The problem is that having health insurance doesn’t mean that you can afford healthcare. Under the Obama program, no insurance company and drop you. On the surface that is correct. However, the insurance companies are in no way precluded from saying that the boil on your ass is a pre-existing health condition and charging you an exorbitant preminum to cover you; far more than you can afford and results in you dropping yourself from the insurance rolls. Then, you are going to charge people a penalty for not buying something that they can’t afford. Even folks with insurance are winding up in the emergeny rooms because their insurance deductable is high or they have insurance but no prescription drug coverage; not to mention the cost of the Dr’s visit itself and finding the time to leave work to go to an appointment. Many people don’t have any wiggle room when it comes to taking time off even for that.

That’s holeybuybull for you!

Giving a Clinton any credit is like waving a red flag in front of a bull! All hail the CDS!

What?

Secret Republican?

I’d say that all the signs he is a Republican we’re on display in 2008. His Canadian NAFTA snafu as well as his vote in favor of retro-active immunity for the telecoms.

That “cat” was out of the proverbial bag a long time ago!!

Unlike:

Obama as saviour unity “unicorn” that craps skittles, and will make the world whole.

Wasn’t alot of credit given to Obama that was neither owed nor deserved? Where was the record of accomplishments? Where were the firm stances of principle? They didn’t exist.

People wanted him to be something he never was….you were never his base and his $400 million warchest was never a “ma and pa kettle” creation.

We laugh at religious extremists who look for Jesus in a moonbeam or a grilled cheese sandwich. Well, the secular version of mass psychosis was the mantra of “Hope and Change” subscribed to man with no accomplishments other than usually being at the right place and the right time! Very Bush-like, wouldn’t you say?

With all due respect Ms. Hamsher:

There were many of us who got “bitch-slapped” prior to the general election of 2008. What comes around goes around! Only now I have been “bitch-slapped” twice to your once!

Wow

Quite the snappy retort!

You must have come over to FDL from the Big Orange Cheeto, if all you can come back with is “your mama”!

Toodles!

They are hardly the de Medici’s

but to each his own!

I agree…

my sympathy to Norway. A very nice country and a very nice people

Values must be lived and not simply mouthed.
In 2008 people on the left, who had always believed their party would have their back, especially after the horror of the Bush years, were derrided and banned from various websites for expressing concern and reservations over Obama as the nominee, there was no accepting fold which said, “well, you are entitled to express your view and let’s find common ground”. It was all or nothing.

Huffington Post, Daily Kos, Democratic Underground, and others basically kicked to the curb members that had been with them since the beginning because their political views did not mesh with the “Hope and Change” mantra of 2008.

That lack of winning over a whole segment of the party; keeping the lines of communication open, in view of Obama’ lack-luster performance these past 4 years, will have a very detrimental effect on the level of voter turnout and the political process going into the next election cycle

Let’s see, as an incoming freshman Senator, who could have picked any liberal Senator to mentor him (like a Russ Feingold)through the shark invested waters of the U.S. Senate who did Obama pick? Yes, that’s right, Joe Lieberman

Projection?

Like the level of projection that supporters of Obama in 2008 leveled on him as the light-bringer? The man who would change the entire dynamics of politics as we now know it?

So the media and Clinton had an adversarial relationship. You mean the free, unencumbered press that propped up Bush that so many on the left derrided as being nothing more than a “corporate” mouthpiece?

As far as projecting on you, it seems that someone doth protest to much. If you did not vote for Obama, Clinton, or a republican (to use your words) than you don’t have a horse in this race to begin with and your directed anger at me is misplaced.

You are correct, Europe is nice this time of year, too bad that there will never be same level of infrastructure in the U.S. under Obama as unlike an FDR, he didn’t feel the need to undertake a WPA or TVA public works project that would have put millions to work and money into the economy.
Sadly that would have taken vision and a backbone.

Hey John:

Wouldn’t the Dale Carnagie approach be a bit like triangulation? Telling people what they want to hear rather than what they made need to hear?

Probably because your head is up your ass. I suggest a good lubricant before making any sudden moves.

The people who were kicked off Welfare in the 1990′s actually got jobs. They received training and not from pay to play bastions of so-called higher education that suck Federal Aid dollars from returing veterans and those from low-income households with barely a GED among them and back-breaking interest rates. Pell grants during the Clinton era were worth $10,000 a grant. Under Bush and Obama they have been halfed to $5,000.

As for Glass Steagall sparky, Clinton didn’t want to vote for it. You may not be old enough to remember but it was Clinton’s own party in the form of Chuck Schumer (NY) and Christopher Dodd (CT) who went to Clinton and told him that they wanted it repealed and that they had enought votes in the Senate to override a Presidential veto which Clinton had been planning to do. With that knowledge, Clinton added into the bill the following caveat that low-interest home mortgages were made available thru Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac. In 1999 the boom of the hedge-fund mortgage industry was in its infancy. So you have Schumer and Dodd (now the head of the American Motion Picture Association) who helped sow the seeds of what would be the boom/bust years of the subprime mortgage industry.

Do I think Bill was perfect? No. But then he left office with a 75% approval rating and more Americans polled would have voted into office for a third term over Gore and Bush combined. Clinton didn’t garner a majority of the American vote until he ran for re-election in 1996. He came into office in 1993 with only 43% of the popular vote. Obama comes in with 300 electoral college votes and will go down in history as the president who squandared the most good will in the shorest amount of time.

By the way…

The Hillary Clinton derangement syndrome here is breath-taking in its scope! So, you wanted her out in 2009 because Obama was nothing like Hillary. Hillary stayed in the race, won all the big states by 10% or more (save for Illinois + the rigged caucauses) and everyone was telling her that she had no chance at the nomination and to get out of the race. She threw her support behind Obama after the convention, when she wasn’t even given the most basic courtesy of having all of her delegate votes counted (including the entire California delegation).

Obama would never have voted for the Iraq War resolution you all said. By the way even former UN Weapons Inspector Hans Blinx say clearly that a vote for the Iraq war resolution was not a vote for was but for a full accounting of Iraq’s nuclear/biological/chemical weapons.

Then Obama voted for retro-active immunity for warrantless wiretapping by the telecomms and many of you said, “well, he has to do that, he is just playing the game until he gets into office and can do the right thing! Hillary triangulates but Obama is just playing 11th dimensional chess!

To those of us that are old enough to remember the 80′s under Reagan, the 90′s were a golden age under Clinton. Hillary would have been an FDR in the White House compared to Obama. And you here would have held her feet to the fire far more than you have ever done with Obama.

Obama has gotten pass after pass, with threats to hold monetar support but not ones vote! You would have cried out for blood if Clinton would have pulled this kind of crap; which she wouldn’t have, because she actually is a Democrat!!

Really?

So many of you here are finally waking up…but it is too little too late!

Obama never had any values. He was always a die-hard Reagan-Era libertarian with visions of grandeur. Mind you, personal grandeur and not for the country or the party that delivered him the nomination in 2008.

Where did you think a freshman Senator got a $400 million war chest from in the first place? Lemonade stands and bake sales? He received more donations from corporate American than McCain and Clinton combined.

Many of us told you in 2008 that you were never his base. His base was comprised of oil, telecomm, and Wallstreet. That’s who brought him to the party. You didn’t heed our warnings. We were told that a new “coalition” (via Donna Brazile) was coming and we could either get on board or go the fuck away.

When this man held Reagan us as a beacon of “transcendental” politics, where were you all? What were you thinking? Better yet, how the fuck old were you when Reagan came on the scene that you could possibly think that this man was a Democrat!

Obama is the epitome of the “all things to all people/nothing to no one but myself” group comprised of Arianna Huffington, Kos, Aravosis, Chris Matthews (who went from talking up Bush’s “package” to the “tingle” Obama gave him.) among others. These folks go where the political winds and opportunities will take them.

Don’t look to me (a former 20-year member of the Democratic Party, now registered as unaffiliated) to do one thing to get this party out of the ditch.

You go to bed with dogs….don’t be surprised when you wake up with fleas…

Where in the hell were many of you when Obama did nothing but tout up Reagan as a “transcendental” figure? Was that not the first idea that this man, who didn’t even want to run with the moniker Democrat; who said that he was beyond such labels, was actually a Republican in “progressive” clothes?

His flimsy record on sticking his neck out for anything without gauging the way the winds of change (or hope) blow (and it really blows right now) spoke for itself. One anti-war speech no one could remember, that wasn’t recorded and was only recorded after he made his 2004 Democratic Convention speech.
With Hillary and Bill the argument so many of you made here was that they were triangulators….
With Obama it was 11th Dimensional chess!

What many of you youngsters don’t remember is that when Bill Clinton ran for office he pledged to allow gays and lesbians to openly serve in the military. He said he would do it, and he fought for it. He was derrided by his own party, the military, and the Republicans. That fight cost him political capital when he also tried to get a universal healthcare plan through. Again, it was the Democrats (in the majority of both houses at the time) who vanquished that idea. The Republican’s may have done what we can all expect them to do, but the Democrat’s in Congress didn’t want it either.

What is Obama’s excuse? After 8 years of Bush, we had Harry (give the Republican’s everything they ask for and only require the Democrat’s to have a supermajority) Reid.
No Paul Krugman….instead Timmy Geithner.

Clinton didn’t go to Congress and say, look I am going to make it seem as though I want to get rid of the ban on gays and lesbians being able to serve but I am really not for it. You all in Congress will be my cover for its’ failure. Wrong! But, that is just what Obama did with the Public Option.
When Bill Clinton took office, the established Democratic Party (think Speaker of the House Jim Wright and his “book” deal and Dan Rostenkowski and the House postal office)were already up to their own elbows in scandal which would look like child’s play compared to what was to come on the Republican side of things). Clinton didn’t loose Congress, Congress lost it themselves.

There was a moratorium on off-shore drilling under Clinton. Wouldn’t one expect the same thing from Obama? Wrong!! He received ton’s of money from BP and then made the Coast Guard sit out and let BP run the show. That is another reason I will never become a member of Firedoglake. How is it that so many of you talk about putting your money where your mouths are and yet every page here as an ad from BP? Touting BP’s “efforts” in the gulf is like accepting payment from Exxon and praising their cleaning of the beaches after the Valdez ran aground. To this day, one need only dig three inches down to find caked oil over 20 years later.

Isn’t accepting BP ad monies here alot like GLAAD president Barrios touting net neutrality and then signing off on the AT&T/Mobil merger? I think it stinks!!

Actually:

GLBT persons are more educated and therefore more fully employed (based on their numbers in the general population) than non GLBT’s. They also tend to have more disposable income.

However, it gets back to the statement I have been making since Obama thru his hat in the ring; when many in the GLBT community (of which I am one) made anyone who did not support Obama an outcast.

I judge people on what they do…not what they say. On their accomplishments not on what-if’s. No one tells me how to think, what to buy, or where to go. No one tells me I undermine a “community” because they and I have one thing in common and nothing else.

There are assholes in the GLBT community just like in the general population. Look at someone’s character. One need only look to this guy as head of GLAAD or the current currupt crop of African American politicians sitting on D.C. city council to understand that just because someone looks like you or shares one trait with you doesn’t mean they aren’t out to screw you over!!