Obama also held a summit on the deficit in the middle of a recession. A major concession to the Republicans, and incredibly stupid to boot. In the capitalist system, it’s economic suicide to cut spending and try to reduce deficits in the middle of a recession.

He also reupped Bush’s tax cuts twice
Kept his defense secretary
Rehired his Fed chairman
Kept his wars going and expanded them
Kept his GWOT going and expanded it
Radically increase his drone program
Continued his Wall Street bailouts, TARP and TALF, etc.
Never once suggested we should roll back Bush’s surveillance state measures
Added to them
Offered Boehner the “Grand Bargain,” which included slashing Medicare and Social Security, something that would have been unthinkable for a Democratic president a few years before that

The above is just for starters.

Obama’s record is “conservative” in every way except for a few culture war issues and the DREAMers act. Maybe a coupla “green” items. But on balance, Republicans should have seen Obama and the Dems’ governance and danced in the street, day after day. Because far from getting some “far left radical,” bent on “transforming America,” they actually got a old-style, moderate Republican with the D on his sleeve. And Obama worked hard to maintain the status quo ante he received from his predecessor.

I’m sorry Billy. Those comments are in the extreme. So the GOP “always” does the wrong and the left/Dems/whatever term you want “always” is correct and fair. Now you’re trying to change how to use the votes that were cast. Disagreement is fine, but villifying the other side with extremes just doesn’t sit with me.

Here’s the facts on fillibusters. Looks like the Dems have had more than their share of them:
Fillibusters

There it is. Obstructionism goes both ways.

So, I’m done with this. I’ll comment on your future posts if it appears you are using terms that are inclusive in arguement, but as it is, this feels like the “old board” to me. And I had enough of that to last me for a very long time.

Nothing extreme in anything I said, NMR. I just stated objective fact. And no way did I say or suggest that the Dems were always correct or fair. Far, far from it. I despise both parties, remember? And you must have skipped over the part where I criticized the Dems and Obama, which was each time I said they were far too willing to compromise and negotiate.

As for filibusters. Yes, the GOP broke all records since Obama took office. The two parties haven’t been close to equal in their usage of that tool. Not at all close.

(your own link shows that, btw. But I’ll provide another.)

3 Charts Explain Why Democrats Went Nuclear on the Filibuster

NewMexicoRam wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

NewMexicoRam wrote:

Personally, I don’t see what the angst is all about. Don’t people realize that the GOP doesn’t have 60 votes in the Senate, like Obama had for 2 years? That means there will need to be major compromise and negotiation like we haven’t seen in many a year.
I doubt Trump uses executive orders to push his way through. Not like Obama did, anyways. He’s a populist not an idealist conservative.
I believe negotiation will now find its way back into our federal system.

Obama went the executive order route less often than Dubya, Clinton, Reagan and every president going back to Benjamin Harrison. And Trump has promised to overturn all of them — at least until he met with Obama and changed his mind about some of them. But we’ll see. Overturning them is also using the power of executive orders.

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/data/orders.php

As far as the lack of negotiation and compromise? That’s virtually entirely on the GOP, whose leaders said on Obama’s inauguration day that they would block everything he tried to do, and they were able to for the most part.

The Dems, in stark contrast to the GOP, are all too willing to compromise and negotiate. That’s one of their biggest faults as a party. Rolling over and playing dead for the other side of the aisle, caving in, basically always starting the negotiation process within the frame the other side creates. Drives me up a wall.

___________________________________________________

That’s not the history I’m looking at. Many times Obama blasted the GOP to get on his side before Congress even debated an issue. And Harry Reid did the same in the Senate. Did the GOP try to block things? Of course. Will the Dems try to block things now? Of course. But look at the tone the last 24 hours where there are reports that Trump is changing his tune some on major issues. It may make many in his camp angry, but it does show me that there is a willingness to negotiate. That’s important going forward.

I thought you agreed in another thread to look at the other’s POV?

NMR,

I read your point of view, considered it carefully, and I disagree. That’s all. And I said why. There is no evidence that Obama or the Dems were unwilling to compromise or negotiate. Again, IMO, they’re guilty of being all too willing to do that. And no American president in my lifetime has tried as hard as Obama to reach across the aisle. Again, he did this to a fault. It’s one of the worst things about the way he governed, IMO.

And the GOP didn’t just try to block things. They took unprecedented steps to do so, and broke every record for filibusters and holds in American history. The Dems don’t come within light years of the recent GOP for that. Think about it, NMR. The GOP refused to even allow hearings to replace Scalia! That’s never been done.

And to make it worse, they said “Let the people decide,” as if they hadn’t already. Obama was elected twice and his term runs four years, not three. And when Republicans thought Hillary was going to win, they changed their mind again about “let the people decide” and said they would block ALL of her nominees for SCOTUS.

Now we get, “The people have spoken,” cuz Trump won the Electoral College. Apparently, that only counts when a Republican is elected. If it’s a Democrat, it’s “We’re going to block everything they do,” despite the people’s vote.

PA Ram wrote:

I find myself reading this with a smile as I think back to Bernie.

Like him or hate him, does anyone believe that he would have had someone like Jamie Dimon on his short list for Treasury Secretary?

He was the most genuine candidate in my lifetime. I appreciate him more every day.

Agreed. And I still think he didn’t want to go far enough. But relative to everyone else in the duopoly? Yeah. Head and shoulders better. Definitely genuine and I think he would have crushed Trump.

Zooey wrote:

bnw wrote:

He needs people that can navigate the DC swamp. Lets see his policy initiatives in play before condemning him.

I think, in politics, you ARE the company you keep. If you think he is going to surround himself with Washington Insiders, seek their advice, and then pursue policies counter to what they advise, you are out of your mind. And you only have to look at these people’s history to know what advice they are giving him.

Same thing with Obama. Remember? He said, “Change. Change. Change,” and then appointed cabinet members from entrenched interests, and we got “Same. Same. Same.”

Agreed, Zooey. When Obama named his economic team, especially. All from the Rubin tree. Brought in all kinds of Clintonistas — neoliberals up the ying yang. And basically that was that. Went about as far away from his campaign rhetoric as one could go. Which is all the more reason why the right’s endless screaming about him being a Maoist, Stalinist, “far left radical” was all the more absurd.

He governed as an actual conservative, if we’re talking about that word historically. A few culture war issues being the exception, and maybe an environmental rule or two. But even there, he never, ever, not once, did anything “far left.” No American president ever has.

bnw wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

bnw wrote:

He needs people that can navigate the DC swamp. Lets see his policy initiatives in play before condemning him.

That’s excusing and rationalizing everything he and his supporters condemned during the election. Now that he’s in, it’s apparently okay to be everything they condemned in their opponents. That’s excusing “crony capitalism” and “pay to play” now because it’s Trump and Republicans doing it.

And that’s the very definition of hypocrisy. It’s rank, slam dunk, obvious hypocrisy of the worst kind.

No it isn’t and you are jumping the gun.

bnw, this one is soooo obvious, I thought surely you’d see it too. It’s not debatable. There is no way to spin this. Just look at the people Trump has around him. They’re all long-time, crony-capitalist, DC insiders. And he’s already tapping Wall Streeters for key economic posts, and K-Street is psyched. Jamie Dimon for Treasury is a real possibility, for example.

He conned his voters, bnw. He conned them, and we saw that long ago, but his voters didn’t. They refused to see the snake right under their noses and he’s biting them now.

— X — wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

Is that a balsamic reduction on those pancakes?
Because that just sounds awful.

Mrs. X and I are foodies. But not the shitty, ‘post immediately to Yelp as if I review Michelin Star restaurants for a living’ type foodies. We just like to try different stuff from all of the up and coming chefs and new restaurants/diners/dives in the area. We had Tapas the other day at Zambra, and it was really good. Expensive, but really good. http://zambratapas.com/cuisine/

That’s cool. I do love good food. And my long-time dream was to have a thousand acres of my own, grow all of my own food, have a coupla lakes and streams for fish and fowl, maybe breed rabbits too as a meat substitute. I’d have giant greenhouses as well, fill them up with every exotic fruit, plant and herb. Would do my best to make sure I never had to go to a grocery store for anything. Everything home grown and fresher than fresh.

Also dreamed of having work shops for wood and metal. Make my own tools and musical instruments. The whole 19th century deal.

Simplify, get back to the earth, get back to basics. End my dependence on corporations, etc. etc.

— X — wrote:

Take away Trump’s twitter. If he’s truly interested in bringing people together, then just stop tweeting. Doesn’t matter what he’s talking about at any given moment, because his feed is just a breeding ground for contemptuous arguments. And not even good arguments, really, because how much can you say in 144 characters? “FU LEFT DEAL W/IT HE’S POTUS U SUCK #BLOWME #GOCRY #SAFESPACE” I mean, truly idiotic shit can be found in the comments after his tweets, and that’s attached to him now. I heard early on that they were going to get rid of it, but he’s still at it. Not doing anything wrong. Just tweeting. But if you take the time to read the literally hundreds of comments that have nothing to do with anything he said, right after he tweets, you have to come to the conclusion that it’s counterproductive to even be on social media anymore. You used it to get elected, it was a good tool, now get the fuck off of it and go to work.

I agree with you about twitter.

Interesting thing in recent days: Trump is now saying really nice things about Obama and Clinton — Bill and Hillary. Very complimentary about both of them. It’s as if he really didn’t mean all the nasty things he said, whipping his fans into a frenzy of hatred toward them, all to get elected.

The subtext seems clearly to be:

“I didn’t mean any of that. It was all for show. It’s just politics.”

The pancakes, of course, are inside everyone’s home who lives beneath the rainbows beside the flowers.

Or, as Carlos Williams Carlos once wrote:

so much depends
upon

a red pan
cake

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
flowers.

zn wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

But have we really been “coup-free”?

Compared to what we’ve done to other countries? I would say yes. We DO have nasty machine politics, but then those of us (which will be many) who remember Mayor Daley won’t think that’s necessarily new.

And we also have the traditional american problem many other democracies do not have—namely, that the USA does not have a left. We aren’t represented by a major party and our worldview is simply made nonexistent in the mainstream media.

But a real american-imposed dictatorship where there’s brutal reprisals for opposing the regime? Obviously not.

Which doesn’t mean of course that we’re all flowers and pancakes.

…

Agreed. That’s a good way to put it, too, the part in bold especially.

But I definitely disagree with your last sentence. Here’s proof:

zn wrote:

wv wrote:

Naomi Klein

Naomi!

Been a while I think.

I wish she could run for prez. Love her vision of the world as it should be, and her assessment of how it actually is. I’d go further. But she would be pretty amazing. She’s Canadian, unfortunately.