The end of the Obama dream?

Hillary always said Obama could talk-the-talk but not walk-the-walk. Will his signature campaign issue, health care, make it or will he squib on this one too?

[gearguy]

sadly, yes. The democrats always fuck-up health care reform. Obama's has been incompetent ; big mistake to let the idiots in congress work this without any direction or arm twisting by the administration. And forget bi-partisanism. It doesn't matter what Obama proposes, they will opoose it. He should tell the repugs to go fuck themselves and get something passed, even a small incremental step.

Unfortunately it doesn't appear that will happen and health care reform in the US is now pushed back at least another 10 years or more.

I predict that the repugs will regain control of at least one branch of congress in the 2010 mid-terms and there is a real chance, unless the repugs are foolish enough to nominate Palin for their candidate that Obama may lose the 2012 election.

very sad. best chance in years and he blew it.

and then the US will be really screwed; you think Bush was bad, the next repug president will be worse. The republican party has
lost it's mind.

[Khor tose]

sadly, yes. The democrats always fuck-up health care reform. Obama's has been incompetent ; big mistake to let the idiots in congress work this without any direction or arm twisting by the administration. And forget bi-partisanism. It doesn't matter what Obama proposes, they will opose it. He should tell the repugs to go fuck themselves and get something passed, even a small incremental step.
Exactly, it is time he learned to live in the real world. This is not Chicago politics where things are worked out in the backrooms. He has the power and it time he started using it. I do not know about you but I voted for him to lead, not beg for partisanship.


Unfortunately it doesn't appear that will happen and health care reform in the US is now pushed back at least another 10 years or more.

I predict that the repugs will regain control of at least one branch of congress in the 2010 mid-terms and there is a real chance, unless the repugs are foolish enough to nominate Palin for their candidate that Obama may lose the 2012 election.

It is still not to late for him to wake up and get his act together. This is a very intelligent man, and I hope he is finished with his learning curve and starts leading like he is suppose to.


you think Bush was bad, the next repug president will be worse. The republican party has lost it's mind.

But not its wealthy business backers, and news moguls.

[gearguy]

one of the best things he could so is to tell the dems in congress it's time for new leadership. Reid and Pilosi have been terrible.

[Wesley]

Obama is an asshole Chicago thug, and is trying to run the white house the same way, The American public won't be Bullied , if he tries to ram it down their throat he will loose at least the Senate to the Republicans. The republicans are \hoping he will try to ram it though. He would loose himself if he lost his teleprompter! His Reverend Wright was an indication of where and how he thought. No one can sit under a guy for 20 years and not agree with him. God did we get this one wrong or what.Don't associate intelligence with the ability to give a good speech. Any idiot can read.

He ran a flawless campaign then reneged on every promise and then governed from the right not the left. If he looses health care, its the end of the presidency and the far left will crucify him more than the Republicans. The swing voters, the independents are leaving him by the droves. God cash for Clunkers , Jesus the rednecks were dragging them out of the woods and trading them in.

Wes

[gearguy]

you honestly would have preferred McCain/Palin?

He won the election by 5 million votes; a fair number of the american public support him and
continue to support him, even those who, like me, are getting pretty disenchanted.

So who is this "American public"? I can't stand it when I hear the wing-nuts screaming
"I want my America back." and "I don;t want my tax dollars spend" on whatever they
are opposed to. Some minor TV star was on TV the other day saying that he was going to
withhold paying part of his taxes and encouraging other to do because "the american people"
were opposed to health care reform and so was he. Well I pay taxes as well and I'd be perfectly
happy if they had used the almost 1T they've blown in Iraq on a single-payer system for health
care in the US.

The health reform will cost 1T over ten years, that's 100B a year. The defense dept budget this
year is 640B. Take a 100B out of that; we don;t need to spend that much. At the current rate
of planned growth in the defense budget, it will be over 1T a year by 2020!

Cash for clunkers? best idea he had. If McCain had been president, and proposed this the repugs
would have been all for and praising it to the hilt! It jump started the auto segment, got 450K
old, unsafe, more polluting and less fuel effecient cars out of the system. If it had been a 3B tax rebate
for the purchase of a new car, the repugs would have loved it. By Obama proposed it, so it must be
bad and it's socialist and communist and where's the hell the long-form birth certificate and I bet he
has gay orgies in the White House and is Satanist to boot (all current statements from the main
crazy from the birther moment.)

Wes, your statement is inconsistent. You rant about Obama as if you're a right wing-nut but appear to bemoan the
fact that he is governing from the right not the left?

He's pretty much a centrist democrat, which you have to be to get elected in the US and even that is too much for
the right-wing nuts that are running the repug party now.

The US will be truly fucked if the next president is a repug before the repug party gets sane again.

Palin in the Whitehouse? Huckabee? Romney?

[Wesley]

I am saying he is loosing his base, and the far left are going to crucify him. He will be lucky to keep the senate after this and the deficit and loss to the dollar while we continue to print money to pay for the trillion dollar new American dream. He just as well have been Johnson and the" New Deal". I am not saying he is doing bad, he just should have led the debate rather than Miss Nancy from SF, It was a huge mistake to let a congress with an already a less approval rating than Bush, take the helm for the debate for health care. He should have shown leadership , instead he has delegated out everything to Czars and Miss Nancy, I get sick when I see her or Miss Boxer, I'm sorry "Senator" Boxer, on TV. God he had the facts and the country in his hand and turned it over to these two nuts to run it , now even they can't agree with each other on the issues and still have not defined the argument and gives the Republicans nothing more than new talking points as they slather around like ants on an ant hill going no where at lightening speed.

Wes

[gearguy]

one of the interesting things about the repug is that they seem to want to pretend that GWB didn't exisit, somehow we entered a time distortion and jumped eight years from Clinton to Obama, and no one remembers the last eight years. So everything gets blamed on Clinton and then Obama.

It bears repeating over and over that GWB was the worse president in US history. We had other bad presidents but that's was cause they did so little,. Here we have Bush with the repugs controlling all of congress for six years out of his terms and just about everything he did was bad and we're going to pay for it a long.

In regards to the deficit and the stimulus two points. Obama's budget added 600B to Bush's deficit, all of that for the stimulus. Bush's 2010 budget carried a deficient of 3.3B; Obama;s 3.9B. Even the repugs were behind the need for an economic stimulus (at least the somewhat sane ones) they just argued that it should have been all tax rebates and cuts, not expenditures. The issue there tho is that tax rebates and cuts don;t have a stimulating effect; they get saved or they are used to pay off past debt, while expenditures create or maintain jobs and a dollar of stimulus propagates thru the economy. Now you could argue that there was bad choices of how to spend the money in the stimulus bill and I would agree but spending the money on expenditures was better than a tax cut/rebate. And BTW, part of the argument was over the amount of the tax cut that was in the bill. The repugs wanted 100% or in compromise 60%, the bill finally was 40% tax cut. IMO, it should have been 100% expenditure on infrastructure. Just fixing all the decaying roads, bridges, etc in the US is estimated to cost 800B and that's not even to maintain what we have. There's another good way to boost the economy; get our transportation system fixed.

Repugs only become deficient hawks during Democratic admins; otherwise they are perfectly happy to run deficits to pay for tax cuts and corporate welfare to defense contractors, etc. I repeat, Clinton left the country with a surplus; Bush ran deficits every year of his admin. The next repug president will do the same to pay for a 1T defense budget, while shafting medicare and social security to pay for it.

On health care, I think Obama's mistake was trying to get it done this year. He should have waited till after the 2010; it was a risk he could lose Congress, but if the economy turns, there was a chance that the dems would have gained in congress, esp one or two seats in the Senate, as so many repugs are retiring. Plus I think that the public has fatigue with the TARP bail out, stimulus, etc. Waiting a year or two would have allowed that fatigue to dissipate and with the economy turned around reform may have gotten a better hearing. He should have also been incremental in his approach; concentrate on some needed reforms (eliminate pre-existing condition, better ways to extend coverage thru a period of unemployed, give the repugs a tort reform bone (tho that only saves less than 1.2-1%)) to make people with existing coverage feel more secure, then the next year or two, concentrate on expanding coverage.

[gearguy]

BTW, fully agree with you on Pelosi. She's terrible; Reid as well.
The dems in congress need new leadership. They've been totally
ineffective and Peolosi in particular has hurt Obama's agenda way
more than she has helped (if she's helped any).

[Bob]

Obama is an asshole Chicago thug, and is trying to run the white house the same way, The American public won't be Bullied , if he tries to ram it down their throat he will loose at least the Senate to the Republicans. The republicans are \hoping he will try to ram it though. He would loose himself if he lost his teleprompter! His Reverend Wright was an indication of where and how he thought. No one can sit under a guy for 20 years and not agree with him. God did we get this one wrong or what.Don't associate intelligence with the ability to give a good speech. Any idiot can read.


Hate to say it but even Sean Hannity would have said it kindler and gentler than that. Needless to say, I disagree - especially with your unbelievable right-wing attempt at guilt by association with the idiot Reverend Wright. It didn't work when the Republicans tried it last fall....and it's not working with me now.

The health care issue, of course, is quite the mess these days - and largely predictable. Too many wealthy and entrenched positions to stir that pot and the 1993 Hillary fiasco is repeating itself. I don't blame Hillary or Obama for that but the special interests fanning the flames of ignorance. I don't know if any reform will occur but I give credit to Obama for at least trying (having 45+ million Americans without health insurance is a national disgrace).

Oh well....., you can always join Sarah on her porch and gaze at Russia....

"the american people"It's about as useful a slogan as "the gay community". People express personal views and hope to boost their case bt claiming membership of a non-existent but plausible sounding lobby group who all, without exception, support the point of view they are putting forward.

[Wesley]

Obama is an asshole Chicago thug, and is trying to run the white house the same way, The American public won't be Bullied , if he tries to ram it down their throat he will loose at least the Senate to the Republicans. The republicans are \hoping he will try to ram it though. He would loose himself if he lost his teleprompter! His Reverend Wright was an indication of where and how he thought. No one can sit under a guy for 20 years and not agree with him. God did we get this one wrong or what.Don't associate intelligence with the ability to give a good speech. Any idiot can read.


Hate to say it but even Sean Hannity would have said it kindler and gentler than that. Needless to say, I disagree - especially with your unbelievable right-wing attempt at guilt by association with the idiot Reverend Wright. It didn't work when the Republicans tried it last fall....and it's not working with me now.

The health care issue, of course, is quite the mess these days - and largely predictable. Too many wealthy and entrenched positions to stir that pot and the 1993 Hillary fiasco is repeating itself. I don't blame Hillary or Obama for that but the special interests fanning the flames of ignorance. I don't know if any reform will occur but I give credit to Obama for at least trying (having 45+ million Americans without health insurance is a national disgrace).

Oh well....., you can always join Sarah on her porch and gaze at Russia....

Actually, Bob I love Russia, but damn they are all liars, Actually, I am playing devils advocate, and have enjoyed messing around a bit with gearguy , only to find him quite enjoyable and of good sport, I don't believe half the shit I spout out on here. You of most should know me better than that by now. If you want to know how I really feel, I think Obama made a lot of promises he could not keep, some he knew he could not keep when he made them but, like most politicians he had to get elected first. I assume that much of his moving more to the right was a sobering reality check when he got his first briefing in which we likely will never know about until many years later. Actually, I do believe he should have moved forward with it all himself and not left it to Pelosi, On that issue, I do honestly despise the woman and Barbara Boxer even the more.Obama had the country in his hand, he should have struck while the poker was hot and presented his own plan and not rely on such as her and her far left crowd to do it for him. I honestly think America at the beginning would have followed him almost any where had it been him, not the Senate or House. I think he is much brighter than he lets on at times and forgive me for picking up the FNC talking points they happened to be on at the time I was posting so it was easy just to write what they wre saying. I don't believe anyone anymore in the media for a honest representative of the truth and there is no one I will turn off faster than Hannity. I will watch Star gate all night rather than watch him for a minute. I stay up to watch Queer as Folk every night and other than that I really don't care what is on, its mostly noise to me while I am working. If not at work I am on here or Planet Romeo looking for my next trick. Honestly, don't ever take me too seriously (of that I am sure you don't) and with the exception of some recent posts regarding a former poster here. Of that I was serious, the rest I like to prod and poke at Smiles and others occasionally if I think they have a good sense of humor and can take it with out getting too upset. gearguy was a pleasant surprise for me. As are you most of the time.

All the best Bob, I appreciated your candid retort.

Wes

[Bob]

No problem, Wes.

Last year, I kept making comments that I couldn't understand why anyone could seriously contemplate wanting to be President of the USA - given the state of the country and world (and the pathetic legacy that Bush and Cheney left us). Yet, I'm an optimist (at least initially) and Obama is the current best hope that we have. I'll give him a chance but I never vote for somebody a second time unless they've impressed me.

Internationally, I think he's done a lot of needed fence-mending and I suppose we can't forget that he's only been on the job for 8+ months. Given what Bushie and the neocons did for us, I'd think it'll take a decade or more to help that situation.

He's bright as hell and he seems to have the right motivations. Time (maybe 2-3 years?) will tell if he'll be able to help lead us to a better path. If so, great; if not, we're totally fucked!

[Wesley]

No problem, Wes.

Last year, I kept making comments that I couldn't understand why anyone could seriously contemplate wanting to be President of the USA - given the state of the country and world (and the pathetic legacy that Bush and Cheney left us). Yet, I'm an optimist (at least initially) and Obama is the current best hope that we have. I'll give him a chance but I never vote for somebody a second time unless they've impressed me.

Internationally, I think he's done a lot of needed fence-mending and I suppose we can't forget that he's only been on the job for 8+ months. Given what Bushie and the neocons did for us, I'd think it'll take a decade or more to help that situation.

He's bright as hell and he seems to have the right motivations. Time (maybe 2-3 years?) will tell if he'll be able to help lead us to a better path. If so, great; if not, we're totally fucked!

For the most part agreed my friend, it is never too late and although he may have lost the initial surge of his presidency I am sure it is far from over with. I do worry about the value of the dollar which for me may be a personal problem in as much as I am in other countries most of my time and the value of the dollar remains important to me. So, I would like to keep the deficit down as much as possible. I personally don't think we can spend what is needed on health care now and deal with the stimulus at the same time. I recommend he deal with the deficit and the stimulus first then worry about health care and take it on himself. Of course I am sure he is hanging on my every word and can't wait until I give him a another load of my advise .

Have a good day Bob, I am busy for the rest of the day mostly.

Wes