what are barack obama's flaws?

i lold so hard at his joke about murdering people with the tools of his unchecked executive power

"youre sooooooooo fucking cool mr president" i said

i remember that

u r an enabler max, you should think abt that

and i remember the expression on glenn greenwald's face afterwards, he couldn't believe it

he was so angry that i disregarded his opinion immediately

They do say, in comedy, that when a liberal man's daughters become teenagers, CONSERVATIVISM AHOY.

who's talking about Russ Feingold?

i can't wait for morbs to castigate us again six hours from now for loving obama's joke!! cuz we really did love it

Oh yeah, he's also an elitist, as the children of single moms tend to be.

lol wut?

In case, it turns out true than the following consequences await the 1st black American president:

1. He will lose the support of the mass public who are his fans cum well wishers. This will definitely lower the prospects of his winning the subsequent elections.
2. Besides, a permanent scar will be marked on the US Presidency.
3. It will also raise the debate that ‘Is US presidency jinxed’? One of the biggest democracies in the world, USA has always been in the news for the adulterous flings of presidents. John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe, Bill Clinton and Monica and now Barack Obama & Vera Baker.
4. Also, on a personal front, Obama’s image will get completely tainted.
5. His marriage with Michelle Obama can also suffer a serious crisis. The recent break-ups of villas of Tiger Woods and Jesse James will only give jitters to Obama supporters.

http://www.worldcantwait.net/index.php/features-mainmenu-220/the-war-of-terror/6280-crimes-are-crimes-no-matter-who-does-them

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-june-15-2010/respect-my-authoritah

^These clips illustrate that the popular mantra "He only spoke like a centrist in '08" is bullshit btw

"youre sooooooooo fucking cool mr president" i said

― max, Tuesday, 4 May 2010 Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink
i remember that

― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 4 May 2010

The popular mantra is "dude is and was always a centrist, pay attention"

like, if you're so smart how come you didn't notice that?

I believed what he said up there, like Mordy still does

lol @ morbs coming back 5 days later

Don't call it a comeback, I been here for years

Alfred: you're right, there's a lot to wade through here. If you can sum up complaints you've posted above, I'll respond.

I was exhilirated when health care reform passed on that Sunday last March. No more devastating portrait of Republican cynicism and bad faith than their no votes and sententious floor speeches. But, to use a tired metaphor, the final bill was like giving a starving child a bag of Doritos and a can of Sprite: it staved off hunger, and probably kept him from death, but unsatisfying and unhealthy once he's stabilized. With Obama much more popular than Congress, he could have spent a commensurate level of capital to get the liberal parts of the House passed; instead he drifted and lost control of the debate.

Fair enough, but the way the Senate's set up, I would say there was no way he was getting the liberal stuff through no how--not even if he'd tried when he was sitting at 70% approval soon after the inauguration. (And by liberal parts, I'm assuming you mean the public option.) Not with exhortion artists like Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman as part of your no-margin-of-error majority. What I really give him credit for is making a second push after the Scott Brown election. (You can certainly argue that he didn't do enough to head that off in the first place.) He could have easily just shrugged and turned his attention elsewhere.

"extortion"...I think an "exhortion artist" is someone who breathes so hard they make an art of it.

Not with exhortion artists like Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman as part of your no-margin-of-error majority.

if the majority leaders had the courage to strip these guys of their committees they might find themselves in possession of much more leverage. the "extortion" in question occurs with a willing partner.

I'm actually going to agree with you there. I wish Obama had simply gone in front of a camera and said, "Here's what Senator Nelson is asking in return for his vote on health care." In a perfect world, I would love to see that happen. Why it doesn't--what repercussions are lying in wait for any president who does so--I'm not really sure.

I believed what he said up there, like Mordy still does

lol morbz. you're a dense motherfucker.

Why it doesn't--what repercussions are lying in wait for any president who does so--I'm not really sure.

well, this is at the crux of why some of us (me) who are angry to the point of self-caricature at the president are as pissed as we are: the obvious reading, and it seems to me the fair reading, is "the president doesn't really mind making such concessions to Nelson; when push comes to shove, it's not something he's willing to stand up for if it means any blowback at all."

To be fair, I'm sick of the Obama-shoulda-studied-the-LBJ-playbook line of criticism. Johnson had been in the House and a minority and majority leader in the Senate. By the time he became prez he'd known these men who were once colleagues better than his own children: he knew their favorite pork projects and their vanities. He was an overbearing, obnoxious man. Obama is not that man.

If we just got rid of Congress it would be so much easier to get things done!

That probably is the right reading, and if so--even as someone who mostly defends Obama--that's the one thing that's most disappointed me, that he didn't...not exactly end all the horse-trading, but at least call some bluffs and bring it more out into the open. That moment has undoubtedly passed. Another reading might be that he's exactly the incremental centrist many believe he is, and Nelson and Lieberman are just convenient foils to get what he wanted all along. I don't know. But in the end, if he sets some things in the right direction, and, in a phrase Andrew Sullivan's been using recently, "gets stuff done," I think that's something.

Reading Reagan's diaries last year, I was surprised to find dozens of crabby references to the intransigence of the "far right," so if Obama's annoyed by progressives he can certainly cement his philosophical similarities with Reagan.

One other thing about Johnson. He had an incalcuable amount of goodwill on his side when he took office because of JFK's assassination--even the goodwill Obama took into office doesn't compare--and he had enough imagery of attack-dogs and firehoses on the news every night to literally shame a lot of senators into finally doing something they didn't necessarily want to do. There were a lot of horror stories concerning health care trotted out the past couple of years, but the effect just wasn't as visceral, I would guess, as those images from the south during the early '60s.

Also, racial inequality makes more sense to America narrative/mythology than economic inequality. The idea that if you work hard you'll succeed is deeply engrained into American mythos. I don't know anyone (conservative or liberal) who gets as worked up about class inequality as they do about racial inequality. Even people who supported universal healthcare seemed to be making very few moral/ethical arguments for it, as opposed to civil rights which always seems to take a moral ground. I mean, look at history. Lots of people tried to pass healthcare before now (including FDR!) and couldn't get it done.

To Morbz, wrt to the centrist narrative, I spent most of the 2008 campaign telling conservative friends that Obama was much more centrist than the right-wing media was making him out to be. This was a huge trope throughout 2008 for me, and it seemed to be all over the media. It could be you've actually confused right-wing rhetoric with leftist rhetoric re: Obama. You're right that right-wingers think Obama is much more left-wing than he actually is. Tho I suspect what's going on is that you only feel like you can critique Obama's politics if you first force people to acknowledge that they hoped he'd be X, and really he's turned out to be Y. If people were expecting him to be Y, and he turned out to be Y, it takes a lot of the wind out of your sails. I don't see why that should be a problem tho. Just complain that he isn't doing what you want. You don't need to lie about people's positions to make an arguments.

Great post!

(no offence meant to Dr M)

Even people who supported universal healthcare seemed to be making very few moral/ethical arguments for it

idk i don't think this is true at all

I don't see why that should be a problem tho. Just complain that he isn't doing what you want. You don't need to lie about people's positions to make an arguments.

dude cmon i think you're being disingenuous - this is exactly what people say when they're frustrated with obama or anyone mostly, if examples of speeches or campaign promises he's made are cited it's just to point out "hey...you kinda said you weren't gonna do shitty stuff like this"

It's one thing to say, "Obama said X, he's doing Y," which is perfectly legit. But it sounds like so much of the rhetoric (from Morbz and Glenn Greenwald both) is like, "You thought he was X, he's really Y," which is really patronizing and also bullshit. It's like saying you're pro-life because you want to make it sound like the people who disagree with you are anti-life. I've never said that Obama keeping that kid in Guantanamo Bay isn't shitty, I've just said it isn't surprising. But Morbz is always setting it up like the argument is whether Obama is perfect or not when that is obviously not the argument.

Glenn Greenwald would be a million times less shrill if he stopped trying to prove that Obama is a centrist and just assumed everyone understood that and attacked his positions. This whole discourse of, "I have proof he's really a centrist" is completely insane and I really don't see the value in it. Who are you trying to convince? The Republicans?

Out of curiosity, who out of the field of candidates in 2008 would have been a credible leftist leader?

greenwald links to ppl like benen, yglesias, klein, etc. telling proggies that Obama's doing his best for them, which he then feels the need to refute, understandably. it's not like iatee, say, doesn't make the argument that he's hamstrung by congress etc. xpost

Those people are, tho, for the most part centrists themselves, especially Klein. Or people like Yglesias are straddling the line between centrist + more leftist.

Out of curiosity, who out of the field of candidates in 2008 would have been a credible leftist leader?

Kucinich

idk, maybe it's just that I know more conservative people that I draw the lines further down than someone like Glenn Greenwald (who doesn't even live in the United States anymore afaik?) who maybe forgets what it's like to be the most leftist person you know. People are shocked when I tell them I'm more left-wing than Obama or the Democrat party. That's still a very radical position in this country.

Btw, I live in NYC, which is itself way more to the left than the rest of the country, and I'm still among the most left-wing people I know.

"Kucinich"

Is there Kucinich fanfiction out there that can point to what our alt-history would be like if he won?

I used to get into Obama/Kucinich arguments with the two guys who did the radio show after mine. Obama (according to them) was the crass politician, a total fraud, while Kucinich was the high-minded idealist, and if I didn't believe it, all I had to do was check his record going back to his days in Cincinnati. The two guys left the station sometime in 2009, so I never got to ask them about Kucinich's role in passing health care, which proved that he was either a) such an idealist that he realized he had to bend a little for the good of the country, or b) his vote could be had for a ride on Air Force One.

xp ask question -> get answer -> insult the person who answered

great look there

all I had to do was check his record going back to his days in Cincinnati

Kucinich = Cleveland

"ask question -> get answer -> insult the person who answered"
I dunno how you parse Kucinich fanfiction requests as an insult, but I was serious!
I hadn't found about this until now but the mafia hit on Kucinich story is pretty amazing.