Sunday, December 05, 2010
Bill Maher tells it like it is.
I still hate to pile on the President, but damn sometimes I think I would pay big money just to watch him stand up in front of a podium and tell the GOP that he is "mad as hell and he is not going to take it anymore!"
I then I would like him to start calling up the Democrats and saying, "Look the Republicans are going to lie about you and accuse you of all kinds of BS in order to beat you in the next election. Wouldn't you like to actually do something that you can brag about before they start their character assassination?
I also agree with Maher that the country is NOT center right. The country is far more progressive than the Republicans want us to believe, especially when it comes to social issues, so they are constantly using the idea that liberals = more government intrusion and higher taxes, when in fact the GOP is the one responsible for most of the recent out of control growth and spending in our government.
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President Obama is neither weak nor stupid...
ReplyDeleteA lot of people are wondering why President Obama keeps offering compromises and capitulations to the Republicans before negotiations have even begun. A lot of people are wondering why he appears to keep effectively unilaterally knee-capping himself. A lot of people accurately argue that it would be great optics at least to try to stand on principle, and it might even produce better policies. Some say he is weak. Some question his intelligence. Some do one or both in less than polite terms. But many are overlooking a possible alternate explanation. Many are overlooking an explanation that is hiding in plain sight.
President Obama is no fool. He's actually extremely smart. One need not recount the entire litany, but suffice to say that one doesn't become president of the Harvard Law Review, get invited to teach at the University of Chicago Law School, or compose on the fly a riveting Speech on Race that galvanizes much of the nation-- even many inclined to be critics-- unless one has a rare and assiduously honed intellect. The argument that President Obama is stupid fails at first thought.
A more common refrain is that President Obama is weak. That he gives in too easily and doesn't know how to fight. This argument sometimes lapses into terms that shouldn't be acceptable even to the harshest of the president's critics, but many believe the president either doesn't know how to or is unwilling to stand his ground. But this belief also doesn't hold up under scrutiny.
President Obama would not be where he is today if he was weak or timid. He has had to overcome a host of personal and structural hurdles, and to dare even to try to become this nation's first black president takes a level of courage and determination almost beyond comprehension. Every president takes risks, but President Obama challenged and defeated presumptions that even many of his strongest supporters had taken for granted. He prevailed because he is smart. He prevailed because he is tough. He prevailed because he is almost fearless.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/12/5/925119/-President-Obama-is-neither-weak-nor-stupid...-nor-a-progressive
Projecting one's emotional and psychological needs onto a leader, and then attacking the leader for not acting on those emotional needs is not productive, nor does it live in reality.
ReplyDeletePresident Obama has shown over and over again that he is an adult, a measured, reasonable, strong, intelligent ADULT. That is why I am so glad he is in charge of things.
Today's society is so given to drama and it is fed to us on a regular basis. Bill is telling it 'like it is' for people who can't see very far into the future, who want a knee-jerk reaction to each and every political nuance and parry. Ain't gonna happen.
That's how Sarah rolls, not Barack. And thank GOD for that!
Send Mitch McConnell, or anyone in the GOP leadership, an e-mail wishing them a prosperous new year. They are earning it. Never mind that in the new year there will be the McConnell millions, or the Boehner brigades standing in soup lines.
ReplyDeleteIf those T^#$% tax cuts were going to work, dontcha think they would have prevented the 2008 meltdown?
Sorry Gryphen, my hair's on fire.
I'm sorry Gryphen, but Fuck Bill Maher.
ReplyDeleteThe President have gotten a lot accomplished being the man he is.
If he would have been too aggressive, then he would have been labeled an Angry Black Man.
Of course Obama looks beaten down. Have you seen, or have you ever been guilty of, one positive line of text about his Presidency? No. You have not. No one has. His highest achievement is perfectly invisible; there isn't anarchy in the streets or famine. Yet. Despite the fact that the current depression is at least as widespread as the Great Depression, the country is still muddling through without martial law. To date.
ReplyDeleteMaher. Stewart. Colbert.
ReplyDeleteAre comedians that only intelligent people on the television willing to tell the truth and who understand exactly what is going on and what needs to be done?
Are the jesters our new political leaders?
Obama is pretty intelligent so I must assume that those advising him are cowardly pinheads. He either needs to stop listening to them and start watching late night cable or he needs to replace them with those that watch late night cable.
Then DON'T pile on him! I love Bill and but he has never worked in government or politics and he has no idea what it's like. I think liberals need to have faith and stand with him. As a group, we can all be very naive about what it's like to stand in his shoes!!
ReplyDeleteAgree with Anonymous above.
ReplyDeleteFUCK BILL MAHER and the horse he rode in on!! and I don't even need to watch the video.
And that goes for Arianna Huffington, Jane Hamsher, Glenn Greenwald, Markos Malitsus(however it's spelled), Cenk Uygur, Ed Schultz, etc. all of whom are simply making money off traffic driven by the constant negative pieces they run on the President.
Arianna, Markos, Cenk and Ed are all former republicans. Hamsher teamed up with Grover Norquist and praised Erick Erickson. Need I say
more?
I used to like Michael Moore, but after he went on Maher's show and made the pink tutu comment referring to President Obama, he's on my list as well (not the good one).
If any of these people ever grow the balls it takes to campaign and run for president and do as much as President Obama has done against all the obstacles and odds that Obama's faced with the steaming pile of shit he inherited from baby Bush AND *do it all while black* then they might have the right to criticize the President but only in a respectful way unlike what they're doing now.
I'm simply fed up with the lies and disrespect directed toward the President coming from the "professional left." The President's press secretary had it right when he called them that.
Here's a piece that should be read by all supporters of our wonderful president and even non supporters *IF* they can handle *FACTS*.
The charges are familiar: He's a compromiser who hasn't stood up to the GOP or Wall Street. But a look at his record reveals something even more startling — a truly historic presidency
Oh and take a look at
the faces of the troops when President Obama made a surprise visit to Afghanistan over the weekend.
Apparently they didn't get the memo that he's spineless and weak.
Funny how this visit and the pictures didn't show up on any of the lefty blogs except for the ones that the firebaggers (professional left) would label "obamabots."
Agree with Anonymous above.
ReplyDeleteFUCK BILL MAHER and the horse he rode in on!! and I don't even need to watch the video.
And that goes for Arianna Huffington, Jane Hamsher, Glenn Greenwald, Markos Malitsus(however it's spelled), Cenk Uygur, Ed Schultz, etc. all of whom are simply making money off traffic driven by the constant negative pieces they run on the President.
Arianna, Markos, Cenk and Ed are all former republicans. Hamsher teamed up with Grover Norquist and praised Erick Erickson. Need I say
more?
I used to like Michael Moore, but after he went on Maher's show and made the pink tutu comment referring to President Obama, he's on my list as well (not the good one).
If any of these people ever grow the balls it takes to campaign and run for president and do as much as President Obama has done against all the obstacles and odds that Obama's faced with the steaming pile of shit he inherited from baby Bush AND *do it all while black* then they might have the right to criticize the President but only in a respectful way unlike what they're doing now.
I'm simply fed up with the lies and disrespect directed toward the President coming from the "professional left." The President's press secretary had it right when he called them that.
Here's a piece that should be read by all supporters of our wonderful president and even non supporters *IF* they can handle *FACTS*.
The charges are familiar: He's a compromiser who hasn't stood up to the GOP or Wall Street. But a look at his record reveals something even more startling — a truly historic presidency
Oh and take a look at
ReplyDeletethe faces of the troops when President Obama made a surprise visit to Afghanistan over the weekend.
Apparently they didn't get the memo that he's spineless and weak.
Funny how this visit and the pictures didn't show up on any of the lefty blogs except for the ones that the firebaggers (professional left) would label "obamabots."
@Likala - WORD!!!!!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteThanks likala, screw the Professional Left. I'm so sick of their whining and complaining.
ReplyDeleteI can't stand Arianna Huffington. I stop visiting The Huffington Post a while back, because of the constant Obama bashing. I've never seen them post anything positive about the President. Arianna and Ed Schultz are former Republicans and they are frauds. They could care less about the middle class. They are attention seeking money grubbing whores.
BTW, thanks for the link. I love BWD's blog and of course IM. Glenn Greenwald is nasty piece of work...comparing BWD to Nazis.
Obama could, quite legitimately, do a 50 state tour and repeatedly say, "Republican are killing American Citizens, and here are the names of people in you state who have died from lack of health care that would have been accessible to them if the Republicans had helped pass, Universal Care, or Public Option. or Opt in. But they chose to not support the American people but choose a health care process that kills Americans."
ReplyDeleteThat's is what I want to hear from him. So we know he is standing up for Americans even if it means looking the Republicans in the eye and not blinking, even if it means calling them what they are, killers of America's children, pregnant women, mothers and fathers and grandparents.
Gryphen, I agree with you and Maher that we have always been far more liberal as a nation that we will admit. If you look at every major issue that has led significant social change, we have consistently gone with the liberal solution every time. Slavery, citizenship for freed slaves, labor laws, suffrage for women, and the Civil Rights Act all had as their final solution liberal proposals that were initially deemed to far to the left. On the question of slavery, Lincoln was initially loathe to free the slaves. He could have issued a proclamation immediately upon his inauguration, but he did not do so. He did issue the Emancipation Proclamation until after the Battle of Antietam, some two years into the Civil War. Ultimately he came to adopt the liberal abolitionist position because it was the the right one. The liberal position did not change to suit the nation, the nation came to see that the liberal solution was the right one all along. That pattern has been repeated MANY times.
ReplyDeleteThis trend is so one sided as to place conservatives on the wrong side of every issue in our nation’s history. Now before anyone goes nuts, I said CONSERVATIVES and not REPUBLICANS. Historically, both parties have either had a cross section of liberals and conservatives together, or they have moved along the left/right political spectrum. In the era of slavery, the Southern Slave owners were as conservative as they could be - and Democratic - and the abolitionists were the überliberals of their day and from 1856-1864 - mostly Republican.
As today’s GOP is only a party of the right most reactionary brand of conservatism, they have decided to uphold that fine tradition of being on the wrong side of every major social issue - and most of the minor ones as well.
However, even today’s conservatives can be persuaded to the left of center IF they eschew lockstep party conformity and engage in meaningful debate. This recent article in HuffPo showed that when conservatives take part in civil discussions with their liberal brethren, they inevitably move TO THE LEFT.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/02/civil-political-discourse-vs-modern-cons_n_791342.html
If the GOPbaggers get wind of this, their heads will explode.
I also would like to see President Obama be more aggressive with the GOP. Like when he singlehandedly schooled THE ENTIRE GOP HOUSE CAUCUS. When he swings for the fences, he usually hits it out of the park. However, with the amount of seething racism that fuels much of the GOP’s irrational anti-Obama hysteria, an aggressive black man in the White House would be like waving a bloody Confederate flag in front of their faces. Obama might as well quote Clevon Little from “Blazing Saddles”: “Hey, where the white women at?”
It may well be that the President realizes that as the first black president, he may have to exercise a greater degree of discretion in order to keep the crackers in line. That may not sit well with the rest of us, but it may indeed be prudent.
Bill Maher does have something right and it's time for the Democratic party to stop with the civility. It obviously gets us no where. The Republicans have their base of idiots that will say and do anything to get their point across, yet we all stand back and wear our polite behavior like a badge of honor. I say no more. Dems, we might have to play in the mud and get dirty to get our point across. The time for polite discourse may very well be a thing of the past. If we Dems stand up and become vocal and pugilistic, there is no Republican in the land that can trump our argument.
ReplyDeleteI also would like to see President Obama be more aggressive with the GOP. Like when he singlehandedly schooled THE ENTIRE GOP HOUSE CAUCUS. When he swings for the fences, he usually hits it out of the park. However, with the amount of seething racism that fuels much of the GOP’s irrational anti-Obama hysteria, an aggressive black man in the White House would be like waving a bloody Confederate flag in front of their faces. Obama might as well quote Clevon Little from “Blazing Saddles”: “Hey, where the white women at?”
ReplyDeleteIt may well be that the President realizes that as the first black president, he may have to exercise a greater degree of discretion in order to keep the crackers in line. That may not sit well with the rest of us, but it may indeed be prudent.
Sorry for the multiple post. When I posted the first one, I got an error message saying it was too long.
ReplyDeleteSo I chopped it in half and reposted the shorter bit at the end.
Mea culpa, mea culpa, maxima mea culpa.
Translation: My bad!
"BTW, thanks for the link. I love BWD's blog and of course IM. Glenn Greenwald is nasty piece of work...comparing BWD to Nazis."
ReplyDeleteYeah nasty piece of something. Her blog's been up for only a week or so I think. I wonder what he's afraid of. At any rate he gave her a lot of traffic so the joke's on him.
There are a lot of pro Obama blogs now and they are getting a lot of traffic. So the silent majority of supporters are out there.
Markos and Cenk are former repubs also. Cenk has been writing some pretty nasty pieces on Kos. One is referenced in the first link I posted.
And don't miss the link that's also in that piece which goes to a piece written by Tim Dickinson of Rolling Stone. According to him, this Presidency will be historic.
But I and many others already knew that. He's gotten more done in 2 years than any other president against all the odds and obstacles.
I just try to keep reminding myself that the whining left is just a *very loud* minority. They certainly are not a majority and certainly not his base as they would like to believe.
likala,
ReplyDeleteI take exception with your last paragraph. Actually, without hard left liberals like me and my socialist fellow travelers, Obama would never have won enough primaries to get the Democratic nomination over Hillary Clinton. It was her position on the war that cost Clinton the support of liberals. That support went to Obama because he very shrewdly came out in opposition to the war in Iraq.
It is facile and glib to go after liberals if you don’t like their position du jour, but like it or not, without liberal’s support of candidate Obama in the primaries, there would be no President Obama.
Us liberals just wish that President Obama looked and acted more like CANDIDATE Obama. That’s the guy we voted for. Where has HE been? Obama’s been good - hell, compared to who he replaced he’s been phenomenal. However, he strikes me as a might too cautious, but as I said earlier, I think I understand why.
Fuck Bill Maher, the whining Left, and all the fucking mules they think are race horses -- that they rode in on!
ReplyDeleteI was a Republican voter for nearly 40 years before the debacle of the GWB years. I'm shocked and disgusted by the whining stab-in-the-back tactics which the Dems use on their own President. Some days, I can't tell the difference in the rhetoric about President Obama coming out of the right-wing and left-wing blogs. There are more similarities between the right-wing nutjobs and the "Far Left" than the Left would like to admit. Screw all these loudmouthed idiots.
"I take exception with your last paragraph."
ReplyDeleteI'm talking about the present not the campaign.
85% of Liberal Democrats Give The President A High Approval Rating
I agree 100% that the "angry black man" persona would not work so what's left? The calm, cool, calculated man he's always been now and during the campaign. I don't know why so many think he was different then.
And the GOP is the party responsible for more government intrusion in your personal life. Do the Patriot Act, FISA, and uterus police ring a bell, people?
ReplyDeleteIt takes far more courage, intellect, patience, grace, and all the other skills Pres O has to have to deal with the current state of the other side and he may look weak, but infact, is showing great strength to try to do the right thing. It is always easier to just throw up your arms and start screaming and yelling.
ReplyDeleteThe thing I'm most disappointed in is the public option.
ReplyDeletePresident Obama campaigned on it and I voted for him, partially because of it.
The public option was "the teeth" in "Obamacare."
I have more than a theoretical interest in the health care debate. You see, the company I used to work for was taken over by corporate raiders, and I, as well as everyone in management, was fired.
I did not collect unemployment. Instead, while waiting for something good to come along, I shuffled from low-wage job to minimum wage job - took any job I could get, as the Republicans are wont to sing the praises of. But it got to the point where I couldn't afford my own health insurance any more and those lousy-wage jobs don't offer health insurance. (They keep your hours just under 40 so they don't have to give you benefits.)
And then I had a heart attack.
Oh sure, they saved my life: stents, quadruple bypass - miracle open-heart surgery stuff. But they took my house. They took my car. And I still owe the hospital and doctors tens of thousands of dollars. The whole nightmare scenario you hear about sometimes on the news? Well, that's me.
Now I live hand-to-mouth, hell, this isn't even my own computer.
My point is: if there had been Obamacare - WITH the affordable public option - I'd be whole now.
(Me and a few million other guys...)
Look, I'm not some welfare cheat - I worked my ass off my entire life and just got caught up in the whims of circumstance and piss-poor timing.
So fuck you jerks that sit around and debate the vagaries of political philosophy as they throw your neighbors into the street.
This is real life, so fuck you very much.
likala,
ReplyDelete"I don't know why so many think he was different then."
Because he talked about getting us out of Iraq quickly. Because he talked about actually doing things that he has either waffled on or has essentially adopted a stance similar to Bush.
Where is presidential leadership on the issue of torture? Why hasn't the president pushed for investigations on the credible allegations of war crimes against Bush and Cheney? Why has Obama done his best to BLOCK such investigatios?
In the healthcare debate, why did Obama START the debate by taking single payer off the table? He started the debate by conceding his biggest negotiating tool with the GOP. What did it get him? Months of bullshit like "death panels" and other nonsense.
Like his current capitulation to McConnell on tax cuts for he überwealthy, President Obama doesn't seem to purchase much with his ceding so much ground. From my perspective, President Obama doesn't really seem to grasp the power of the bully pulpit.
I agree that his calm style and demeanor are great, but strength and civility are not mutually exclusive. The president's opposition are bugs compared to him. In 10-20 years nobody will much remember McConnell and Boehner or any of their deeds. So why is the president not brushing their feeble nonsense aside by calling them out?
President Obama could totally dominate the GOP if he but stiffened his spine a bit. I at least like to see him try it. Being a doormat for Boehner and McConnell has not produced any tangible benefit.
I'm in the president's corner, but I'm telling him to punch harder.
Wowee. I'd like to add my "eff you Bill Maher and the jackass you rode in on." Yeah, that one, the symbol for the Democrats. And to Anon who realizes how restrictive the "angry black man" trope is for Obama, yes, thank you, so true.
ReplyDeleteObama is head and shoulders above anyone who has been in the White House since, and including, Reagan.
Gasman
ReplyDeleteWe'll just have to agree to disagree.
IMO and the opinion of many many others he's done the best job he could possibly do when faced with the political realities of passing legislation in today's Congress.
He's never had a sure 60 votes to stop a filibuster. That's just the way it is. The R's won't vote for anything he wants even if it's something they were for in the past. The blue dog democrats are a disgrace. Then there's Lieberman, the turn coat.
Obama is out there talking his head off at every chance. It doesn't get reported for the most part (example: his trip to Afghanistan) unless there's something the MSM can use against him. They'd rather chase after Palin and report on every thing she says and/or tweets. Then they have the insolence to ask him about what she's said. There's something wrong with this picture.
Someone said he should/could go to all 50 states and talk about how the Republicans are screwing us all over or something along those lines. Yeah that would be great if only he didn't have so many other things on his plate.