Originally Posted By mawnck From the "forward to all your right-wing friends even though it won't do any good" file. This article has me adjusting my own thinking a bit ... <a href="http://www.truth-out.org/goodbye-all-reflections-gop-operative-who-left-cult/1314907779" target="_blank">http://www.truth-out.org/goodb...14907779</a> >>A couple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption. Should Republicans succeed in obstructing the Senate from doing its job, it would further lower Congress's generic favorability rating among the American people. By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner.<< >>This constant drizzle of "there the two parties go again!" stories out of the news bureaus, combined with the hazy confusion of low-information voters, means that the long-term Republican strategy of undermining confidence in our democratic institutions has reaped electoral dividends. The United States has nearly the lowest voter participation among Western democracies; this, again, is a consequence of the decline of trust in government institutions - if government is a racket and both parties are the same, why vote? And if the uninvolved middle declines to vote, it increases the electoral clout of a minority that is constantly being whipped into a lather by three hours daily of Rush Limbaugh or Fox News. There were only 44 million Republican voters in the 2010 mid-term elections, but they effectively canceled the political results of the election of President Obama by 69 million voters.<< Much, much, much more at the link.
Originally Posted By DyGDisney I'd love to send that link to the right wingers I know, but it would be pointless because they wouldn't read it, being that they already know the "truth". I do have to say, lately I'm hoping that a Republican DOES become president in 2012, just to see what happens. If things aren't better by 10 months into their term, then they darn well better not blame Obama any more.
Originally Posted By SuperDry <<< I'd love to send that link to the right wingers I know, but it would be pointless because they wouldn't read it, being that they already know the "truth". >>> If it was important enough that they should know it, their radios would have already told them about it.
Originally Posted By DDMAN26 So this is basically saying what's been assumed for years. What's next Mercury and Venus are closest to the sun?
Originally Posted By planodisney DyGDisney, I have a feeling that Obama could be president for 10 years with the economy and are world standing remaining the same as it is now, and you would still vote for him. At some point, and I am not saying it is yet, but at some point he has to take at least some of the responsibility for not getting us out of the mess we are in. There is enough blame to go around, but he, as president, surely has to accept some of the responsibility.
Originally Posted By planodisney This brings up an interesting recent obsrvation of mine. There are currently 2 stories, one involving a military contract and one involving green job contracts. These stories are headlined on both FOX news and CNN. Anderson Cooper has hadextensive segments on the story the last 2 nights. Meanwhile, if you turn over to MSNBC, the spin is in full force, and Rick Perry is a bigger headline for them than these 2 very important stories. To me personally, this is extremely dishonest journalism. We dont know what happened in these 2 cases, and hopefully they were just stupid decisions, which is bad enough, but the people over at MSNBC dont care. They just see this as something that might hurt the president and they obviously dont want that to happen. This is one of the worst infractions, IMHO, I have seen them commit. These are issues we should ALL care about.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 Calm down. I saw the story on msnbc just today. Unless you watch it 24/7, you can't even say fir certain if it wasn't on there earlier either--just not when you tuned in.
Originally Posted By mawnck >>At some point, and I am not saying it is yet, but at some point he has to take at least some of the responsibility for not getting us out of the mess we are in.<< That depends on whether you agree that "the mess we're in" can be gotten out of. I don't think it can anymore ... and you ain't seen nothing yet.
Originally Posted By planodisney I have watched plenty of MSNBC and the primetime shows have not taken a critical look at these stories. Also,I think we can move this country forward again, but we need truly great leadership from a truly great leader. Obama is definitely not up to the task, and I think many of us Republicans are frustrated because we dont see it on our side either. We have always had greatness step forward when we needed it, but it isnt happenning yet. I am socially conservative, but I am extremely frustrated that many in my party dont understand that Romney is far better suited for the presidency in the crisis we are in. How is he not conservative enough for you? I dont care about labels at this point, and want vision and leadership.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 "I have watched plenty of MSNBC and the primetime shows have not taken a critical look at these stories." Unless you watch 24/7 you can't know. I did see it there. And their primetime shows are pundit-type "this is my take on things" shows as opposed to news per se. So yeah, you're not likely to see Ed Schultz devote a lot of time to this when he's devoting his full hour to workers in Ohio, any more than Hannity devoted time to any of Bush's (far more serious) scandals. And water is wet. "I dont care about labels at this point, and want vision and leadership." Then I don't know why in the world you'd back Romney, who changes his "vision" at the drop of a hat (or result of a focus group) and whose business experience centered less on hiring people than with laying them off.
Originally Posted By mele <<but we need truly great leadership from a truly great leader. Obama is definitely not up to the task>> How is he supposed to lead when they hate him so much that they've refused to approve ANYTHING he does, no matter how much he compromises, no matter how much he concedes and gives them? Oh, I get it, you want a MAGIC leader (White Republican)!!!
Originally Posted By RoadTrip I voted for Obama. I support Obama, and I will likely vote for him again. But he has been a disappointment. Unfortunately he seems to want to take Jimmy Carter's approach when the times require an LBJ. Trying to get Congress to "do the right thing" through reason and compromise just isn't working (didn't work so well for Carter either). At times you need an LBJ style power broker who will twist arms and get down and dirty to get what he wants. Love him or hate him, I don't know of any other politician in my memory who could have gotten the "Great Society" legislation passed during the 60's that LBJ did.
Originally Posted By mawnck >>How is he supposed to lead when they hate him so much that they've refused to approve ANYTHING he does, no matter how much he compromises, no matter how much he concedes and gives them? << Compromising and conceding and giving to them is, by definition, not leadership.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 Compromise is not a dirty word. I see it as somewhat different from "concession," which I agree Obama has done too often. Compromise is how democracies get things done. We don't have an emperor. Congress was duly elected, too. So I wouldn't mind if Obama said "this is what I want," (and truly fought for it), Congress said "this is what we want," and they compromised somewhere in the middle. The problem is that too often Obama has started with what most people would see as the compromise position as his OPENING position. And then the GOP in Congress (even if Obama's opening position contains tons of what they GOP has said it wanted for years) will say "nu-uh; we want THIS." And then the final position will be somewhere between what Obama started with and a more extreme version of what the GOP wanted. It's just bad negotiating, and he needs to stop it. The jobs bill is a step forward, but he really needs to KEEP stepping forward.
Originally Posted By mawnck >>It's just bad negotiating, and he needs to stop it.<< It's even worse PR. How can anyone support him if he won't give us something to support? So many of his positions *start* from a point that I'm not in favor of. That's why I got off his mailing list. He was asking me to call my Congresscritter to support his unilateral compromises. Forget it, Barack. That's not what I signed up for. I'm not arguing against compromise. OF COURSE he won't be able to get everything we progressives want, and I don't think anybody (sane) is arguing that. But compromise should not be a position, but an end product. But my primary beef with him is the bailout of the bad banks. That transcends any leadership issues. Capitalism without failure is not capitalism. If we had enforced the rules and let the banks collapse, we would have had a couple of absolutely dreadful years (during which the government would have spent trillions to keep us alive), and right now we would be coming out of it. As it is, the government has already spent the trillions, Obama has lost most of his support, and we're going to get the dreadful years anyway .... only with a Gopper in the White House, supported by half a nation of crazies. Sounds like a typical set-up for a world war, does it not?
Originally Posted By Dabob2 "But compromise should not be a position, but an end product." Yes, exactly.
