I have a lot of fun mocking the dishonest, loony left like Michael Moore, Naomi Klein and Cynthia McKinney. I also think it's important to give back occasionally and honor members of the left who are fair, intelligent and thought provoking, such as Matthew Yglesias.
Let me add another name to the list of honest outspoken leftists and reveal my respect for Rachel Maddow. Just look at this clip from last month where she took President Obama to task for his embrace of imprisoning people without due process:
Psychologically, it's very difficult for people to distance themselves from an idea, cause or politician once embraced. With all the broken promises of the current administration, I can see the people who vote for in 2012 divided into two camps.
The first camp is people who believe the Republicans are worse. They like a few things he's done or stands for and have some major reservations about some of his other actions, but think a republican president would make worse mistakes. I don't agree with these people, but I respect them.
The other is people who still look at him like it's 2008. They can easily be identified when they make excuses for his failures like "he inherited a mess."
He did indeed inherit a mess, but can anyone find the speech where candidate Obama said the country is too screwed up to turn it around in the next few years? I've never heard this speech, but a lot of his supports reference it a lot.
President Obama is in over his head. He did not know what he was getting in to and has had to abandon a lot of his positions and goals, and that has lead him to make the same decisions George W. Bush made. Kudos to lefties like Maddow for not turning a blind eye.
Saturday, February 18, 2012
President George W. Obama
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I'm voting for him because the Republicans can't do anything, want to reverse course on anything remotely good, and are disasters on foreign policy. But that isn't it. President Obama has been turning things around. He kept unemployment lower than it would have been without his policies, he has been incredible with a number of foreign policy issues, and he has advanced the equal rights of gays. He has been better than Reagan when we compare '81, '82, and '83 to '09, '10, and '11. He completed what Clinton started with gays in the military. And he managed to kill bin Laden (a fact that Republicans are surprisingly hesitant to even mention - and when they do, it's along the lines of 'Nuh uh! It was Seal Team 6 that pulled the trigger!')
ReplyDeleteI believe strongly in judging presidents by the decisions they made based on the information they had available, instead of what happened during their presidency.
ReplyDeleteWhat evidence do you have for his policies helping the recovery? From the predictions his Econ team made in the beginning - which I linked in the final paragraph - the economy would have 6.5% unemployment rate by now, not under 9%.
You may be right about the first 3 years of Reagan - I don't know either way - and I have not followed his foreign policy choices to great depth.
What do you mean that he completed with Clinton started with gays in the military? My stance is DADT was a way to keep gays in the military in a hostile environment. Obama did have a role in ending DADT, but it wasn't as big as it could be. He could have used an executive order in 2009 and ended it there, but for political reasons he let the courts knock it down two years later.
As for bin Laden - that was the US Military. Was there some specific military policy change or decision he made that caused it?
Hey, I gave him credit for Osama. I like that he had the testicular fortitude to give the go ahead.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately for him, I think we would be hard pressed to find a person who would have said no in the circumstance.
Still great, but hardly an extraordinary decision to make.
And what evidence is there that unemployment would have been higher? I don't find that claim to be much different than of your favorite challenges.
Prove the the existence of God. Well how about you prove the existence of a major stimulating effect.