Could we have a discussion section dedicated to "Obama = epic fail" so the rest of us can come back?

[Hamlette]

I've heard it. I get it. I'd like more too.

Enough.

Let's go after our real enemies. I'm not convinced Obama is one of them.

[Hekate]

1. KnR, but Hide Thread works well too. nt

[pocoloco]

44. Could stick your head in the sand.........

[Hekate]

46. Better inthe sand than where the sun don't shine. Hide & Ignore are as good as a blood pressure pill

... when DU loses its collective mind, as it has done recently. Nothing gets accomplished when all that people do is revile the POTUS or the Speaker of the House or the Senate Majority Leader, and threaten to take their marbles and go home and never again in this lifetime vote Democratic or work for Dem candidates. IN ALL CAPS!!11!!!1

Hekate

[NanceGreggs]

2. K and R!!!

[leftstreet]

3. Where did you all go?

:shrug:

[AllentownJake]

6. The Barack Obama primary forum

Some people like an echo chamber

[NYC_SKP]

9. Oh, come on, like GD hasn't become an echo chamber of Obama hate.

And collective self-destruction.

[leftstreet]

10. Hating the policies is not hating the politician

But then you know that

[bigwillq]

20. Very good point.

:thumbsup: I agree.

[Hekate]

47. It gets pretty personal when the object of wrath is accused of being a whore, a sellout...

... only went into politics to get rich, became a community organizer only to have it on his resume so he could become rich as POTUS, cares nothing for anyone but himself, is a warmonger with blood on his hands, tricked us all with malice aforethought...

Shall I go on? I seem to be missing the nuances of policy debate here.

Hekate

[cliffordu]

13. A veritable

orgy of hate filled mutually masturbatory screeds disguised as political

insight and intellectual acumen.

But hey, that's just what I read, and I could be wrong.

[AllentownJake]

14. You are free to post whatever you want in GD

You just have to face the left bagging assholes like myself.

[HughMoran]

18. Agreed

Hate like you never thought Dems were capable of.

[Frances]

4. Great idea

I'm ready to move on to new battles on other issues. And there will be battles because the Repubs wouldn't vote for Santa Claus if Obama put Santa to a vote.

[gardenista]

5. Fantastic idea!

Or how about Obama=Corporate Shill Meanie?

[NYC_SKP]

7. Recommended. nt

[sandnsea]

8. The Obama forum has gotten very busy

Busier than it's been since its creation. So there is a bit of a retreat available.

[cliffordu]

11. KAY AND FUCKING ARE!!!!!

Rec'd it back up to zero....

[Aramchek]

12. they come here to make a nuisance of themselves.

they don't obey the rules now.
there is no way they would keep their trash in one forum.

[EFerrari]

22. You've only been here a few months.

For a while the way it seemed to work was GD discussed issues and GDP discussed politicians and political strategery. That's been a little scrambled lately.

[Aramchek]

28. well, it's a free-for-all of hate now. sad, really.

[EFerrari]

30. No, I wouldn't agree with that. But it is true that a lot of people

are upset. Calling an upset person names generally doesn't make them less upset, in my experience anyway.

It's also a tense time of year.

We'll settle down.

[Aramchek]

33. I sure hope so.

[EFerrari]

36. It will. This is what maximum stress looks like.

DU will be fine and will sort this out.

[tabasco]

15. The rest of us are outnumbered by utopians, trolls and turfers.

This site has become a cesspool.

I think you can get banned for supporting Obama.

[EFerrari]

35. I'd agree there's too little discussion and too much name calling.

[coti]

16. "I'd like more too"- no, you don't get it. So let's go over it again.

The issue isn't that there isn't enough for progressives in the bill.

It's that, without the trade-off of some kind of government insurance program expansion, what this is showing is, as Dean said, a commitment to reform health insurance through the private sector. That plan, even over many decades, will never work because in order to get the insurance industry's costs under control you have impose extremely heavy regulations on them- which will never happen in this country, for a bunch of reasons.

The only way costs can be controlled in this country is to actually have the government begin or expand some kind of insurance program and actively compete with the industry for customers. That was the idea that just got thrown in the trash can, probably forever.

So, this is a huge step backward. We'll never be able to get costs under control and the insurance industry is going to make a ton of money fleecing both the treasury and the 30 million people who are now forced to buy from them. It will only become more difficult to make progress in the future as their lobby grows stronger.

This is a huge, huge mistake.

[Hamlette]

26. a few of points:

1. You would never have voted for Social Security. As passed, it basically only covered rich white people. FDR = epic fail.

2. The Senate bill looks something like the Swiss system which my sister lived under for years and loved. Switzerland (and its universal health care system) = epic fail.

3. We have been trying to do something on health care reform for 100 years. FDR = epic fail, LBJ = epic fail, Truman = epic fail TR = epic fail.

4. This is the first piece of progressive legislation since LBJ. Clinton = epic fail.

5. If the right had their way we'd outlaw personal injury lawsuits against corporations and doctors. The end. We all = epic fail.

6. We have mandatory auto insurance with no public option. Storm the White House! Demand a public option.

7. We have mandatory workers' compensation insurance in every state and in most states there is no public option. I worked in the area for 10 years. Works great. I also think welfare reform was great (not reauthorization, but the original bill) and I've worked with that for 12 years. But because I don't think HCR is the end of the world and Obama is exactly like Bush, ppl on this board don't want to hear about it.

8. In my friggin' lifetime, blacks and women basically had no rights. In 1964 it was illegal for a doctor in Conn. to advise a married woman about birth control! It comes slowly. But it comes. I'm willing to give Obama more than one year. In fact, I'll give him 3 more. And envy the right for its ability to walk in lock step which allows them to get way more done than we do.

[RainDog]

31. a few more points

this is how politics work.

if you (generally) do not agree with the policy, you use what clout you have to change it.

that may mean you (personally) are forced to read a lot of dissatisfaction among certain people in this nation on this site. you don't have to read those threads, tho. but those people you have no time for have ALREADY gotten the democrats' attention and the democrats KNOW we are not joking. they know, or should, if they don't, that progressives have put up with a lot of bull from this administration.

but there comes a time when the corporo-crats have to acknowledge those who worked to get them in office - the millions, not the millionaires. this is what democracy looks like in the internet age.

the march on washington is in the blog-o-sphere and the politicians who are smart know this.

you do not own DU. you do not get to decide what is posted here. many who are unhappy with what has gone down have been here a long time and have contributed to DU in various ways. if you don't like what they post, you can hide the threads or put people on ignore. or you can leave. I left DU for a couple of years after Dean was taken down and Kerry was the nominee... even tho I held my nose and voted for him anyway.

DU got along fine without me. People here will be who they are and think what they think. Unlike the right wing, they generally have valid reasons for opposition, not just a "god told me to do this" sort of rationale. I say this even about people I disagree with, even on this issue.

[Hamlette]

34. who is censoring whom?

don't tell me to leave.

I asked for a fucking section where it is not all trash Obama all the time.

FU

I'm not going anywhere.

I just don't buy your arguments. I think this is legislation we should support as a small step in the right direction for the first time in 40 years.

[RainDog]

38. I didn't tell you to leave

I mentioned options if you are so unhappy. that was one of many. I mentioned that I left.

I don't care if you stay here or not.

People are unhappy with Obama for not fighting for a better bill. that's life. they're going to vocalize that in this online forum. People are unhappy with Obama for a host of things he did before this bill. One part of the backlash is people saying ENOUGH.

For a while I just avoided DU b/c I was already so disappointed with decisions this administration had made. I couldn't stand the cheerleading. I was very glad Bush was gone but after that the real issues of governance come into play.

You think the legislation is fine as it is. Others disagree. I, for one, hope the disagreements can override some of the crap. I have real-life reasons for thinking it is a really, really bad idea as it exists - or as it is claimed to exist.

those who trash the progressives as part of a concerted effort to undermine them have come from the democratic party. so progressives are telling them to go fuck themselves.

we'll all see how this plays out.

[Zhade]

43. "who is censoring whom?" "I asked for a fucking section where it is not all trash Obama..."

Man, that's some delicious irony.

[coti]

39. Responses

1) It doesn't follow from your point that our leaders plan to or will be capable of passing tighter regulations on the industry.

2) I've mentioned Switzerland in other posts and they have regulated their private insurance companies to the point of being placeholders. This legislation doesn't come anywhere near their system. The MLR is far too low and only gives the companies an incentive to increase costs so they can increase premiums and their profit margin.

3-5) I don't see the relevance of any of these points with regard to the merits of the bill at issue. As far as #4, I don't consider this bill to be "progressive." In fact, your bringing up these points only illustrates the seeming desperation in the minds of those who want to pass this- "Just pass something." That mentality can lead to disaster.

6) Auto insurance is not mandatory. It's only required if you drive a car, and you can always choose not to drive. This HCR bill requires all Americans to obtain some kind of health insurance, no matter what. There's no way to avoid it- the simple fact of being alive means you are forced by the federal government to buy insurance from a private company.

Further (and this is a point that is often overlooked in rebuttals to your point), most auto insurance laws only require a driver to have liability insurance, meaning a driver is only required to be insured against injury to others or damage to their property. In other words, the rationale is that a driver should not be allowed to put other people at risk of being injured by their car without being prepared to cover at least a minimal amount of damages. That rationale can not be used (so directly, at least) to support this individual health insurance mandate.

In short, the auto insurance precedent does not support this individual insurance mandate.

7) State workers' comp systems came about individually but they mostly evolved from a serious need to streamline employee lawsuits against employers, which were clogging the legal system and costing way too much money. The mandated insurance came from this same process. Unions and corporations got together to figure out some simpler laws and each side made concessions to the other. In most states the general compromise they came to was that a corporation couldn't do a lot to contest a claimed injury by a worker, but the worker would be barred from bringing any suit against the employer for the injury and would have to settle for a pre-determined amount of money, depending on what and how bad the bodypart was injured, which wasn't as much as they would have been able to get had they filed suit. Worker's comp is one of those exceptional parts of the law that doesn't analogize well to other areas.

8) I know what you're saying. We'll just have to wait and see what happens. What we're trying to tell you, though, is that this is a step backward, not forward.

[JohnnyLib2]

17. Worth a try.

I'm not sure I can put up with the "ditto's," though. :banghead:

[tblue]

19. Yes. Why not? Don't be silenced by anyone.

I won't.

[ixion]

21. better idea: we make a DLC lovers room

and ya'll can hang out in there and spin to your hearts content.

[PufPuf23]

24. I made a poll somewhare along this line

only a refuge for those with traditional Democratic values as opposed to new/third way. dlc/ neo-liberals.

Unrec'ed but 70% plus were in favor except some said that I had it backwards and DLC supporters should be dungeoned.

We have a DLC POTUS and cabinet that bully and mock Progressives and Liberals while assuming their support similar to the Neocons and the Xtian right. The Neo-Liberals and Neo-Cons are closer in nature to each other than the parties co-opted by money and marketing.

[LostInAnomie]

23. No joke.

That dead horse has to be pulp by now.

[laststeamtrain]

25. Your 'poutrage' is noted. Now can we 'let it sink' ? n/t.

[debbierlus]

27. We are you leaving? If you believe something, argue it and take on the issues

Why do you need the adminstrators to take the people with opposing views of the main page?

The fact that DU argues these thing out is healthy.

And, it is good for us.

[rug]

29. Try LBN.

[Bobbie Jo]

32. K&R

Damn. :kick:

[liquid diamond]

37. K&R

Fuck you freeper trolls.

[Toasterlad]

40. !!!LEAVE OBAMA ALONE!!!!1!!!

[Skittles]

42. you're not gonna start blubbering are ya Toasterlad?

I WILL kick your ass :D

[Toasterlad]

45. !!!IT'S HARD BEING PRESIDENT!!!!11!!!

HE'S DOING THE BEST HE CAN! WHY ARE YOU SO MEAN???

[Skittles]

48. I'M WARNING YOU TOASTERLAD

YES INDEED

[Zhade]

41. Awwww, do you not like your idol's lies being pointed out?

Too fucking bad.