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?

[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."

[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]

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.

[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

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.

[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.

[redneckgaijin.livejournal.com]

Um... if the problem is that both of the parties in power have become toxic to their constituents, how is just talking going to change anything?

(And it doesn't help that the Big Two parties have placed massive obstacles in the way of any attempt to supplant or even seriously challenge them...)

[regalpewter.livejournal.com]

By finding what we have in common we can supplant the big two by refusing our support to them any longer. Every vote for one of their canidates is a acceptance of their continuation.

It is time for all of us to come together and simply work around them.
Change your party registration. Study the other parties. De power them or you keep getting what we have been getting. Actually look at what canidates have done not what is being said by the media. Heck, even down to running for dog catcher as a thrird party canidate. Bring together those who really want change from both sides and try and make workable solutions that don't require 2500 pages of legislation to make work.
YIS,
WRI

[regalpewter.livejournal.com]

I am all for opening a can of Whoop-ass. But I honestly don't feel we are at that point just yet. Particularly on the items being discussed here. Divisiveness has brought us to this point, dividing us up into catagories only serves to make people weaker.
Bullies also will back down when all of the kids in the playground stand against them. What the point of my comments is, is this; we all want to have a better outcome than what we are receiving currently. We all must work together for a common goal. But first we all need to agree on the goal.
YIS,
WRI

[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

[redneckgaijin.livejournal.com]

By finding what we have in common we can supplant the big two by refusing our support to them any longer. Every vote for one of their canidates is a acceptance of their continuation.

Except, without some other option to vote for to replace them, the existing parties will continue on without us, ignoring whatever else we do.

And it's not enough to say, run as a third party candidate. Done that. Didn't help. We need a viable third party, which current laws, as written by the big two, make damn near impossible.

And, more importantly, we need a party we, the unpartied, can agree on... and that's always been the trick. Right now we have, in the third party movement, three or four Green/Progressive parties, three or four Libertarian/Personal Choice/Anarchist parties, a couple of Conservative/Constitution parties, and a whole host of socialist parties. If we can't all get together and vote for the same guy and same platform, the Big Two will keep on trucking with their straight-party, no-thinking-required voters.

[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.

[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]

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

[unclelumpy.livejournal.com]

BOFF SIDZ R BAD, VOT RUHPUBLIKKIN!

[unclelumpy.livejournal.com]

Maybe because over the course of January 20, 2000 to January 20, 2009 the American people had their fill of "leadership"?

[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.

[tcgtrf.livejournal.com]

I grew up in a world like that--no police presence below the county level, highest government official a town mayor and school board members. Minimal taxes...

There were problems with it...mainly the lack of protection of the minority from the majority. For most, though, it was a peaceful existance where folks won or failed on their own merit with a bit of help from their neighbors.

A land with little government doesn't have to be Somalia of the 1990s--it can just as well be LaSalle County, Illinois in 1955.

I'd go back to live there in a heartbeat.

Tom T.