quote:

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Originally posted by AlmasterGM:
Otherwise, there really wouldn't be a reason to hate him seeing as all Bush's policies would still be in place...right?

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P. much all bush policies are still in the same place.

quote:

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Originally posted by pyr0ma5ta:
Because American interventionism is doing so much good everywhere else in the world, right?

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**** human rights who needs em? right? Discarding a political belief when it is convenient or bending to the right is very Obama like.

Stolen but whateve. Why Obama sucks.

FOREIGN POLICY
Prior to March, 2009

* Maintains Right to Attack Pakistan
* Destructive Stance on Israel/Palestine
* Has successfully framed Afghanistan as the "good" war, is intensifying it - with still no benchmarks for "success"

March, 2009

* Maintaining dishonest stance on Armenian genocide
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationw...0,3250498.story
* Ahahahaha sovereignty, Afghanistan? Sure thing WHOOPS
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/200...o-bypass-karzai

MILITARY / WAR
Prior to March, 2009

* Carrying out attacks in Pakistan
* Obama Administration Maintains Bush Position on 'Extraordinary Rendition' Lawsuit, Particularly disgusting after recent reports of torture more severe than waterboarding
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalp...-administr.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/new...errogators.html
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenw...lism/index.html
* More like an 8% increase in Defense spending apparently
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenw...09/02/03/kagan/

March, 2009

* Obama drops the "Enemy Combatant" title for detainees - a superficial change to blanket an essential maintenance of Bush policy 2
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/...e_n_174806.html
* Iraq: We know you banned Blackwater, but, uh, we didn't
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news...cision-by-iraq/

April, 2009

* Plans to contest ruling that military detainees in Afghanistan can sue for their release -- because we just ain't Bushy enough
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/11/w...?_r=2&ref=world
* Reiterated Iraq withdrawal date - that's nice, but reinforcing ramp-up into Afghanistan and keeping 50,000 combat troops in Iraq after August 2010
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/200...end-august-2010

May, 2009

* Keeping that fine military tribunal tradition
* Does not release detainee abuse photos
* Maintaining indefinite preventive detentions without trial

DOMESTIC POLICY
March, 2009

* Appears to be avoiding issue of immigration?
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/19564.html
* Merit Pay! Charter schools!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090310...obama_education
* Fourth amendment protection against illegal search and seizure doesn't apply to cell-phone sites, apparently!
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/20...-administr.html

April, 2009

* Obama DOJ: the government cannot be sued for spying that violates federal surveillance statutes
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenw...bama/index.html
* Rejected torture truth panel for investigating CIA torture, rejects prosecution of culpable CIA agents
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...ml?hpid=topnews

May, 2009

* Will not interfere in individual cases of dismissal based on sexual orientation
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/micha...a_b_203264.html
* Opposing appeal of Wilson v Libby, et al. dismissal
http://www.citizensforethics.org/node/39740

ECONOMY
Prior to March, 2009

* Opposed to Congress imposing stricter regulations on executive compensation and spending
* Neato appointees (see Government / Administration)

March, 2009

* Surprise! The Geithner plan blows
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/20...nancial-policy/

April, 2009

* Eager to support "Credit Card Holders' Bill of Rights" which grants credit card holders the right be more easily ****ed by credit card companies
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090430...ss_credit_cards

May, 2009

* Obama is eager to give unnecessary hundreds of billions to the IMF
http://www.politico.com/news/storie...2400_Page2.html
* Gary Gensler, who worked to exempt the credit default swap market from oversight, to head CFTC
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/w...r_to_head_cftc/
* Threatening to strip SEC of power
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?...FDcw&refer=home

GOVERNMENT / ADMINISTRATION
Prior to March, 2009

* Ugh please don't replace Daschle with Bredesen
* Zeke Emanuel, opponent of single-payer healthcare, tapped as White House healthcare policy advisor
* Kathleen Sebelius named as replacement for Tom Daschle as HHS Secretary - you can look up her record of success here
* COPYRIGHT 2009 OBAMA-VIACOM
* "Yo, China. Civil Rights ain't ****, amirite? Keep up the good work." - Clinton

March, 2009

* Claims 'national security' reasons for hiding details of Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement but permits certain corporations to access such information
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/20...a-declares.html
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/03/1...st-of-corp.html
* US to UN: Condemning racism is fine so long as you don't condemn the racism we condone
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?...0Y&refer=europe
* Treasury officials: it may be our fault, but do be so kind as to blame Dodd for the AIG bonus payments
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenw...dodd/index.html

April, 2009

* Geithner, Summers: Working for Wall Street
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenw...mers/index.html
* Binyam Mohammed’s lawyers may face jail time for insane reason
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/artic...72JDM.DTL&tsp=1

May, 2009

* Nominated superfund polluter lawyer to run DOJ Environment Division
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/micha...a_b_203264.html

quote:

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Originally posted by AlmasterGM:
I thought the general anti-Obama viewpoint was that he was doing too much. Otherwise, there really wouldn't be a reason to hate him seeing as all Bush's policies would still be in place...right?

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It's a classic technique used by the political opposition. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

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quote:

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Originally posted by super323:
P. much all bush policies are still in the same place.

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The syntax of this sentence is rather confusing so perhaps I'm misinterpreting you, but if all/much of Bush's policies are still in place, why are you whining? Isn't more Bush/republican less Obama/democrat what you want?

quote:

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Originally posted by super324:
stuff

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quote:

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Originally posted by AlmasterGM:
Uh, is anyone actually supposed to read all of that? This is like if I told you to go Google "bush sucks" and respond to every hit. If you're going to copy and paste instead of debating the topic for yourself, at least narrow the subject.

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Your framing the argument on a Republican vs Democratic choice. I am framing it on a Left Vs Right argument. I'm saying that Obama isn't Left enough.

But what do you want to debate? how he ****ed up the stimulus bill? how he is ****ing up UHC opportunity, how he is continuing most of Bushs foreign polices? How he is curbing civil liberties? That's is basically a comprehensive list on how Obama said he was going to do one thing and is now saying..."eh...nah". In fact why don't you try and read some of those articles and you will see how hypocritical Obama is being.

quote:

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Originally posted by super324:
Your framing the argument on a Republican vs Democratic choice. I am framing it on a Left Vs Right argument. I'm saying that Obama isn't Left enough.

But what do you want to debate? how he ****ed up the stimulus bill? how he is ****ing up UHC opportunity, how he is continuing most of Bushs foreign polices? How he is curbing civil liberties? That's is basically a comprehensive list on how Obama said he was going to do one thing and is now saying..."eh...nah". In fact why don't you try and read some of those articles and you will see how hypocritical Obama is being.

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Wait, so what you're saying is, politicians lie? ORLY? Stop the presses!

/me points to all his previous posts about why he doesn't trust anyone who would willingly run for office

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quote:

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Originally posted by pyr0ma5ta:
Wait, so what you're saying is, politicians lie? ORLY? Stop the presses!

/me points to all his previous posts about why he doesn't trust anyone who would willingly run for office

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So what are you really saying with your incoherent internet talk? I shouldn't be mad about it because the all do? or are you just justifying what you have been saying? The last part of your post was incoherent with the me and he, who is "He"? Or are you just posting just to post?

quote:

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Originally posted by super324:
So what are you really saying with your incoherent internet talk? I shouldn't be mad about it because the all do? or are you just justifying what you have been saying? The last part of your post was incoherent with the me and he, who is "He"? Or are you just posting just to post?

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Clearly someone doesn't use IRC.

/me is the emote. In chat, that would have come out as:

pyr0ma5ta points to all his previous posts about why he doesn't trust anyone who would willingly run for office

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quote:

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Originally posted by super324:
Your framing the argument on a Republican vs Democratic choice. I am framing it on a Left Vs Right argument. I'm saying that Obama isn't Left enough.

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I'm pretty left of center myself, but as I told all my Obama-hyped friends when I was supporting Clinton--youthful idealism is all well and good, but it generally alienates 50% of the American public in its aims and in the end, defeats itself. Far better to be practical. Obama is a better statesman than Clinton, and he's a skillful politician, so he got my vote, given that his agenda is closest to my own from my field of choices.

There is no miracle candidate who is going to do everything you want--NONE of the candidates from the last election would do any better than Obama (yes, including Ron Paul... libertarianism is not a miracle cure and has its own host of problems) and many of them would be far worse.

If you want a truly left wing leader, you're in the wrong country. 50% of Americans make European conservatives look like pollyanna socialists. Get used to it. You can't FORCE people to move left (or right), they have to do it on their own. Given the reality of the situation, you are left with politicans who will use unrealistic idealism (left or right) to get elected, and then move toward the center once elected if they want to get anything done.

quote:

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Originally posted by PlasteredDragon:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by super324:
Your framing the argument on a Republican vs Democratic choice. I am framing it on a Left Vs Right argument. I'm saying that Obama isn't Left enough.

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[/QUOTE]

This, in a way. I'm glad Obama is being determinedly centrist- he's winning over popular support and his brand of leadership is going to influence (and his support will as well, positively) democrat's politics and chances of reelection in later years. And really, after the thirty years of pretty much nonstop destructive Reaganism, the last thing America needs is a blue equivalent of the same thing. If Obama were to jump hard left immediately and shove everything down everyone's throats, yeah he'd be getting things done, but at what cost? The public would reel in shock and we'd be right back to republican governance in 2013. Furthermore, Obama was elected by a wide margin of centrists. As much as you may not like it, his being centrist actually is keeping his campaign promise- and he honestly is changing the way we do politics.

We all know Fox News and her Spawn all thrive as opposition. Obama is frankly one of the best politicians of this age, certainly up there with Reagan. By staying center/slightly left of center he's not giving his opponents anything they can throw at him while still getting things done. That's why the republican party is becoming an increasingly ridiculous minority- they have nothing they can adequately attack so they have to scavenge for the scraps they can find and use those instead. But as we can all tell, those scraps are a poor substitute- the public ain't buying it. No, it may not look like much ATM, but Obama has his opponents fairly well pinned.

And finally, if what you're worried about, super, is that he hasn't done many BIG things quite yet, remember he has three and a half more years (hopefully seven and a half, we'll see) to accomplish all this. You can't just seize the populace by the throat and drag them off into the dark left corner to shove stuff down their throats, especially when they've just stumbled back into the light after being trapped and subjected to the same manipulation in the dark right corner for eight years. No, you have to let them adjust their eyes first- and let them come to the conclusion on their own that moving tentatively in the opposite direction is a good thing, what they need.

quote:

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Originally posted by Keaner:
Policy aside, at least the rest of the world doesn't hate the US because of it's president anymore. Obama's got that going for him.

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Yikes, are us Obama supporters supposed to be cutting our losses already? It hasn't even been a year yet!

__________________
Originally posted by GLE:
And man... what happens when we get past 300 GDs? Will we need a second MOTL?

And then past 300 MOTLs... we'll need a new internet!

quote:

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Originally posted by Super324:
But what do you want to debate? how he ****ed up the stimulus bill? how he is ****ing up UHC opportunity, how he is continuing most of Bushs foreign polices? How he is curbing civil liberties? That's is basically a comprehensive list on how Obama said he was going to do one thing and is now saying..."eh...nah". In fact why don't you try and read some of those articles and you will see how hypocritical Obama is being.

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Why does this have to be a debate about what other people are doing? The reality is that politicians are always going to play games no matter what party they are from. There's really no use in complaining about it. Since this is undoubtably the case, why don't we be productive - you tell me what positions YOU support and then we can debate about whether said positions are good or bad.

quote:

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Originally posted by PlasteredDragon:
yes, including Ron Paul... libertarianism is not a miracle cure and has its own host of problems)

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quote:

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Originally posted by AlmasterGM:
I disagree with your implied implications. Libertarianism may not be a miracle cure, but it's still a cure. Drugs with side effects are still good for you.

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To spell it out--I find that third-party supporters can get away with the most grandiose claims because their party is never held accountable since it almost never achieves any sort of political power. Third party candidates run, they lose 99.9% of the time, and then they talk about how they "changed the debate". As a result, whenever a discussion cynically turns to how there is no real difference between dems and pubs, or how neither can be relied on to do anything (neither a premise with which I agree, for the record), invariably a third-party supporter will pipe up about how everything would be better if only third party X had gotten into power. I was attempting to circumvent that inevitable turn of the discussion since it is an inherently untestable hypothesis in our political climate. To say nothing of the fact that in any discussion where the point is pragmatism vs idealism, third parties are already pretty much out of bounds.

I'm getting old--I don't really have the stomach to argue about questionable political perspectives that are never going to significantly affect public policy. I don't want to hijack this into a discussion of libertarianism. It's fair to say I take an extremely low view of libertarianism. But it's also off the current topic (Obama: turncoat or pragmatist?) which is why I tried to prevent the inevitable "Ron Paul would have done it better" discussion in the first place.

quote:

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Originally posted by PlasteredDragon:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by AlmasterGM:
I disagree with your implied implications. Libertarianism may not be a miracle cure, but it's still a cure. Drugs with side effects are still good for you.

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[/QUOTE]

Ron Paul would have changed the way we do politics better.

quote:

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Originally posted by Bugger:
Ron Paul would have changed the way we do politics better.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Bugger:
Antidiscrimination laws for gays just passed in my state
Up next: legalization of marraige! (hopefully)

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BTW, Bugsie, you misspelled "marriage". Why do you hate America?

quote:

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Originally posted by PlasteredDragon:
That would be nice. The social direction is clearly toward legalization of gay marriage. In 100 years or so, when it is legal in every state of the USA, those who tried to prevent it from happening will be a historical annotation, giving rise to much tisk-tisking, shaking of the head, and wonderment at how people could be so primitive--pretty much how we look back on those who opposed equal rights for women or various minorities.

BTW, Bugsie, you misspelled "marriage". Why do you hate America?

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Women and minorities were given the right to vote?!? How did that get past me?

__________________
Stages of Death: Anger, Denial, Barganing, Depression, Acceptance, Burial, Decay, Haunting, Revenge, Evil Laugh

I wish my life had rich experiences . Or my white male cheese burgers helped me understand the constitution better

Congrats to the wise Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Maybe Mr. Thomas's fried chicken helped him make that ruling.

quote:

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Originally posted by JoshSherman:
Did I miss something, or is the post above me so racist that the poster should be banned?

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quote:

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Originally posted by PlasteredDragon:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by JoshSherman:
Did I miss something, or is the post above me so racist that the poster should be banned?

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[/QUOTE]

Awful lota' crackas in here.

__________________
Stages of Death: Anger, Denial, Barganing, Depression, Acceptance, Burial, Decay, Haunting, Revenge, Evil Laugh

quote:

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Originally posted by ch3ckm4t3:
The Supreme Court reversed the wise Latina Sotomayor's decision on the fire fighters. For those who don't know the story, basically Connecticut gave a promotion test to a group of fire fighters. However, only white men passed the test (and one Hispanic), so the state through the results out. The men naturally sued the state, but the rich experienced Sotomayor quickly ruled against them. A liberal Hispanic judge was concerned that the wise female Sotomayor (with her magic Puerto Rican food) had hardly considered the case.

I wish my life had rich experiences . Or my white male cheese burgers helped me understand the constitution better

Congrats to the wise Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Maybe Mr. Thomas's fried chicken helped him make that ruling.

Super at least you are happy with Obama's Supreme Court pick. I couldn't stand Bush, but I liked his Supreme Court picks.

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Here's that racism for you, AGM and Gawain.

quote:

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Originally posted by PlasteredDragon:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by JoshSherman:
Did I miss something, or is the post above me so racist that the poster should be banned?

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[/QUOTE]

No need for intros, sir. I'm very familiar with ch3ckm4t3, and his racist posting. I hope this one finally earns him the banhammer he deserves.

What I really meant, though, was that I couldn't really understand the post. It didn't make much sense to me, so maybe it wasn't blatant racism...

__________________
Stages of Death: Anger, Denial, Barganing, Depression, Acceptance, Burial, Decay, Haunting, Revenge, Evil Laugh