Hope. Change. Yes we can.

[Tim01]

So, has everybody gotten what was promised to them?

[polichick]

1. I got a couple of picture postcards in the mail - does that count? nt

[valerief]

2. Hey, I didn't vote for Obama in the primary, so no, I didn't. nt

[JuniperLea]

3. Yes...

More than I expected in so short a period of time, actually.

If you think the magic negro isn't so magic in one short year, you were either dreaming when you voted for him or dreaming when you thought he could make all your wishes come true in one short year.

I'll judge his presidency upon its conclusion, not 25% of the way through term one... that just seems utterly stupid to me.

[readmoreoften]

5. So 25% of the way through it's bankers, war, torture, and scams... but in 2011

it'll be people, peace, justice, and reform? Why? Should freshmen in college who fail their classes "not be judged yet" through failing grades because they might pull it together by senior year? Should their work not effect their GPA? What about an employee in his or her first year? Is it stupid to judge a worker's performance after a year?

[rollingrock]

10. +1

and after the 2nd year when little or nothing has changed, they'll be saying 'well its only been two years!' ...and after the 4th year, they'll be saying 'well its only his first term! Bush had 8 years! ...its not fair to judge Obama only after one term! give him more time!!'....blah blah blah ad nausem.

[JuniperLea]

14. Your crystal ball is in error...

You can't make shit like that up and bash people over the head with it. That is beyond ignorant.

[JuniperLea]

Bogus straw man...

Kids in school don't come to class on the heels of the Bush administration with the world crumbling around them. Very poor strawman indeed.

He needs to be judged on what he had to work with.

A year ago we thought we were on the slippery slope to The Great Depression V2.0. Seems something happened to change that... or slow it down.

We were in the Titanic, going over Niagara Falls... and somehow, we didn't hit bottom... and the bow has turned to point up. We don't have much momentum, yet, but at least we didn't shatter on the rocks below!

But does Obama get credit for half of us NOT being in a soup line. Oh, hell no.

[readmoreoften]

30. You could call it a faulty analogy, but...hmmm...sorry, it's not a strawman.

I'm not attacking "the weakest version of your argument" (strawman). I'm attacking your argument as it is.

And your entire post, by the way, is a red herring. You move from "he can't be criticized for what he's done; he's only 25% percent through a term" to "we're in the Titanic and he's averted doom." That's changing the conversation.

You can absolutely criticize someone for their actions while they are in office. You can criticize someone while they're in the middle of doing something. Lieberman is only part way through his term, should we refrain from criticizing him?

I'm not criticizing the outcome of Obama's decisions. I'm criticizing the immediate harm caused by the decisions themselves: bailouts for banks--no matter how it pans out, mandatory purchase of a private product--no matter how it turns out, more troops and resources to Afghanistan--no matter how it turns out. Those actions are immediate rewards for corporate grift and immediate assaults on the public. I don't need to wait until 2012 to know the harm done.

[JuniperLea]

32. You conveniently left out the first part of the definition...

A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position.<1> To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by substituting a superficially similar proposition (the "straw man"), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position.<1><2>

Presenting and refuting a weakened form of an opponent's argument can be a part of a valid argument. For example, one can argue that the opposing position implies that at least one other statement - being presumably easier to refute than the original position - must be true. If one refutes this weaker proposition, the refutation is valid and does not fit the above definition of a "straw man" argument.


So "no matter how it turns out" if you don't like or don't understand an action, it's wrong. I call bullshit.

[readmoreoften]

37. What part of "you can't judge someone 25% into their term" did I fail to attack?

I'm not attacking anything other than (the main thrust, mind you) of your argument: "you can't judge someone only 25% of the way into their term." I don't have to refute every sentence you lay out in order to criticize this.

You have not--not one iota--supported your claim--that there's a reason to support bad policy because a term is 1/2 complete.

Either answer the question or shut the hell up: why should anyone support ideas they consider bad or anti-democratic based on how far a politician is into their term?

It's not on anyway to affirm your claim. That's on you.

[readmoreoften]

38. Well, yes, if I think a politician's behavior is wrong, I am in fact going to go ahead and say so.

"So "no matter how it turns out" if you don't like or don't understand an action, it's wrong. I call bullshit."

Note how you added "Or don't understand an action" in there. That's circular reasoning. In other words, I don't support Obama because I don't "understand" Obama. It's also an ad hominem attack (you're just too stupid to understand; you think you understand, but you don't).

If I don't like a politician's vote, behavior, associations, or anything else--I'm going to say so. That's what a democracy is about. Neither myself nor Obama nor you can say what the outcome of a political sequence will be. If you want to call criticizing politicians based on disagreeing with their positions "bullshit", then you go right ahead.

[Tim01]

7. Magic negro.

Holy cow that's freakin funny.:rofl:

[JuniperLea]

15. See my signline...

I'm told it's biting political satire... I hope you get that.

[Prism]

22. I like the magic negro bit

When discussing policy, if you can't much answer in terms of the debate at hand, simply inject a highly inflammatory racial denigration to imply your opponents are privileged whites who are racistly condescending to the President.

[Liquorice]

29. This tactic has been quite popular since the primaries. nt

[Cronus Protagonist]

4. I got everything I expected

I'm still waiting for my pony, though.

[AndyA]

6. The meaning is all in what was left out.

Hope. Change. Yes we can. (But we won't.)

[rug]

8. Yes we can change hope

into raging cynicism for another generation.

[liberal N proud]

9. Nothing was promised to me personally

So yeah, I wanted a Democratic President and got one.

Beats the hell out of President McCain and his curly little friend as VP.

[paulsby]

11. as usual, south park NAILED it

in their

http://www.southparkstudios.com/guide/1212/?

aired november... 2008!

[guitar man]

12. No!!

I'm still waiting for my pony!! :grr:

[jillan]

13. Ya know - I was one of those people that didn't get behind him until the end.

I guess I'm in the "I kinda expected this, but hoped I was wrong" group.

[asdjrocky]

16. A big fat zero so far.

But that's okay, liberals are invisible.

[FarLeftFist]

17. Ask again after 4 yrs.

[JuniperLea]

18. Yep...

I'm not sure what magical world some DUers are living in, but I know it took many years to fuck us up this badly and I expect it will take many years to set things straight. I think Obama is doing the best he can with what he has.

[Marr]

20. You do?

I don't think anyone expected him to be near the finish line after a year. I think they expected him to have traveled in the proper *direction*, though.

[JuniperLea]

23. Not one of us here has the proper perspective to know that direction when we see it...

No matter how well-informed we think we are, there are many things we don't have privy to and can't imagine into any equation.

That half of us aren't jobless and standing in soup lines is nothing short of miraculous... I think that's the right direction. I prefer to look at the big picture instead of getting lost in the minutiae.

[Marr]

28. That's amazing to me.

You're actually making the same argument I used to hear from right-wingers, explaining why it was ok that Bush had lied us into a war.

Bush's fans assured themselves that they just didn't know what Bush knew, that they had to trust their leader, that the very fact that they still drew breath was proof that he was protecting them... all the same sentiments you expressed above.

It's pretty eerie.

[Hannah Bell]

39. no, bush started fucking things up immediately. it didn't take 8 years.

that's why his approval ratings were dropping prior to 911.

& to start fixing what bush fucked up wouldn't take 4 years, let alone 8.

obama hasn't started.

[Tim01]

21. 4 YEARS? Do you think things are going to get better?

I'm pretty sure this is just about as good as it gets with this administration. I don't really think there will be any more democrats coming on board to make a strong enough majority for this administration to feel it can actually do stuff.

[JuniperLea]

24. Your crystal ball is no better than that poster's crystal ball...

You have no idea if this is as good as it will get. None whatsoever.

[Tim01]

27. Oh, for petes sake.

He has burned his political capital. His rock-star status is over. He no longer has the overwhelming support of his own people, which he did. And come the next election cycle dems are going to be lost and repubs are going to gain.
And even with all the advantages he HAD, he was still all concerned about not pissing off the republicans.

But you go ahead and remain enthusiastic. I'll be happy to announce later that I was just completely wrong.(sure:eyes:)

[Marr]

19. I'm getting about what I expected.

I don't often make, "I knew it from the beginning" comments, but with Obama I think a lot of people did. It was obvious pretty early on that corporate America had decided the acceptable Democratic candidates were Obama and Hillary Clinton. When they finally whittled the actual race down to those two candidates, I pretty much lost interest.

Well, I still did some volunteering, mostly out of habit, and I voted of course... but I never had any Hope© about this guy. He's been confirming my suspicions since he started hiring people like Rahm Emanuel and Tim Geithner. He's a corporate stooge and I won't help him or his allies again.

[SaveOurDemocracy]

25. Never was a believer; got what I expected.

I HOPED to be proven wrong...no CHANGE in sight.

[WilliamPitt]

26. I got another one-sentence thread.

[NoPasaran]

33. What are you, the thread police?

My cat's breath smells like Joe Lieberman.

[WilliamPitt]

34. It tastes like burning.

[NoPasaran]

31. I think I got exactly what I expected

I never really smoked the hopium pipe. In fact, until the convention and Hillary's gracious speech I was planning to write her in. But I knuckled down and voted a straight ticket in the end. But I figured that there'd be a lot of pissed off folks when it turned out Obama really couldn't walk on water after all.

I expect I'll end up voting for him again in 2012.

[Laelth]

35. I was promised no individual mandate.

As per this ad he ran against Hillary:



Looks like I am going to get an individual mandate, anyway.

:dem:

-Laelth

[Individualist]

36. We were promised hope and change

and didn't even get a lousy T-shirt to show for it (not that I believed in the campaign rhetoric to begin with).