Obama is the perfect example of why I don't like following politics.
I'm bored, so I wanted to make a list of things we voted for:
1. Escalated wars in Iraq and Afghanistan 2. Less gun restrictions 3. Right-wing healthcare reform that extends no government programs, and only benifits the private industry. 4. An extension of the Patriot Act 5. Campaign finance reform that benifits the rich more 6. No Justice for Bush/Cheney breaking international laws 7. No fight against companies that evade tax laws 8. No tax cuts for the middle class 9. Great speeches 10. Increased Spending - (Everyone who actually looks into it knows that 1.2 trillion of the deficit was created by failed policies under republican leadership. But Obama didn't help.) So anyway, moral of the story is... no matter who you vote for, you'll get the same BS. The system in this country is very broken. The only thing I can give Obama credit for now, is the same thing I bashed at #1.. he's definently made more progress then the last year in the Afghan war then bush made in his last 5 years.. but we're still just wasting even more money on a war without clear objectives. Thoughts? |
Re: Obama is the perfect example of why I don't like following politics.
I pretty much quite caring about politics a while back or bothering to keep up with anything going on. I just drop out of any conversations that start going down that path. Everyone already has their minds made up.
It's too stressful and there's nothing I can really do about it. I'll just continue voting for whoever supports the social concerns that I have. |
Re: Obama is the perfect example of why I don't like following politics.
Ok, it's been a hard day at work, so I'll bite.
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Do you like the fact that insurance companies deny coverage to people for pre-existing conditions? Do you want to prevent them from doing that? Well, the fact is covering people for pre-existing conditions DOES cost more (many insurance companies abuse the policy, but that doesn't mean the basic economic fact is untrue). So if you force companies to take people with pre-existing conditions, they will raise premiums. How do you prevent that? You expand the pool of insured people and get as many healthy people insured as possible so that their premiums cover sicker people. The best way to do that is by a mandate. But what if you mandate coverage for people who can't afford it? That's why you now have subsidies for people earning below a certain amount. Now if you don't want to benefit the insurance industry at all, then you could just institute Single Payer at one fell swoop. But that was never going to pass Congress, and the inconvenient fact many liberals ignore is that doing such a thing would put tens upon thousands of people out of work. Instituting something that sudden just isn't a good idea. It took Canada quite a long time to develop their health care system. Quote:
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You have to keep two things in mind about Obama: 1. He's a former community organizer and 2. He's a politician. #1 means that he will almost never talk tough because he is not interested in bashing people. He's interested in getting results. Right now, his best asset is the American public views him as reasonable, moderate, and trying to be bipartisan (this isn't just my opinion. The polls bear this out). If you watch him carefully, you will see that he likes to say a lot of stuff about how he hopes to be bipartisan while at the same time not raising too much of a fuss when his policies are voted on in Congress along strictly partisan lines. Which brings us to #2. Obama is a politician which means you cannot take everything he says at face value. It's not so much that he lies (although sometimes he will be misleading) as that he only says things that aren't going to get him in trouble with the media. Take the bipartisanship talk again. A lot of liberals like to bash him because they don't understand why he would continue to try to seek bipartisan support for his programs when it's clear Republicans will never go along. The thing is the moment Obama says, "All right, you Republicans are just being silly obstructionists. I'm going without you" the media would blare headlines saying, "Obama gets tough!" or "He's being partisan all of a sudden! What happened to change we can believe in?" If you haven't been turned off politics already, I encourage you to pay very close attention to Obama. By that I mean watch his favored legislation moving around at the committee level. Check out the little changes in rules and regulations at various agencies he's implementing. Or if you're too busy for that, find some good bloggers who do that sort of thing and read from them. I think what you'll find is that Obama is definitely making very huge changes in the country in ways that liberal Democrats will like and Republicans will not like (whether conservatives will like it too depends on your definition of conservative). |
Re: Obama is the perfect example of why I don't like following politics.
I made a reply yesterday.. but my computer decided to freeze, and I wasn't up to typing it all back out. Actually I'm still not up to it, but I'ma quickly share my thoughts on things.
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Canadate Obama would have agreed with me. President Obama, however, isn't even willing to fight for it. It wasn't even part of the discussion with the republicans last week. But that's a whole different debate. Quote:
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And this is an example of Obama waffling and being weak on a subject. He clearly said that he thinks torture is illegal as a candidate, and banned it as president. But he's unwilling to acknowledge that the previous administration broke the law. So when the next president comes, if they decide to open up another off-shore prison and torture people, it's now legitamate and simply a "difference of opinion" from Obama, and not illegal. Quote:
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And it has changed more then if Obama had done nothing. 1.2 Trillion was the base deficit if no changes were made. I don't see Escalating the war in Afghanistan as being a smart move when it comes to the deficit. Quote:
I mean, look at the stimulus package... Obama rammed that through, republicans hated it and tried to paint it as something it wasn't. Even though it adds less then 100 billion to the yearly deficit, we get to hear the numbers 900 billion, and 1 trillion over 10 years over and over. Even though it's 10 year cost is less then the 1.2 trillion YEARLY problem that was created under republican leadership. But you're never going to hear that. But.. over the last 3 months people have been coming out and saying that the stimulus package is working. Democrats and Republicans. I want to go back and say that Obama is probably playing smart politics.. And he's going to use his bipartanship to his advantage come 2012.. but when I look at his approval ratings right now, I really can't say that what he's doing is working. |
Re: Obama is the perfect example of why I don't like following politics.
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Health care reform is not going to be done in one bill. Medicare and Social Security were very small programs when they were first created. In fact, at the time that FDR signed Social Security into law, he was accused of being a corporate sellout because it was such a small pittance compared to what people wanted. But what he understood was that these kinds of programs grow and expand over. The same thing is going to happen with health care reform. We will come back to the issue later, but the important thing to do now is get universal coverage for everyone. Once the public has gotten used to the idea that everybody should be covered, then they can move on to the debate over the best way to do it. There's a reason why insurance companies are fighting health care reform so hard. They know what's going to happen over the next few decades once the bill passes and Obama signs it into law. Also, I'm tired of people whining that Obama doesn't "fight for" their issues. Nobody has ever been able to explain to me what it looks like when a President "fights for" something. They seem to think that if Obama just gave lots of speeches advocating for a particular position, senators would come around to seeing things his way. But the problem is senators are huge egotists, and some of them will actually oppose Obama's stated positions just so they can feel powerful. And if Obama just makes a lot of public speeches, the media will get bored of it and stop covering it. In point of fact, every time Obama was at a town hall and got a question about health care, he would give a detailed response and say that he would love it if there was a public option. Did you know that? I'm guessing probably not, and that's because the media doesn't mention it. Now maybe you're thinking that Obama should bribe, blackmail and threaten senators, but the thing is that kind of stuff happens in secret. I'm sure he's doing his level best, and I'm also sure we won't know about it until long after he's out of office. Quote:
1. It's Congress that actually has to do something about the Supreme Court ruling, not Obama. And as you know, 60 senators are required to pass anything. Right now, 41 Republicans are pledged to vote against any kind of campaign finance reform law. 2. The Supreme Court ruling said that for the purposes of political campaigns, corporations are to be treated like people and donations to politicians or their campaigns are to be treated like free speech protected under the First Amendment. That leaves very little that anybody can do. The best that anybody can do at this moment is to require that all commercials clearly state who is sponsoring them, and even then that's not going to help very much. If a commercial states that it was sponsored by a group called Americans for Prosperity, would you know if that's a liberal or conservative group? Quote:
In point of fact, there are ongoing investigations into torture. Those things take time. There was a report released in which John Yoo (one of the authors of the torture memos) was found to have exercised poor judgment rather than being criminally negligent in his duties. You'd think that is a sign that Obama is weak and doesn't want to revisit the past, but actually the conclusion of that report was written by a career attorney at the Justice Department who was around before Obama entered office and will still be around after Obama leaves. Quote:
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But it passed. You remember it now as a bill passed by Obama and the Democrats. Economists think it helped. And remember that at the time, there weren't 60 Democrats in the Senate to vote for the bill. 3 Republicans had to cross over to vote for it. Reaching across the aisle is necessary sometimes. Quote:
If you're going to ignore my advice and worry about presidential approval ratings, then you should at least consider them in historical context. Every president in modern times experiences a huge drop in his approval ratings during his first year. The reasons for this are myriad and complicated, but it's a true fact for both parties. Obama is actually doing better than Clinton at the same period in his presidency and WAY better than Reagan. And although I hate making predictions about politics, I'm fairly confident that his approval ratings will go up once health care reform passes. That's because public approval of the government goes down when they see people squabbling and arguing about something they don't have a good understanding of. Once health care reform passes, Obama and the Democrats are going to move on to things like passing jobs bills, financial regulation and possibly some restrictions on bonus payments for financial companies. Those are all very popular. Just think about what's going to happen if Republicans try to defend AIG executives getting million dollar bonuses every year. So come back to this post in May or June and see if you still feel the same way. I'm sure you'll have other complaints, but you'll find that a lot has changed since then. |
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