And I, like everyone else, felt McCain shot himself in the foot by choosing that trollop as his VP/running-mate. McCain has a heart attack.....you really think ANYONE would want some idiot soccer mom to be PRESIDENT?

That would have been unacceptable by any measure.

Obama has accomplished more in his first year in office than many presidents do in two, three or four.

Too bad the Republicans are trying to destroy America by voting against EVERYTHING he is trying to do.

In the healthcare thing, it is not Republicans vs. Democrats.
It is not conservatives vs. liberals.

IT ACTUALLY IS THE HEALTHCARE AND INSURANCE INDUSTRIES VS. THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!

SOMEONE has to stand up for "The People". And Obama is actually doing that.

The Republicans are doing their best to insure that the healthcare and insurance industries CONTINUE TO ASS-RAPE THE AMERICAN PUBLIC.

The Republicans are acting in a quite ANTI-AMERICAN FASHION.

If they TRULY cared about this great nation and the people who live in it, they would be going out of their way to help reform the healthcare system, and to regulate the insurance corporations.

But NO! They are completely in favor of Corporate America (with Financial Slavery and Profits For A Chosen Few), and are in favor of making the poor and middle-class even POORER than they already are.

I was already disgusted with conservative asslickers.

And seeing the Republicans try to harm the American People in this manner makes me feel even moreso.

The Republican Motto is "Keep The Power Out Of The Hands Of The People, And Keep The Money In The Pockets Of The Corporations Whose Cocks We Suck".

So, no. I have no regrets.

In fact, I hope America sees how the Republicans are trying to destroy this country, and I hope The People Of The United States Of America revolt against their asinine efforts.

obama is a puppet for the bilderberg group.

[Nitro Express]

I'm still pissed about the credit card thing. Those motherfuckers take gov money to bail their asses out, then immediately stick it hard to the people that have been the most responsible with their fucking credit. I'll pay MORE money just to keep a fucking dime out of their hands now. I switched everything away from cards, and have been using paypal, COD, or just mailing in money orders for stuff I just would have put on a card. Any of my vendors that wouldn't bill me (only a couple wouldn't) I dropped them completely. There isn't ANY benefit to good credit anymore so I give a fuck about maintaining any good paper trails..

Exactly. If we refuse to do business with crooked institutions, they eventually will wither and blow away.

[Nitro Express]

obama is a puppet for the bilderberg group.

There are many groups. Bilderberg was founded in 1954 to consolidate Europe and put it under a common currency. Some of the American corporate and financial elites are involved with this group, the Rockefellers being the better known. The World Bank, Federal Reserve, and other large financial institutions are well represented at Bilderberg each year. Obama and Hillary did attend Bilderberg two years ago when they met in Virginia. What went on who knows.

[Nitro Express]

I get why people voted for Obama. They were sick of eight years of Republican rule that was a complete disaster and they were hoping Obama would be a monopoly breaker who would break the grip of the big corporations.

[Seshmeister]

There are many groups. Bilderberg was founded in 1954 to consolidate Europe and put it under a common currency. Some of the American corporate and financial elites are involved with this group, the Rockefellers being the better known. The World Bank, Federal Reserve, and other large financial institutions are well represented at Bilderberg each year. Obama and Hillary did attend Bilderberg two years ago when they met in Virginia. What went on who knows.

They probaby exchanged bug recipes and talked about banning lizard skin handbags...

[Seshmeister]

The year of presiding impressively
by Andrew Sullivan
Sunday Times of London
January 17, 2010

A year ago this week, in even colder temperatures than now, a young, charismatic president-elect gazed across the Mall in Washington, DC and gave an inaugural address that some felt was anti-climactic. It feels like an age ago and so I went back to see what my first impression was: “From the moment he gave his election night victory speech, Obama has been signalling great motion in the face of immense challenges. The tone is humble. . .He is not a messiah and does not act or speak like one. He's a traditionalist in many ways."

A year on, that seems like a good call to me. Those on the left who foolishly saw him as a revolutionary are in a sulk right now. Those on the right who still see him as a leftist ideologue keep railing against the reality in front of their eyes - as if contemplating a small-c conservative black Democratic president is too much for their brains to grasp. To those who hadn't observed or read or listened closely enough to Barack Obama, the first year remains a baffling record. But to my mind it is almost exactly what I expected and yet much more than I could have hoped for.

Obama is a liberal pragmatist in politics and a traditional conservative in his understanding of the presidency. Once you grasp this, his first year makes much more sense. He has marshalled conservative constitutional norms- against the radical claims of George W Bush and Dick Cheney with respect to the presidency- in defence of a liberal restoration of the importance of government. This has made for a frustrating year for those who want instant results, because he has often deferred to Congress; or for those who want short-term tactical political coups, because he prefers strategy to tactics. But for anyone taking the long view, it is hard to see where Obama has really gone wrong.

What mistakes has he made?

His inheritance is one even Republicans concede was the worst since Ronald Reagan’s: a global economy spiralling into a possible second Great Depression; a deficit exploding just as long-term debt was poised to enter the red zone; failing banks; an imploding car industry; two flailing wars; a deeply polarised country; a mortgage crisis; a collapse in America’s moral standing after the Cheney torture regime; 30m Americans with no health insurance; crumbling domestic infrastructure and eight wasted years in the fight to mitigate climate change.

Where did he go wrong? Was the stimulus too big or too small? In retrospect, it looks like a pretty good balance in putting a bottom under the economy without adding too much debt. Was the bank rescue insufficient, as many liberals at the time argued? Nope. If you judge by results, Obama got it right: no nationalisation and targeted bailout money led to a stunning turnaround in which many of the recipients of aid were able to pay it back within a year. Last week he announced a big new tax on banks to get back the rest and is preparing a bill for financial re-regulation.

In other words, he didn’t succumb to leftist populism or right-wing ideology. He neither attacked the banks nor let them off the hook. And it worked. The global economy has since stabilised – something that was by no means inevitable.

Did Obama make a mistake by sticking with his campaign pledge to reform and expand health insurance in such a perilous economic time? My view is: no. He crafted a compromise bill that would provide insurance to 30m people, reduce the deficit and bring the drug and insurance companies along. Such a result enraged the left and sent the right into a tizzy of fury. But it will endure as the biggest social reform since Lyndon Johnson. Did he err by allowing Congress to take the lead? Well, the Clintons tried dictating to Congress and look how that turned out. No president has succeeded in this area before, in good times or bad. Obama got his reform in a year of economic crisis. The further you remove yourself from this, the more impressive the achievement is.

His first Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, was a smooth, shrewd choice, rewarding Hispanics (who support health reform by massive margins, by the way) and elevating a competent, moderate liberal. His war management? Again, you see the caution of the first Bush, led by Hillary Clinton and Robert Gates at the departments of State and Defence. Obama kept the second Bush’s timetable for Iraq withdrawal, dispatched three Somali pirates, intensified the drone attacks on Al-Qaeda, saw a huge drop in Al-Qaeda's popularity in the Muslim world, a huge rise in pro-American sentiment around the globe and re-crafted an Afghanistan strategy that won both Democratic support and the enthusiasm of General Stanley McChrystal.


I retain severe doubts about Iraq and Afghanistan and suspect the efforts to create stable states in both are doomed. But I have to reserve judgment in the fog of war and neither of Obama’s big decisions here seemed obviously misjudged. They seemed like the least worst option on the table.

More broadly, his quiet demotion of inflammatory rhetoric in the war on Jihadist terrorism in favour of talking softly and taking one Al-Qaeda leader out at a time strikes me as a shrewder way to win this war than Bush's grandstanding. On Iran, he helped the green movement immensely by removing the “Great Satan” card from the leadership’s weakening hand. If he can target sanctions precisely at the Revolutionary Guards, he could help some more. But his breakthrough was in understanding, as any conservative should, that this is the Iranians' revolution, not America’s. The job of the West is to get out of the way.

His only obvious failure has been Israel. He misjudged the intransigence of Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, and the power of his support on Capitol Hill. But he will keep persisting in trying to rescue the Jewish state from the perils of its own hubris and paranoia.

On social issues, he has stepped back to help to unwind polarisation and allow society to evolve and federalism to work. By merely refusing to use federal agents to police states where medical marijuana has been legalised, he has all but ended cannabis prohibition in large swathes of the country without lifting a finger. Although his term saw marriage equality lose in Maine, it also saw gay marriage rights come to Washington, DC and the debate shift so much that we are now watching Ted Olson, a Reaganite conservative. argue that the California initiative that denied marriage to gays violated the equal protection clause of the federal constitution.

He has also failed to end the cultural and partisan polarisation in America. But he has not empowered it. The energy for this polarisation has come from the hard left (which is angry with him) and the hard right which, to a great extent, has gone completely bonkers in the wake of its defeat in 2008.

This rabid conservatism - one that seeks more tax cuts as debt spirals, that thinks Guantanamo is an asset in the war on terror, that wants no extension of health insurance, no bailouts, no stimulus- may well ride some populist anger to short-term success at the ballot box (watch the Massachusetts by-election on Tuesday). But under Obama, the Republicans have become whiter, more extreme, more religious and synonymous in the public mind with polarising figures such as Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. This may be a good ratings strategy for a cable network like Fox News, but it's a highly risky one for a party attempting to win back the centre.

And Obama himself? Suffice it to say his first year revealed something we already knew. He is a cool customer and a shrewd strategist and has also managed to marshal the stagecraft and elegance to inhabit the role of the presidency with more ease and grace than anyone since Reagan.

Two years ago a black president was unimaginable. Now it seems like background noise. As with all of Obama's revolutions, this was a quiet one. But in the eye of history, my guess is it will be seen as game-changing for America and the world.
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[bueno bob]

What Andrew said. Spot on.