what are barack obama's flaws?

You honestly think that single payer is a possibility in 2010 America

i do

Even Joe Namath couldn't get it passed with this Congress

Or, if we're being honest here, with this American public

joe namath, legislator

something like half country, a whole political party, most of its media, and every single last one of the winners in the current health care game, is skeptical to outright warlike against the idea of single payer health care. and yet, because we aren't talking about it, it must mean, obama is just too weak. "weakness" doesn't seem like the operative problem here.

how about something between single payer and the pathetic compromise of a compromise they wound up with, BEFORE Massachusetts Brown?

like the house bill? sounds good to me!

http://www.moviesonline.ca/movie-gallery/albums/userpics//DreamerPoster.jpg
l-r: morbs, j0hn D.

morbs maybe you could call chuck schumer and tell him to get on it

xp

Bam's the head of the party -- he calls in every member of Congress on January 21, 2009 and says "If you won't support me on this, we'll find a candidate in yr district who will." It'll cost you seats? What does that change, given that you can't get anything good through WITH 60 votes??

curiously, i've never seen anyone take on this question: how happy are canada and europe with the prospect of subsidizing US drug consumers?

we always get told that US insuerance-buyers are subsidizing us! US big pharma does all the heavy lifting, they say. which is a bit uh imo coz the big pharma companies... some of them are non-american im guessing. probably multinational now, idk. ici bitches.

not "exercise his will," Tracer -- package and put makeup on his ideas, the way so many goddamn extremist GOP ideas got Dem votes for 8 years cuz they were so fundamentally American.

yes, the far-flung future dream of anything less than constant capitulation

you big dreamer you

next thing you'll be saying Democrats should vote with their party

How smart would it be then, to put yourself "on the line" for a guaranteed losing position?

^This is really really really cynical

this conversation is boring. I'm bored now.

I can't believe anyone actually thinks single payer, with this Congress, and this American public, is anything other than that

I mean wow

shut up Tracer you're boring Shakey Mo

Didnt most people that voted for Obama think he was gonna bring the universal health care? Wasn't that a huge selling point in 2008? Before the Fox News misinfo shitstorm of summer 2009?

sometimes i think the dems are completely tone deaf and clueless and the repubs are sociopaths. only sometimes, strangely.

srsly tho you guys have boy-who-cried-wolf the "you're asking him to work magic!" line so bad at this point - anybody's disappointed with the president about anything ever, the go-to line is "you have unrealistic expectations of the president." so I put it to you Tracer! what can one reasonably ask of a president? what can he do? what ought one expect of a president - what are the things one's support can reasonably be thought to depend on?

The main thing I expect the President to do is not say or do things that will get us blown up. Anything he/she does beyond that that I agree with is pretty much icing on the "don't get me killed" cake.

so how did W work out by that standard? (for the last 7-1/3 years)

lol Dan every president save one has a perfect track record then & we can pretty much just vote for whoever as long as we don't elect Bush again

I can get down w/that actually

Going into subway now J0hn but I'm gonna come up with something real good

(actually along with "don't get me blown up" is "don't get my job taken away", which aside from political philosophy goes a long way towards explaining why I like Clinton and dislike Bush II)

srsly tho you guys have boy-who-cried-wolf the "you're asking him to work magic!" line so bad at this point - anybody's disappointed with the president about anything ever, the go-to line is "you have unrealistic expectations of the president." so I put it to you Tracer! what can one reasonably ask of a president? what can he do? what ought one expect of a president - what are the things one's support can reasonably be thought to depend on?

― Lee Dorrian Gray (J0hn D.), Friday, January 29, 2010 1:11 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i think a lot of people on this board have demonstrated a fair amount of disappointment in the prez since the brown election for his unwillingness to make a strong stand on the senate bill. i know ive been disappointed.

i'm not sure obama can get as much done as he would like because congress is filled with mouth-breathers and folks who are careerists and not idealists. i do think that obama is better than he has appeared (while he probably has some careerist in him as well, like most politicians, i tend to believe he's way left rather than middling around in the neutral zone like he has been) but he's keeping an eye on not handing everything back to the republicans this year and in '12, because i think that what he might like to say or do would be rather easy ammunition for morans.

i mean look, wed have a public option, right now, if we didnt have a senate.

so the problem with health care... is the president? i dont really see it.

Tending to believe Obama is way left will end up with you crying bitter tears of disappointment, btw.

i think obama's cautious, "let's all be pals" nature doesn't serve him well in the face of folks who know that being a straight up asshole will only get them more props from their base.

(Unless by "way left" you mean "mainstream Democrat", in which case yes I agree with you.)

i don't believe that his way-left nature will ever reveal itself in this presidency btw, i just think that's what he would like to do. but then again, i'm sure the same could have been said of clinton, perhaps? lol i guess by "way left" i mean "not a war mongering dbag at heart."

but he's a politician and he has to play the game which means he'll end up being a war-mongering dbag like everyone else.

(also I think I've said this before but I am about 90% in favor of dumping everyone currently in Congress, both in the House and the Senate, and starting over; the 10% dealbreaker is the terrifying thought of 645 Sarah Palins being put there instead)

i mean look, wed have a public option, right now, if we didnt have a senate.

so the problem with health care... is the president? i dont really see it.

^^^THIS

i was watching the address the other night and i saw so many familiar faces on both sides of the aisle i wanted to never see again and, barring that, punch repeatedly

J0hn/Morbz - loads of us have issues with things Obama's done and make no bones about calling them out. I'm just tired of this argument, we have it all the time, it goes nowhere.

his way-left nature

*bangs head on desk repeatedly*

max, he shouldn't have turned the whole damn legis-writing process, or the APPEARANCE of it if you prefer, to Congress.

Tending to believe Obama is to the left of W on some issues will end in bitter tears of disappointment.

max, he shouldn't have turned the whole damn legis-writing process, or the APPEARANCE of it if you prefer, to Congress.

dude CONGRESS MAKES LEGISLATION NOT THE PRESIDENT go back to civics class

or by all means tell me what ammo Obama could've used against Lieberman/Baucus/Nelson et al to make them vote for a public option. would love to hear about it. in fact, call up Rahm Emanuel and let him know, I'm sure he'd love to hear it too.

plz see 2001-2008

xp

i mean look, wed have a public option, right now, if we didnt have a senate.

so the problem with health care... is the president? i dont really see it.

Feels like what really killed the public option was the disinfo campaign at the end of last summer. While yes the senate bought it, they felt they had to cos there was no opposition equally as strong or effective. The con-people had their shit together but the pro-people didn't. That, coupled with O starting by working with the insurance companies that got us into this mess, plus the no-CSPAN gaffe, you can all blame pretty directly on him.

I don't know jackshit about what he could've used, Shakey. That's the time for Rahm to pull out the Corleone shit, he's the Evil Genius.

Rahm's from the House - you'll note the House passed a public option. Because Pelosi knows how to marshal her troops and doesn't have stupid obstructionist elitist Senate rules to contend with.

of the 6+ "blue dog" senators needed to get on board with the hcr bill, i genuinely dont know what siding with obama can offer them politically. if obama is unpopular in nebraska, why would ben nelson want to seem like an ally?

don't misunderstand me morbs, i don't think he's really done anything but give lip service to that nature, but i think if he wasn't a politician and didn't have the qualities that tend to make politicians (esp. ones on the left) afraid of truly stepping up to the plate, i think we'd see him in a much better light. i base this on little evidence, admittedly, and mostly on what i've read here and there about him.

and certainly not on his campaigning for Joe Lieberman in 2006