pan6467

And I would agree with you wholeheartedly.

I also do not think it is an accident that the partisans are so extreme and tearing this country apart. Keep people mad at the government and not the people truly controlling everything.

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I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

FuglyStick

It would be easier to say that the wingnuts are not representative of the Republican Party as a whole (which they aren't) if Republicans weren't so obviously willing to accept any homophobe, racist, sexist, or terrorist into their camp, as long as the homophobe, racist, sexist or terrorist is opposed to Obama and his policies.

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AZIZ! LIGHT!

Shauk

It's easy to peg the repubs with the homophobe/racist/sexist/terrorist labels because those beliefs are inherently against the idea of equality that tends to sit firmly in the liberal camp. *shrug*

repubs have sole claim to that segment of society, if that doesn't make them question their values, I don't know what will.

WinchesterAA

I do. They'll question their values as soon as their owners/funders/sponsors/any other name for owners -- tell them to.

reconmike

Have to love the self righteous lefties on this board, so what you are saying is that the Democs dont follow their handlers?

How about them turning out in droves to re-elect Marion Barry to a seat in DC, after his conviction on crack smoking?

I would be willing to say the left has just as many sheep, following the hearders around as the right does.

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FoolThemAll

Democrats, much like Republicans, favor only the kinds of equality that will get them votes.

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I wonder if we're stuck in Rome.

SecretMethod70

reconmike: In your effort to find new ways to criticize "lefties," you've apparently failed to read the posts on this site very clearly. WinchesterAA has been here lobbing such criticism on both sides - he's more conspiracy theorist than liberal or conservative.

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Le temps détruit tout

"Musicians are the carriers and communicators of spirit in the most immediate sense." - Kurt Elling

raptor9k

I've come to realize the political circus is all bullshit on both sides of the fence. I personally wish the moderates would get together and get down to business while sending the outer fringe nut jobs on BOTH sides to a 'meeting' involving numerous starving lions and no escape routes. Our current political climate is one of the main reasons I've stopped identifying with either party.

I don't really care for the point at which the health care reform started but it had to start somewhere and it needs to continue. Stop all the senseless bickering and start working toward some of the other points people wanted to see (tort reform/interstate insurance offerings/etc.). Bridge the gap and I think you'll see people calm down and stop throwing bricks through windows.

dksuddeth

no. no charts necessary. I just wanted to know if you were going to be consistent.

__________________
"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

dippin

Considering this bill is in many ways identical to the republican proposals of the 90s and the proposals that Romney ran on in 08, I'd say it is pretty moderate. In fact, between 1/3 and 1/4 of the opposition to this bill comes from the left who thinks this doesn't go far enough.

ratbastid

You know, I'm not all that interested in consistency at this point.

The following is my view. I'm clear it's an opinion, and I'm clear there are other opinions out there.

In my opinion, the last administration was eight years of the worst thing that could possibly happen to America. Our last president so profoundly fucked shit up, it's hard for those of us at street level to even really get our heads around it. To whatever small degree we DID get our heads around it, some were outraged, and spoke.

Now we have someone in office who's actually trying to mend that damage, and put through an agenda that takes care of average Americans. And he's facing a pissed off right wing that feels like their guy was called out for the last eight years (although he was actually pretty untouchable for the first several of those, and those speaking out were consistently marginalized and ignored by the "liberal media"), and now want to hit back in kind or worse. So you get tea party protesters who are protesting to protest, who don't know anything about the thing they're protesting except that a talking head on their favorite "news" channel told them it's bad. And it's justified because it's no worse than what "they" did to "our guy".

For it to be consistent, people would have had to be as outraged about the supreme court appointing Bush in the first place, the USA Patriot Act, allowing New Orleans to drown, an illegal and immoral war against a country that couldn't hurt us that has cost $600 billion so far, $10 billion in cash vanishing in Iraq, sweetheart deals for Haliburton and energy companies, etc, etc, etc., as they are about a bill that attempts to make sure every American gets to see a doctor.

I mean... Doesn't the outrage from the right seem a LITTLE suspect, given all this stuff that they COULD have been outraged about? Doesn't the timing seem a little bit, well, convenient? It's like, now that our guy is out, we're mad, and it looks best to be mad about everything government does, except that we were quiet little doormice while our guy was doing the worst raping of our precious "god damned piece of paper" that has ever been done by a president in the history of our nation. But no, let's make damn sure Americans keep paying the most and getting the least in terms of health care. That makes really good sense.

EDIT: To be entirely fair, dk, I know you were as outraged about some of Bush's atrocities as anyone. The above isn't specifically addressed at you.

Derwood

well said

__________________
"You can't shoot a country until it becomes a democracy." - Willravel

pan6467

The following is MY opinion and response to yours Rat....

I did speak out. And he was by far the worst to that point.

I think the man in office now has far too many issues and in all honesty, I think he's just as corrupt as Bush. I think he surrounded himself with people that only care about power and he's in his own way just another W.

As for "tea partiers" not all of us who believe in the principle of the idea, are "righties" or controlled by "right winged talking heads or media". Some of us have just had it and see that Obama and the Dems in power now are no different than what we had with W.


OR maybe people expected "change" and a government that listened, because those were the campaign promises and they found that there was no "change" in how business was done. Different party, same game.


I was just as outraged at these as I was the medical bill. And you can check my posting history on that. I was NEVER a Bush fan.

I find it funny that people can be outraged by what Bush did and yet, find no faults with what Obama is doing.

That's partisan hypocrisy.

In the end it has all come down to partisan politics and hate mongering. Dems are being blind to what Obama is doing and not speaking out with "outrage" to the things they KNOW are bad for this country and will haunt us in the future. They just don't care, because "it's better than Bush" and "he's doing the best he can with what was left him". EXCUSES. The man is not a good leader and the Dems wish to believe he is a "Great leader".

A great leader would find ways to bring the country together, not deepen the division, which is what he is doing.

I still maintain W was the beginning of the "Barrack Room" Emporers, Obama is just following the same path but under a different guise. BOTH in my view are equally as bad for this country. But for someone so far left Clinton was a "moderate", there is no Obama problem.

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I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

Derwood

Pan, you keep going back to this "power" thing. In your mind, what does gaining/maintaining "power" accomplish for those in question? How are they benefiting from said "power"?

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"You can't shoot a country until it becomes a democracy." - Willravel

Poppinjay

Clinton was against gay rights, pro gun, pro death penalty.

That seems moderate at best.

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I think the Apocalypse is happening all around us. We go on eating desserts and watching TV. I know I do. I wish we were more capable of sustained passion and sustained resistance. We should be screaming and what we do is gossip. -Lydia Millet

roachboy

in reality, clinton was a moderate.
he came out of the democratic leadership conference.
his central political strategy was "triangulation" and its architect was dick morris. triangulation consisted of the moderate clinton administration co-opting moderate republican issues.
the administration pursued this strategy relentlessly, and it explains in alot of ways what started the populist right heading into the outer reaches of the right to stake out an identity for itself.

this is all a matter of record.
what's stunning is that so many folk who position themselves amongst the teabaggers can't detach themselves from the manufactured pseudo-history of the 1990s enough to remember what the fuck actually happened.

i mean, clinton was a monetarist---morethan any republican president. his was the first administration since the collective delirium of "supply-side" economics hit to actually implement a fiscal regime consistent with it--you know, balanced budgets and all that stuff which the bush administration vaporized almost immediately. republicans before and after have all been straight up keynesians---they just favored republican friendly sectors to pump state money into like the military.

i think ratbastid's post above states what i would expect to be the obvious to anyone who looks.

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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Baraka_Guru

I think this is an interesting commentary as an indirect extension to ratbastid's post above and some of the comments elsewhere in this thread:

The frightening face of American fascism | rabble.ca

To me the concern here isn't that Republicans are against the bill, or Obama in general; it's how they deal with it. My concern is what they do, not why.

Is this blog entry an overreaction? Is Sara Robinson's concern in "Fascist America: Are we there yet?" largely unfounded?

Although there can be some things said regarding the parallel between liberals (Democrats) and conservatives (Republicans) in reaction to presidents and politics. But I'm not sure the overall reaction amongst the public is entirely equal.

Am I wrong?

Many don't even seem to know the difference between or the actual core ideals of leftism vs. centrism. I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that America is overall fairly strongly conservative and right-wing. So this means that any move toward the middle or any strong social program is going to have a strong reaction.

Again, am I wrong?

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—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

pan6467

How was Clinton any of those things? Why, because he didn't change them enough? He was left-centrist and was willing to listen to the other side, but he was liberal in many aspects also.

I found Clinton socially liberal and to a degree the best president in my lifetime. The ONLY problem with Clinton was the GOP did all they could to destroy him and made it impossible for him to get anything done. But as a LEADER he was damned good, he inspired and kept a positive tone in most of his time. He could have gone back and tried to attack the GOP (Gingrich was having his own affairs) but he didn't. He did what he could and he IMHO did the best job possible.

---------- Post added at 11:52 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:46 AM ----------

I disagree. It is only obvious to those with Obama blinders on. I stand by my statement that W was the first true Barrack Room Emporer and Obama is taking it further.

You can't have a nation going one way and slam on the brakes and go in a completely different direction and expect the masses to be ok with that. It just doesn't happen. Takes time and compromise and I don't see that from Obama.

In my mind he is every bit as bad if not worse than W. He just is doing it in a different way, but the results are the same.

__________________
I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

Plan9

I won't comment on the healthcare bit, but calling President Clinton "pro gun" is a little ignorant.

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Whatever you can carry.

"You should not drink... and bake."

rahl

you beat me to it. I guess people forgot about the assault weapons ban.

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"Your life is Yours alone...Rise up and live it"

mixedmedia

Obama blinders

pan, I don't rightly see how you can write that last post and accuse anyone of wearing 'blinders'...the irony tastes very, very strong at this point

Remind me again just what Obama is 'doing' and how is it giving him unchecked 'power' in the manner of the neo-liberals of the last administration. I really need for you to clear this up for me, thanks.

I agree with ratbastid's assessment, as well.

__________________
Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus
PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce

dc_dux

Clinton's welfare reform certainly was moderate to conservative, as was his trade policies and financial regulatory reform.

And I too have to chuckle at pan @ Obama blinders given the misrepresentation of the facts in this health care discussion alone.

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"The perfect is the enemy of the good."
~ Voltaire

ratbastid

To be crystal clear: the above category doesn't include me. I'd be surprised if you could find one person on TFP who had zero policy differences with Obama.

One MAJOR approach the right has taken is to put "Obama is perfect" in the mouths of anyone who's not on the right. Ever since the primary, when they started saying he was "your messiah". It's manipulative bullshit, pan. Don't get sucked into it.

EDIT: BTW, pan, when I say "the right", I'm clear I'm not talking about you. You're your own critter. For a while you looked to me like a good liberal but I know better than to think that now.

dippin

For someone who has been proven wrong without ever acknowledging it so many times, it is certainly funny to see you claim anyone has blinders on. Especially when at one time or another over these past 2 months you've either claimed that Obama was far left AND the same thing as Bush.

But hey, if that is the case, please point to the members here who apparently have those blinders on. Please cite everyone who hasn't criticized Obama recently.

pan6467

Ah, but people here did the exact same thing to Bush followers. I was one and at the time I did so won some acclaim from people here who now can't stand my posts and do all they can to make sure they point out some of my foolhardiness.

There is a difference between a "liberal" of the 80's and Clinton era and now. Hell, Clinton here has been called a full moderate. LOL

And I have said before on numerous occasions and while somethings have been pointed out this for whatever reason doesn't. I am my own critter (as you point out), I have my own warped, foolhardy, weird, wild extremist views. (I am neither left nor right in my views, I consider myself socially liberal, fiscally conservative with a sense of patriotism and belief the US needs to work on itself and fix itself first, then help the rest of the world.)

Beyond that, there are things where I can bring out truly good points, I can bring out points that will be heated on one side or the other... or I can just fuck with people so I don't get loopholed into any one belief.

My goal is to find people that freely think for themselves and stop using "talking" points or seemingly post whatever to try to "show their intelligence and win some form of praise from whichever "clique" they are trying to impress here. If I found someone that truly didn't give a fuck how they appeared to others here and truly spoke their own beliefs (no talking points, no BS polls or data that can be swayed because both sides manipulate facts to benefit themselves), I would probably have a great talk and honest debate with. And probably have a good friend in the end.

But in the end I am someone who loves my country and believes it can do better. However, I firmly believe we are in the midst of the Barrack Room Emperors" W being the first Obama being the second. And yes, to me they are one in the same. They may have different items that they push and sell to different groups, but in the end Iraq, Afghanistan, Oil, minimum wage, programs to help people advance, the infrastructure, Federal Reserve, deficits and so on remain relatively unchanged. Just a different wrapping paper and sales technique.

Just MY opinion. I'm sure people here will jump all over it to prove me wrong, just as W people did the same thing 6 years ago.

Anyway, people will think what they want. Truth is I don't care, I will be who I am, warped as I am.

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I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

dksuddeth

__________________
"no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

Derwood

can we stop with the "b-b-but you did it to Bush!" retort? It doesn't justify any current behavior

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"You can't shoot a country until it becomes a democracy." - Willravel

The_Dunedan

Tellya what; we'll stop with "You did it to Bush!" when y'all stop with "It's all Bush's fault!" and "But Bush did it too!"

Deal?

roachboy

so wait...what you want is for those of us who opposed the bush administration to stop mentioning his actual record and in exchange you will stop making shit up about obama?

what kind of trade is that?

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

FoolThemAll

Huh. How'd you manage to misread a two-sentence post that badly?

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I wonder if we're stuck in Rome.

roachboy

that would be correct. my post was two sentences. but i think you screwed up with your pronoun usage. pity, as it makes your post confusing, lending an implication that you could theoretically be trying to address me.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Derwood

no deal. I will continue pointing out those instances that it WAS Bush's fault.

I don't think I've ever used the "Bush did it too" excuse, but feel free to prove me wrong

__________________
"You can't shoot a country until it becomes a democracy." - Willravel

FoolThemAll

Oh, don't get me wrong, it's a completely understandable mistake. 'Bush' looks just like 'Obama', it's really easy to confuse the two names.

But just for fun, go back to Dunedan's post and count all the instances of 'Obama'. I promise you won't have to use your toes.

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I wonder if we're stuck in Rome.

roachboy

so....context is not important to you when you interpret a statement?
just wondering.

or are you misconstruing the pronoun "you" in the two sentences i wrote as a mode of addressing the dunedan directly?
that would be wrong.
that's an example of why looking to context helps.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

ratbastid

This is what I meant when I said I'm not all that interested in consistency. Not given the gaping chest-wound Bush left. Not given the blind eye turned on those who opposed him and the free pass and bullhorn given those who are blustering against Obama.

Here's one place you can see the asymmetry of this thing: People who protested Bush's actions largely were protesting Bush's actions. Yes some names got called, but whatever conclusion people came to about Bush's intellectual capacity were brought about by observation of his policies and decisions.

By contrast, these tea party people are against Obama personally. They don't know enough about any policy (for instance the actual health care legislation) to formulate an argument against the policy itself. They have to change its name to "Obamacare" as a signal to fellow anti-Obamites that it's a Bad Thing, because Obama's a Bad Man. And then their reasoned, specific response to the legislation is "It's a gummint takeover!".

We looked at what Bush did and called him an idiot. People call Obama a communist muslim nazi, and then are against anything he does. To treat the two like they're ANYTHING like the same is just ridiculous.

And look, the things Obama has done that Bush did too (ie. extending USA Patriot, wiretapping, etc), I'm as against those when Obama did them as I was when Bush was doing them. I don't give Obama any passes on those things. I didn't expect anything different--he told us during the campaign he would be doing that. So it doesn't surprise me or particularly disappoint me, but I do disapprove.

The_Dunedan

No, what I want is for sauce to be applied to both rabid goose and distempered gander equally.

It's not so much a misreading as a deliberate misrepresentation. A classic tactic of many collectivists is to force an incorrect definition, position, or context into/onto someone and then force them to defend it, while denying that the person's -actual- definition, position, or context is relevant, cogent, coherent, or even extant. It's a refined version of "So Senator, have you stopped beating your wife?" and is especially popular among collectivist brainwashers with captive audiences dependant upon them and their whims for grades, jobs, and promotions. You run into this kind of thing most predictably from the Left at Universities, and the Right in the military and in business.

I don't know if you have/did or not, and frankly couldn't be paid to care. Since collectivists are so comfortable dealing with, judging, and assigning blame to people based upon group membership rather than actual actions taken or words uttered, I decided to speak your language. I see this hasn't made it any easier for me to be understood. Pity.

Since you replied directly to my post (both sequentially and thematically), used the singular personal pronoun "you" without any collective modifier (y'all) or indicator of collectivity (you all, you guys, you lot, etc), yes. As you say, context.

Part of the contextual/metacultural problem is also the fact that, as a collectivist, you personally seem to view a group of individuals as an individual and feel comfortable addressing and dealing with them as such. I as an individualist do not. This has a linguistic reflection.

As opposed to "bushco," "bushworld," and "bushitler," which I saw bandied freely here and even used myself on occaision?

Yes, and people called Bush a faschist Christian-reconstructionist chimpanzee, and were against anything he did.

Pardon me if I cannot see the difference between a kick in the teeth and a punch in the balls. Both hurt a lot, neither will improve my luck with the ladies, and neither were probably my idea.

dippin

It's funny when someone accuses someone else of being a "collectivist" while only describing society in collective terms.

And whatever Bush and Obama have been called, to equate the two is to engage in a game of false equivalency.

Whatever you think Obama has done so far, it does not compare to starting a war under false pretenses. Reasonable minds can disagree on whether it is better to leave Iraq straight away or gradually, but there is no disagreement that the war was started under false pretenses and that over a hundred thousand people lost their lives as a result.

Likewise, it is insane to compare "accusing" Obama of being a secret muslim bent on destroying the country to the statement that Bush was a born again Christian who let that influence his agenda, and who based a lot of his political career on the support of other born again Christians.

ratbastid

You've missed my point entirely. I'm saying there's no goose and gander. There's goose and tomahawk missile. There's no kick in the teeth vs punch in the balls. It's kick in the teeth vs knife through the heart.

I reject entirely that there's ANY equivalency between what's being said about Obama and what was said about Bush, and I assert that an attempt to create an equivalency both minimizes the disaster Bush was, and rationalizes away the damage these sore losing tea partiers are doing.

pan6467

No, it doesn't but I truly get sick of people who act as if it is the lowest of lows to attack Obama when they would say ANYTHING they wanted about Bush.

To sit there and yell about how someone is attacking Obama, the SAME way Bush was attacked (you can find polls and stats that support just about anything on the net) is hypocritical. And to say "stop with the you did it to Bush".... well stop crying over attacks to Obama. Isn't that what you told W people.

Me, I like to just bitch about both because if I were king.......

---------- Post added at 02:29 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:24 PM ----------

I just like this post, someone who I can relate to in some ways....lol scary.

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I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

FoolThemAll

is not on your side here either.

Just read more carefully next time and take more care not to misrepresent the words of others. A moderator, of all people, should be practiced in this.

__________________
I wonder if we're stuck in Rome.