He was a typical hothouse product of our self-satisfied liberal elite culture: untested, insulated from reality, but marinated in the intoxicating certainty that the liberal consensus he represented was the key to enlightenment and prosperity — provided, of course, that those angry, narrow-minded people who “cling to guns or religion” would get out of the way. linkHow anyone could have expected a result at all different from the pathetic presidency we've had to endure for the past two-plus years is beyond me. Transformational? Light-bringer? Uniter? Post-racial? Post-partisan? Fantasies, all. Clearly those on the left believe in religion, too, as "faith" was obviously a component in their election choice.
Education, politics, and anything else that catches my attention.
Wow. Another cry-baby "I hate Obama" post. One echo-chamber linking to another.
ReplyDeleteNothing so easy as casting stones. Especially when there's no one out there you want to defend. Enjoy the "sport" of it. About as tough as falling off a log.
Wake me up when you're ready to play defense.
Oh look, another cry-baby "Don't hate on Obama" comment. Wake me up when you can say something intelligent--heck, just dispute what I quoted or said in this post, or defend your guy since you're so big on defense.
ReplyDeleteRight now I'm on offense, and I'm liking it.
Wow. Another cry-baby "I hate Obama" post. One echo-chamber linking to another.
ReplyDeleteHahahahahahahahahaha!!
How far gone do you have to be to waste time defending the worst president in history over these comments.
I expected a different result. Obama's much worse than I ever imagined. I expected bad and got epic bad.
I know some liberals. Some liberals are good friends of mine. Obama, sir, is no liberal.
ReplyDeleteExtending the wars and basically continuing all foreign policies from the last ten years? Retaining key cabinet members and leaders from those years. Expanding such policies into a Libyan campaign?
Extending the 2001/03 tax cuts? Pursuing a stimulus plan that was half as big as liberals wanted and 40% tax cuts? Obama wants to reform the tax code that will lower rates on corporations. While he may call for closing loopholes on jets, that's just populist rhetoric. He's taken the conservative approach used by Clinton and Gingrich. Agreeing to Medicare reform through spending cuts and raising the retirement age for Social Security.
Sure he ran on ideas seeming contrary to these actions. But there are two reasons for that. One: when you get in a job you learn things that lead you to develop new attitudes. Two: (and this is far more significant) he's, above all else, a politician. One of the shrewdest since Bill "Slick Willy" Clinton.
Obama is actually pretty centrist in many ways - and that makes him a truer traditional conservative than most GOP members these days. Obama is a Burkean conservative. Of course, many GOP members will have to look that one up. From same-sex marriage to abortion to public education to Social Security reform to a myriad of issues, Obama is a Burkean conservative. Conservatives will, of course, balk at this, and they will never claim him. But Teddy Kennedy was a liberal. Barak Obama is no liberal.
Oh, and, The ACA? The essence of "Obamacare," as of Romneycare, is a three-legged stool of regulation and subsidies: community rating requiring insurers to make the same policies available to everyone regardless of health status; an individual mandate, requiring everyone to purchase insurance, so that healthy people don’t opt out; and subsidies to keep insurance affordable for those with lower incomes. The original health care reform plan from the Heritage Institute in 1989 had all these features.
Not liberal. Centrist, yes. Burkean conservative, probably. Politician, definitely. Liberal. Uh ... no.
I know you liberals want to convince yourself of that, but he's yours. He's a lib. There's nothing conservative about him, Burkean or otherwise. He's a socialist, a redistributionist, a liberal, and he may even be a big ole poopy-head. But he's definitely the first three.
ReplyDeleteAnd you have so much evidence of that - especially since he's taken office.
ReplyDeleteVery impressive argument - "Nanny, nanny, boo, boo .... He's a liberal." That follows effectively with your "Liar, liar, pants on fire" defense of Bush.
I'm not going to argue that the sky is blue. That you want it to be pretty pink is irrelevant.
ReplyDeleteNot even looking for it, but look what I stumble upon from James Taranto of the WSJ (boldface mine):
ReplyDelete“Left-wing progressives have abundant reason to be unhappy with the Obama presidency. If it continues on its current trajectory, it could be the greatest setback to progressive ideology since the Vietnam War. Uygur is also correct in reckoning the president an atrocious negotiator as we argued last week. But the notion that Obama is not a progressive or has not been ‘fighting for progressive principles’–a very different activity from negotiating, we should note–is bunk. . . . In short, Obama is a fighter for the progressive cause. Progressives are upset with him because he is a loser. . . . Progs loved Bill Clinton because he was a winner. They loathe Barack Obama because he is a loser. But Obama is a loser in large part because he is unwilling to do what Clinton did to make himself a winner: cast aside progressive ideology when it is expedient to do so. Obama isn’t betraying the left, the left is betraying Obama–and they are doing so precisely because he has done what they say they want him to do.”