Obama is easily the worst president of my lifetime, doubly so because the press practically refused to criticize him for fear of being called racist. Obama ran for president for one and only one reason, ego. He had a once in a generation opportunity to push through actually transformational policies and instead did nothing but sure up the absolutely most vile and predatory aspects of this country. He did some minor tinkering on health policy that still keeps us paying 2x what every other country does for worse results. He saw an IMF study on hundreds of banking crises and decided to go with the costliest and least effective way of handling it, handing over millions of poor black and brown peoples homes to his buddies on Wall Street and destroying countless lives by keeping unemployment sky high for a decade. To say nothing of his prosecution of whistleblowers, continuation of endless wars, illegal spying on US citizens, turning Libya from the country with the highest HDI in Africa into an open air slave market, and arming Al Qaeda to try and topple Assad in Syria. The fact that anyone has anything but contempt for that man is astounding. I feel like I am in a country full of morons incapable of taking off the partisan blinders and seeing just how awful everyone in both parties are.
"I’ve always argued leftists were insufficiently prepared for this occurrence and their gripes betray a lack of understanding for the cutthroat nature of American politics. Yet it’s inarguable Obama, the de facto leader of the Democratic Party, did not want Sanders to win, and did everything he could, absent forcefully campaigning against him, to ensure his defeat."
Leftists still want to think that Obama is one of them, and they make excuse after excuse for him, even as he betrays them over and over.
For his part, Obama has nothing but contempt for the left.
Now, you see, you're proving my point. Instead of making a case for your position, you sneer and tell me I'm ignorant. Great politics. What emerges from this is the crappiest of crappy policy. No wonder progressives are electorally unpopular.
I do know something about the health and social service system in Europe, and I know that it involves a major difference from the US in the balance of private and public consumption. Taxes are higher, wages are lower, and middle-class people live simpler material lives. They seem satisfied with it, and maybe we would be satisfied with it, but it came about through a lengthy historical process that the United States did not go through: therefore our pathway will be different.
One estimate of Medicare-for-All (promised at the level of a high-end corporate benefits plan) had it costing $3 trillion a year - quadrupling the Federal budget. It's a con job (or gross innumeracy, or both) to believe that billionaires will pay for this. The middle- and working-classes would pay for this. So if you want M4A, you have to persuade working- and middle-class Americans to radically reprioritize their consumption patterns, which involves a sense of realism and willingness to broadly build trust that progressives conspicuously lack.
Personally, I would like to see universal health care in the United States, and realistically this involves a gradualist approach that includes private health insurance (which is how it works in most advanced countries). Progressives, in my view, have added less than nothing to this effort. As far as I can see, all they can do is wave their fists, make militant statements, and break stuff. Or so I think now. I could be persuaded otherwise, but I don't expect to be.
We can't afford to save money and get better results, like every other first world nation does!
And if we save money while getting better results from our healthcare, the deficit will balloon, because spending less money makes debts go up! And we must avoid having taxes go up, because even though the increase in taxes will be far less than what we pay now, it will cost more, because reasons!
Just because it exists in the world where I can see it doesn't make it real! Only a fool would let their opinions be influenced by observed reality.
My opinions are important, and when I comment randomly about things I don't understand, it's mean of you to not be super kind and nice to me!
I hate when people get elected in a landslide based on a wave of anger at Wall Street and then proceeded to intentionally maximise the number of foreclosures on poor people but make sure that Wall Street still gets to keep their huge bonuses. http://www.billmoyers.com/2015/02/14/needless-default/
Obama continues to be the worst.
How long did it take him to start scooping up those $400K/hr speaking fees at a grateful Goldman Sachs? A week?
Obama is easily the worst president of my lifetime, doubly so because the press practically refused to criticize him for fear of being called racist. Obama ran for president for one and only one reason, ego. He had a once in a generation opportunity to push through actually transformational policies and instead did nothing but sure up the absolutely most vile and predatory aspects of this country. He did some minor tinkering on health policy that still keeps us paying 2x what every other country does for worse results. He saw an IMF study on hundreds of banking crises and decided to go with the costliest and least effective way of handling it, handing over millions of poor black and brown peoples homes to his buddies on Wall Street and destroying countless lives by keeping unemployment sky high for a decade. To say nothing of his prosecution of whistleblowers, continuation of endless wars, illegal spying on US citizens, turning Libya from the country with the highest HDI in Africa into an open air slave market, and arming Al Qaeda to try and topple Assad in Syria. The fact that anyone has anything but contempt for that man is astounding. I feel like I am in a country full of morons incapable of taking off the partisan blinders and seeing just how awful everyone in both parties are.
The Iron Law Of Institutions remains undefeated
"I’ve always argued leftists were insufficiently prepared for this occurrence and their gripes betray a lack of understanding for the cutthroat nature of American politics. Yet it’s inarguable Obama, the de facto leader of the Democratic Party, did not want Sanders to win, and did everything he could, absent forcefully campaigning against him, to ensure his defeat."
Leftists still want to think that Obama is one of them, and they make excuse after excuse for him, even as he betrays them over and over.
For his part, Obama has nothing but contempt for the left.
In all of this, did anyone think that progressives didn't win in 2020 because their policies are . . . bad?
Not if one is even vaguely informed on the issues and is capable of looking at the rest of the industrial world and how far behind them America is.
Now, you see, you're proving my point. Instead of making a case for your position, you sneer and tell me I'm ignorant. Great politics. What emerges from this is the crappiest of crappy policy. No wonder progressives are electorally unpopular.
I do know something about the health and social service system in Europe, and I know that it involves a major difference from the US in the balance of private and public consumption. Taxes are higher, wages are lower, and middle-class people live simpler material lives. They seem satisfied with it, and maybe we would be satisfied with it, but it came about through a lengthy historical process that the United States did not go through: therefore our pathway will be different.
One estimate of Medicare-for-All (promised at the level of a high-end corporate benefits plan) had it costing $3 trillion a year - quadrupling the Federal budget. It's a con job (or gross innumeracy, or both) to believe that billionaires will pay for this. The middle- and working-classes would pay for this. So if you want M4A, you have to persuade working- and middle-class Americans to radically reprioritize their consumption patterns, which involves a sense of realism and willingness to broadly build trust that progressives conspicuously lack.
Personally, I would like to see universal health care in the United States, and realistically this involves a gradualist approach that includes private health insurance (which is how it works in most advanced countries). Progressives, in my view, have added less than nothing to this effort. As far as I can see, all they can do is wave their fists, make militant statements, and break stuff. Or so I think now. I could be persuaded otherwise, but I don't expect to be.
We can't afford to save money and get better results, like every other first world nation does!
And if we save money while getting better results from our healthcare, the deficit will balloon, because spending less money makes debts go up! And we must avoid having taxes go up, because even though the increase in taxes will be far less than what we pay now, it will cost more, because reasons!
Just because it exists in the world where I can see it doesn't make it real! Only a fool would let their opinions be influenced by observed reality.
My opinions are important, and when I comment randomly about things I don't understand, it's mean of you to not be super kind and nice to me!
Doubling down, I see
You should stop stepping on rakes and blaming other people.
I hate it when the democrats form up their circular firing squad.
I hate when people get elected in a landslide based on a wave of anger at Wall Street and then proceeded to intentionally maximise the number of foreclosures on poor people but make sure that Wall Street still gets to keep their huge bonuses. http://www.billmoyers.com/2015/02/14/needless-default/