Obama to Cave to GOP and Cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security

If I could give 95% rep that's what I'd give; you got 100% instead. It was that or nothing and I very nearly feel the exact same way you do.

But...

Obama has made the mistake of starting every negotiation in the middle and then allowing himself to be pulled to the right. He starts by asking for about 50% of what he wants and winds up with 25. I can totally understand that once or twice, as an attempt at a charm offensive and an attempt to let the GOP know he was a ****ing well reasonable guy, ready to compromise and work together, nuts and bolts, to get stuff done at a time when the country desperately needed that.

But the GOP made themselves very clear from the beginning. They were going to stake out the most radical possible position and not budge. They don't care if the country goes to hell; they are politicking, not governing. That's how they keep getting 75% of what they want. And Obama should know that by now and put his foot down on something, anything.

His positions, the things he would do if he had no Congress to deal with, are incredibly much in line with what the country wants. Especially when it comes to taxes on the rich and entitlement programs. He's giving up too much when the vast majority of the country is with him in his preferred position. Even on health care, which wasn't quite at 50% approval, due to so much GOP disinformation, if you looked at the pieces of the legislation one by one, they polled through the roof.

So wherefore the bully pulpit?

The health care legislation, as relatively limp as it turned out to be compared to what it could have been (if he'd started w/single payer he would have ended up with a public option), does an incredible lot of great, great things that presidents (including some Republicans) have been trying to get done forever. He succeeded where they failed. When I hear liberals complain about that legislation I want to punch them in the mouth.

And I share your disappointment in liberal response to Obama in general.

But when you look at Gitmo, wiretaps and wars (and withdrawals), he has been flatly disappointing. Those were unforced errors, or even betrayals.

On virtually everything else, when you look at the incredibly bad hand he was dealt in the most radically obstructionist opposition party of all time, by miles, he has done basically well relative to the challenges. But he has not been in any way a fighter, at a time when so many people desperately need one.

giff, the liberals make me as sick as you do wrt Obama, but they are not entirely without an argument.

 

Terrible, terrible post. See my other posts in this thread for a lot of Obama criticism but caught up in status? That is ludicrous. It doesn't even make any sense.

 

One down, ~10,000,000 to go.

 

The only area where I really fault Obama is embracing the stimulus package as passed. I think what got passed was the best it could be, but it was woefully inadequate. After it passed, Obama should have said, "This is a good start, but we need to do a lot more." I doubt the Democrats could have got much else through, but they have to make the argument that not enough has been done.

 

i really don't mean this as an insult, but in regards to glynch and deckard, they re old and they either long for the days of LBJ or they are just tired of this being a center right country and government and have built up some fantasy in their minds that will not happen.

 

The alternatives are sooo much better...

 

Yep. A free-marketeer would be absolutely disastrous right now. Obama has been disappointing, but any of the Republican candidates would be exponentially worse.

 

If Mitch Daniels ran I probably would vote for him. But I still favor Obama slightly over Romney. If it is that crazy lady from Minn, it is Obama all the way. Republicans say Obama is super liberal, are they looking at the nuts their party is fielding half the time?

 

Feb. 11 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama said he and his administration have pursued a “fundamentally business- friendly” agenda and are “fierce advocates” for the free market, rejecting corporate criticism of his policies.

 

It's not an "either, or" thing with me, pgabriel. - Yes, I long for the days of politicians like LBJ, a deeply flawed man, but one who brought himself up from the lower classes to become President of the United States and didn't forget his roots. A man who did great things for countless people in this country while, at the same time, throwing us into a nightmare without end in Vietnam. I admired the man and hated him, both at the same time, but by god, he wouldn't roll over for anyone. If LBJ were thrust into the situation Obama finds himself in, he would have fought back ruthlessly, giving no quarter. I would dearly love for the President to have a quantum of the backbone and political ability of Lyndon Johnson. I also miss the men who ran the Republican Party back then, and their rank and file. Men considered conservative, who wouldn't be able to sniff at a seat in Congress in today's GOP.

And yes, I'm sick and tired of the direction this country is going in. I thought the election of Obama and a Democratic Congress would be transformational. The moment was there. The President punted, instead of going for the first down. In my opinion.

(yeah, not the sport I'd like to use for an analogy, but it fits)

 

This is true. In fact, some of the same libs will lament how all of Congress is now bought and paid for by the rich.

I think the unforced errors Bats mentioned such as warrantless wiretaps, extraordinary renditions, TSA's unneeded ridiculousness, copyright law skewing towards media interests, or pursuing government whistleblowers under the guise of espionage doesn't give me much to believe in what the man stands for. It's triangulation in the sense of the mute response it generates but I'm not sure what public good comes from it other than serving "the establishment".

Want to increase domestic security? Stop sending more troops to far off places is a start.

 

We are a big problem and no one wants to address it. It would be nice if we could all not pay any taxes and retire when we are 30 with a 100 percent pension, but that's not the real world. We can only do what we can afford to do. To fix our deficit, we need to raise taxes and lower entitlements.

 

http://hotair.com/greenroom/archive...-entitlements-its-the-discretionary-spending/

As the article points out, it's discretionary spending that has ballooned under Obama. The "one time stimulus" has now become the baseline for budgeting, as we all knew it would. And it's discretionary spending that represents the graft that keeps the Democrats (and many Republicans) in power. Special subsidies and programs and grants, all spread around to various constituents.

That's why Obama would prefer to go after entitlement programs or raise taxes. Anything to avoid reducing the Chicago style walking around money he grew up knowing.

 

Try again.

 

And that graphic is actuallly generous to the right wing side of the argument if you factor in the drastic cuts in spending that state & local governments have enacted, which the federal gov't has had to triage to prevent complete collapse.

 

We would have to cut almost all of our discretionary spending including the military to solve our deficit problem. Mandatory spending makes up two-thirds of our budget so we don't touch that and/or raise taxes, our deficit isn't going anywhere.