what are barack obama's flaws?

i mean j0hn can u at least admit that the truth is somewhere in the middle

yeah but that middle is still miles away from anything more complimentary than "what an incredible disappointment this presidency is" no matter how low your expectations were. also, "a health care bill" is like the saddest thing, and it's already depressing that, no matter how ugh the bill that goes through ends up being, we're being prepped for "hey, give the guy credit: he got a health care bill through!" it's like if I promise you a car and I give you a Yugo, I think you're within your rights to say "this is a fucking Yugo"

ingrate

"Hey stfu it runs and gets you down the street" ok fair enough but I was hoping for at the very least a gremlin

the food here is terrible, and in such small portions

Stop it – I'm hungry.

yeah but that middle is still miles away from anything more complimentary than "what an incredible disappointment this presidency is" no matter how low your expectations were. also, "a health care bill" is like the saddest thing, and it's already depressing that, no matter how ugh the bill that goes through ends up being, we're being prepped for "hey, give the guy credit: he got a health care bill through!" it's like if I promise you a car and I give you a Yugo, I think you're within your rights to say "this is a fucking Yugo"

― a full circle lol (J0hn D.), Monday, December 14, 2009 12:36 PM (17 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

an 'incredible disappointment'? imo, huge overstatement considering the state the country was in when he got here, & the fact that he was only elected 12 months ago & wasnt even in office until less than a year ago, in the middle of a huge economic collapse. WHAT A HUGE DISAPPOINTMENT. i dont understand -- are you trying to, like, agitate from the left by being disingenuous now? does pushing him left require you pull a chicken little routine about his presidency, & act like a health care bill is somehow not a big deal?

i think being honest about whats going on doesnt mean you shouldnt be disappointed, but christ

well, to follow that analogy, who is to blame for the yugo being a yugo? (the president can be one of your answers.)

yeah until somebody gets prosecuted for using my fucking tax dollars to torture human beings, "incredible disappointment" is an understatement as far as I'm concerned. if anything's worth spending political capital on, it's torture. after that, the subverting of the Constitution for political ends. both things from which we're "moving forward."

"oh so it's YOUR money" fucking right it is. if you pay taxes, you paid for somebody to torture prisoners. we know that. the guilty should be brought to justice. they won't be. that's an incredible disappointment.

so when you grudgingly voted for barack obama you expected him to swiftly bring cheney to trial & prosecute him for war crimes

im not saying he shouldnt have btw -- just wondering if youre so incredibly disappointed because you thought at any time that was going to happen

deej i admire your stansmanship but on torture or surveillance or 'executive privilege' u cannot

I certainly didn't expect his Justice Department to file briefs with the Supreme Court urging it not to hear arguments in favor of releasing photos of torture.

goole stop asking for "perfection" - only Jesus Christ would make any effort to right such wrongs, everybody else needs to focus on what's important: a win in the Senate

I knew he supported the FISA compromises and would probably keep Bush's cool new executive branch powers, but Holder's move there was breathtaking in its capitulation to the unitary executive theory of government.

j0hn bro you are making it v difficult to agree w/ you

what the fuck dude stop misinterpreting me -- im talking about your stance here of calling this a 'failure' of a presidency -- what president's gold standard are you holding this up to -- presidents are assholes -- FDR interned japanese ppl -- every president is 'disappointing,' im talking about working w/in the world we actually live in

goole stop asking for "perfection" - only Jesus Christ would make any effort to right such wrongs, everybody else needs to focus on what's important: a win in the Senate

― a full circle lol (J0hn D.), Monday, December 14, 2009 12:44 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

what does 'a win in the senate' mean -- do you mean health care? because i do think that is 'what's important'

But that doesn't stop one from saying, "Presidents are assholes -- FDR interned American citizens of Japanese descent – but here's how Obama in particular is an asshole."

and to be clear deej if he'd hang a scooter libby out to dry, something, anything, to indicate something other than total moral cowardice in the face of what 8 years of bush turned this country into - a nation of people for whom torture & indefinite detainment without charge is an unpleasant fact of daily life which they subsidize with their own money - I'd be placated. "moving forward" is bullshit. the man in the oval office has the names & notes of the people who tortured. either them or the people who commanded them need to be brought to justice. it's never going to happen. 100% permanent no-excuses crap imo.

i find myself searching for the reasons for doing that [xp to Alfred: re: the torture photos] -- necessity of legal continuity? need to keep the CIA happy while they are dying in SW Asia? foreign gov'ts have begged for no more riots in muslim cities? -- because the prospect of Holder thinking it's really the right thing to do, is really really gross.

j0hn i really don't know how to respond to what you are saying. is there really a response? i could repeat myself. i probably will.

(and in the face of that, yeah, whatever, a health care bill - deck chair on the damn titanic if we just go "yeah, some bad shit went down, you guys don't really need to know about it, let's just move along")

(goole I was being sarcastic, pretty sure you & I are on the same side here)

can someone fill me in on the STD apology for o's lack of movement on stuff like torture etc? is it still "it'd tear the country apart?" or is it that he'd blow capital and get stuffed on healthcare and other plans that Look Forward?

got ya -- so universal health care is simply a mea culpa for not prosecuting gwb for torture

Listen to Beltway hack Chuck Todd tell us what would happen if Obama pressed ahead on prosecuting lawyers who authorized torture:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2LroD5_IbU

xp evidently I can't keep up

ugh @ chuck todd not realizing that his framing is exactly the problem

iPhone, can't watch. my q was srs btw

"best" answer about torture: it would be extremely distressing to the CIA and military, who need to be kept in some kind of fighting shape so we can get out of two wars (u can not agree on this, of course), and yes, suck up any valuable oxygen needed for health care, the economy, anything else. and it has no constituency. americans like torture. they took to it very easily and don't want to let it go. they are mostly happy to forget about it and move on.

"worst" answer: obama and his ppl are narcissistic enough to think that merely electing them to not-torture is a good enough solution.

none of these is a good answer, mind u.

and, see, Todd is yet another guy who thinks that Practical People understand how torture is a "distraction" for the President.

thx goole

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the obvious, which is that photos of the US actually torturing detainees would be first-rate recruitment materials for al-Qaeda etc. I'm sure if considerations of Americans' safety didn't factor into it, Obama would like nothing better than to embarrass and shame the Bush administration. It's pretty much a slam-dunk in terms of domestic politics. The fact that he refrains shows some of the maturity required of being commander in chief, IMO.

can someone fill me in on the STD apology for o's lack of movement on stuff like torture etc? is it still "it'd tear the country apart?"

it's "he wouldn't get reelected and be able to do the things he really wants to do/the really important things" IIRC and to try to make it plain that I do get the argt, I just don't agree with it: look, there are small gains to be made, which have real impact on people's lives: health care; the economy; jobs. On these, the Democrats, led by Obama, can make gains, and repair some of the damage to the system done by 8 years of neocon economics (really 28 years of neocon economics I'd guess, gotta defer to people who can really describe how Clinton engineered the years that followed Bush I). If Obama chooses to do something huge & make-or-break like prosecute members of the previous administration (or people who would be compelled to point up the chain of command), he risks the midterm elections for sure, and probably reelection, and these losses would have human costs -- less people getting the jobs we hope the Obama administration will produce; less statesmanship and back to the adversarial international ways of the previous administration, which demonstrably harmed us at home and abroad; less of the small good gains we believe tend to be made on behalf of normal working people under Democratic administrations.

How'd I do?

"so universal health care is simply a mea culpa for not prosecuting gwb for torture"

I accept this apology!

so deej is your position seriously "nothing can be done" on torture? like, it happened, too bad so sad for dudes who got tortured, we promise not to do it again?

um, no ...?

it's "he wouldn't get reelected and be able to do the things he really wants to do/the really important things"

jesus christ will you fucking stop it with this re-election line since NO ONE HAS EVER SAID THIS TO YOU EVER on this board. nor have I read any pundits say anything like it.

yeah i dont know where the re-election thing is coming from j0hn is that something your irl friends say or what

irl friends?

thx j0hn!

intemperate raccoon lovers

do you guys live in some dreamworld where 1st term presidents with sympathetic house & senate are never thinking about elections?

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2007/03/01/01_raccoon_lgl.jpg

don't thank me yet gbx evidently my understanding of the whole thing is based on a fallacy, to wit, that politicians sometimes seek reelection

no one here is arguing that Obama should/shouldn't do things based on how it would affect his chances for re-election, is all I'm saying.

Obama is surely performing that calculus, but that's beside the point.

I'd argue not so much a fallacy as much as an unstated assumption but that arguing would take away time I could spend posting this:

http://www.lepenquotidien.com/valentine.png

GAH

Obama is surely performing that calculus, but that's beside the point.

wtf, that's the entire point

"no one's ever said that to you" - conceded! how does that even matter?