Obama General Discussion, vol. 3

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it still amazes me the fantasies the right has about Obama. as if there isn't an actual record there to scrutinize. i suppose this is the double-edged sword -- as expertly as Obama allowed his supporters to project their "black messiah" liberal fantasies upon him in 2008, so too can the angry right concoct any number of detached-from-reality conspiracy theories about him.
 
it still amazes me the fantasies the right has about Obama. as if there isn't an actual record there to scrutinize. i suppose this is the double-edged sword -- as expertly as Obama allowed his supporters to project their "black messiah" liberal fantasies upon him in 2008, so too can the angry right concoct any number of detached-from-reality conspiracy theories about him.

True but this to an extent epitomises the problem I've always had with Obama. He's a bit of a cypher. Where's the substance? Ok, getting Osama was a win but that was just a matter of giving the right instruction at the right time. Not rocket science.
 
True but this to an extent epitomises the problem I've always had with Obama. He's a bit of a cypher. Where's the substance? Ok, getting Osama was a win but that was just a matter of giving the right instruction at the right time. Not rocket science.



health care?
 
Mercifully, liberalism has the advantage of time on its side. And those millions of illegals and their offspring that the GOP loves to hate.

So you're acknowledging that liberals are callously allowing the country to be flooded with foreign nationals for the express purpose of securing a voting majority in the future?

Or am I misstating the views of Democrats as wildly and inaccurately as you just did of Republicans?
 
i really don't know what to think anymore.

my leftist friends talk about how Obama is to the right of Ronald Reagan on so many things, like the power of executive branch as well as taxation when we have our meetings over yerba matte down at the Marx Cafe. heck, Reagan raised taxes many times while in office.

then i hear people like you who think he's part of a larger Bolshevik plot and i just get really confused.

Well, you miss the gist of what Brooks is saying.

“He’s certainly more liberal than I thought he was. And he’s more liberal than he thinks he is. He thinks he is just slightly center-left. But when you got down to his instincts, they're pretty left. And his problem is he can't really act on them because it would be political disaster. And so that means, I think he is doing very little — proposing very little.”

His instincts are those of a far-left ideologue but he's brought towards the center by political reality. Hence the disappointment of fellow ideologues. For proof of where his heart lies you can look to his Senate voting record; his appointments to the Supreme Court, Attorney General, czars, the EPA and the NLRB; his record spending; what he campaigned on (single-payer healthcare, Cap & Trade, closing Gitmo. etc) and his rhetoric. Find me another president in history ever saying anything like:
"We’re not, we’re not trying to push financial reform because we begrudge success that’s fairly earned. I mean, I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money."

Don't try, you can't.

On foreign policy he has had enough success and keep our cities safe from terrorism so I'll call that a wash but who doubts that his policies on same-sex marriage, Palestinian statehood and many others won't change once reelection isn't a concern.
 
If his "instincts" without a re-election to worry about are that concerning, I imagine he won't get the campaign dollars from big business, right?
 
Find me another president in history ever saying anything like:
"We’re not, we’re not trying to push financial reform because we begrudge success that’s fairly earned. I mean, I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money."

Don't try, you can't.

All American presidents since 1945, and plenty before, have made quotes more left wing than that.

Let us know what year you want to start.
 
So you're acknowledging that liberals are callously allowing the country to be flooded with foreign nationals for the express purpose of securing a voting majority in the future?

Or am I misstating the views of Democrats as wildly and inaccurately as you just did of Republicans?

i want to call this a wanker comment, but it'll get me in trouble so i won't.
 
I get aggravated by negative news, so occasional headlines like this are a brief salve:
link
Panetta to Offer Strategy for Cutting Military Budget
By ELISABETH BUMILLER and THOM SHANKER

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta is set this week to reveal his strategy that will guide the Pentagon in cutting hundreds of billions of dollars from its budget, and with it the Obama administration’s vision of the military that the United States needs to meet 21st-century threats, according to senior officials.

In a shift of doctrine driven by fiscal reality and a deal last summer that kept the United States from defaulting on its debts, Mr. Panetta is expected to outline plans for carefully shrinking the military — and in so doing make it clear that the Pentagon will not maintain the ability to fight two sustained ground wars at once.

Instead, he will say that the military will be large enough to fight and win one major conflict, while also being able to “spoil” a second adversary’s ambitions in another part of the world while conducting a number of other smaller operations, like providing disaster relief or enforcing a no-flight zone.

Pentagon officials, in the meantime, are in final deliberations about potential cuts to virtually every important area of military spending: the nuclear arsenal, warships, combat aircraft, salaries, and retirement and health benefits. With the war in Iraq over and the one in Afghanistan winding down, Mr. Panetta is weighing how significantly to shrink America’s ground forces.

There is broad agreement on the left, right and center that $450 billion in cuts over a decade — the amount that the White House and Pentagon agreed to last summer — is acceptable. That is about 8 percent of the Pentagon’s base budget. But there is intense debate about an additional $500 billion in cuts that may have to be made if Congress follows through with deeper reductions.

Mr. Panetta and defense hawks say a reduction of $1 trillion, about 17 percent of the Pentagon’s base budget, would be ruinous to national security. Democrats and a few Republicans say that it would be painful but manageable; they add that there were steeper military cuts after the Cold War and the wars in Korea and Vietnam.

“Even at a trillion dollars, this is a shallower build-down than any of the last three we’ve done,” said Gordon Adams, who oversaw military budgets in the Clinton White House and is now a fellow at the Stimson Center, a nonprofit research group in Washington. “It would still be the world’s most dominant military. We would be in an arms race with ourselves.”

Make no mistake; I hate cuts based on the accounting of trying to reach an arbitrary target "x billions of dollars". We should pay exactly as much as needed to satisfy our military goals, it's just.....our national goal up until now was to be able to simultaneously defeat two adversaries in a ground war, which just sounds insanely archaic. We're gonna defeat the Nazis and Japs! The "one plus" plan is a positive (cheaper!) step in the right direction. I'm glad a modicum of fiscal discipline is finally being applied to the U.S. military.
 
His instincts are those of a far-left ideologue but he's brought towards the center by political reality.


do you even know what a far-left ideologue is?

Obama's far too professorial to ever be ideological.



Hence the disappointment of fellow ideologues. For proof of where his heart lies you can look to his Senate voting record; his appointments to the Supreme Court, Attorney General, czars, the EPA and the NLRB; his record spending; what he campaigned on (single-payer healthcare, Cap & Trade, closing Gitmo. etc) and his rhetoric.

your definitions of left and right are very, very, very skewed. Sotomayor and Kagan are hardly left-wing equivalents of Scalia, Roberts, Thomas, and Alito. and that's just to begin.

Find me another president in history ever saying anything like:
"We’re not, we’re not trying to push financial reform because we begrudge success that’s fairly earned. I mean, I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money."

Don't try, you can't.

it's amazing what you read into the bolded quote. my guess is that he's referring to the so-called "golden parachutes" and 8 figure bonuses of certain executives.

anyway, here you go:

"We're going to close the unproductive tax loopholes that allow some of the truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share ... [tax loopholes] sometimes made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying 10 percent of his salary – and that's crazy. Do you think the millionaire ought to pay more in taxes than the bus driver or less?" ~ Ronald Reagan, 1985



On foreign policy he has had enough success and keep our cities safe from terrorism so I'll call that a wash but who doubts that his policies on same-sex marriage, Palestinian statehood and many others won't change once reelection isn't a concern.

a wash involves the decimation of Al Qaeda, the assassination of Bin Laden, the further weakening of Iran, the end of the Iraq debacle, the lead-from-behind success in Libya, the end of Afghanistan in sight, and the fact that people actually like the US again after 8 years of the most drunk, insane, stupid foreign policy we've ever had?

the only real "failure" he's had is preventing the Likud Party from leading Israel into madness.

you'll notice that the GOP is staying far, far away from foreign policy because, 1) most of them don't know a thing about it, and 2) they know that Obama's record is virtually unimpeachable. they have nothing to offer but China Panic and saber rattles.
 
(AP)WASHINGTON — The Obama administration says it is expanding the FBI's more than eight-decade-old definition of rape to reflect a better understanding of the crime and to broaden protections.

The new definition counts men as victims for the first time and drops the requirement that victims must have physically resisted their attackers.

Vice President Joe Biden, author of the Violence Against Women Act when he was in the Senate, said the new definition announced Friday is a victory for women and men "whose suffering has gone unaccounted for over 80 years." Calling rape a "devastating crime," the vice president said, "We can't solve it unless we know the full extent of it."

The change will increase the number of people counted as rape victims in FBI statistics but will not change federal or state laws or alter charges or prosecutions. It's an important shift because lawmakers and policymakers use crime statistics to allocate money and other resources for prevention and victim assistance.

The White House said the expanded definition has been long awaited as many states and research groups made similar changes in their definitions of rape over recent decades.

Since 1929, the FBI has defined rape as the carnal knowledge of a female, forcibly and against her will. The revised definition covers any gender of victim or attacker and includes instances in which the victim is incapable of giving consent because of the influence of drugs or alcohol or because of age. Physical resistance is not required. The Justice Department said the new definition mirrors the majority of state rape statutes now on the books.

Congress approved $592 million this year to address violence against women, including sexual assault, domestic violence, dating violence and stalking, under the Violence Against Women Act and Family Violence Prevention and Services Act. Of that amount, $23 million goes to a sexual assault services program and $39 million to a rape prevention and education program administered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Obama administration had sought $777 million to combat violence against women.

The change likely will result in big increases in the number of reported rapes, but it was not immediately clear how big. To take just one example of how the FBI totals will change, Chicago didn't report any rapes to the FBI for 2010 because its broad definition of the crime didn't match the FBI's narrow definition.

The change has been sought by women's groups for more than a decade.

The Women's Law Project, on behalf of more than 80 sexual assault coalitions and national organizations concerned about violence against women, wrote FBI Director Robert Mueller in 2001 that the narrow definition reflected gender-based stereotypes and requested it be changed.

Using the old definition, a total of 84,767 rapes were reported nationwide in 2010, according to the FBI's uniform crime report based on data from 18,000 law enforcement agencies.

Nearly 1 in 5 women and 1 in 71 men in the U.S. have been raped at some time in their lives, according to a 2010 survey by the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which used a broader definition.

The revised FBI definition says that rape is "the penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object," without the consent of the victim. Also constituting rape under the new definition is "oral penetration by a sex organ of another person" without consent.
 
do you even know what a far-left ideologue is?
Yes.

avatar28290_20.gif


And I'm a right-wing ideologue which is why we respectably disagree on damn near everything.

your definitions of left and right are very, very, very skewed. Sotomayor and Kagan are hardly left-wing equivalents of Scalia, Roberts, Thomas, and Alito. and that's just to begin.
Sometimes it's painfully obvious that you're a Beltway denizen.

anyway, here you go:
I heard that Reagan quote during the one of the recent tax standoffs in Washington. Arguing for a tax code free of "unproductive tax loopholes" and "fairness" isn't liberal really. Reagan's tax laws of the mid 80's got rid of volumes of the things. (You used to be able to write off credit card interest for example.)

Anyway, if you want to single out a Republican, as opposed to something as radical as FDR's Second Bill of Rights or speeches about his National Recovery Administrators, I'd go with Richard Nixon's 1971 speech:

"I am today ordering a freeze on all prices and wages throughout the United States for a period of 90 days."
He also took us off the gold standard with that speech by the way.

a wash involves the decimation of Al Qaeda, the assassination of Bin Laden, the further weakening of Iran, the end of the Iraq debacle, the lead-from-behind success in Libya, the end of Afghanistan in sight, and the fact that people actually like the US again after 8 years of the most drunk, insane, stupid foreign policy we've ever had?

the only real "failure" he's had is preventing the Likud Party from leading Israel into madness.

you'll notice that the GOP is staying far, far away from foreign policy because, 1) most of them don't know a thing about it, and 2) they know that Obama's record is virtually unimpeachable. they have nothing to offer but China Panic and saber rattles.

You could argue that his success in preventing terrorist attacks here stems from his 180 on Gitmo, the Patriot Act and many other Bush policies he campaigned against. And congressional Republicans have largely supported the president in his duties as commander-in-chief. Most of his critics are your liberals friends you mentioned in an earlier post that are furious with the successes you list above.
 
Yes.

avatar28290_20.gif


And I'm a right-wing ideologue which is why we respectably disagree on damn near everything.


oh okay. :rolleyes:




Sometimes it's painfully obvious that you're a Beltway denizen.


you mean "informed"? i don't work in politics. my job is profoundly apolitical and deeply populist and dedicated to turning profits for large corporations. i really should be in NYC or LA but have found a niche here in DC. i'd hold these opinions if i lived anywhere else. i don't buy this "inside the Beltway" crap, nor do i buy "San Francisco values" or any other anti-elitist-but-yet-quite-elitist right wing slurs that people who live inside the Beltway concoct and pass out to their suburban and rural consumers in order to flatter their audience.

what happens in DC, however, is that people do tend to be quite informed, and you have to know what you're talking about should you engage politicos in conversation, either left or right wing, and most of them don't particularly like to talk shop with civilians. but what remains is that people inside the Beltway actually do know how politics works, they know how the game is played, they know all the inside baseball stats you'd like to think you know because you read a few blogs. and that's neither right nor left.

that said, what i said is, in fact, true: the right and the left are not equivalents in this country.

you're free to view Obama as a closet liberal all you want. you're not free to paint him as someone somehow outside the mainstream. need we remind you -- the individual mandate was a Republican idea as recent as the 1990s. your front runner, need we remind you, pursued an individual mandate for the citizens of Massachusetts.

this idea that Obama is somehow a radical or ideologue or trying to turn America into Scandinavia anything like the snooty caricature in those cartoons you post is the biggest paranoid fantasy since Hillary supposedly had Vince Foster killed.


You could argue that his success in preventing terrorist attacks here stems from his 180 on Gitmo, the Patriot Act and many other Bush policies he campaigned against. And congressional Republicans have largely supported the president in his duties as commander-in-chief. Most of his critics are your liberals friends you mentioned in an earlier post that are furious with the successes you list above.


some ideologue, right?

the phrase "furious" is wonderful. whatever you need to paint the opposition with. :shrug:
 
a lot of people in here ( and elsewhere) seem to be baffled by this

Obama signing the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012


I don't get that at all.

what was he supposed to do? veto it?

Yes. You do not sign a bill carrying those provisions into law. You VETO it. Even though it could be overturned. You VETO it on principle. You do not issue a statement saying you don't support a law you signed in with your own signature.

You also don't make signing statements to circumvent Congressional authority when you criticized the previous presidents for doing so.

"t is a clear abuse of power to use such statements as a license to evade laws that the president does not like or as an end-run around provisions designed to foster accountability. I will not use signing statements to nullify or undermine congressional instructions as enacted into law"

Right. Either way, looks bad. Just VETO it. Then make a speech explaining to Americans why you are following through with your oath to protect the Constitution.
 
a bill that passed 99 to 1?

that veto will be over-ridden probably 100 to 1

it is a very large bill, with many, many components, was it even up against a dead-line that would have shut down the military?

so with the veto, any election that is close, goes to the GOP and we have super majorities in both the House and Senate after Nov election and a better chance for a GOP President

for a worthless, principle stand that would mean nothing, a President has to be smart enough to know what battles to fight and when.

Perhaps many would have liked Obama to end DADT on day one, in January 2009? Also, recognize a Palestinian State, and appoint all of his Judicial appointments as recess appointments, because the GOP will not let them have an up or down vote?
 
a bill that passed 99 to 1?

that veto will be over-ridden probably 100 to 1

it is a very large bill, with many, many components, was it even up against a dead-line that would have shut down the military?

so with the veto, any election that is close, goes to the GOP and we have super majorities in both the House and Senate after Nov election and a better chance for a GOP President

for a worthless, principle stand that would mean nothing, a President has to be smart enough to know what battles to fight and when.

Perhaps many would have liked Obama to end DADT on day one, in January 2009? Also, recognize a Palestinian State, and appoint all of his Judicial appointments as recess appointments, because the GOP will not let them have an up or down vote?

I'm sorry, but I disagree. You don't have to rewrite a whole bill. VETO it on grounds of the unconstitutional provisions. I'm sure with those provisions removed, the bill would pass just fine.

It's not black and white. There is no "all or nothing" context to the passing of this bill. Passing it with a signed statement is better than no statement, but Obama now set another precedent for the suspension of the writ of habeus corpus. Another president down the line could very well take advantage and abuse this power.

The President took an oath to defend the Constitution. The allowance for the suspension of writ of habeus corpus is a very serious thing. Obama's failure to protect our liberties cannot be overlooked or shrugged off...for the sake's of a bill's passage.
 
they would have just over ridden the veto and passed the same exact bill, with 100 % of Democrats in the Senate

the GOP would have a huge talking point the Obama is more concerned about coddling terrorists, than providing for our men and women that are dying to keep us safe, that is how it works

you may recall how Kerry got all tied up by saying he was 'for it' before he was 'against it' and then for it again.

it does not matter if he was 'more' right or not, that sank him.
 
I have serious doubts that after a presidential VETO, 100% Democrats would vote to override their Democratic president.

Talking points? What talking points? The GOP has no play when trying to defend their decision to revoke the right of writ of habeus corpus. You could accuse the president of coddling terrorists, but the president can just respond by saying this bill gives the government the right to detain any American, son or daughter, brother or sister, forever. Boom....talk about a blow to everybody's reality. GOP would have no play.

This 'it would happen anyways' attitude is dangerous.

And I don't care about some dude's re-election chances..especially when he's demonstrated this major failure in leading by example (or leading by principle as some say).

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." - B.F.

Or in this case, it's giving up essential liberty to lower the risk of losing votes. This country's backwards thinking nauseates me too much at times.
 
And I don't care about some dude's re-election chances..

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." - B.F.

that is what I thought, a GOP landslide with a GOP President in 2012 would do a lot of harm

and what some whore frequenter and chauvinist* said, has no bearing on politics in 2012,
except as a retreat from sound arguments, that is why an Antonin Scalia is always going on about these mediocre 'so-called' founding fathers

* “He that displays too often his wife and his wallet is in danger of having both of them borrowed” B Franklin
 
Arguing over whether vetoing the NDAA should have happened is a sidetracking distraction, because it's based on the misconception that the main negotiation between the Legislative and Executive Branches occurs at the actual vote over the finished product.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6ARkiJM2bA

Carl Levin's office was in negotiations with the Administration over the text of the NDAA's sections as they were developed, as is justifiably, commonly (and extra-constitutionally) done. The point should not be whether Obama should've vetoed, it's

A) if he disliked the indefinite detention sections, did he push hard enough to remove them during the drafting phase?

and/or

B) did he like the indefinite detention sections and want them in there?

the final product that reached the Senate floor represented the consensus position between the Senate Principals and the Administration, and would not have reached the floor if it wasn't. "I know it's bad but the vote was 99 against 1, I did the best I could" is a fair argument.....if Obama actually wanted to say that. But while I have not read all the relevant statements, my impression is Obama's instead saying "there's nothing in the text to worry about", which is a different argument. That implies he's quite satisfied with the detention sections being what they are, and the voting margin has nothing to do with his signature.
 
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