Interesting AMA with someone who has worked on Congressional and Presidential campaigns.
http://www.reddit.com/r/tabled/comme..._presidential/
Interesting AMA with someone who has worked on Congressional and Presidential campaigns.
http://www.reddit.com/r/tabled/comme..._presidential/
Get that weak shit off my track
This the kind of stuff I wish I could say to Mo'.Clinton was legendary for getting Congressmen and a room and say "hey buddy, now look we can figure this out." Obama says "I'm right, and that's it." Forgive me, I hope we NEVER elected another college professor as President again
Not a bad person, just a limited politician.
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There is a reason why I posted that rhetorical question, about you understanding how our government works. There are THREE BRANCHES of government. The White House is only one.
Ordinarily you could say "yes, lets look at the President's record" peruse through the bills and legislation, and come to a decision about his Presidency based on that. however, this President has had a non functioning Congress, where they've had to pass resolutions just to keep the doors open, where they've shut the government down, where they haven't passed a budget, they haven't voted on items, they've voted against items that have already been passed, signed and legislated, etc.
So, stop pretending that Obama is the only arm of government. If the Bills he had proposed and sent to the House to be voted on, were voted on, you could say "let's remove the Republicans from the picture and examine only the White House."
If that were the case, we'd have single payer health insurance, probably would have been a larger stimulus, the veterans jobs act would have been signed a long time ago, the jobs act, the infrastructure bill, the farm bill would have been different, Glass/ Steigel probably would have been reintroduced, Dodd/ Frank wouldn't have been declawed, and it would have been enforced, the agency that overlooks consumer protections would have had its appointed head in place and would have been functioning, the funding would have been put in place to close GITMO etc etc etc. but all those things didn't happen because the REPUBLICANS vetoed, blocked, didn't bring up to vote, filibustered etc etc etc because that's how the three branches of government work or doesn't in this case.
Any discussion, or judgement of Obama absent the foul actions of the Republicans is nothing more than piling on. The Republicans are who have shut the government down. Those are the facts.
As for his fuck ups.
Lets stop and consider that where you and Mario think that he is the same war monger as Bush was, Obama has not invaded a single country, occupied a single country, and threatened anybody. His rhetoric has never been inflammatory towards other countries.
Bush, by contrast, invaded two countries, occupied both and was well on his way to starting another war with Iran at the end of his Presidency. Throughout all the revolutions and uprisings that happened in the Middle East in the last few years, we sent not a single soul, not a single soldier to risk their lives. The only "engagement" was a few bombs dropped on Libyan Government troops, from a fighter jet thousands of feet in the air.
The Syria thing. No US involvement. Even when the Republicans were calling for us to get involved in a "humanitarian" effort, before such a thing called ISIS existed, they were calling for us to arm and train and equip the very people, the very group that became ISIS, and Obama resisted that call.
And whey ISIS started trying to implement their vision of a Caliphate reaching from North Africa to Asia, and started beheading people,and the same Republicans were now calling for us to do something about them now, not arming them and training them like they wanted to before, but eliminating them, Obama stood firm in his resolve that we would not get involved alone.
Drones. I'm against them. You know what i'm against even more? Involving our troops in extended engagements in hostile territory trying to flush out a warlord or AQ big shot hiding in a village in Yemen. It's called the lesser evil. It's used to describe a situation where you have two shit choices and you try to make a decision and choose the one you think is the least worst. When we have intel about terrorists especially those high up on the AQ or whatever it is front, I want to see action taken to take them out. I would hate to see boots on the ground. Fuck that shit. And trying to get diplomatic permission to act takes time and time is the enemy of opportunity in such case. Send a drone. Drop a bomb. I'm fine with that. It's not ideal. But YOU TELL ME, WHAT'S THE ALTERNATIVE?
NSA wiretapping. Sorry. That's a Bush program. Obama should have ended it. I don't know exactly what his reasons are. Whatever they are, I don't think it's enough. Are we getting good enough intel to act on to take out hostiles and eliminate terrorist acts before they happen? I dont know. If we are, then say so, and i'm reluctantly ok with it. Otherwise, fuck the Patriot Act.
Are those reasons to believe I have been betrayed by Obama. Hell no.
Last edited by neanderthal; November 12th, 2014 at 11:40 PM.
Where you think he is a limited politician, ask yourself, how did he get Iran to not only relent on letting arms inspectors back into Iran, but also to get rid of their biological weapons.Originally Posted by article
Pressure on Russia vis a vis Ukraine?
Look at the surgical precision of the OBL assasination vs the drone bombings in Yemen.
Consider the hijacking of the budget(?) over, whatever the fuck it was, that led to the sequester. They threatened, he hemmed and hawed, they acted, they got egg on their face.
This guy is an astute politician and most people don't realise it. He is playing chess, not checkers. he doesn't apply the same blunt axe to everything like his predecessor. And he, imo, is leaving less of a trail of destruction in his wake while doing so.
I really wish he'd taken care of taxing corporations and the banks that led the recession, but,... he's not perfect.
A *great* politician would have been able to break through a, as you put it, non-functioning Congress. Obama's big failure was his inability to get the other two branches of government on his team. The cop-out is to say that was impossible. The simple fact is that he didn't do it. Suggesting anything more is guessing. What this country has sorely needed for nearly a century is a leader - an individual's whose wisdom and wit can transcend partisan politics either by rallying politicians or rallying the populace to the point the politicians have no choice. Obama is a smart guy and likely legitimately has the right answers, but he's no more a leader than Bush was. That is his failing - and it's a failing typical of smart people. An inability to convince people of "the right answers" because, in the mind of a smart person, the answers are self-evident and don't need explanation. A smart guy who can't convince people to follow him is no better than a dumb guy who can lead a country in the wrong direction.
My prediction is that Hilly is not exactly hard on for compromises.
That's the emotional part of the betrayal, Obama made the people believe he was rallying the country into a progressive regime of forward thinking capitalism, instead he defaulted on his political momentum and got stuck in the muddy banks of the Potomac. He gets A+ on capitalism. though.
Like other people on this board have said, "Sure Mr. Chicago, we disagree on a lot of ideological points, you and me, but we both believe that a strong push for infrastructure investment is badly needed in the middle of America to kick our gears into motion, and if you say you're gonna do it, in spite of all our disagreements; You have my vote, Professor Dude!" And He did not deliver on that compromise.
He got the swing voters by promising certain elements of pragmatic government he simply wasn't able to deliver on. Because he either watered down his proposals [Infrastructure, Healthcare] for the sake of bipartisan support or completely ignored those compromises [Patriot Act, Latino issues].
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