Thursday, July 17, 2014

Barack Obama: a generic Democratic president?

One of the more amusing things about political campaigns on both sides is their attempts to charactarize their opposite as outside of the mainstream. Thus, the milqetoast John Kerry was the most liberal Senator in 2004, followed by newby Barack Obama in 2008.

In reality, Obama's goals are rarely more radical than what liberals want, and oftentimes (drones, financial regulation) quite a bit more small-c-conservative than the Dem base wants. But Freepers are never ones to go halfway where political drama is concerned, and insist that he's a slavering radical Muslim Marxist and that people only defend his policies because they worship him.

detective just decides all Democratic voters are basically lunatics.
He’s a generic Marxist.

Unfortunately, in America today, a generic Democrat and a generic Marxist is pretty much the same thing.
I actually expected more broad brush "everyone but us is crazy" than there were.

SMARTY thinks this article was planted by the liberals at the Chicago Tribune to distance Obama from his own Presidency...?
Hmmm...the MSM has a creative new approach to distance “O” from his disastrous Presidencies.

Not going to fly...BUT “O” really DOES have a ‘Brand X’ intellect. :)
JayAr36 does not approve of any analysis of Obama other than invective:
Obama is a lying, Marxist, phony. End of sentence. Any other description of him is whitewash.
On a site that's been posting nonstop about Obama for over 6 and a half years, StAntKnee says:
The guy lost me at: He’s an interesting man.
kevkrom - what sets Obama apart is his lack of pragmatism:
I’d say that he’s actually the “ideal Democrat” in the sense that he promotes the party line to a “T” and gets the results that reality has in store for such idiocy.

What makes him worse than his Democrat predecessors is his inability or unwillingness to let ideology go to get better results. In large part because he doesn’t want better results.
OrangeHoof doublethinks that Obama's agenda is totally out there, but also full of long-held Democrat positions
I disagree. Obama basically said “to hell with” even his own party to push for his agenda. When he took office, the Dems owned both the Senate and the House which, under his watch, went right back to the bumbling go-along-to-get-along GOP.

He exploited his race to make himself above criticism but there was no hiding the disaster of his policies’ effect on our economy and our reputation around the world.

I hope (though not sure who notices) that by actually implementing long-held Democrat positions, Obama proved their folly just as Bill Clinton demonstrated the folly of feminist groups who stuck with him during every personal assault against women.

Maybe some Democrats are noticing. Maybe some GOP-e are noticing too and finding the courage not to just go-along with all of Obama’s extremism and lawlessness.
mojito thinks more crazy things about Obama than other Democrats:
None of our previous presidents, Democrat or Republican, has been a muslim.

Kinda takes it out of the “generic” category.
Pollster1 - Obama hates America more than other Presidents.
FDR loved America. Truman was a patriot. JFK believed in American exceptionalism. LBJ’s lack of concern for our troops in Vietnam was pretty disgusting, but he liked America. Jimmy Carter was a terrible and antisemitic president, but he didn’t hate our country and actually liked Christians. Bill Clinton was the most revolting sleaze ever to stain our White House, but he more or less liked our country and wasn’t terrible when it came to job performance.

Obama hates Jews (like Jimmy Carter), hates America (unlike anyone who ever occupied our White House), and is shockingly inept in all respects except for playing the race card and keeping the media in line.
I like the current Freeper position on Clinton - "I still hate him, but he was a good President."

Fantasywriter, as is her wont, delves deep into an imagined Presidential psyche.
He’s got a pen & a phone...and the golf course. He reportedly engages in marathon TV sessions, when it doesn’t interfere with late night parties. Vacations & AF1 joyriding about round it out.

The point being, he resorts to executive orders because they alone require no interaction with congress. There’s never been a POTUS so adverse to working with anybody else. His own party says he doesn’t engage with them. As long as he’s got Valerie Jerrett, he must feel congress is unnecessary. Who knows. Anyway, his isolatedness is certainly unique. It deserves more attention. It’s part and parcel with his larger issue of Malignant Narcissism.
The Sons of Liberty is deep thinking:
The only thing that might be generic about the kenyan/indonesian commie usurper is that he is a POS!

27 comments:

  1. I have no idea where Freepers got the idea that the rest of the world is laughing at us or that our reputation is damaged because of President Obama. Is it just because they wish it were true, or is there something else going on?

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    1. They wish it were true.
      Freepers are much happier in their make believe lives (which also include seeing themselves as wrinkle bag Rambos).

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    2. You should get a trademark on "wrinkle bag Rambos". LOL.

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    3. Could also be backlash at the memory of GWB being ridiculed/disrespected abroad (which was a thing).

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    4. February 15, 2003 anti-war protest
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_15,_2003_anti-war_protest

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    5. I pretty much figured that it was just wishful thinking, but I wondered if they had anything real to base it on or if they just made it up out of whole cloth. Sounds like it's the latter.

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    6. Both, probably. I've seen that saw about Obama not being especially radical before, from an actual 500-lb IBM Fellow who liked to dress up in a ski mask and go be active with Occupy. Dunno if he managed to shit on any cars.

      Obama is certainly a radical, you can fight over what kind of radical but there are pointers. The question, of course, is if he's a radical doing the bidding of a bipartisan system gone mad, or if he's marching to his own drummer. I tend to believe the latter.

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    7. I suppose it depends on your definition of the word "radical". I'd like to think that he's a root of a number or quantity.

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    8. Indeed. So, to get an inkling of you boys definition of radical, I'll just ask a simple question of you all: Who among you are, or has been, sympathetic to Weather Underground? Simple thing, really :).

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    9. Awesome guilt by association, chief.

      But looking at the policies he's pursued while in office, what has he done that isn't
      1) something mainstream Democrats have wanted for a decades? (e.g. health care, cap and trade)
      2) something well to the right of what Democrats want (e.g. NSA, drones)

      Speculating about Obama's past is fun and all, but in the end the proof is in the pudding, not in the tea leaves.

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    10. Sorry about that double post. Something with blogger.

      Mainstream is as mainstream does. To give you another example, a few years back Quilliam - the British muslim think tank - published a report saying that between 60 and 70% of all muslims did indeed have the same goals as AQ, but there might be some difference as to the methods. That was a half-classified report to the British government, and they've sort of walked it back since. Hovever, the conclusion is supported elsewhere.

      The point is that you find radicalism in places that used to be the mainstream. Obamacare doesn't seem even close to viable, cap&trade is just as easily a tool to kill economies. The Obama pudding, however you want to serve it, isn't really edible.

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    11. Obamacare not viable? I guess someone should have told Romney that when he implemented it in Massachusetts. Seems pretty viable there. And if cap and trade kills economies, maybe someone should have told the Republicans that before they suggested it. As for whether the Obama pudding is edible or not, that's a matter of opinion. But make sure you're not turning down the pudding because you'd rather have kool-aid.

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    12. Hahyrningur, As to your argument that one can have radical means to achieve mainstream ends, that's true - the main difference between the Tea Party and the GOP is not in goals, but in methods.
      But again, note that Obama's methods have been ratified by Democrats.

      Beyond that, I'm afraid you have not yet proven that radicalism is not in the mainstream. Even taking your study at face value (and Quilliam has quite an agenda), note that Muslims who agree with AQ are not a majority of our society - thus their views are outside of the mainstream. Radicalism is defined opposed to a status quo, which in America is America's policies, not European Muslim policies.

      Now, if you want to argue that the Democratic party itself is radical, go ahead. But 1) that cedes the point that Obama is a 'generic Democratic President' and 2) brands half the nation as radical, which kinda makes you a kook.

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    13. Implementation is everything, isn't it? So far, more and more favored segments are getting exempt from Obamacare, which is such a kludge that it couldn't even get a decent website - something that Bezo's people could have up and running flawlessly in a month or so. But that is difficult when the system is so corrupt that half the federal government is related or married. That is banana-republic politics.

      And of course the Republicans are not any better. They're not really Republicans, either, nowadays, and they have gotten worse. At least a few years back they had the gumption to throw David Duke out of the party. Wouldn't happen today, I think.

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    14. Anyone whose actually studies Latin America knows how far we are from banana-republic politics. That you are allowed to talk without fear of arrest, to begin with - though a priori assuming the government is half corrupt is a good start!

      Your disatisfcation with Republicans is noted, though I can't tell if you are to the left (more libertarian) of them or to the right (insufficient zeal/secret collusion with Democrats).
      Still, 2016 will be interesting as the fractures in the GOP either play out or are shown to be mere performance.

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    15. Well, Oz - of course I'm a kook by your lights. Obama is indeed a generic Democrat, and Democrats have over tha last few years slid so far to the left and to the antisemitic islam as to not be even recognizable. The movie "Death of a President", which was a drama celebrating a fictitious assasination of President Bush was served up with broad Democrat acclaim. And the last Democrat convention was a bizarre performance - if I was a very religious person I'd say bordering on Satanic.

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    16. The thing is, when you call half your countrymen radical, you are the one with a problem.
      And I'd counsel the same thing of my friends on the left who say the GOP as a whole are all immoral haters or whatever.
      Once you jettison such a large part of your follows, you become that much less a useful part of any societal dialogue.

      The Dems have slid left? Your list of anecdotes aside, I'm not seeing any policies that they espouse that they weren't down with though 1972 when they jettisoned the Dixiecrats.

      Yeah, Death of a President was passive aggressive BS. That's how the liberal id rolls. Contrast that with Limbaugh's constant rage and cries of persecution, or the Tea Party's direct assassination grumbling.

      Read "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 1972" and you'll see it has always been thus re: political parties and tribalism.

      Now, do I think the partisanship has gotten worse these days? For sure. Not in the fervor, but in the numbers that buy in. I blame the media, myself. But this, too shall pass.

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    17. So far, more and more favored segments are getting exempt from Obamacare,

      [citation needed]

      which is such a kludge that it couldn't even get a decent website

      The website has been operational for months.

      Democrats have over tha last few years slid so far to the left and to the antisemitic islam as to not be even recognizable.

      Again, [citation needed]

      The movie "Death of a President", which was a drama celebrating a fictitious assasination of President Bush was served up with broad Democrat acclaim.

      This is the first I've heard about it. [citation needed] once again.

      And the last Democrat convention was a bizarre performance - if I was a very religious person I'd say bordering on Satanic.

      OK, you're either a Poe, or you're so far out of the mainstream as to be ridiculous.

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    18. We shall see what happens. Anyway, as some of you may have gleaned, my bark is sometimes worse than the bite, and sometimes very bad indeed. I agree with you about the purity thing, it doesn't give us much.

      Something interesting just happened: Laz opused out. If he's not pulling legs.

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    19. I will actually concede one thing to you, the Democrats have slid to the left a bit on social issues, but only because the country as a whole has. A 1972 Democrat would have never considered putting same-sex marriage in their platform, let alone a president saying it's something that should be legal. Heck, even Bill Clinton signed DOMA into law.

      On economic issues, though, both Democrats and Republicans have moved right. Republicans are sprinting to the right, and Democrats are being dragged there reluctantly. Kind of the opposite from social issues. When Nixon was president, he said that we are all Keynesian now. 40 years later, Republicans try to pretend that it doesn't work, and only tax cuts for the rich will.

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  2. I need a scorecard. So are Putin and Russia back to being evil on FR???

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    1. Their hard-on for him isn't as hard as it was back a few months ago apparently.

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  3. Indeed. Let's get a hint of your definition of radical, shall we? Who of you gentlemen are, or has been, sympathetic to Weather Underground? Anyone?

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    1. Meh - their tactics were sound. Their ideas were retarded.

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    2. Obama was 10 years old in their heyday. Quite precocious was he.

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    3. Yes, the WU ideas were retarded but not original and not gone. Kerry's "Winter Soldiers" carried the same idea material in their little action group that planned murder of republican congressmen. Ayers and Dohrn have not changed their views one iota as far as I know, and their bond with Obama is fairly well documented.

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  4. I'm reminded by an article I read in the 90s about Clinton: Democrats look at Clinton and see a Republican; Republicans look at him and see Che Guevara. Imagine that today but ten times worse.

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