Birthers, deathers, sufferers of Obama Derangement Syndrom, screeching ninnies of the right and left... people. Get a grip. Just get a grip. Whether you're the gang of left-wing lunatics at Corrente or a teabagger, reality simply *is*.
Look. I understand the disappointment that you folks at Corrente have with Obama. You forgot to look at the label on the back that said "Eisenhower Republican". Well, folks, Obama is the candidate you guys chose, he's doing exactly what he said he'd do in all his policy papers on his web site prior to his election, so you have no one to blame but yourself. In the meantime he's the Democratic President we have -- basically Eisenhower Jr. -- and not the Democratic President we need -- FDR reincarnated. But there's no way to get from point A to point B in 2012. There isn't. Attempting to primary Obama will simply end up electing some right wing lunatic as President. Every single one of the Republican candidates I've seen so far makes George W. Bush look like a socialist. Is that really what you want to do to America?! So quit with the deather conspiracy theories (Osama bin Laden is dead, alright, already), and the rest of the weird Obama conspiracy theories you keep messing around with, and live in the world we have, not some alternate universe where primarying a sitting president results in victory for your party.
As for folks on the right... people. Get a grip. All this after-birther stuff doubting the authenticity of Obama's long-form birth certificate makes you look like raving lunatics to the 90% of America who's satisfied that Obama is American. We have a way of handling these situations where you don't like a President. It's called a VOTE. Find yourself a good candidate for 2012, and get the most votes. It's called DEMOCRACY. I know it's a dirty, ugly business, but what's your alternative? Tyranny of the minority over the majority? Yeah, like that ever turns out well...
-- Badtux the PO'ed Penguin
Dude. I never even got a chance to vote for Kucinich. :(
ReplyDelete"reality simply *is*" Actually, truth simply 'is.' Reality is relative. ...Just say'un: from a situationist point of view.
ReplyDeleteNunya: People other than Hillary and Obama were on the Democratic ballot here in California, so even though everybody but those two had "officially" dropped out, I voted for the person I thought best qualified to be President, not for the "front-runner".
ReplyDeleteMandT: Sorry. Your *perception* of the reality you see outside your front window may differ from other people's perception. But the asphalt on the road is the asphalt on the road, regardless of your perception of it. The tree in your front yard remains the tree in your front yard, regardless of the fact that you think it's a pin oak and your neighbor thinks it's a water oak. And so forth. What is, *IS*. The fact that your perception of it may differ from someone else's is because you're a limited human being with limited perceptual abilities, not because reality differs based upon whether you or your neighbor is observing it. (Well, at least if you're observing at the macro level... at the quantum level, strangeness happens).
What is, is. The other alternative is the Bushevik alternative -- click your heels and wish hard that what you think reality should be, actually *is* reality. And we all know how well *that* turned out...
- Badtux the Reality-based Penguin
You still read Corrente? Hell, BT, that blog hasn't been the same since the farmer left. And once I decided a few years ago that I just didn't make the grade for what passes as a progressive, I outright stopped reading certain blogs, Corrente being one of them. Good thing, too -- I'm frequently at odds with my co-bloggers at skippy's place, most recently over the "draft Bernie Sanders" nonsense, I don't need to read that stuff anywhere else...
ReplyDeleteThey have me on their blogroll and they're on my blogroll, but usually I just look at the headlines in Google Reader and shake my head. Some folks just don't seem to have much attachment to actual objective reality... drafting Bernie Sanders or Dennis Kucinich is *not* the way to keep crazy Christaliban out of the President's office. Incumbent presidents simply have too much power and visibility for that to happen... all that ends up happening if you primary your President because you don't like him is that your party's President ends up going the way of Jimmie Carter or George H.W. Bush, i.e., one term, because they have to spend so much time fending off criticism from the extremes.
ReplyDelete- Badtux the Reality-based Penguin
One person's extremism is another person's signature issue. Mine is civil liberties. I've been a carrrd-carrying member of the ACLU for three decades. And I'm going to say this very deliberately, in its own paragraph, so there will be no mistaking what I am saying:
ReplyDeleteBARACK OBAMA IS *WORSE* THAN GEORGE W. BUSH WHEN IT COMES TO CIVIL LIBERTIES.
And I think you know I detest GeeDubya and everything he stands for (and doesn't).
But absent a truly compelling reason... a likely Mike Huckabee victory, for example... I cannot vote to re-elect a president who put out a hit contract on an American citizen, with no charge, no trial, no conviction, the executive acting as judge, jury and executioner all in one man. That is an issue on which I simply will not compromise. Once America condones presidents acting like Tony Soprano, it's all over.
I will vote, as I always have voted. strategically. If there is any real likelihood that Obama will lose, I'll hold my nose and dial his name. (Damn e-voting machines anyway.) But if his victory is a foregone conclusion, I will not participate in it. Like GeeDubya before him, Barry has much to answer for.
[CAPTCHA text: "herse" ... what they will carry me out in, if I am forced to vote for one or more utter bastards.]
When the GOP was voting to give all these powers to Dubya, I warned them. I said, "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, do you *really* think President Hillary Clinton is going to refuse to use these powers you're giving Dubya?" Well, we got Obama rather than Hillary, but I'm not pleased to find that I was completely correct -- that whoever got elected was *not* going to turn down the chance to exercise these new powers that Congress gave the President. So while saddened that Obama is doing this, I'm not surprised.
ReplyDeleteMy take: Whoever got elected President would have been corrupted just as swiftly by the absolute power in many areas that our President has been granted by Congress. The only way to deal with that is not by expecting human nature to change (people seeking the Presidency by definition are seeking power), but by removing that absolute power from the President. Congress could do that. If Congress had balls. But they don't, or if they do, "their guy" is in office and they *want* "their guy" to have those powers.
You think electing someone different as President will change the outcome on the civil liberties front? That seems alarmingly naive to me, given the fundamentally corrupting nature of power... you apparently believe we have saints in politics. Unfortunately, what I see are human beings -- fallible, corruptible, and all too human.
- Badtux the Power Penguin
"You think electing someone different as President will change the outcome on the civil liberties front? That seems alarmingly naive to me,..."
ReplyDeleteWell, I'm pleased to have been able to alarm you, BadTux; it's not often a 62-year-old crippled human can alarm a healthy younger penguin! :-)
There are two aspects to the problem, as you correctly point out: the alleged existence of the unprecedented presidential powers added during the Bush years, and the impossibility of a president's resisting the use of them:
- The first is damnably difficult to address... I doubt either major party could survive politically an attempt to revoke those unconstitutional unitary executive powers in a time in which there is, in fact, terrorism out there.
- The second involves the power of one (wo)man, and at least in theory, if the public gave a good damn about civil liberties, that one person could be politically intimidated into restraint in the use of such (illegitimate) powers. If a president paid a political price for putting out a hit contract on an American citizen, they might not be so quick to do it. But thanks to the GOP, the American electorate is swimming in FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt), and is unlikely to make a president pay a price for unconstitutional action.
I agree that this is primarily my "thang," and I do not expect to succeed in my efforts. And of course I reserve the right to vote for Obama if that turns out to be the strategic course of action from my personal perspective. But we've got to put an end to the executive branch behaving like a mob crime family; that simply will not do. I may not be able to prevent it, but I feel I have to try.
I suppose my point is that it's a systemic issue, not an issue of one man or woman. To change it we have to fix the system, not expect electing one man or woman to make a difference. Of course, as you point out, that's easier said than done...
ReplyDelete- Badtux the Systems Penguin
Changing the system is especially difficult now that there's this horse's head here in my bed... oh, wait... it's just a massive pile of cat hair...
ReplyDeleteGood luck on your cleaning.