I’ve actually now copied and placed that in notepad right on my desktop.  I will use it every time I run into a whiner outside of their comfort zone.

I think I may frame that. Maybe do a needlepoint something or other of it. Chiseled in granite, perhaps. Bravo indeed!

This is the unfortunate side-effect of energizing a lot of political neophytes - they all want what they thought they heard Obama say (or projected on him), and they want it now. They don’t understand the old maxim about legislation and sausage-making.

And of course, not a single goddamn thing would be playing out any differently if Hillary had been elected. What, do Hamsher, et al think Hillary wouldn’t have compromised all over the fucking place to get healthcare passed after failing to do so in the 90s? Ha.

These pants-peeing late-to-politics progressives who don’t understand that it’s a game of inches (as is every other goddamn fucking thing in life) give me scrapie. They wouldn’t have lasted a day fighting for integration. Can you seriously imagine any of them standing up to police dogs, fire hoses, et al? Let alone the fact that they lionize FDR and other politicians from the past while handily erasing the glaring sins of those men—sins that make Obama look like a fucking Boy Scout.

They must be a real fucking joy to try to maintain personal relationships with. “You PROMISED to take out the garbage this morning. I TRUSTED you! You BETRAYED me! Me, who is so good and pure and worked SO HARD to make this relationship work. Now I don’t want anything to do with you!” Jesus, get off the fucking internet and enroll in a remedial U.S. history class or a course on the constitution. Or at least go to your therapist.

Out of patience. Shocking, I know.

Don’t get me started.  I was on the verge of removing Daily Kos from my bookmarks yesterday when it appeared to be turning into the left-wing version of Free Republic.

I hate the crybaby mentality of lefties, almost as much as I hate the lockstep Christian Nationalist mindset of the right.

It’s becoming easy to spot the people on either side of the fence who flunked or slept through civics/social studies classes.

I’ll see your Bravo, and raise you an Amen! and a Fuck yeah!

I was on the verge of removing Daily Kos from my bookmarks yesterday when it appeared to be turning into the left-wing version of Free Republic.

Wait, you didn’t do that after Alegre’s writers strike diary?

Wait, you didn’t do that after Alegre’s writers strike diary?

Hah!  Thanks, that was a nice trip down memory lane.

Up to a point I agree with this.  I knew compromise was inevitable—I’m not shocked, shocked, that Obama administration doesn’t look like the Hamsher administration or the Glennzilla administration.

But I’m pissed off that Obama and the Democrats in a year have managed to piss away several years’ worth of goodwill the Democrats had amassed after the clusterfuck that was the Bush administration.  Was it Obama’s fault that this happened?  It was Obama’s fault that he let the evil Republican bastards run him over with a steamroller, back up, and do it forty or fifty more times.  He never saw it coming and he never changed his game to prevent it from happening again.  That’s the betrayal I’m having a hard time getting over.

Steve, on what issues has Obama specifically let the GOP run him over? He passed the stimulus bill and some form of healthcare reform will pass against strenuous GOP objections, he got Sotomayor on the court over strenuous (and heinously racist) GOP objections, he signed Lily Ledbetter, he signed hate-crimes legislation, overturned Mexico City—the betrayals just never fucking stop! /snark

He doesn’t have a magic wand to force things through Congress by executive fiat —and that’s a good thing for those of us who still at least like to pretend checks and balances matter in federal goverment. I’m really puzzled, given the presence of the Blue Dogs, what exactly you think Obama could have done differently? He doesn’t have the authority to change the rules of the Senate.

Seriously. Show me on what specific issues you think Obama “betrayed” us. He never made a secret of courting GOP support during the primaries or general election, but it’s not the GOP that’s tying his hands—it’s Lieberman and the Blue Dogs. And he didn’t make Harry Reid Senate Majority Leader, either.

On DADT, sure, I wish he’d overturn it with an executive order, but he’s said he’d rather it be done through Congress so that future presidents can’t reverse the executive order (in other words, so we don’t have the constant on-off thing we have faced with international family planning vis a vis the Mexico City Policy for the past twenty-odd years). And I’m no fan of his lack of promised transparency and go-slow on Gitmo, but the factual record doesn’t back up these widespread unsubstantiated screams of “Betrayal!”

And what data do you have to support your assertion that the Dems had this unsurmountable bank of “goodwill” that would have allowed him to pass whatever he (or more likely, the leftie bloggers who still mistakenly think they elected him) wanted to see passed?

“Goodwill” doesn’t mean jack shit unless you have the votes in Congress. Period. That’s what it comes down to. He can’t force Lieberman, Conrad, Baucus, Landrieu, Lincoln, et al to not be stupid self-serving Blue Dog assholes.

Obama ran as a moderate pragmatic corporatist centrist who prefers to make changes slowly (I was in Grant Park and I clearly remember him saying “We may not get there in one year, or even one term”), and that’s how he’s been governing. Could he have been a lot stronger on messaging, particularly around healthcare reform and particularly over the Summer of Teabag? Sure.

But “betrayal?” Drama Club hyperbole. Strange has it right.

I would also point out that it’s a mistake to confuse voters who didn’t want more of George Bush or who were terrified of Sarah Palin being a heartbeat away with voters who were totally on board with gay marriage and single-payer healthcare.

I of course meant he signed the stimulus bill. Was it as large as it could have been? Probably not. But again—I’m not sure where anyone gets the idea that he had carte blanche to do a new New Deal right out of the box. Even FDR had to make his deals with the devil (i.e., white southern congressmen) in order to move on his programs, and they didn’t all happen in a year, either.