The Democrats, who originally proposed the provisions, but seeing as the republicans stonewalled, conceded some important points.
Congress generally, who couldn’t make a deal if their life depended on it, as we’ve seen at least twice now.
Hey, there’s an idea! Let’s not pay or feed congresspeople who get nothing done. If all they do is argue, then all they get at the end of the day is to stand in front of the grill at 7-11 for 15 minutes. I’m sure if they get hungry enough, they’ll work.
I'm not a fan of a lot of Obama's decisions but you're entirely deranged if you think he's been worse than Geroge "Mission Accomplished" Bush.
Agreed. I think more people need to take a long look at these 24 charts below and think about all the dire implications of each and every one:
Obama is certainly worse than GW Bush on certain issues, but it’s a mixed bag. For example, Obama has been worse than GW Bush on the “war on drugs” in many ways, but is also far more tolerant of state’s rights on drugs in some other more complicated ways.
I’ll put it this way, I helped to get marijuana legalized in Colorado and there was no way in hell we could have done it during the GW Bush administration. To say Obama is worse overall is just the result of frustration and selective memory. And, yes, McCain/Palin and Romney/Ryan would make Obama’s presidency look like a walk in the park comparatively.
Obama is a pile of shit, but given the choice we had in our current, shitty, American reality - he was the best choice. Sad, pathetic, but true. I just hope the American public has finally gotten the swift kick in the ass we deserve to look towards getting more involved for real change, but I sadly think that’ll take decades of more abuse and spreading information to one another first.
If it were up to me, I'd haul the insurance agencies out on their asses, and set up socialized healthcare.You'd have to close your eyes and wish away all the bluedog democrats and republicans with their filibusters first. I don't like Obamacare either, but I also have no illusions that if Obama had tried to push through a true [single payer system for health care][1] the opposition would have screamed, "communism!" and stopped it flat.
I do blame Obama for only tepidly pushing for single payer and not at least trying an active campaign to educate the public on it, but I’m not sure that would have done much good against the powerful insurance lobby in this day and age. We’ll have a single payer system for health care in the USA eventually but it’ll probably be after Obamacare runs its course (which I hope is relatively quick since it’s just another law written by industry).
So they haven’t made us more secure, but the real problem is that they have almost certainly made us less secure.
if someone like snowden was able to walk away with that many documents and had access to that much information, can they honestly tell us that not a single mole/double agent exists in their entire system??? It is a statistical certainty that more skilled and adept people have been turned for nefarious purposes. That is a undeniable certainty in the intelligence world. Imagine what level of information a more skilled mole could access when the internal systems are so open and full of holes. truly frightening.
By engaging in blanket information gathering up to the highest levels of every government including the US and being so insecure, the NSA has undeniably created a huge security problem and risk, one that didn’t exist before they directly created it. if you are going to gather information, it is your obligation to protect and make sure that information doesn’t fall into the wrong hands, or you’ve created a much bigger problem then you’ve solved and done the work of your enemies for them.
I often wonder if the truth is so absolutely horrible that the American people couldn’t handle it or is Absolute Power so corrupting that anybody who gets into office refuses to relinquish one iota of power. They’re the only reasons I can think of why candidate Obama became Bush/Cheney Lite when he got into office.
Obama has been better than the other alternatives’ self-stated political advertising versions of themselves would have been. McCain and Mittens probably were giving us as much BS as Obama did. Once an alternative got into office, I don’t think the outcomes for 90% of Americans would have been vastly different.
Forcing all Americans who can afford it to buy private insurance is somehow progressive? Seems to me this is a business-backed wet dream. (To be fair, I was originally in favor of the ACA when the single-payer option went out the window, but then I thought a bit more about it and think the wool was pulled over most everyone’s eyes: the right who abhor the ACA and the left who champion it.)
While I agree with most of what you’ve written, in that there is a lot of blame to spread around, the scent of impropriety is heavy in the air and clinging to Obama as well, since he took campaign money from BigPharma. And the buck ultimately stops at his desk. He didn’t even broach the idea of negotiations on drug pricing which has a tremendous impact on the cost of healthcare.
Agreed. No secrets means the NSA has no power to keep itself afloat.
Contraception has been under attack by religionists for the last few years, not just the right to terminate. With a very compliant House and an indifferent Senate, outcomes for 51% of Americans might have been much worse if our autonomy had vanished in a puff of fundamentalist cow-towing. My comment is entirely OT, but it’s important to understand that the difference between D and R is greater than what is often assumed by the truly jaded.
Obama played his part in a bit of theater. He never intended to close anything. Being the commander in chief he has the power to order a troop withdrawal from Gitmo or, he can just order his soldiers to release the prisoners. He has so many options that it’s a bit intellectually dishonest to say he tried but was stopped. Then there are the dozens of other black prison sites we maintain extra-judicially around the world. He never closed those either.
I think that perhaps what’s going on here is a bit of partisan wishful thinking on your part. Instead of blaming Bush or Obama, maybe it’s time to look at both sides of the aisle and see them both for what they are - Differing management styles for the same agenda.
So, what are the odds that that one attempt to wire money to Al Shabab was actually some FBI agents coaching their hopeless D-list ‘terrorists’ through one of their risible little plots?
Can’t let this discussion omit Clifford Stoll, before he lost his mind:
Also on vid:
No doubt. Obama may have had to appease Republicans and bluedog DINOs, but he didn’t have to let industry literally write the ACA for him either. I don’t think Obama should get a pass, but I do wonder if he had seriously pushed for single payer if powerful industry would have decimated and defunded the Democratic party only to have the entire thing rescinded later by empowered Republicans after the dust settled. How would a weakened Democratic party defend itself and the single payer system without lobby money to compete with Republicans?
Frankly, the fact we still don’t have a single payer system in the USA makes me embarrassed to be an American. But, I also have no illusions about who is really running the show right now and realize it’s regrettably a long term strategy to get it in place here. First things first, etc.
It’s sickening that we are discussing how the fight against national healthcare is driven by people who say it will bankrupt the country, in a thread about the wildly expensive monitoring of citizens under the guise that it is providing safety. It’s not cool to get blown up, but it’s okay to die from cancer, um-k.
Obama was always a centrist pragmatist - he’s never been a socialist, perhaps a social democrat at best. He was happy to be marketed as left of where he really is, but he’s no Kuchinich - if he was, he wouldn’t have been electable.
I’ve been using a magic invisible rock. It doesn’t have quite the range, but I only had to pay for it once. OK, it does have an ongoing monthly fee of a few thousand dollars, but I’m sure it’s worth it to protect my family from rogue elephants.
I still think that Bush was worse, but only by degrees. The parts I’m upset with Obama are those areas where the policies were virtually identical. I guess it’s the difference between being “lost, itchy, and starving” and “lost, itchy, starving, and being attacked by bears.”
I have a real rock, but it keeps away tigers.
“As long as it appears to work, and fits the wishful thinking of the elite, it’s worth every single (trillion) penny.” -USA.
Hey, one of the very few times that LOL was actually applicable.
