.:.:.:.:
RTTP
.
Mobile
:.:.:.:.
[
<--back
] [
Home
][
Pics
][
News
][
Ads
][
Events
][
Forum
][
Band
][
Search
]
full forum
|
bottom
jump pages:[
all
|
1
|
2
]
jump pages:[
all
|
1
|
2
]
Reply
[
login
]
SPAM Filter:
re-type this
(values are 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,A,B,C,D,E, or F)
you are quoting a heck of a lot there.
[QUOTE]blah blah blah[/QUOTE] to reply to ShadowSD.
Please remove excess text as not to re-post tons
message
[QUOTE="ShadowSD:1327480"][QUOTE="Headbanging_Man:1327131"]Obama should have done:[/QUOTE] I agree strongly with you on some things, disagree on others. On Iraq, you’re incorrect, Obama finished withdrawing the 50,000 residual troops out at the end of 2011. They're not in Iraq anymore and haven't been for a while. This is also another generally unnoticed example of where Obama has been even more anti-war than the details of his campaign promises; while Obama never set an end withdrawal date for those residual non-combat troops during the 2008 campaign, he did so immediately when he got into office and followed through on that timeline exactly. What really gets me even worse is that if someone aside from Obama had become President in 2008, even if they were another leading Democrat (HRC or Edwards) who withdrew all the combat troops out of Iraq, we'd still have those 50K residual "non-combat" troops in Iraq to this day, and still holding the permanent bases that we've since handed off to the Iraqi military on top of it. No one registers how abruptly Obama broke from bad historical US policy embraced by both parties in recent years by doing these things. In fact, based on what you said, it seems a lot of people still think we have 50K troops in Iraq STILL, when we haven't had those soldiers there for ten months. How can we determine what the most progressive anti-war options are if we don't even have the right facts? Yes, the public option should have happened and single payer would have been great, but single payer certainly wasn't going to pass if even the public option couldn't get sixty votes in the Senate (thanks to Joe Lieberman's ties to the health insurance industry). The idea that Obama pushing more forcefully on the public option than he did by waiting even more than a year for it to pass or twisting more arms on it would have somehow changed ex-Democrat Lieberman's mind makes no sense, and the idea that the Obama law was preferable to the insurance industry over the previous system is equally absurd considering the money that industry has invested in repealing the law; sure they would have hated a public option even more than the law that passed, but they clearly loved the old system the most since they're spending every lobbying dollar they have to go back to that, and to get rid of the Obama law. Why are they spending so much money to get rid of a law if they prefer it? I agree there should have been more Wall Street prosecutions for the mortgage swap fiasco, but Obama's record on standing up to Wall Street can't be ignored: he forced the execs of Wall Street companies like AIG who owe taxpayer money to take [URL='http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/business/22pay.html?_r=2&hp&']pay cuts[/URL], he forced execs of failed banks across the country to [URL='http://www.startribune.com/business/89963477.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUUT&refer=y']pay[/URL] for the financial losses they caused, his administration implemented the biggest mortgage fraud crackdown in [URL='http://www.bizjournals.com/southflorida/stories/2010/06/14/daily41.html']history[/URL], he signed into law financial regulation that cuts Wall Street financial sector profits by as much as [URL='http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703559004575256983028632328.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEADNewsCollection']20%[/URL], and his probes of Goldman Sachs and AIG resulted this past April in Goldman paying a restitution settlement totaling [URL='http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-12/goldman-sachs-to-pay-22-million-in-settlement-with-sec-finra.html']tens of millions of dollars[/URL]. I'd love to see more, but comparatively, that's objectively the biggest crackdown on Wall Street since FDR - by far. Ignoring it hardly makes the needed case for the additional cracking down that is necessary. Obama's EPA has also more teeth than any in history, and while you are absolutely right that fracking and mountaintop removal should not be allowed, contrary to what you said [URL='http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/10/16/794233/-BREAKING-EPA-Denies-Permit-for-Infamous-WV-Mountaintop-Removal-Mine']HAS denied permits for mountaintop removal[/URL], and two months into the Obama administration actually [URL='http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/03/24/national/main4889433.shtml']halted all of them[/URL]. On the biggest issue where environmental activism has made a stand in this administration, the Keystone Pipeline extension, Obama came down on the [URL='http://www.thenation.com/article/164658/keystone-victory#']correct side[/URL] against it when all the chips were down. Obama is also responsible for progressive environmental [URL='http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/12/18/674783/-A-GREAT-Obama-appointment-Jane-Lubchenco-160-UPDATE']cabinet appointments[/URL], the [URL='http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/wilderness-lands-bill-becomes-law/']Wilderness Lands[/URL] Law, the [URL='http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2009/11/17/more-important-than-copenhagen-u-s-china-deal-on-energy-and-climate/']China Climate Deal[/URL], the [URL='http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/19/science/earth/19climate.html?hp']Copenhagen agreement[/URL], [URL='http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/18/business/economy/18leonhardt.html?_r=1']Cash For Caulkers[/URL], $2.3B on [URL='http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/01/08/823061/-POTUS-anounces-2-3-billion-dollars-for-clean-energy-sector']green energy[/URL], EPA regulation of [URL='http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/05/04/863461/-EPA-announces-new-regulations-of-coal-ash-as-hazardous-waste']coal ash[/URL], EPA enforcement of the [URL='http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/05/26/869899/-Breaking-Updated-EPA-bars-Texas-rsquo-operating-permit-to-refinery']Clean Air Act[/URL], preventing [URL='http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/5/27/870385/-Salazar-Delays-Arctic-Drilling!']Arctic Drilling[/URL], adding deepwater drilling [URL='http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/06/03/871673/-In-which-Obama-s-Offshore-Oil-Policy-is-Praised-Really']regulations and a mortatorium[/URL], appealing in court to keep that moratorium [URL='http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/07/07/882321/-Obama-administration-requests-reinstatement-of-deepwater-moratorium']in place[/URL], EPA shutdowns of [URL='http://www.governing.com/gov-data/coal-plants-to-shut-down-from-EPA-regulations.html']coal plants[/URL], cutting fed govt [URL='http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/president-obama-expands-greenhouse-gas-reduction-target-federal-operations']greenhouse emissions[/URL], veto threats to stop legislation [URL='http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/6/8/874074/-President-Obama-Will-Veto-Murkowski-Resolution.']weakening the EPA[/URL], protecting [URL='http://www.huffingtonpost.com/philip-radford/obama-administration-keep_b_623866.html?ref=fb&src=sp#sb=991478,b=facebook']whales[/URL], an additional $2B in [URL='http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/07/03/881357/-UPDATEx2-Obama-announces-2-BILLION-in-solar-power-investments']solar power[/URL], the new law to reduce [URL='http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/07/18/885069/-A-DEMOCRATIC-legislative-regulatory-WIN-you-didn-t-know-about']formaldehyde emissions[/URL], the offshore drilling [URL='http://augustafreepress.com/2010/12/01/obama-offshore-drilling-ban-draws-bipartisan-criticism/']ban[/URL], solar panels for [URL='http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/01/10/935248/-Another-Lame-Duck-Victory-Buy-American-Solar-Panels-Clause']the Defense Department[/URL], pushing to [URL='http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/science/earth/01subsidy.html?_r=2']end[/URL] oil subsidies [URL='http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/06/obama-calls-for-end-of-oil-subsidies/']repeatedly[/URL] despite [URL='http://www.democraticleader.gov/blog/?p=3631']uniform opposition[/URL], the EPA limiting greenhouse gases from [URL='http://www.marshall.org/article.php?id=1102']new power plants[/URL], and perhaps most important of all the EPA's higher fuel efficiency [URL='http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/autos-must-average-545-mpg-by-2025-new-epa-standards-are-expected-to-say/2012/08/28/2c47924a-f117-11e1-892d-bc92fee603a7_story.html']standards[/URL]. That's an outstanding environmental record, and the most pro-active President and EPA on the environment ever. I personally think Obama did have the right to assassinate Bin Laden and that cleric in Yemen, even though the latter was a dual citizen, and I say that as a dual citizen myself; I don't think I have the right to go to Iran where I also have citizenship through my bloodline, independently plot attacks against the US that are successful in killing innocent people, and then say that since there is no extradition treaty so my American citizenship prevents me from retaliation - that's just nuts. Now of course, there is absolutely a valid point that such a power not clearly restricted could some day create precedent for terrible shit to happen, but the idea that citizenship creates an impenetrable shield for a foreign terrorist who has denounced and waged war on the US is equally ridiculous. I agree prosecuting torture is a must. If Obama leaves office without doing it, it will always be a shortcoming of his Presidency, likely the biggest. I also understand why he hasn't in his first term, because third-world democracies are rife with parties prosecuting each other once in power, and the argument is that combination of the Clinton impeachment and Bush being tossed in jail within a ten or twelve years might have set in place a doomed pattern in this country we might not be able to break out of, and a downward spiral of retribution that America has always steered clear of no matter how bitter politics ever got between the two parties. That's actually not an unreasonable argument to at least consider when someone has made a core campaign promise to try and bring different sides together - but on the other hand, I think if at the end of the day that level of systematic and widespread torture is never prosecuted, we're actually WAY worse off. So I'm with you that prosecutions are absolutely necessary - it's just a more fucked choice either way than I think you lay out when it comes to doing it, particularly in a first term. Obama must however pursue prosecutions in a second term, and it needs to get done. After all, it’s one thing to say it was something that could have backfired in his first term for the torture issue itself (Obama prosecutes, doesn’t get re-elected because he is cast as a partisan on that specific issue, other party gets elected and actually takes it as a popular mandate to torture, expanding the Bush torture policies instead of only reinstating them as Romney would currently do), but in a second Obama term there would be zero excuse for not prosecuting Bush/Cheney/Yoo/Gonzalez/etc. Zero. Obama [URL='http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/175/end-the-use-of-torture/']ending torture[/URL] and his DOJ launching investigations of it were great, but it just isn’t enough. I agree with you that Obama should have followed through with his initial threats to veto the NDAA, although it's also fair to point out that there were enough R and D votes to [URL='http://www.politicususa.com/obama-ndaa-statement.html']override his veto[/URL]. [/QUOTE]
top
[
Vers. 0.12
][ 0.004 secs/8 queries][
refresh
][