Obama has become Bush

[CuriousPhoenix]

That's the hard part of being critical about Obama. There will be someone who will always say that the reason you don't like Obama is because your racist, which is hardly true. I don't like Obama because of his policies pure and simple. He has divided this country on even more issues. He lied about being transparent. His healthcare fix doesn't really work and is costing most Americans more. Also his foreign policy has allowed for things in the Middle East and Russia get this bad. He has violated the Constitution and disregards Congress and their respective power.

He won the Nobel Peace Prize before doing anything to deserve it because the international community hated Bush that much that they were happy to have Obama as President. A president has to have a backbone in Foreign Policy. He became enamored with having the legacy of ending two unpopular wars, so he didn't react or do enough to help Afghanistan and Iraq, and in fact probably helped the crisis in those countries grow.

I was optimistic with Obama coming into office. I never voted for him but I was not sad to see him win the first time. Washington needed to change and Obama was going to be that change. But once again a President doesn't have that much power to enforce domestic change like he wanted. Also since he was basically a Washington outsider, he really wasn't able to be an effective legislature. He had like 2 years of senator experience but most of that was spent campaigning for the Presidency. We had another President who ran as an outsider, Jimmy Carter. His presidency failed because he could not work the system. LBJ was an insider and he was able to get the Civil Rights Act passed and enough legislation to create the Great Society. Sometimes it takes an insider to get things to change.

[Jason74]

Hey at least both parties can agree on one thing is this nation and that going to war is a good way for both sides to agree on something. I mean its not really helping our country in the long run but hey at least they are working together. It doesn't matter who is in the white house because these days nobody cares about improving America as a nation, its all about it going all to hell. When are they going to release the zombies and have the end of the world. I am still waiting for Obama to come get my guns, lol

[East]

That's the hard part of being critical about Obama. There will be someone who will always say that the reason you don't like Obama is because your racist, which is hardly true. I don't like Obama because of his policies pure and simple. He has divided this country on even more issues. He lied about being transparent. His healthcare fix doesn't really work and is costing most Americans more. Also his foreign policy has allowed for things in the Middle East and Russia get this bad. He has violated the Constitution and disregards Congress and their respective power.

He won the Nobel Peace Prize before doing anything to deserve it because the international community hated Bush that much that they were happy to have Obama as President. A president has to have a backbone in Foreign Policy. He became enamored with having the legacy of ending two unpopular wars, so he didn't react or do enough to help Afghanistan and Iraq, and in fact probably helped the crisis in those countries grow.

I was optimistic with Obama coming into office. I never voted for him but I was not sad to see him win the first time. Washington needed to change and Obama was going to be that change. But once again a President doesn't have that much power to enforce domestic change like he wanted. Also since he was basically a Washington outsider, he really wasn't able to be an effective legislature. He had like 2 years of senator experience but most of that was spent campaigning for the Presidency. We had another President who ran as an outsider, Jimmy Carter. His presidency failed because he could not work the system. LBJ was an insider and he was able to get the Civil Rights Act passed and enough legislation to create the Great Society. Sometimes it takes an insider to get things to change.

To be fair...the Republicans made it clear they were going to say NO to everything from the moment he entered office and have been obstructionist. I blame them for pretty much everything that has happened in the past six years....period. He worked the system with health care and abandoned the public option which was the moment the left turned against him as he basically adopted the Romneycare Republican plan. He has had his hands tied. I place the blame on Congress much more than I do Mr Obama.

[Buzzer]

But once again a President doesn't have that much power to enforce domestic change like he wanted. Also since he was basically a Washington outsider, he really wasn't able to be an effective legislature.

We had 8 years of a President who loudly asserted his "Washington outsider" status, even to the point of practically moving the White House to Crawford, Texas and barely ever worked, and got virtually every single thing he wanted passed by rubber stamp other than the dismantling of social security.

Anyone who thinks the difference between Bush and Obama's Presidencies were just a simple difference between who could and who couldn't get things done in the system is kidding themselves. This is about the different ways the two major parties approach the carrying out of government. The government shutdown should have been a rather big sign of that as well. As much as Democrats really disliked Bush, they did not consider it an acceptable interpretation of their job in government or their job to their constituents to simply vote no on absolutely everything, and filibuster absolutely every single measure.

[Virge]

Some of the many reasons I never supported Obama... or
Things most people don't know about Obama that can be fact checked from neutral and liberal sources

Candidate Obama made a speech calling for a civilian security force operating within the United States "as well funded and armed as the other Armed Forces"... The only nations with internal security forces have been and are dictatorships seeking to control the population. Here's him saying it. 37 seconds long.

Less than 2 months after entering the White House, Obama staffers proposed a plan to make the private sector insurance companies of injured war veterans responsible for paying for their treatment that could be enacted by executive order. The long range effects of this had not even been taken into consideration. It would have made it harder and much more expensive for veterans to obtain private insurance. It would have led to situations in which employers would be reluctant to hire veterans and have their group insurance rise exponentially. Here's a link to this on Snopes. Start reading at the 4th paragraph starting with "The basis of Mr. Semmens' satire was that ...... "
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/veteranshealth.asp

Did you ever hear Maddow's report on how Obama justified his support of FEMA camps to imprison US citizens without due process of law -- no right to a fair trial -- no right to consult an attorney. If not then you should see it now

Did you know the second stimulus bill (signed barely a month after Obama tok office) was written before the First stimulus bill was passed? It was not written by congressmen or economists. It was written by the Apollo Foundation headed by its co-founder,Joel Rogers, the man who founded the socialist New Party that disbanded after Obama's election to the Senate and provided him with no less than a dozen of his top advisors. That bill received no support from Republicans in the House or Senate (which led to their being called 'obstructionists' by liberals) Do you remember Pelozi telling the House they had to vote on the bill in order to read it? The reason for that was it contained the most outrageous payoffs to the supporters of a president in the history of the USA. Short on reading material in Afghanistan soldiers and marines divided up the bill and read it then had discussions about it. I'll never forget reading that an even million dollars went to the owners of dinner party cruise boats on the Chicago River to fight terrorism. That was just a small pay off. In just over 5 years every multi million dollar "green jobs scheme " and "environmental incentive" in that bill has gone bankrupt or never materialized with the taxpayers being made responsible for the debt. However political cronies and the very people the Obama administration calls 'greedy Wall Street investors' profitted because they'd financially supported Obama over his opponent at a rate of five to one in money donated. Unions that supported Obama were rewarded. Giant Corporations did as well. Ultimately Obama himself admitted the stimulus bill was a failure by saying all the shovel ready projects he fooled the public into believing were in it never were there.

I read the 2008 Ebony Magazine interview with Candidate Obama in which he said this about his alternative to supporting reparations for slavery. "If we have a program, for example, of universal health care, that will disproportionately affect people of color, because they're disproportionately uninsured," Obama said. "If we've got an agenda that says every child in America should get _ should be able to go to college, regardless of income, that will disproportionately affect people of color, because it's oftentimes our children who can't afford to go to college." So obviously the Affordable Care Act (also written by the Apollo Foundation) was sold to the general public as one thing and instituted for another. No matter how you spin it, to disproportionately benefit any people is to disproportionately discriminate against others who have done nothing to deserve it. Add to this that never in the history of the USA has the federal government and bureaucracy been able to administer anything effectively without creating more problems than it attempted to solve. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/08/02...16506.html

And those are just a few real examples. Knowing these facts, I find it really dishonest for people to continually curse Bush for things he did that barely compare to the things that have happened under Obama's administration.

[Virge]

Note to my previous comment.

All I'm doing by making the comment above is
asking people to remember the words below.

↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓

[Buzzer]

I read the 2008 Ebony Magazine interview with Candidate Obama in which he said this about his alternative to supporting reparations for slavery. "If we have a program, for example, of universal health care, that will disproportionately affect people of color, because they're disproportionately uninsured," Obama said. "If we've got an agenda that says every child in America should get _ should be able to go to college, regardless of income, that will disproportionately affect people of color, because it's oftentimes our children who can't afford to go to college." So obviously the Affordable Care Act (also written by the Apollo Foundation) was sold to the general public as one thing and instituted for another. No matter how you spin it, to disproportionately benefit any people is to disproportionately discriminate against others who have done nothing to deserve it. Add to this that never in the history of the USA has the federal government and bureaucracy been able to administer anything effectively without creating more problems than it attempted to solve. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/08/02...16506.html

This objection makes no sense. What he said was no different from saying a program aimed at ending homelessness will disproportionately help the homeless, or a program aimed at ending illiteracy will fail to commensurately benefit the already literate. The ACA was intended to reduce the degree to which Americans are uninsured, unable to get insurance, and to end the practice of bumping people off of insurance or refusing to pay on claims based on loose arguments that a condition may have been "pre-existing." Of course it aimed to "disproportionately help" the uninsured who were in many cases without any medical resource other than ER's, although the mandates on how much premium money had to be spent on claims, and the mandates which barred insurance companies for dumping insurees once they got sick benefitted everyone.

To point out that aiming to help the poor in America is, at the same time, something that helps many people of color in America is not "discrimination" against white America. I'm a little disturbed you could see it that way. I believe that you are taking his quote and perceiving it way out in a left field that Obama somehow intended the ACA to be "reparations for slavery" or to "only help black people." Since it does neither, this perception just doesn't make sense.

[Virge]

Before getying into the real matter -- how many people are aware that in the 2nd stimulus bill there were positions made for an additional 15,000 IRS agents to administer the Affordable Care Act that was over a year from being presented to Congress?

Here's what I was trying to point out and I obviously failed to do completely.....
The best way to predict the future performance of anyone or anything is by looking at past performance.

What was the real purpose of creating the Dept of Education in 1979? To make education better or worse?
Which have they done when you look at the evidence?

What was the real purpose of the Great Society Legislation in the 1960s? To end poverty or make it worse? Which have they done when you look at the evidence?

What is the purpose of ACA ? Will it make health care better or worse?
Which do you expect when you look at the current available evidence?

Show some broad range social programs that have been successful and cost efficient and I'll change my mind.

Do you know what Johnson said after signing the legislation to end poverty?

"I'll have those n*ggers voting Democratic for the next 200 years."

-- Lyndon B. Johnson to two governors on Air Force One according Ronald Kessler's Book, "Inside The White House"

The words we hear selling these things to us are words designed to sell us these things. Nothing else. Everyone knows politicians lie -- but they forget it when they like what they hear a politician say.

Here's Carter selling his Dept of Education.
"it will increase the Nation's attention to education. Instead of being buried in a $200 billion-a-year bureaucracy, educational issues will receive the top-level priority they deserve. For the first time, there will be a Cabinet-level leader in education, someone with the status and the resources to stir national discussion of critical education concerns. "

It stands to reason that the same government that administrates Education will perform just as well or poorly at administrating health care.

Total DoE Budget in 1979-80 = 12 billion.
Recent DoE budget figures.
Budget..............................Stimulus Bill
2009 $32 billion PLUS $102 billion $134,000,000,000
2010 $56 billion PLUS $51 billion $107,000,000,000
2011 $71 billion PLUS $23 billion $94,000,000,000
2012 $68.1 billion PLUS $19.4 billion $85,500,000,000
2013 $69.8 billion PLUS (unknown)

There are many sites that compare educations in DoE administrated schools (75% of all in US and 88% of teachers ) to private schools (25% of all in US with 12% of teachers) In public sector salaries for teachers are dropping, graduation rates are dropping and academic excellence is dropping. All these are just the opposite with private schools.

Here's a link. Scroll down to "What is Gained"
http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/th...education/

The bottom line is that anyone who expects a government that fails at administrating schools to do better with health care is delusonal. Anyone telling the public otherwise is lying... but then that's what politicians do for a living, isn't it?

So goes welfare and education goes the Affordable Care Act.

[Buzzer]

What is the purpose of ACA ? Will it make health care better or worse?
Which do you expect when you look at the current available evidence?

Show some broad range social programs that have been successful and cost efficient and I'll change my mind.

The ACA is not a government administered healthcare plan. It is not socialized medicine. It is not a single payer system. Health insurance remains private in the United States. That's part of why diehard progressives hold their nose about it just as much as conservatives do. Progressives wanted a for real national healthcare plan-- universal coverage. Conservatives seem to be reacting negatively but for the complete opposite reason-- they seem to believe this IS a universal nationalized healthcare plan.

It isn't.

The stipulations about coverage minimums, the stipulations that a new higher percentage of all revenue from premiums must be spent on actual healthcare claims, and the stipulations that people cannot be booted off the moment they stop being a pure profit payee and actually get sick, in my mind, are alone enough benefit to stand by this law as a very good thing, even though taken all together it is not a law that pleased either the partisan progressives or the partisan conservatives.

The difference is that conservatives seem to have completely forgotten that this program was essentially the same program Mitt Romney supported as Governor, and that it was a healthcare reform plan made by conservative interests to keep healthcare provision private. They also seem to not register that this is not the much-dreaded "socialist healthcare" that any ordinary citizen could expect as a basic norm in Japan, Canada or most of western Europe.

There is no need to prove that a broad national government-administered social program works as a model for the ACA because the ACA is simply a regulatory change to the private health insurance system. It is not a government takeover and private insurance companies are not being taken over by the government. The fact that we actually needed laws to say that health insurance companies had to actually cover people that they accepted premiums from for years and not find pretexts to boot them off their policy when they got sick just shows what a poor state the private healthcare system was in.

[palbert]

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