Really. What’s the point? What benefit is there to meekly seeking compromise with people who are simply crazy, mean, nasty liars, like this guy:
Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) believes that President Obama is bent on turning the United States into a totalitarian state and already has all the tools he needs for the purpose.
“He has the three things that are necessary to establish an authoritarian government,” Broun told a meeting of local Georgia Republicans on Wednesday, citing the creation of a private army, a ban on gun ownership, and complete control of the press. […]
Broun, who was elected to the House of Representatives in 2007 by less than 400 votes, has recently taken other high-profile positions. In May, he raised a firestorm by proposing that 2010 be declared “The Year of the Bible.” In June, he voted against climate change legislation, calling global warming a “hoax … perpetrated out of the scientific community.”
At this week’s meeting, Brown described health care reform as yet another attempt to control peoples lives and suggests that health care costs could be brought down by repealing consumer protections and enacting tax credits for doctors to take on charity cases.
Hey Congressman, we already have a private army and it was formed by a wealthy wingnut religious murdering freak (allegedly) which was hired by our former Republican overlords to help fight our unnecessary wars in the Middle east. The same Republican overlords who made “torture” America’s middle name, and who authorized the NSA, FBI, CIA, Pentagon, DEA and any other government law enforcement and/or “intelligence” agency and/or to violate the Constitution by spying on all our financial, health and library records, not to mention downloading all our email, internet and phone communications to some mondo-mega-terrabyte data base stashed away in Dick Cheney’s private hidey hole. And you have the nerve to claim Obama is planning a totalitarian takeover of the country?
So, please, Mr. President, why are you still seeking bi-partisan support for your policies from these racist smear merchants? I’d like you to explain the logic in that. Because from where I sit, it is the stupidest, most inane thing you have done since taking office: to try to accommodate these people who quite simply want you dead, politically or otherwise. It’s like Batman negotiating with the Joker in The Dark Knight — we have nothing they want, and there is nothing we can offer them to make them stop spreading their twisted lies meant to elicit hyperbolic fear and dread about your administration among their supporters. So why are you still bothering to come to terms with the insane sociopaths who now lead the disloyal opposition? It makes no sense.
Far better to go it alone.
Hello, Steven
My opinion of what motivates Obama to actively involve right wing lunatics in the process at all is probably best left unsaid because I have a very low opinion of his motives, his tactics and his intent to begin with, but at this point few of us should be surprised by his actions and/or the actions of his party.
What I really wanted to ask you though, was if you were planning on doing a football league again? :o)
That is the kind of question that I agonize over these days! lol :o)
Yes, I did. I sent out the announcement two weeks ago super. I’m sorry you missed it. The league is full.
well ain’t that a shame?
I’ll get yooz next year :o)
“So, please, Mr. President, why are you still seeking bi-partisan support for your policies from these racist smear merchants?”
Because he is weak willed. This allows the stronger personalities in his administration (Emanuel, for instance) to end up with the last word on policy. And even if he disagrees, he has no desire to punish those that do what they want once they leave his presence.
I never much liked Clinton(s), but at least with both of them you got the sense that THEY made the decisions, and they were not afraid to yell at people who went off track. I disagreed with them because they are both corporatists by training and education, so they fed the machine.
Both Obama and Clinton came from nothing. Clinton sold his roots out to get ahead, Obama has forgotten his roots to get ahead.
Somebody needs to remind him soon.
nalbar
I don’t think he’s weak willed. I think he honestly thinks he can be a bridge that brings a divided nation together, and that “one nation” is a priority value. It used to be a liberal article of faith that one opinion has the same right to respect as another irrespective of class, education, and English usage. This view underlies the whole rationale for democracy.
The scary thing is, our society seems no longer able to function while keeping faith with such ideals. Our side, myself included, finds us slipping into words like “trailer trash” and “redneck” to describe the kind of people we used to claim to champion. Given the media environment, we’d have to be some kind of saints not to hit back. But Obama stubbornly insists on believing that respecting the other side can lead to working together for the common good.
I don’t see that happening anymore, myself, but also can’t see a way to have a country if it doesn’t. In the meantime, Obama’s insistence on working at the “high vision” level is sabotaging his ability to prevail at the specific policy level. If he can’t turn that around, he’ll go down in history ranked somewhere around Wilson as well-intentioned and ineffectual. But we’re not there yet. Next week should make prospects for the future a lot clearer.
“I think he honestly thinks he can be a bridge that brings a divided nation together, and that “one nation” is a priority value.”
Well, I certainly believe he thinks this.
But the question asked is, why in the world he would continue to believe it after the people who he is reaching out to are making or abetting personal attacks. Against him.
What is a person who does the same act over and over, yet expects different results?
nalbar
If you REALLY want to see how the “guvmint” has fucked up health reform, read Matt Taibi’s new article in Rolling Stone.
I knew it was seriously screwed up. Now I know how bad it is. All in the name of BI PARTISANSHIP.
Check.
you should have included the link: Sick and Wrong.
thanks.
Obama should shock everyone by taking the right wing to task for the extremism and lies they are allowing to poison our national debate. Give specific examples (Grassley, Michelle Bachman, this Braun guy) and admonish them. Also rebut the key charges of socialism, govt takeover, blah blah blah by painting of picture of the current health care system and how messed up it is.
I’d love to see him rip the right wing for their lies. But from what I’ve heard so far, the speech will mainly make progressives mad. That doesn’t make sense in my opinion.
My prediction: the speech will be so in-your-face deceitful that it will set a new standard for the genre. He’s pissed that too many Democrats are questioning and not obeying his will. Cool has its limitations. And Facebook is a sham. The smiles are better suited to toothpaste advertisements than to ramming policy down a politician’s throat. He knows what ‘he’ (= his coterie) wants and is determined to get it. The only problem is no one else outside the sacred ring seems to know what that is. One way or the other he is not planning to tip the apple cart. His speeches annoy me: staccato presentation, lack of phrasing, constant turning of his head from side to side and flashing a mini-smile at the public, abrupt changes in tone, refusal to show his cards and call it as it is, mechanical. He’s becoming incoherent. He talk to the power brokers and fails to address the proverbial people. Power to the People!
Time to review Obama’s DKos diary posting four years ago.
“…According to the storyline that drives many advocacy groups and Democratic activists – a storyline often reflected in comments on this blog – we are up against a sharply partisan, radically conservative, take-no-prisoners Republican party. They have beaten us twice by energizing their base with red meat rhetoric and single-minded devotion and discipline to their agenda. In order to beat them, it is necessary for Democrats to get some backbone, give as good as they get, brook no compromise, drive out Democrats who are interested in “appeasing” the right wing, and enforce a more clearly progressive agenda. The country, finally knowing what we stand for and seeing a sharp contrast, will rally to our side and thereby usher in a new progressive era.
I think this perspective misreads the American people….”
Methinks Obama misreads the Republican party.
more apropos, it’s beginning to look more and more like he mislead the majority of the american voters who elected him.
Can I take it that the presidential honeymoon is over?
yup.
honeymoon is over, now we’re into the separation phase and then the final divorce in 2012.
I’m not surprised.
I went to the same high school as Obama and also knew his father. I was especially hopeful he could live up to his promise. Apparently that is not to be.
He is a product of a school, Punahou, that was first created to serve the haole (white) missionaries and their children. You know in Hawaii we have a saying, “these are the people that came to do good, and they came and did well!” These folks the locals call “Punahou Haoles” embody social entitlement and a surety of their superiority.
My middle son laughed at me the other day as I lamented Obama’s apparent compromise and complicity behind closed doors. “Despite his color, he’s just another fuckin Punahou Haole” he said.
I couldn’t agree more!
In fact, the only thing that should define “bipartisan” for the Obama White House is the fact the President should have bury his foot buried so far up the GOP’s ass that everything he does from that point onward will-out of sheer necessity-be bi-partisan!