As a friend noted, its like I was writing on Booman Tribune about progressive blogs whacking President Obama.
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Many progressives should know that if you are so willing to dish out criticism be ready to take criticism also.
I personally don’t understand what the big fuse was about. Just because an anonymous (even if the person wasn’t anonymous) saying take off pajama blah blah blah or whatever the criticism was. It was ridiculous for progressives to go off the bend over the comment.
People grow up and act like adults.
Excellent rant. I have been in the position of leading an organization (as an elected official) and was hammered by my own supporters for not cleaning up the pig sty fast enough. Like the man said, THERE ARE ONLY SO MANY THINGS YOU CAN GET DONE IN A GIVEN AMOUNT OF TIME!!!! So chill a little and let the president do his work. I have 100% confidence he is going to get rid of DADT and that we will have a very good health care reform bill and we will figure out what to do in Afganistan. I just don’t expect it to ALL get done this week.
Tom: I have 100% confidence he is going to get rid of DADT and that we will have a very good health care reform bill and we will figure out what to do in Afganistan.
I’m not 100% sure, but fairly confident on DADT and Afghanistan.
But as these things are taking a while, wouldn’t mind a bit more regular status reports from the White House. It would also help highlight where Repubs are simply being obstructionist.
This is an illustration of the extremely unrealistic world view of the typical of the left. It is to the detriment of our nation we have so much rot within. Obama is the worst thing to happen to this country since Rooseveldt fathered the creation of the welfare state long considered utopia by socialists, communists, and progressives. Obstructing Obama is patriotism of the highest order, that his agenda is happening slower than some progressives desire is the best of a bad situation.
To hear Obama speak is to hear Obama lie.
Ah, good. More ranting from Amused 0 that’s completely devoid of reason or support.
I was afraid I’d make it thru the day without any gibberish.
Sean, One point I tried to make is that is hard enough to accomplish an agenda when the obstructionists are screaming at you. Even harder when your supporters are screaming too. I’m willing to sit back and let the man work. As no lefty needs to be reminded, it took 8 years for the party of stupidity and corruption to get us so hosed up. I don’t expect Obama to fix everything in 8 months. I don’t need frequent status reports either. I’d rather the administration use that time to work on the end goals. Eyes on the prize, eyes on the prize.
“Obama is the worst thing to happen to this country since Rooseveldt [sic] fathered the creation of the welfare state long considered utopia by socialists, communists, and progressives.”
Seriously. Every senior I’ve ever met immediately returns their Social Security and Medicare checks to the government and isn’t willing to spend them.
Reality, AO. Look into it sometime.
Christ, AO. Obama is the worst thing since Roosevelt? Really? Worse than 9/11? Worse than Vietnam? Spoken like a man who’s never suffered.
I remember Reagan saying that the scariest phrase he knew was ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” It’s probably because he’s never had anyone say to him ‘I’m sorry, but your insurance won’t cover that.’, or ‘We’re going to have to let you go.’ or even ‘You have 30 days to leave or you will be evicted.’ I suppose Republicans are more scared of government than actual problems people have; I have found most conservatives don’t actually care about people’s problems unless it impacts them somehow. THEN they’re all about someone stepping in and fixing it. Why is that, AO? IS there a reason why Republicans are lacking any sort of empathy? Is it the devotion to Ayn Rand? The fixation on the Prosperity Gospel? The apocalyptic mindset? The bitterness over losing the Civil War? A combination?
Maybe you could enlighten us.
Back to the topic, I agree. I’d like Obama to do a lot of things; I want him to shoot cannons full of subpoenas at the departing Bush administration too. Obama doesn’t exist to fulfill my wishes, and he has to deal with a horde of crazy every day, and not crack. So, yeah, it’s frustrating. But, we need to press on him, to make the right choice, and we have to press on the conservatives, to let him know someone’s at his back. The conservatives are cutting open their own throats in pursuit of ideological purity, best not to emulate that.
Indeed Abanterer worse. 9/11 didn’t damage the underlying fabric and morale charactor of the nation. That you fail to understand Reagan’s quip speaks volumes about your understanding of things work, federalism, and the negative effects of well meaning intervention. Every dollar that is given away to one person is a dollar taken away from another. Just FYI the Republicans won the Civil War.
Jaim,
Reality check; free money is always popular but free money isn’t really free. The free lunch theory, look into it sometime.
He sounds like a whiny bitch who doesn’t like the fact that people disagree with him. Really, I supported Obama, but he’s acted like a chicken-shit servant of the powerful for his entire term in office. He might care about people, but he’s not willing to take on a single entrenched interest to fight for him. In normal times, that might be okay. with 10+% Unemployment, it makes him the next Herbert Hoover. Hoover tried, and he listened to some smart people too. But those people were wrong, and so is Summer, Geithner, and Rahm.
AO, do you send your Social Security checks to the Fed? If not, you’re a complete hypocrite. And this means you’re a Republican.
1. 9/11 fed into a general wailing hissy fit on the right, that led to 2 wars, countless terror alerts, and the DHS. To say that it hasn’t done anything lasting to this nation is to forget that we’ll be paying for Bush’s lack of follow through for a generation or so.
1a. Amazingly, whatever ‘damage to the underlying fabric and morale’ FDR caused seems to be pretty damned popular; moreso, I’d wager, than anything Nixon, Reagan or Bush I or II have done.
2. Speaking of Reagan – that quip is pretty clear cut to me. Reagan was all against government, before he was a part of it. Once he did, though, he loved him some government pork, didn’t he? He just shoved it into places we’d never see much of a return on, like Star Wars. Meanwhile, infrastructure languished and the social fabric began to decay, as families drifted into two-income households to make ends meet and manufacturing began to shrink. Reagan did more lasting damage to this country than FDR did.
3. “Every dollar that is given away to one person is a dollar taken away from another.” Cute, but wrong. If this were true, capitalism and the profit motive would collapse in a week.
4. No, the Union won the war. Modern Republicans resemble the Republicans of the 1860’s in few ways. It’s modern base is solidly in the area of the old Confederacy. It’s planks have shifted quite visibly away from pro-immigration and certainly on breaking business monopolies. It is not Lincoln’s party anymore, which, considering the number of Neo-confederates still in it these days, is proof enough.
FDR winning WWII within four years was Communism.
Jaim,
I don’t receive SS checks, FDR winning WW2 is a bit of an oversimplification don’t you think. FDR had more than a few former communists and current socialists helping form and run several of his more ambitious projects. You probably don’t know much about that do you?
abanterer,
“3. “Every dollar that is given away to one person is a dollar taken away from another.” Cute, but wrong. If this were true, capitalism and the profit motive would collapse in a week”
Spending tax money has nothing to do with either capitalism or the profit motive. Our government can only spend money that it raises with taxation or borrows and pays back with taxation or receives from selling assets usually resouce based. The vast majority of money spent is through taxation. Again when the government gives money from one individual it is money it got from another. Why is that hard for you to understand? While the Union won the war it was a Republican administration, and Republican issue.
Support for Republicans is spread throughout the country, even in “blue”states there is support for Republicans. Southern support and rural support for Republicans has to do with older traditional values and Constitutional issues as much as anything. (Get ready for the old southern strategy race baiting canard) Democrats try to increase the size and scope of the welfare state to prop up their political coalitions. It is a much harder sell to say “No you can not have that” compared to “Yes, it’s all free take as much as you desire.”
Perhaps you can explain how Uncle Sugar is able to give away free money without taking it from someone else?
And yet, not a single teabagger existed when Bush spent like a drunken sailor and blew the budger surplus that a Democratic president had left him.
At least Obama’s stimulus is creating jobs (according to the Wall Street Journal) and infrastructure. That’s a much better investment that pouring billions (not to mention thousands of lives) into bungled occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan courtesty of Dick Cheney.
And speaking of Cheney, I thought you were a fan of his AO? Remember, the guy who said “deficits don’t matter,” which translated means “government borrowing doesn’t matter.”
Didn’t realize what a pinko lib you were.
AO, you’re living in a completely delusional state of mind if you want to claim that FDR was a president who caused this nation irreparable harm. If Obama is half the President that FDR was, we’re in for a very good 8 years and beyond.
If you are being sincere, you are seriously fucked in the head. I’m concerned. Seek help.
Oh yeah, and you never told me about the Crusades. Apparently, I said something that suggested that I didn’t know much about them… something about killing Muslims or something… care to address that? I would love to be educated by you, since I clearly need to know more about this particular historical period and you CLEARLY know more than I.
I could’ve sworn that the Crusades involved Christians and Muslims slaughtering each other in battle… Shit, you gotta help me out, AO. You and that big, diseased brain of yours… please help.
You missed my point entirely, AO. Money spent in an economy has a multiplier effect; A dollar spent on a service usually buys something that cost less than a dollar to produce. This especially applies to the welfare system, since that money must be spent by necessity, as it is money needed to get by. You’re complaining about the aged and creaky libertarian canard (we all seem to have our own, don;t we?) that taxation is theft.
And even THAT is wrong. You receive value for that dollar, even if it is intangible to you, or not of immediate value. That dollar provides to a system that helps keep the economy running, which you can enter in times of need. I’m not sure what you think an alternative is. Removing the welfare system would provide little tax relief at all, unless you eliminated SS and Medicare, which would be funny to watch. Do you really think America would work better, with people being unable to support themselves during a recession? Looking for work without any available jobs? Where a sizable proportion of money is effectively taken out of the system? If we ever wanted to see what a permanent depression looked like, that’s a great start.
As for republican values – again, they have changed mightily since the Civil War. When I can see conservative teabaggers calling for secession and revolution, it’s not a great comparison to the party of Lincoln. And Republicans are hardly immune to gathering money for their constituencies, lest we forget faith based initiatives, corporate subsidies and military boondoggles such as Star Wars. Can you tell me how spending money on a non-existant missile defense program or abstinence ed is a wise use of my tax money?
2008 – If you’re a blogger who isn’t shouting full-throated condemnations about everything the Administration is doing wrong 24/7/365/8, then you are somehow complicit in every action undertaken by the Administration, even if it’s one of the things you were complaining about vociferously.
2009 – If you’re a blooger who isn’t in 100% lockstep with the administration, then you’re just a whiny bitch.
What a difference 9 months makes.
I think the Bush administration deserved every minute of those denunciations; I don’t recall anything negative said about him from the right blogs until after the 2006 elections turned out a Democratic majority. Then he ‘wasn’t conservative enough’. Whatever.
But to say there’s been no criticism of Obama from the left? Did you even read the article? It wouldn’t take much to find a left blog that took the administration to task on something – try Greenwald for a start.
abanterer,
Your economic analysis doesn’t hold water. Government spending is a zero sum game. Discounting resource sales the Feds can only spend money which is raised through taxation of by borrowing money that is repaid through taxation. Follow the money. Money not spent on personal consumption or taxation enters the economy as capital, the source of prosperity and employment.
Likewise your grasp of national defense issues mirrors your undertanding of economics.
Mambo,
Indeed the crusades involved christians and muslims killing each other. But you phrased it as if that was a bad thing. LOL
“Government spending is a zero sum game.”
According to Dick “deficits don’t matter” Cheney, it is not. But I’ve always thought he was an idiot myself. Do you?
Personally, I’d like to see America run the budget surplus it earned under Clinton. But with something as bad as the Bush Recession, government had the duty to step in and do some job creation. Which is exactly what it did. Which is why our country is emerging from the Bush Recession in far better shape than it ever was during the dark years of 2006-2008.
Which is why Obama is going to win easily in 2012.
Government spending is not a zero sum, AO. Public Infrastructure produces efficiencies that businesses can take advantage of. Spending on public education creates a more productive workforce, and trains the next generation of innovators. Large scale research leads to new technologies. Even beautification efforts improves land value. The welfare system is a counter to the inefficiencies of the capitalist market, which requires a pool of constantly unemployed people to hire from, and hinders mobility by increasing costs to the working poor.
This public investment is not a waste – IF it’s planned well, and administered competently. Conservatives aren’t so good at that these days. Not since Reagan anyway, because they aren’t planners or administrators. They’re zealots. They expect things to work itself out, either through God’s plan, or the Magic Hand of the Markets, depending on their bent. That’s if they care at all – the ‘I got mine’ mentality is quite strong in many conservatives these days. Thus, the eternal ‘taxes=theft’ meme that crops up like dandelions in spring whenever the welfare system comes up. For all the conservative bellyaching about how much welfare costs them in taxes, they have yet to come up with a workable plan to replace it, except the ’screw them’ plan.
If there is a God I pray to him to let Barack Obama have even half the effect on this country that FDR did.
abanterer,
Trace the money to it’s source. Your faith in government to make efficent use of the money it extracts is naive but touching.
Oliver,
Your approval of FDR’s socialist policies, creation of our welfare state, and disregard for our Constitution
is not surprising.
The source of money? I just checked – printed by the US Mint. That was easy. Turns out, the government makes it’s own currency and regulates it, and decides how much of it exists. Oh, I know – your bank account is all electronic these days. Turns out, it converts right to some form of currency, produced by some government somewhere. Unless you’re buying you next flat screen with McDonald’s coupons, I think you’ll be stuck with that.
But I’ve already mentioned several different examples where the government spends money that improve life for us Americans, and you’re still telling me ‘follow the money’? Who are you, Deep Throat? Many of the biggest businesses in America wouldn’t be around if the government hadn’t subsidized them at some point. You want to tell the CEO of Lockheed whether he owes the government anything? Or IBM?