Change I Cannot Believe In

[filkertom]

I am so fucking sick of the political news lately that I don't even want to discuss it. Short form, Obama has gone from the Audacity of Hope to just Audacity. No, not because of the Nobel Prize and his speech about why he increased the number of troops in Afghanistan.

The health care mess.

The gay rights mess.

The economic mess.

The mess.

Anybody want to discuss it, go ahead and be polite. I haven't got the stomach to do either right now.

Comments

[rsmit212.livejournal.com]

I liken it all to a horse stable that hasn't been taken care of for a while getting a new worker that digs in and starts cleaning. He gets dirty, tired and covered in shit, but who's to blame? Him or the horse's asses that were there before he got there and are still there and will be there when he's gone?

[solarbird]

Yeah except a lot of these things are active action on his part. Not "taking to long to fix it." Actively doing new things to make stuff worse. It started with his vote for retroactive telecom immunity before the election, which is why I did not vote for him.

Since taking office, active, positive actions on his administration's part include

• the active cover-up of torture on all fronts, including endorsement of every argument made for secrecy and above-the-law status made by the Bush administration invention of a few more, and threats against other countries to stop their investigations
• the continuation of the Bush secret "black prisons" (he closed the one the CIA ran, but oh look, there were others run by the Army. Surprise!
• the three-teir "justice" system (some get trials, some get military tribunals, some people just get held forever without trial, and oh, if we lose in court, we can imprison people forever anyway) and endorsement in court of the Bush "we can arrest anyone, anywhere, and imprison them forever without trial" horror
• the spirited defence of DOMA in court and, in particular, the brief given by an Obama appointee to a Bush fundamentalist appointee to write
• The delay - tho' it did finally happen - of Congressional and Bush administration action to end the anti-gay HIV travel ban
• The re-extension of the Patriot Act without meaningful changes

There's more, but that's a start. I'm fine with "it takes a while." I'm totally onboard with that idea. I'm not fine at all with "we need to make the mess worse and somehow that'll clean it up," and I'm also not fine at all with "it's okay now that it's Mr. Obama, his heart is in the right place." That's just bullshit, and what the GOP base said about Mr. Bush. They were wrong, too.

[redneckgaijin.livejournal.com]

Except that, in the cases of the war, of gay rights, and executive overreach- just to name three- our new worker has mistaken what he was hired for, and he's hauling more horseshit in.

[selenesue.livejournal.com]

He didn't create any of those. I'm not even ready to blame the previous administration this time. To some extent, WE did, by allowing the evil and greedy to run roughshod over our rights and our wallets while we failed to act.

Welcome to Port Huron, Michigan

[phillip2637.livejournal.com]

I think this qualifies as 'mess'.
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/12/11/dr-peter-watts-canad.html

I note that someone in the comments quotes him as once saying he didn't want to "visit the US during the Bush years, but he'd reconsider once Obama got in."

Re: Welcome to Port Huron, Michigan

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

Definitely qualifies as mess.

Scalzi's take on it (http://whatever.scalzi.com/2009/12/11/helping-out-peter-watts/).

Nine years of Imperials. I'm sick and tired of it.

[redneckgaijin.livejournal.com]

Here's the text of an email I sent to Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish today:

The single thing from Obama's Nobel speech that burns me up the most is his claim that he banned torture.

Obama didn't ban torture; he merely stated that America wouldn't torture so long as he was President. The Military Commissions Act is still in force. The people who ordered torture, and who carried it out, have suffered absolutely no punishment for their acts. So long as the law gives the President the right to define and order torture, so long as those who do torture are able to do so with impunity, there IS no torture ban.

And instead of working to bury Bush's torture legacy, Obama and his Justice Department are working to defend it- as witness, for example, the recent filings in Jose Padilla's lawsuit against John Yoo.

Obama has NOT banned torture, and someone should explain to him that when he claims he has, he's lying.

There is one bit of news today, though: major financial industry reform and re-regulation quietly, with no fanfare to speak of, passed the House today. It almost makes me wonder if Obama deliberately sent up healthcare reform to fail, as a distraction from whatever else he wants to do...

... nah. He's still No Change to me.

[solarbird]

Best of all, there are allegations starting to appear of long-past-takeover torture coming out of some of the black prison sites his executive order closing them didn't cover.

And yeah, he's made torture a matter of policy, not the clear and specific violation of law that it is. This was the Bush administration's position as well. His administration is making all this bipartisan and the "new normal," just as the Democratic Congress helped do from 2006-2008.

[regalpewter.livejournal.com]

Welcome to the club.
American politics have become about power over people. The idea of friendly debate and real building of concensus are gone by the tactics of those in both parties.
What is most distressing is that we have been brought to this point by ignoring the warnings of the past and repeating the mistakes that have failed historically.

Now how do we go about fixing it?
We talk, in calm tones, and most important in the act of talking; we listen. There is a middle path that we all can walk on if we are willing to find that path.
It's what we do as Americans, not trying to out-scream one another.
YIS,
WRI

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

oh, I dunno. We've a long (FSVO long) history of, when things go too far, opening a can of whoop-ass. I think we need another can. Now, I would vastly prefer the instrument of opening that can be the keyboard and the protest sign, and not the gun and the tank... but dangit, I'm sick and tired of this bovine scatology. And you can flap your yap at a bully all you want, but most of the time until you haul off and bust him in the mouth one time, he's still gonna take your lunch money.

It usually only takes once, though. Bin there, Dun that, got the scar from where his braces cut my knuckle to prove it.

[tcgtrf.livejournal.com]

Trust me, I have no schadenfreunde, but.....

I wrote about this in 2007, put it in my book, and I was told by fandom that there *was* a major difference in political parties.

Not really--whether it's petty Texas/Yale elites or Chicago street-fighters, they're not our friends, not our defenders. Government is not the solution to our problems, it is the author of most of them.

It will be so bad by the 2012 election, a majority of you will be nostalgic for the Bush years. Trust me, I can see where this is going.

Tom Trumpinski

[unclelumpy.livejournal.com]

May you one day awaken to find your life free of any and all government involvement.

[eleri.livejournal.com]

Honestly, and I know this highly offends many of my politically savvy and active friends, I don't care. I'm in day-to-day functionality mode, unless the federal government did something to magically make my life noticely better in the next 48 hours, it is off my radar.

[lovefromgirl.livejournal.com]

This. Protest feels like a privilege restricted to people whose energy isn't eaten up by living.

*hugs* to you. We'll make it through.

[stormgren.livejournal.com]

Why is anyone surprised? New boss, same as the old boss.

Why anyone jumped up and down claiming he was the bringer of hope, light and fluffy bunnies is beyond me.

[unclelumpy.livejournal.com]

BOFF SIDZ R BAD, VOT RUHPUBLIKKIN!

[aulayan.livejournal.com]

Obama was never about change. At least not change from the status quo.

But he got some things right. The HIV ban is going away (Thank god). There isn't a mindless move towards tax cuts. There is some small push towards looking into financial matters (Though he's not truly leading this. He should be.)

Obama...Honestly isn't being a leader. I'm not sure why. When it comes to gay rights. He hides. The health care mess, he mostly is hiding. The economic mess...Okay he is out there up front on a lot of things, and it's hard to say if it's working or not. (It's not a slam dunk victory, but it doesn't look like he made things worse).

Basically, Obama needs to get some balls and stick his neck out there. Because if he keeps not leading on these things...I'll have less respect for him than I have for Hoover.

He was never

[capplor.livejournal.com]

as liberal as all his opponents and most of his proponents claimed.

I was hoping for a bit more than I've seen, but I still think McCain/Palin (depending on whether the codger lived through his term) would have been worse.

[unclelumpy.livejournal.com]

President Obama's approval ratings will continue to plummet as long as he, like every Democrat, insists on continually alienating his liberal base in an attempt to appease people who shall always regard him with irrational, homicidal hatred based on delusions regarding his faith and birthplace.

[ashkitty.livejournal.com]

This.

[rmeidaking.livejournal.com]

Yeah, 2008 was the year that both the Rs and Ds ran on a platform of "Change" (or maybe it was "Change back") when clearly neither side wanted any sort of meaningful change at all. Hypocrisy reigns supreme.

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

yeah, yeah.. ya know what, what with the changes we're getting here in some ways America is looking the lesser evil actually. [still wouldn't trade in the NHS though].

Meh.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

As I said elsenet, it's still 1930, and the people who made the mess are still in charge. Obama's not a fanatic like Bush II, but he's clearly willing to align himself with the right wing.

I just sent the White House a note, that ended "F---, man. *What* change?" (Enter Sarah Palin, *Barbarian Heroine*. She's a lot like Othar Tryggvassen, *Gentleman Adventurer*, only much less fun.)

[tropism.livejournal.com]

"She's a lot like Othar Tryggvassen, *Gentleman Adventurer*, only much less fun."

You Win for Best Analogy Of the $time_period.

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

I have outrage fatigue. All I can do is what I've done for the last 8 years: hunker down, do what I can on a local level and keep my head above water.

I'm one of the few who came out of the Bush years better than I went in. I went in with nothing. But what I got I got because of hard work and the EEOC (women truckers are in short supply), not because of Republicans.

[hanabishirecca.livejournal.com]

I stopped paying attention because everyone on the left seems to think he is a King who can fix anything without involving the the Legislative Branch and everyone on the right is just a blathering idiot.

[dan-ad-nauseam.livejournal.com]

My complaint is that the administration has failed to show any real backbone in dealing with Congress.

Sorry to high-jack the thread...

[capt-video.livejournal.com]

but I thought you and everyone else who reads your site would want to know about this...

Dr Peter Watts, Canadian science fiction writer, beaten and arrested at US border

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/12/11/dr-peter-watts-canad.html

Re: Sorry to high-jack the thread...

[tcgtrf.livejournal.com]

It's a highjack for a good cause.

Dr. Watts seriously could use some money and as much sympathy in the press as we can garner. He's a fine writer and a gentleman.

Tom T.

[emiofbrie.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I wonder if Obama got a threat from powerful people shortly after gaining office. "Do what we say or your family dies" or something like that.

Honestly, it's the only way I can explain this massive 180.

[fredhuggins.livejournal.com]

Bill Hicks theorized that every new president immediately gets shown footage of the JFK assassination, shot from a different angle...

America has no Kings.

[lariss.livejournal.com]

Repeat:
America has no kings.
I was glad when Obama got in, NOT because HE WAS OBAMA (angel chorus), but because the people voted for NOT the neo-cons and I thought that represented a shift in consciousness or a minor awakening of some kind.

I expect nothing of Obama, and I don't blame Bush (Boo! chorus) for what happened during his regime because the president is a figurehead. If any of us, no matter how honest or liberal were to be thrust into that position, I think we would find that we'd be pushed this way and pulled that way and blocked here and manipulated there.
I'm not saying that these things Obama has done are excusable - I'm saying that Obama didn't do them.
Not on his own, and possibly not even by his own will.

If he were King, I'd feel differently.

I didn't like Bush, not because of "his" policies, but because the man was an ass. I like Obama, because I think he's not an ass.

Becoming crestfallen and irate towards ANY one person due to the behavior of our nation is silly.

Just as silly as putting the power for any nation's course singularly into the hands of one person.

Re: America has no Kings.

[capplor.livejournal.com]

It IS easier to target one person as the agent of change than to work on the entire congress. Any ideas to help?

[purpleranger.livejournal.com]

Quite frankly, I have been thinking that he was no steak and all sizzle for quite some time now. I don't want to say "I told you so," but . . .

Just keep one date in mind: January 20, 2013.

[sdelmonte]

Except for how he's handled health care, he's been what I expected. I think that his stimulus package saved us from a true depression, and that he's being realistic about Afghanistan. And while it's damning with faint praise, but he is a far sight better than Dubya.

But he's making almost all the mistakes that Clinton did in his first year, and added a few new ones. His utter mishandling of health care reform makes Clinton's failures seem mild - Clinton had a plan, the plan died, and the mess didn't become worse, while I am worried the current half-plan might be worse than nothing.

At the end of the day, we are once again seeing that the skills needed to get elected are not the skills needed to govern. Obama ran a brilliant campaign but seems to have not figured out what needs to come next. I hold out hope that he will, since I still maintain that Clinton learned from his mistakes. But Clinton also needed to lose control of Congress and be freed from Politics as Usual before he got better. I hope it doesn't take the same thing now, but it might.

Look on the bright side...

[unclelumpy.livejournal.com]

Under Bush, we had to worry about;

1. An unwinnable war
2. A crubmbling economy
3. Vanishing civil liberties
4. The sheer disgust of the rest of the civilized world

Under Obama, we only have to worry about half of that.

Re: Look on the bright side...

[sepdet.livejournal.com]

That's pretty much my thought.
Sigh.

I still don't want Sarah Palin and whoever to have another shot at screwing things up.

[antinomic.livejournal.com]

Obama doesn't understand that business is the driving force of this country. He wants higher taxes when we need businesses to expand and generate jobs. He had no leadership or business experience, and it shows. His government is the problem.