what are barack obama's flaws?

I don't have any problem admitting that Dubya saved thousands of lives in Africa with his AIDS policies.

you guys need some of this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WPtEGOp5rI

come on now, awwwwwww, everybody

is there a german word for real things outrunning every metaphor for them?

gabbneb was an ideologue of the center. I love you, Morbs, but you're an ideologue, period -- an ideologue seeks proof for judgments he's made a long time ago. As much as I admire Greenwald and company, they're not as adamantine as you, or as smug.

I wouldn't have time to seek proof. It's shoved under my nose 24/7.

do you need a hug?

The only things I've been wrong about since deciding what the Democrats are, in 1984, are trivial matters.

I've never fucking loved LBJ.

You're getting tiresome.

How's the climate there btw?

LBJ sent thousands of Americans to their deaths needlessly, and, worse, as you reminded us, he knew already it was needless. He also refused to prosecute Nixon for espionage after discovering that he was subverting the Paris peace talks in '68. Heinous! Yet LBJ is responsible for the greatest expansion of the welfare state you and I will ever know. What's so wrong with holding pros and cons at the same time? The test of a first-rate intelligence, etc.

i have a feeling that tombot is not as starry-eyed about Obama now as he was way back when. he doesn't post all that often anymore, though, so i can't say for sure. but seeing as he clearly always took under consideration the facts and circumstances and not necessarily a pre-set ideology before he posted, i think that he's been as mugged by reality as the rest of us.

i've been an Obama skeptic from the start, but more in the Paul Krugman "i don't always like what he's saying and i don't think his approach is the correct one, but i'll reserve judgment till i see how this plays out" vein.

You, me, aerosmith, kevin k, and a couple of others have watched Obama carefully for three years, and admittedly, we're often harsher on people who voted for him. But this I-told-you-so shit is fucking boring.

to some extent this is the paradox of power, right?

that said was uncomfortable tonight hearing obama use phrase "took out" to refer to OBL's assassination.

Exactly. And it's weird trying to play the role of historian when the present is still unfolding.

Generally, when pols do the right thing, it's for the wrong reasons. LBJ's social policies might've been his stab for secular sainthood.

Right, but as you've admitted yourself, look not to intentions.

Look, I'm sure I'll be back to posting look-what-Obama's-done-now links tomorrow, but I can't be honest with myself and deny that Obama's been Coolidge, i.e. responsible for not a single piece of meaningful legislation in three years.

I had a Tanzanian student a few years ago who said the sudden opening of a clinic in 2004 saved his HIV-infected mom's life; she got free antiretroviral treatment. He didn't know shit about politics or history, but I knew Dubya's commitment to fighting AIDS in Africa was at least partially responsible; and I would be a blackguard not to admit it.

Generally, when pols do the right thing, it's for the wrong reasons. LBJ's social policies might've been his stab for secular sainthood.

― already president FYI (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, June 22, 2011 8:06 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

so what? what are the right reasons? who the fuck cares?

i think that there's enough evidence for someone who thinks that LBJ enacted his social policies for "the right reasons" to make that conclusion. dude was a schoolteacher who taught poor Latino students in Texas during the 1930s before he entered politics after all.

but yeah, does it really matter WHAT his "real reasons" were? or the "real reasons" for any politician?

what are the right reasons? who the fuck cares?

I guess the people who are fans of the politicians they vote for.

Alfred, you're making the nabisco mistake; I post here to vent, not to perform Serious Political Analysis. No interest in that.

off-topic: this is not my Field but it was my understanding that lbj had been interested in domestic anti-poverty reform since he was like five years old. anyway yeah of course he is responsible for vietnam escalation; the buck stops there. i guess the distinction i was making was that johnson's vietnam policy seems to have come more from exasperation, hawk advisers, and texas macho, whereas the expansion of the security state and the invasion of iraq were actual goals of the bush admin, the same way attacking the depression by Trying Everything was an actual goal of fdr's.

and many (if not most) people are more like Alfred's Tanzanian student than us Internet politics nerds. after the office of my parents' right-wing dickwad of a US Representative helped them out of a tight spot, there wasn't shit i could do or say to persuade them to vote for said dickwad's opponent. and i can't blame them for standing behind that guy either.

Nah, dlh: LBJ was a fervent believer in the National Security Sate.

my only point re: lbj is that lbj did not go into office thinking YOU KNOW WHAT I WOULD LIKE MY ADMINISTRATION TO BE REMEMBERED FOR? AN ENDLESS NIGHTMARISH JUNGLE WAR THAT IRREVOCABLY MANGLES THE EMPIRE'S IDEA OF ITSELF, whereas rumsfeld and cheney had been pining after iraq forever and basically proceeded as they had intended as soon as they found a pretext. and that this is a difference between presiding over (and of course being totally responsible for!) events and Leading them: being overtaken by history vs. driving it. this is not a moral argument at all.

I thought you studied JFK.

IN THAT DOCUMENT

BOWWWWWWWW

LAY THE VIETNAM WAR.

JUST GIT ME ELECTED AND AH'LL GIT YA YER DAMN WAR

also do you think even LBJ knew what the fuck his motives were? does anyone? what is this war in the heart of nature? why does nature vie-- oh, wait, came over from the terrence malick thread. sorry.

lyndon... barack... always u wrestle inside me

lyndon larouche

"For all his talk about 'winning the future' (and his undeniable intellectual gifts), Obama seems to think that solving immediate problems is the key to political victory."

http://www.tnr.com/article/not-even-past/91367/obama-presidency-roosevelt-economy-election-progressives

Government has to start living within its means, just like families do. We have to cut the spending we can’t afford so we can put the economy on sounder footing, and give our businesses the confidence they need to grow and create jobs.

-- Barack Obama, July 2, 2011

i remember thinking back in November 2008 that the country had wisely chosen FDR over Herbert Hoover ...

Since we have no idea what the Speaker and Obama are agreeing to in their secret negotiations, Frum speculates:

And now President Obama has summoned Republicans to another round of negotiations over the debt ceiling.

Perhaps he will there deploy some previously invisible form of leverage.

To the uninstructed eye, however, it looks like Obama has set up yet another lopsided bargaining table: He needs the Republicans to give him something, anything, that he can claim as a victory. This need, however, perversely puts the Republicans in the situation where if they give him something, anything, it will be represented as a defeat. The president’s own weakness has had this perverse effect on his political opponents: it has reduced the value of his own concessions (no matter how big) and hugely exaggerated the significance of any offset he achieves (no matter how small).

i don't know that that's so different from how things usually are, now, in a climate in which depriving obama of wins has superseded the underlying political logic. perhaps having made a slightly more pronounced step towards declaring a stand-off entrenches that all, somewhat, but probably not enough to outweigh the potential benefit of doing it (standing up & calling out republicans). like the mathematics of how his concessions play pales in comparison to the narrative anyway.

i think obama obviously has a lot of personal political failings but i dont love the desire to foist the failings of our political institutions on this one guy--if he had a different view of politics or was "better at bargaining" that still wouldnt change the incentives in play, for the GOP in particular

i mean we might have had vaguely better outcomes but

him murdering caylee anthony might just cost him the re-election

yeah but if he hadnt murdered caylee the political incentives for republicans would be the same

i mean sure he should have cleared his google search history and cleaned his trunk! but the gop would have nailed him anyway

gop mom

to back away from Casey Anthony for a minute: the institutional obstacles that Obama et. al. face are indeed formidable. however, one of his key flaws is to accept them as given instead of trying to change them. as i've said before, if President McCain in 2009 enjoyed a 59/41 majority and all that was standing in his path of Total GOP Domination was the stupid filibuster, the filibuster would've been gone tout suite. actions like this were NEVER on the plate for President "change we can believe in."

he "lied" about his mom?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/14/us/politics/14mother.html

well that does it

I'm sure it'll pass quickly, but if the story were true--and I skimmed it very quickly--that wouldn't be good. The one thing that Obama has maintained with all the people who voted for him (outside of this board, I mean) and probably even some who didn't is his basic decency or whatever you want to call it. Pulling an Al Gore with his mother's death would really undermine that.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/opinion/sunday/what-happened-to-obamas-passion.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=opinion

feelin a lot of that, tbh

i agree with a lot of that too. obama's appeased the bullies way too much, either because he secretly agrees with them, has to appeal at the end of the day to the same power brokers the GOP does, doesn't know how to fight back, is so naive he believes he can transcend their determination to destroy him, and/or is so stuck up he refuses to fight fire with fire in terms of maintaining the dirty work of day-to-day effective messaging. i still have some hope he'll wise up and put the assholes in their place but that hope is fleeting

thought the "i'd love to offer a diagnosis here" bit was sort of unnecessarily tantalizing

especially since he sort of went ahead and did it anyways

glad these were noted --

The president tells us he prefers a “balanced” approach to deficit reduction, one that weds “revenue enhancements” (a weak way of describing popular taxes on the rich and big corporations that are evading them) with “entitlement cuts” (an equally poor choice of words that implies that people who’ve worked their whole lives are looking for handouts).

-- since obama's belief in the innate seriousness of dessicated phrases like "revenue enhancements" is what's finally gonna send him to hell. all that fuss about his book and he turned out just as immorally illiterate as his co-workers.

I get that O should be louder and more direct about what he wants for the country, but I read these articles and I think the same thing: it's fucking congress's job to pass the laws that the prez abides by. It's just lazy to pick off Obama from high atop the executive rather than work through congress member by member. Shit, I'd think it might even be easier to call congressional leaders on their bulshit day in and day out cause it's so thick and steamy. I do like that the O disappointment op-eds lay out what's wrong and should be right pretty well.