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| marantzo |
 Posted: Wed Sep 02, 2009 10:10 am |
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lady wakasa wrote: marantzo wrote: I can't remember candidates or names of their staff, but I'm sure I remember a number of cases where chief strategists for a candidate did a great job when he/she was running for office, but when they were appointed head strategist after getting into office they bombed.
I think it happens pretty often, too, and not just in the US...
I agree. |
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| Marilyn |
| Posted: Wed Sep 02, 2009 10:58 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 8210
Location: Skokie (not a bad movie, btw)
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Americans don't get the health care they deserve. Average Americans can't buy the influence deep pockets can, and people are routinely disenfranchised from the vote. The majority can't make their voices heard when the fix is in.
The new bill will require Americans to buy health insurance and fine us if we don't. How will Americans be able to afford fines if they can't afford coverage. This is exactly the same as mandatory car insurance, only the costs are much, much higher. Full employment for insurance companies.
Obama has sold Americans down the river. A public option can not be "compromised" away. Fuck big tent politics when it comes to this. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Wed Sep 02, 2009 11:45 am |
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| Marilyn, the reason I said that is because the polls show that a plurality of Americans polled were not in favour of the plan and it seemed to be because of the scare tactics. The way that Americans react to scare tactics is more like an uneducated third world country, than an informed modern society. They gobble up advertisements as if they were telling it like it is, also. I remember that from way back when I visited New York as a kid. The kids would see the ads on TV and immediately wanted what was advertised. My friends back home and I used to make fun of the commercials and even created parodies of them. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Wed Sep 02, 2009 11:53 am |
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| Car insurance is government run in my province. They even give refunds if they have a surplus. I've had a refund of $100, give or take, for the last four years. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Wed Sep 02, 2009 11:55 am |
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Location: New York City
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Here's a brilliant piece by a writer named Frank Schaeffer that was e-mailed to me. It's brllliant, of course, because I agree with every syllable. Marilyn would puke if she read it, but of course she won't (it might confuse her). Gary will probably read it, and may even read it with interest and insight. Here's hoping, at least.
In the August 20 Rolling Stone magazine is a conversation about Obama's first six months among Krugman, Michael Moore and David Gergen. The interesting thing is how happy Moore -- the real Leftie "radical" -- is with Obama. Sure he has some differences, but as he put it, Obama is adept at faking right and going left. Moore was much more sensible than Krugman (Gergen was good, albeit starting out from a different place). I think that Moore's view represents a lot of what I hear from Obama's real supporters. (Keep in mind that Krugman was for Hillary, and always doubted that Obama would succeed.)
That said, Krugman and his ilk have started what amounts to an anti-Obama leftist coup that is now begining to seriously undermine the possibility for change by (ironically) harping on the theme of wanting change faster. Obama's leftist critics would all have made terrible Little League coaches! You don't boo your guys in the first inning every time they make a play you don't like or miss a catch -- not if you want to win the game.
While the critics on the left think in minutes the president thinks in years. Where the right thinks of "we" versus "them" the president thinks of "us."
How to understand Obama?
He's the leader that somehow missed the bitterness that deforms the thinking of we culture war survivors of both the right and left. He'd rather win the battle than have the pleasure of instant vindication. And he understands magnanimity -- a concept lost on the right and left.
The president is being asked by the left to stop trying to work with the far right Republicans: in other words all the Republicans these days. I agree. The Republicans have proved that they are more adept at encouraging such outrageous behavior as bare-faced lying about health reform ("death panels") and/or carrying loaded weapons to presidential rallies than at putting forth actual policy. But the president also must do nothing to appease the vocal left in terms of changing his long term incremental strategy. These critics on the left don't know what the words "long term" mean.
You can't trust people who won't admit they are wrong. The shrill left said that Obama's economic recovery program would fail. But the economy is slowly turning around. I have yet to read an opinion piece by anyone on the left who claimed to have had such perfect information on what Obama should have done now saying that maybe, just maybe, they were wrong and spoke too soon.
Instead the critics on the left have just moved on to health care in order to predict doom. They predict that somehow Obama has given away the farm and "wavered" on the public option. Has he?
No, he hasn't. Obama is grownup enough to be playing for the long term tactical victory. It is called politics. He's good at it.
Now take note, all ye of little faith, and email me in four to eight years and tell me I was right!
Health care will be reformed in stages. And somewhere in the next three and a half years of the Obama presidency there will be a public option added (by whatever name). And we will -- thankfully! -- be on our way to a single payer system by the end of the second term in the Obama presidency in seven and a half years.
And by the way the economy will be in great shape by the end of the first term.
By the end of the first term gays will be serving in the military without harassment. Gay rights, including marriage, will be achieved nationwide. And because Obama will have been smart about how to make these changes, unlike the Roe v. Wade all-or-nothing culture-war starting hubris of the left we saw in the 70s, there won't be a second culture war started and most Americans will go along.
The far right will be utterly discredited. The Republican Party is going to be repudiated for a generation. The doubters on the American left will merely look small, impatient and childish.
And I'll bet the critics on the left will be taking the credit for Obama's successes, something they have contributed little to since his election. All the leftie critics have done so far is help drive down the president's poll numbers in a way that helps hand potential victory to the enemies of change. In that sense, Obama's critics on the left might as well be in the pay of the insurance companies. After winning his many battles -- and he will win them -- knowing Obama he'll thank his "supporters" on the left anyway for all their "help." But history won't be so kind. The left and the right will be lumped together in the history books as the people one of our greatest presidents had to overcome to achieve his stunning succession of successes.
Ignore them all, Mr. President. Stick with your long term vision. You are smarter, kinder and nobler than all your critics put together. Bless you for trying to save us from ourselves. Some of us are sticking with you for the long haul and we're grateful.
Frank Schaeffer is the author of Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back and the forthcoming Patience With God: Faith For People Who Don't Like Religion (Or Atheism). |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Wed Sep 02, 2009 12:41 pm |
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Sounds like a wish list by a worshipper, not anything that has been evident yet. If his dreams (which I see as dreams, considering the performance so far), become reality, then good for him and good for Obama and good for America.
The guy seems to write books concerning God. God works in mysterious ways, of course. He may have found his earthly God and figured out the mysterious ways he is working on. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Wed Sep 02, 2009 12:42 pm |
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| Not surprising that that was written by a reformed religious wacko, as the whole thing seems to rest utterly on faith (in Obama). Just faith and bald assertions, resting upon nothing. Hope he's right, but sorry to say, there's nothing of substance and nothing persuasive there. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Wed Sep 02, 2009 12:52 pm |
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gromit wrote: Not surprising that that was written by a reformed religious wacko, as the whole thing seems to rest utterly on faith (in Obama). Just faith and bald assertions, resting upon nothing. Hope he's right, but sorry to say, there's nothing of substance and nothing persuasive there.
We seemed to interpret the article the same way. gromit. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Wed Sep 02, 2009 12:58 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: New York City
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| I repeat: Check back with me later, and be prepared to eat...etc. |
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| yambu |
| Posted: Wed Sep 02, 2009 1:02 pm |
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| I fundamentally disagree with this pie-in-the-sky piece. Congressional Dems are going to take a hit in 2010, so it's now or never, and O knows it. What we need from him is leadership of his own party, and he hasn't given it. Tell them the three or four things their bill must contain before he'll sign it. And one of them had better be a real public option. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Wed Sep 02, 2009 2:10 pm |
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What are you going to eat if you are wrong, Billy?  |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Wed Sep 02, 2009 2:16 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: New York City
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marantzo wrote: What are you going to eat if you are wrong, Billy?
Dream on, pal.    |
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| lady wakasa |
| Posted: Wed Sep 02, 2009 2:18 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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Location: Beyond the Blue Horizon
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yambu wrote: Tell them the three or four things their bill must contain before he'll sign it. And one of them had better be a real public option.
I agree. I'd rather they drop the whole thing than leave out a true public option.
I really think this is part of Obama's learning curve, and by no means do I think his presidency is ruined if he doesn't pull this off, but failing here is a clear setback. |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Wed Sep 02, 2009 2:24 pm |
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| I should add that I think the public option will be part of the package immediately, but that Frank Schaeffer's article gives a reasonable idea of a decent scenario short of that immediate public option. |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Wed Sep 02, 2009 2:24 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: Houston
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| Ditto Lady's post. |
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