by minimus 48 Replies latest jw friends
Soooo many thought Obama was the Savior and now scores of people are abandoning him and his policies. The pendulum swings and you hear how we NEED a Republican to bail us out of our mess.
Do YOU really believe a single person or party can make the changes for the country or the world ??
Despite the Watchtowerish nuance of your question, I respectfully answer, NO!!!
Syl
Someone should just number the paragraphs in their post and have study questions for them.
here we go again
Tee hee hee hee hee hee hee hee ...
Syl
Sure. You can argue a lot of things, but to say that Obama hasn't brought about "real change" is not one of them.
Also, sometimes you'll hear some drooling idiot say "there's not a dimes worth of difference between the two parties". This too, is stunning idiocy. One only has to look at the voting records on virtually all the legislation brought to a vote in the past 10 years to see the clear, stark differences.
By Tim Dickinson Oct 13, 2010 1:15 PM EDT The following is an article from the October 28, 2010 issue of Rolling Stone. -snip- During his campaign, skeptics warned that Barack Obama was nothing but a "beautiful loser," a progressive purist whose uncompromising idealism would derail his program for change. But as president, Obama has proved to be just the opposite — an ugly winner. Over and over, he has shown himself willing to strike unpalatable political bargains to secure progress, even at the cost of alienating his core supporters. Single-payer health care? For Obama, it was a nonstarter. The public option? A praiseworthy bargaining chip in the push for reform. -snip- But if the passions of Obama's base have been deflated by the compromises he made to secure historic gains like the Recovery Act, health care reform and Wall Street regulation, that gloom cannot obscure the essential point: This president has delivered more sweeping, progressive change in 20 months than the previous two Democratic administrations did in 12 years. "When you look at what will last in history," historian Doris Kearns Goodwin tells Rolling Stone, "Obama has more notches on the presidential belt." In fact, when the history of this administration is written, Obama's opening act is likely to be judged as more impressive than any president's — Democrat or Republican — since the mid-1960s. "If you're looking at the first-two-year legislative record," says Ornstein, "you really don't have any rivals since Lyndon Johnson — and that includes Ronald Reagan."
Less than halfway through his first term, Obama has compiled a remarkable track record. As president, he has rewritten America's social contract to make health care accessible for all citizens. He has brought 100,000 troops home from war and forged a once-unthinkable consensus around the endgame for the Bush administration's $3 trillion blunder in Iraq. He has secured sweeping financial reforms that elevate the rights of consumers over Wall Street bankers and give regulators powerful new tools to prevent another collapse. And most important of all, he has achieved all of this while moving boldly to ward off another Great Depression and put the country back on a halting path to recovery.
Along the way, Obama delivered record tax cuts to the middle class and slashed nearly $200 billion in corporate welfare — reinvesting that money to make college more accessible and Medicare more solvent. He single-handedly prevented the collapse of the Big Three automakers — saving more than 1 million jobs — and brought Big Tobacco, at last, under the yoke of federal regulation. Even in the face of congressional intransigence on climate change, he has fought to constrain carbon pollution by executive fiat and to invest $200 billion in clean energy — an initiative bigger than John F. Kennedy's moonshot and one that's on track to double America's capacity to generate renewable energy by the end of Obama's first term.
On the social front, he has improved pay parity for women and hate-crime protections for gays and lesbians. He has brought a measure of sanity to the drug war, reducing the sentencing disparity for crack cocaine while granting states wide latitude to experiment with marijuana laws. And he has installed two young, female justices on the Supreme Court, creating what Brinkley calls "an Obama imprint on the court for generations."
What's even more impressive about Obama's accomplishments, historians say, is the fractious political coalition he had to marshal to victory. "He didn't have the majority that LBJ had," says Goodwin. Indeed, Johnson could count on 68 Democratic senators to pass Medicare, Medicaid and the Voting Rights Act. For his part, Franklin Roosevelt had the backing of 69 Senate Democrats when he passed Social Security in 1935. At its zenith, Obama's governing coalition in the Senate comprised 57 Democrats, a socialist, a Republican turncoat — and Joe Lieberman.
In his quest for progress, Obama has also had to maneuver against an unrelenting head wind from the "Party of No" and its billionaire backers. "Obama is harassed as well as opposed," says Princeton historian Sean Wilentz. "The crazy Republican right is now unfettered. You've got a Senate with no adult leadership. And Obama's up against Rupert Murdoch, Dick Armey, the Koch brothers and the rest of the professional right." Compared to the opposition faced by the most transformative Democratic presidents, adds Wilentz, "it's a wholly different scale."
Obama has brought about change, no doubt about that. Depending upon your view, it isn't necessarily a good thing.
But I'm not just centering on Obama. Do you honestly believe any one person (or party) can change "this system of things"?
Absolutely not. I find it sad that posters on here have traded being a delusional JW to being a delusional elephant, donkey, or teabagger. I hate politicians, hate em all. I don't give a flying you know what about them, there families, their friends, any of that nonsense. If those planes would have hit congress that day, more than a few people in this country wouldn't have lost sleep.
Ew, Misery, you live up to your name!
Misery, I agree that some here have traded their JW delusions for political ones. Interesting observation.
