Were you disappointed when Obama's latest PR move was to basically say "It could be worse"?

I have to agree…i never voted for him from the get go! Every word that came out of his mouth seemed phony! Too bad most people didnt see that coming…They so wanted a change they didnt stop for a min to think…If no pres til this very day were able to make things work, why on earth would someone so young, so inexperienced with no prior skills have the right to even be in an election to run for such a high rank from the get go!?! But now that he has failed miserably lets see how blinded by change will our fellow friends & families decided yo vote this coming November…will they buy into more empty promises or finally take the pink shades off & call it quits!

Look: I KNOW that McCain wanted to invade Iran. You saw his essay in the Heritage foundation’s publication…? So, yes, that would have been bad. But, I’m massively disappointed in the guy for taking Goldman Sach’s money and selling out.

lol, I knew you were going to bring up his name as well… I agree with what you are saying here too! I didnt vote for him either because I didnt believe in everything he stood for just as well!

Neither candidates had the real issues I believe in at heart for the country or for the people…you cant believe in half of what 1 says & 1/8 of what another 1 says…that is why i didnt vote for either of them!

But please sweetie, dont kid yourself if you think that we arent going to wind up invading Iran if things keep on going this way! They may not talk about it in the news…but they are talking about it behind closed doors. When they have planned the whole situation, and are ready to leak out just a little information about what might happen in the future…then you will know that it is going to happen. That is how the government does things…plans, sets everything in motion then allows something to leak to the press…and just before there is this huge panic going on…they will prepare you for the worst! How do I know this…call it an intuition…when is it going to happen…maybe by the end of this year or next year or the year after that but if things continue this way as I see it…where they are telling people abroad to get their masks up to date…then that speaks for itself! (Enough said on that matter! I dont mind getting into it in funmail if you like just not on here!) :)

Eh, I wasnt exactly disappointed. Seriously, it could have been worse and I think a lot of people decided they didnt want to risk McCain dying and ending up with Palin as the president.

Very little about Obama’s presidency has disappointed me so far, maybe because I’m less surprised than some of his supporters that he hasn’t been able to usher in sweeping change. It’s simply not the job of the president to do that, and it’s not supposed to be. The presidency is by nature a moderate position, it was designed to move swiftly only during times of national crisis. Obama’s campaign platform of hope and change was just that: a campaign platform. The only president to truly bring about major social and economic changes in the last 150 years was FDR, and even he didn’t go nearly as far as his liberal supporters wanted him to…he also faced a crisis much bigger than anything the US is facing today.

As much as I don’t understand why Obama supporters expected considerable change, I’m also baffled by this “tea party” movement that blames Obama for violating rights, bringing about socialism, etc. The movement is very vague as to how exactly Obama is violating their rights and have no concrete examples of how he’s a socialist. Nor did they seem to have a problem with the violation of other civil rights that took place under the Bush administration (it’s worth pointing out that even that administration had a lot of support from Congress).

This should be proof positive that true power never really switches hands. Although I do believe that I always fair better under Republican rule. I do think however that republicans and democrats are two sides to the same coin. I am more disappointed in the people who voted for him believing in all that “hope and change” crap! This election season can we be a little less emotional please? Can we turn a deaf ear to stump speeches based on hate and finger pointing?!?!?

What happened?

Sure I’m disappointed but then again look at how most Republicans were disappointed in George W Bush. Nobody can live up to the enthusiasm of their campaign and election.

The Middle East of course is a power keg. Israel is widely known to have nuclear weapons but we insist that all of Israel’s enemies abandon their nuclear ambitions. Put yourself in Iran’s situation. Let’s say we were still in the cold war and the Soviets had the H bomb but we were not permitted to have them because the Soviets insist they are the good guys.

Politics is always picking the lesser of the available evils. While I am disappointed in the Obama presidency so far I’m still confident that we did pick the lesser evil.

If Democrats loose big time in the mid-term elections we will have the same sort of gridlock. The Democratic congress will filibuster every Republican bill simply because it was proposed by Republicans. Quid Pro Quo.

I’m pretty disappointed in health care reform but best I can tell it is better than nothing and nothing is what we would have gotten from Republicans. Wall Street reform is close to passing; also something that would never happen under Republican rule. Little progress on energy and the environment but hopefully President Obama will be able to work on that the 2nd half of his term.

The truth is that it took 30+ years of bad economic policy to get us into the fix we find ourselves in so there is no quick fix. The American people don’t have the stomach for the sort of large changes necessary to turn things around so all we are going to see is incremental improvements.

what is pr?

Press Release - talking to the public

oh thank you

The Tea party has excoriated the Bush administration and the republicans as well as the democrats… this being the impetus for a different party. One of the major platforms is the problem of cronyism on behalf of both parties as well as Obama’s continuation of the violation of civil liberties including the extensions on the ease of RICO warrants for wiretapping and further infringements on our first amendment rights: [link removed] I cannot speak for everyone who consider themselves a part of the Tea party movement… but a lot know that the veneer of the socialization promises from Obama including the recently passed healthcare bill and his call for cap and trade energy dispersion and green taxes are a thinly veiled disguise for state sanctioned cronyism which can be likened in essence more to fascism… the only difference being the relation of oligarch to governance. I think that those in the Tea Party have grown tired of this trite trend of blaming the preceding President for the lameness of the succeeding President. We are tired of living in the mistakes of the past. It isn’t just a referendum on the quality of the President but the entire lawmaking portion of our government including congress and the slew of the executive formed commissions with powers that have no basis in the constitution. Your entire portrayal of the Tea Party is askew. Your dismissal of the liabilities of President Obama along with your analysis of the state of things at present leave a lot to be desired in my opinion as well… but these are subjective arguments.

ht tp: // www. washingtonpost. com/ wp-dyn/ content/ article/ 2010/07/28/ AR2010072806141 .html

this is the link that was removed [hopefully] just remove the spaces

If Obama’s extension of wire-tapping and other practices bothered Tea Party disciples so much, why was the movement not more visible, and more vocal, during the Bush administration and the Republican majority in Congress which passed Patriot Act legislation?

As for the health care bill being likened to socialism, that’s absurd. The government is not nationalising the entire industry as would be the case if moving to a socialist system. The plan does a lot of things regarding new laws for insurance companies (health exchanges), mandating health care (it can be a private option), and the like. None of it is socialism. Many on the left opposed it, preferring a single-payer system instead.

Cap and trade…again, this is not socialism. Setting a cap on emissions, and then leaving it up to companies how they want to abide that law, is very different from, say, the bill that Republican Senator Lugar proposed, which has a bunch of new regulations for private sector industries and which smacks of centralised government control

The government is a player in the US economy, to be sure. I don’t think that can be avoided. But regulating the economy is very different from owning and managing it. Americans have no idea what it’s like to live under a socialist system, and I suspect they never will, even long after Obama leaves office.

The summary of the Tea Party’s gripes, leaves much to be desired :)

Not to mention if you can even possibly consider the health care reform pushing socialism on America, then I guess we have technically been socialist for almost the last 2 centuries, what do you suppose the U.S. postal service, public schools, fire/police departments, the road/highway department… etc.. There are a skew of government run organizations that could be considered socialist, that we pay for with our tax dollars for all of the general population, therefore argument fail by the tea party? I think so..

The Tea party formed in part as a response to the draconian measures begun under the Bush administration… the reason that they were not as visible during his presidency is because there was no real structure to it… it was a loose confederation of people tired of the two party… lesser of two evil system. The movement was in its infancy… actually the movement begun as a carryover from Ron Paul’s supporters following his campaign forfeiture… so you could as easily chide them for not being disgruntled during Nixon’s administration. I’m not arguing against socialism… if it was a workable system… it would be preferable to what we have today. In my opinion… it leaves too much centralized power in the hands of men who by nature are prone to avarice and ambition. I never claimed that Obama had ushered in a strict socialist system. My characterization of the socialization of industry was a measure in overall quality. A move towards state sanctioning is a move towards a more socialistic form of governance… away from laissez-faire capitalism. The nationalization of an entire industry is not a movement towards socialism… it is fully realized socialism… in regards to the industry. I also provided the caveat that these sanctions are better characterized as cronyism… the government sanctions are intended to further the monopolies of particular corporations at the expense of either the populace… as is the case with “Obamacare”… or at the expense of both consumer and small business as is the case with the cap and trade proposal… setting a cap on the emissions and then selling the emission credits will only ensure that the biggest industries will hold all the chips in the game… nothing is ever black and white… regulations can be used as readily as either government loans or contracts to control competition.

I have never apologized for the Bush administration… I have been as critical as any here… my former posts can attest to this fact. You’re simply showing your partisan stripes as Obama’s apologist… or perhaps a democratic apologist… when so many of us have moved on. You can try to make this a divisive issue… coloring the Tea party as the new antagonists to the democratic hold outs. In reality it is the manifestation of the desire for real change… more than a campaign slogan… a way out of the two party quagmire. Perhaps the movement does leave some things to be desired… but it is a general movement in the right direction… away from bullsh!t rhetoric… for those of us who have stopped inhaling the smoke being blown up our a$$es.

Socialism and capitalism in small instances if founded in an area with a stable economy, and higher tax rate can work quite suitably, for instance a nice town with many suburbs with at least on average a middle class income (one like from which I lived in high school), usually will have, nice roads, nice schools, nice u.s. postal department, nice police stations/ fire departments, with quality workers, but fails in poorer area’s for instance lower class income families, usually containing projects or slum like apartments, such area’s have poor schools, poor roads, etc.. It really kind of bumbles back and forth. Of course there’s no perfect governmental/economical system, mainly because they are run by humans, which a large majority of people are corrupt and many of said people gain power in our political system. Society is a fail, government is a fail, everything humanity creates as a fail, like so many great empires of the past we are destined to fail. So don’t put to much merit in the systems, just realize it’s all future ruins.

Home Schooled students routinely outperform their publicly schooled counterparts. Postal companies have been both private and public throughout the duration of the countries existence… the pony express provided an invaluable service to the western territories… Private railroads were the first to traverse the continent… necessity dictates so much enterprise… leaving government annexation to follow… government enterprise is an oxymoron. Private enterprise speaks for itself… however this point was not the contention of my argument. So… argument fail?… yeah… but whose fault is that? BTW… if you believe in the inevitability of government failure… why would you choose to rely on it for the necessities of life?

There’s a difference between being an apologist and simply not having high expectations in the first place. You seem to think that my post is about defending Obama, or making excuses for him. You’re missing the point. My original point was that the presidency is not capable, nor should it be capable, of making sweeping change in US policy and society. Whether you see Obama as a success or a failure depends very much on your own point of view, and that’s not the issue I’m speaking to. The fact that Obama has not made as many changes as his liberal supporters expected him to shows that’s not what the presidency is about.

I can see the Tea Party movement, at least the libertarian supporters under Ron Paul, as being just as angered by the Bush administration’s fiscal policies. However, libertarian Ron Paul supporters are not the only ones in the Tea Party movement now. Many religious conservatives, partisans, and people who simply don’t like Obama have joined the movement. It’s a partisan movement directly opposed to Obama…and that is why it never really gained momentum until after 2008. And, criticisms of the Obama administration that I’ve heard or seen, are often vague and sometimes baseless.

Which brings us back to this socialism issue. I agree with you that “cronyism” or “corporatism” are better characterisations. Both Obama’s health care and cap-and-trade could be seen as being very pro-corporate, perhaps even at the consumer’s expense. Again, many in the Tea Party movement have accused him of outright socialism. And, again, my original point is they have no idea what they’re talking about. Nothing Obama has proposed remotely resembles socialism, nor will the consumer-driven US economy ever become a truly socialist system.

It also occurs to me that you seem to think I’m defending socialism. My parents lived in a socialist system, before moving to the US with me when I was very young. So, we are fans of capitalism. However, the late 19th and early 20th centuries have shown that capitalism has its excesses, and there must be some regulation and control. Corporations, like the government, do not always have the consumer’s best interests in mind.

I was challenging your appraisal of the Tea Party as a whole… especially as it parrots this recent trend in mainline media to apply a GOP certified stamp to the movement… after trying to smear the movement outright as simply a racist contingent assembly. The Tea party has been too often maligned by the mischaracterizations… and those of us familiar with the movement since its inception are tasked with correcting these false attributions or watch as it is incorporated back into the two party… us versus them… false dichotomy. Here in Kentucky… the Tea party was the momentum ensuring GOP establishment candidate Trey Grayson’s defeat to Rand Paul in the republican primary. It is an all inclusive movement meant to oust the establishment from their entrenched positions who have overseen the ruination of the country… and to that effect many incumbents from either establishment party have been handed their walking papers. Certainly… it is going to attract those ordinary republicans discontented with the state of affairs while democrats are at the helm. There is an attempt by the GOP to completely usurp the movement as well… illustrated by putting Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck at the forefront. We’re fighting this battle as well… but it doesn’t apply to your argument. You challenged the Tea Party to provide concrete examples of Obama’s violation of our civil liberties. I offered up two… there are more. Obama pledged he would never use signing statements to bypass the legislative system… he lied. Senator Lieberman has proposed the Presidential internet kill switch bill… which would allow for Federal censorship for so called national emergencies. Those of us who railed against the Patriot Acts and Military Commission Act have found no sanctuary under Obama’s watch. Your challenge of these facts are what spurred me to consider you an apologist for Obama. I tried to clarify the charges of socialism. It is simply easier for the grass roots activists who are not as savvy to correlate the movement towards heavier government sanctions with the abuses of power seen under the guise of what was called socialism. Real socialism as a philosophy is not what is being decried by these charges of socialism… but rather the abuses of power that occur via the centralization of power. Corporatism can only exist under the heavy regulations of a central government. Things are not so peachy here. Your description of the role of the President is correct. Congress has allowed for the executive to trespass into the legislative via the establishment of executive commissions. As President… Obama has inherited these constitutional abominations and has the power to reverse them. As congress has granted the office of the Presidency their constitutionally mandated war powers… he could make sweeping changes…instead he ratchets up further instability imposing sanctions on Iran. You are giving Obama a pass that I am not convinced you would have given President Bush. Perhaps I spoke out of place calling you an apologist for Obama… but these are my reasons for making the assumption. You know better than me where your intentions lie. I am trying to keep things honest.

I can understand the Tea Party is an “umbrella” movement with people that may not always be in agreement on everything. Opposition movements to presidents sometimes bring together people that would otherwise not be aligned (just look at MoveOn.org during the Bush years). Not everyone in the Tea Party movement, however, sees the Patriot Act, wiretapping, etc. as bad things.

Actually, I have the same thoughts on the Bush administration that I do about Obama, as well as the opponents. I frequently challenged people who blamed Bush for all the country’s ills, pointing out that much of what he did was sanctioned by Congress, and in some cases, initiated by Congress. Bush did not, by himself, make such drastic changes in the country’s legal, social, and political landscape, even after 9/11, that some people claim.

You’re right… and as I said in my first response… the movement is not simply a referendum on Obama but on the entire law making branches of government. Your original claim was that the Tea party brought false charges of rights violations against Obama… how is this consistent with your latest statement that not everyone in the Tea party movement sees the Patriot Act… wiretapping as bad things? Hopefully I have at least led you to reconsider your original appraisal of the Tea party. Any and all legitimate criticisms are warranted… but the need for a way out of the two party quagmire is important enough to mandate an honest evaluation.

No, actually what I said was they tend to be vague about how he’s violating their rights, not that their accusations are false.

The Patriot Act, and wiretapping, might be concerns for you, but it’s a non-issue for a lot of people in the Tea Party. They didn’t have a problem with it under Bush, and they don’t mind that it’s continued under Obama. If you look at their “Contract From America” there are no references to any of that. And that’s my whole point…why not?

I’ve heard complaints that his tax policies are in violation of the constitution, that his gun control policies will trample the 2nd amendment, and that his expansion of the federal government is also unconstitutional. Assuming any or all of this is true (which I don’t accept) then why problems with this and not the Patriot Act?

LOL… so vague in a subjective sense and not vague in the sense that their argument may be lacking in tangible phenomena. This seems to be a case of special pleading.

The Tea party wasn’t around to criticize Bush… it is that simple.

I’ve said my peace… I think you’re determined to undermine the Tea party movement despite my redress of your contestable characterization. You wish to condemn it on perceived wrongs… while I am trying to salvage it as it has gotten many things right. You are satisfied with the status quo… or at least the mechanism of change innate to the status quo… while I consider the status quo the mechanism that begins at the top tier with hand shaking… is addressed at the congressional tier by hand waving… and is realized at the bottom tier with hand wringing.