The Obama Administration thread

[D]

we are in debt but can still find billions for wars or to help other countries.

There is no reason we shouldn't have cheap healthcare and programs to help the homeless, teen mothers etc. without our taxes going through the roof.

I was thinking last week as i was driving home in a terrible snow/ice storm that if i were to wreck right now, I'd be royally fucked as I am in my final year of college and have no health insurance at the moment.

so that made me realize, that yeah, we do need a universal healthcare but hopefully it won't take away the quality of care.

[freedom78]

we are in debt but can still find billions for wars or to help other countries.

There is no reason we shouldn't have cheap healthcare and programs to help the homeless, teen mothers etc. without our taxes going through the roof.

I was thinking last week as i was driving home in a terrible snow/ice storm that if i were to wreck right now, I'd be royally fucked as I am in my final year of college and have no health insurance at the moment.

so that made me realize, that yeah, we do need a universal healthcare but hopefully it won't take away the quality of care.

That seems odd to me.  I've attended two colleges/universities, and both required students to be insured while enrolled, either under a parental policy or through a university group policy that was included in your fees upon registering for a given semester.  I don't know enough to say whether this is normal, but considering the way sickness can barrel it's way through a college campus (what's better than a bunch of promiscuous individuals with alcohol weakened immune systems?), it seems only natural that a university would have this in place.

[D]

I have an insurance i bought that protects me against Lawsuits if I were to injure somebody in clinic but it isn't medical insurance.

[Nostradamus]

we are in debt but can still find billions for wars or to help other countries.

There is no reason we shouldn't have cheap healthcare and programs to help the homeless, teen mothers etc. without our taxes going through the roof.

I was thinking last week as i was driving home in a terrible snow/ice storm that if i were to wreck right now, I'd be royally fucked as I am in my final year of college and have no health insurance at the moment.

so that made me realize, that yeah, we do need a universal healthcare but hopefully it won't take away the quality of care.

Why don't you purchase insurance then?  You can obviously afford a computer, car, etc.  Why not purchase insurance?  Why should other taxpayers have to subsidize your health costs considering that you could probably find money to purchase insurance?  I understand for those people that insurance companies won't insure, but there are a lot of people that simply choose not to purchase insurance. However, most of these people are could afford insurance if they simply made some sacrifices.

[freedom78]

Remember last April when we (i.e. some of us) were deriding reports of right wing extremism as "racist" and "hit lists" and "profiling" and "Hitler"esque?  Remember when right wing extremists were people who "love and want to protect their country"? 



Remember yesterday when some yahoo who hates taxes flew his plane into an IRS building?



I shall enjoy the twists of logic that somehow make this not count as a right wing extremist act of domestic terror.

[GeorgeSteele]

Remember last April when we (i.e. some of us) were deriding reports of right wing extremism as "racist" and "hit lists" and "profiling" and "Hitler"esque?  Remember when right wing extremists were people who "love and want to protect their country"? 



Remember yesterday when some yahoo who hates taxes flew his plane into an IRS building?



I shall enjoy the twists of logic that somehow make this not count as a right wing extremist act of domestic terror.

I think the difference here is that the IRS itself is a terrorist organization and therefore a legitimate target.

Joking, of course, it was completely senseless, but you do know a lot of people believe that and justify what happened on that basis.  So it's OK for him to get Miranda rights and not be detained indefinitely.

[sandman]

Remember when right wing extremists were people who "love and want to protect their country"? 

personally, no. but did i miss something? what exactly are you saying?

[freedom78]

Remember when right wing extremists were people who "love and want to protect their country"? 

personally, no. but did i miss something? what exactly are you saying?

Last April the DHS (I think...could have been a different department) put out a statement saying there could be a rise in right wing extremism.  This statement was derided as targeting, unfairly, everyday, patriotic Americans who happen to be conservative, as if the Obama admin was incapable of telling the difference between normal folks and dangerous nutjobs or, more malevolently, simply wanted to tie conservatism to extremist violence.  This was an interpretation that some in this tread held to, though since we've seen people taking loaded weapons to Presidential events and, now, a nut on an anti-government crusade flying his plane into an IRS building. 

In other words, the administration warned about certain things and was criticized for unfairly training the resources of government on conservatives, but it turns out that the warning was correct.

We need to be practical about these things.  There are nuts at both ends of the spectrum and calling them nuts and warning that they may have harmful intentions isn't "playing politics".

[sandman]

Remember when right wing extremists were people who "love and want to protect their country"? 

personally, no. but did i miss something? what exactly are you saying?

Last April the DHS (I think...could have been a different department) put out a statement saying there could be a rise in right wing extremism.  This statement was derided as targeting, unfairly, everyday, patriotic Americans who happen to be conservative, as if the Obama admin was incapable of telling the difference between normal folks and dangerous nutjobs or, more malevolently, simply wanted to tie conservatism to extremist violence.  This was an interpretation that some in this tread held to, though since we've seen people taking loaded weapons to Presidential events and, now, a nut on an anti-government crusade flying his plane into an IRS building. 

In other words, the administration warned about certain things and was criticized for unfairly training the resources of government on conservatives, but it turns out that the warning was correct.

We need to be practical about these things.  There are nuts at both ends of the spectrum and calling them nuts and warning that they may have harmful intentions isn't "playing politics".

derided by who?

your last statement makes alot of sense to me. i don't see how anyone could disagree that there are nuts on both sides. and that warnings are valid.

now, would a republican prez get criticized MORE than a dem prez? i believe so. they would be called racist. but that's not really relevant and doesn't mean the warning last year was not valid.

[Smoking Guns]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gG-_1ZILuzA

[freedom78]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gG-_1ZILuzA

What a nutcase.  This isn't explicitly about Obama, but it seems relevant here:

*******************************************
Don't confuse them with facts

I got an e-mail the other day that depressed me.

It concerned a piece I recently did that mentioned Henry Johnson, who was awarded the French Croix de Guerre in World War I for single-handedly fighting off a company of Germans (some accounts say there were 14, some say almost 30, the ones I find most authoritative say there were about two dozen) who threatened to overrun his post.

Johnson managed this despite the fact that he was only 5-foot-4 and 130 pounds, despite the fact that his gun had jammed, despite the fact that he was wounded 21 times.

My mention of Johnson's heroics drew a rebuke from a fellow named Ken Thompson, which I quote verbatim and in its entirety:

"Hate to tell you that blacks were not allowed into combat intell (sic) 1947, that fact. World War II ended in 1945. So all that feel good, one black man killing two dozen Nazi, is just that, PC bull."

In response, my assistant, Judi Smith, sent Mr. Thompson proof of Johnson's heroics: a link to his page on the Web site of Arlington National Cemetery. She thought this settled the matter.

Thompson's reply? "There is no race on headstones and they didn't come up with the story in tell (sic) 2002."

Judi: "I guess you can choose to believe Arlington National Cemetery or not."

Thompson: "It is what it is, you don't believe either ... "

At this point, Judi forwarded me their correspondence, along with a despairing note. She is probably somewhere drinking right now.

You see, like me, she can remember a time when facts settled arguments. This is back before everything became a partisan shouting match, back before it was permissible to ignore or deride as "biased" anything that didn't support your worldview.

If you and I had an argument and I produced facts from an authoritative source to back me up, you couldn't just blow that off. You might try to undermine my facts, might counter with facts of your own, but you couldn't just pretend my facts had no weight or meaning.

But that's the intellectual state of the union these days, as evidenced by all the people who still don't believe the president was born in Hawaii or that the planet is warming. And by Mr. Thompson, who doesn't believe Henry Johnson did what he did.

I could send him more proof, I suppose. Johnson is lauded in history books ("Before the Mayflower" by Lerone Bennett Jr., "The Dictionary of American Negro Biography" by Rayford Logan and Michael Winston) and in contemporaneous accounts (The Saturday Evening Post, The New York Times). I could also point out that blacks have fought in every war in American history, though before Harry Truman desegregated the military in 1948, they did so in Jim Crow units. Also, there were no Nazis in World War I.

But those are "facts," and the whole point here is that facts no longer mean what they once did. I suppose I could also ignore him. But you see, Ken Thompson is not just some isolated eccentric. No, he is the Zeitgeist personified.

To listen to talk radio, to watch TV pundits, to read a newspaper's online message board, is to realize that increasingly, we are a people estranged from critical thinking, divorced from logic, alienated from even objective truth. We admit no ideas that do not confirm us, hear no voices that do not echo us, sift out all information that does not validate what we wish to believe.

I submit that any people thus handicapped sow the seeds of their own decline; they respond to the world as they wish it were rather to the world as it is. That's the story of the Iraq war.

But objective reality does not change because you refuse to accept it. The fact that you refuse to acknowledge a wall does not change the fact that it's a wall.

And you shouldn't have to hit it to find that out.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/editorialsopinion/2011132171_pitts21.html

[sandman]

i disagree with the premise of that article. i don't think there was a time when "facts settled arguments" for ALL people. i think combative, never proven wrong, my way or the Long Island Expressway attitudes have always been around. it's just now there are vehicles for them to be heard.

if 9/11 had happened 20 years prior, i still think there would have been people that blamed the president and/or thought he was actually behind the orchestration of it.

i'm just noticing alot of journalists who seem to be unhappy with the current "state of the media," if you will. they seem bitter. i'm guessing it's because they are less relevant than they were 10-15 years ago. just my own opinion.   

[Skeba]

I agree with you sandman with that there've aleways been people who've never listened to facts. And that now there are more platforms for them to be heard. And I also believe that while, for example the internet and 24 hour news networks have given a lot more people a voice, it's still astonishing to see how those voices get people's attention no matter how ludicurous they are. I'm not saying that the internet or the newsnetworks are bad, or that it should somehow be limited. What I'm saying is that before, there used to be a reason why the people that were on the television giving the news, or writing the news on the papers, were those people. They were the best at what they did. Now, it seems, that there is a whole generation of people who suddenly have access to all this information, but have not learned to be critical of the massive loads of information given to them so that it seems that in many cases the loudest voice wins. And this is not about the republicans, it goes for the democrats as well.. in fact, it seems to go for pretty much all the countries on earth, just with some variations.

I don't think that journalists are unhappy or better because they're less relevant. I think it's because all this loud shouting and bull shit that keeps flying in the air seems to make people totally blind to the actual facts that can be found behind these idiotic allegations that are being thrown in the air with out any real work to back their things up. In this world, where everyone gets a voice, it is up to the people to see what sources can be trusted, what sources actually back their arguments up with facts that matter, not some semirelevant shit that can be found about everything to make the other party/participant look bad! It's that there are _so_ many people with access to a lot of information, but only choose to listen to the loudest because it's easy and it gives you what you want to hear, over simplified, dumbed down and facts modified to suit their needs at the cost of the truth. Some things are complicated, and can not be covered with a bunch of slogans!! All of this, the 1,000,000 voices, the sheer power of large news networks only driving their own agenda instead of the truth, all of this is alienating people from the actual things that matter, the stories behind the propaganda and most of all the truth!!

That's why I think the journalists are angry.

[Jdog0830]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gG-_1ZILuzA

What a nutcase.  This isn't explicitly about Obama, but it seems relevant here:

*******************************************
Don't confuse them with facts

You see, like me, she can remember a time when facts settled arguments. This is back before everything became a partisan shouting match, back before it was permissible to ignore or deride as "biased" anything that didn't support your worldview.

I think sarah palin one of those kind of people.

Steven Colber had the right idea when he said "Sarah Palin is Fucking Retarted" a little while back.





Joe

[Vicious Wishes]

How to fix Congress


I know many of you will say, "this is impossible".  Let me remind you, Congress has the lowest approval of any entity in Government, now is the time when Americans will join together to reform Congress - the entity that represents us. 

We need to get a Senator to introduce this bill in the US Senate and a Representative to introduce a similar bill in the US House.  These people will become American heroes.

Congressional Reform Act of 2010


1. Term Limits: 12 years only, one of the possible options below.

A. Two Six year Senate terms
B. Six Two year House terms
C. One Six year Senate term and three Two Year House terms


2.  No Tenure / No Pension:

  A congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they are out of office.


3.  Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security:

    All funds in the Congressional retirement fund moves to the Social Security system immediately.  All future funds flow into the Social Security system, Congress participates with the American people.


4. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan just as all Americans.


5. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise.  Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.


6. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.


7. Congress must equally abide in all laws they impose on the American people.


8. All contracts with past and present congressmen are void effective 1/1/11 . 

    The American people did not make this contract with congressmen, congressmen made all these contracts for themselves.


Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career.  The Founding Fathers envisioned  citizen legislators, serve your term(s), then go home and back to work.

[inlikeflynn420]

I agree that there should be term limits and not so many lifetime rewards for serving in Congress. I think there are people who run for office with the best intentions, but once they get in they realize that things are the way they are and the people who have been therre a long time do not want it to change. Sadly, most of them are not primarily interested in what's best for America, but how can they get re-elected. Again, I'm sure there are a lot of good intentions but they have to do what their party wants them to do if they are to keep their cushy job. It pisses me off that either party won't support anything the other party suggests just because it might actually work! That would be horrible for their own party -- who cares if it's actually good for the country. Like everyone, I lean more to one side than the other, but I do think both sides are guilty of this. Maybe if the suggestions in the above post were put into action, we could get people in there who aren't concerned about an easy career, but instead, they want to fix some problems in this country.

[pilferk]

i disagree with the premise of that article. i don't think there was a time when "facts settled arguments" for ALL people. i think combative, never proven wrong, my way or the Long Island Expressway attitudes have always been around. it's just now there are vehicles for them to be heard.

if 9/11 had happened 20 years prior, i still think there would have been people that blamed the president and/or thought he was actually behind the orchestration of it.

i'm just noticing alot of journalists who seem to be unhappy with the current "state of the media," if you will. they seem bitter. i'm guessing it's because they are less relevant than they were 10-15 years ago. just my own opinion.   

I agree, to a point.

There have always been folks who are ignorant, and content to be so.  You have no further to look than groups like the KKK, who have been around since...well...seemingly forever.  The hate mongers, the deluded, the zealots...they've been around since time (or at least humanity) began.

The problem is:  It's either getting much more widespread, or they're simply becoming a lot more evident.  I honestly don't know which.  But the clamor coming from that type of person is definitely growing louder...either by numbers or by "delivery method".

It could very well be a product of our current global climate:  There's lots for them to latch on to, there's  a 24 hour news cycle to fill and there isample opportunity (via the media and the net) to disseminate their views  Maybe it's just that.  I HOPE it's just that.

Keep in mind, I'm not talking about most of the posters, here, who are relatively good at making their case with some logic, thought, foresight, and SOME factual basis.  I think, by and large, we're pretty good at arguing each other's facts.

But the video, above, is a perfect example of a man who, in the face of overwhelming factual evidence, simply puts on blinders and rails away.  I just don't get it.  I don't see how those brains work....it's quite scary, actually.

[Smoking Guns]

What is odd about the video, is the person speaking is a black man.  Keyes is good at Economic theory, its just the other stuff he gets bogged down on.  This must have been right when he was sworn in.

[freedom78]

What is odd about the video, is the person speaking is a black man.  Keyes is good at Economic theory, its just the other stuff he gets bogged down on.  This must have been right when he was sworn in.

Anyone who thinks Obama is a "radical communist" strikes me as having a poor understanding of economic theory.

I can't figure out of he's just a wingnut on a crusade or an attention whore.

[Smoking Guns]

What is odd about the video, is the person speaking is a black man.  Keyes is good at Economic theory, its just the other stuff he gets bogged down on.  This must have been right when he was sworn in.

Anyone who thinks Obama is a "radical communist" strikes me as having a poor understanding of economic theory.

I can't figure out of he's just a wingnut on a crusade or an attention whore.

There was a time when Obama used to speak more freely.  Alan beleives more in Monetary Policy where as Obama probably leans to Fiscal policy.  I think Obama of the two would more likely raise taxes, and print more money vs. Keys who would adjust interest rates and keep taxes low to stimulate economic activity.  I could be wrong, but Obama seems more like a Keynesian.