PLEASE don’t say there isn’t much difference between the two candidates. That’s just nonsense.
There isn’t much difference between the two candidates.
I believe I have made my case, so that is exactly what I will say (even if you tell me very nicely not to). Note that I have never asserted that there is no difference between Obama and Romney. I have said — and this is thrice now — that our current president is “a Wall Street-serving corporatist, a radical and lawless executive, and an unrepentant, murderous warmonger very much like his predecessor.”
Maybe none of that bothers you very much. Or maybe you are under the mistaken impression that my statement isn’t true. You are of course under no obligation to agree with me. But if your argument boils down to “Nuh-uh!” and you provide neither evidence nor argument that Barack Obama is not, in fact, “a Wall Street-serving corporatist, a radical and lawless executive, and an unrepentant, murderous warmonger very much like his predecessor” (that’s four!) then naturally I will remain unpersuaded. I’m not being glib here; this is important to me, because I would very much like to be wrong about him. But I fear that I am not.
I’m sure you’re resting easy knowing Obama has already appointed two women to the SCOTUS and will appoint between 1 and 3 more SCOTUS justices who WON’T overturn Roe V. Wade.
I’m not resting easy for one second. Roe v. Wade is and always will be under constant assault, especially at the state level. However, if (when?) Roe falls, abortion law would immediately revert back to the domain of the states: they would be free to restrict it, or, at least theoretically, to enact expanded access. This scenario is pretty much what we have right now. For all practical purposes, TRAP laws, waiting periods and the defunding of women’s health care in Red states have made access to legal abortion impossible for many thousands of women. This is happening with Roe still in place, rendering it all but symbolic at best.
I have acknowledged that Supreme Court appointments is an issue on which Obama is better than Romney. And I am of course pleased to see three women on the high court. But women are not magically immune from CPD. Sotomayor in particular was an excellent choice: an actual liberal with no apparent symptoms of Conservative Personality Disorder. Kagan replacing Stevens has actually moved the court to the right, albeit only slightly. Personally, I would rather see a liberal male appointed than a slightly conservative female. YMMV. Here’s my point: if Romney had appointed a wingnut or three the appointment(s) would still have to get by the Senate, which in case you haven’t noticed is home to a lot of conservative Democrats including anti-choicer-in-chief Harry Reid. The problem isn’t the wingnuts, who will always be clambering for power. It’s the Democrats who enable them, especially the conservative Democrats who agree with them. They are the targets of my scorn, and justifiably so. If you can think of any way to stop them other than voting them out of office — even at the cost of a Republican winning the seat — I’m all ears. If you cannot, and remain unwilling to support this course of action, you can expect to see both parties drift rightward.
Women’s reproductive rights just got a huge boost from the SCOTUS side with Obama’s re-election.
Reproductive rights is another issue on which Barack Obama is better than Mitt Romney. However, let’s not overstate the case: if Obama is such an unrelenting champion for reproductive rights, please explain this.
I am not only a life-long activist on this issue, I am also someone who would be at grave risk personally were I to get pregnant and find myself unable to terminate immediately. However, I am convinced that misogyny and militarism march in lockstep, hand in hand: where you find one, you will always find the other. This is why rape is and has always been a weapon of war (endorsed by the god character in the bible, by the way); it is also why sexual assault is endemic in our own military.
Perhaps you misunderstood the point of my series: I am looking at the bigger picture, and thinking about a term longer than the next four years. Our culture and even our police forces have become more and more militarized under Barack Obama — and he wants to make the War on Terror permanent, with all of the tyrannical power and civil liberties erosion that entails. The sanctions on Iran are pure evil, and as Iraq should have proven once and for all, they do not work and are in fact counterproductive. It will take even more effort to limit U.S. militarism than it will to keep abortion safe and legal, but I remain convinced that these are two sides of the same coin. This is why Democrats who are warmongers, who double down on Bush’s idiotic foreign policy, are flat-out unacceptable to me for reasons above and beyond innocent dead Muslims (including children).
Also, you can visit http://whatthefuckhasobamadonesofar.com to be reminded of some of the non-existent accomplishments of the last four years.
Don’t be an @$$hole. Please point to where I said that the Nobel Peace Prize Winner has accomplished exactly nothing of value, or retract this statement. And two can play at that game: you can visit this very blog to be reminded that in addition to being “a Wall Street-serving corporatist, a radical and lawless executive, and an unrepentant, murderous warmonger very much like his predecessor” (five!), Barack Obama is in favor of expanding offshore oil drilling, pro-death penalty, pro-SuperPACs, against raising the federal minimum wage, against legalizing marijuana, has no intention of exiting Afghanistan, wants no cuts to our insane defense budget, supports military tribunals and indefinite detention, unleashed an unprecedented war on whistleblowers, supports targeted killings of American citizens on his word alone, secretly cut a deal with Big Pharma and health insurers to enact his conservative health care “reform” law…
I can do this all day.
Speaking of Obamacare, I personally believe in the one sentence healthcare solution “Medicare For All”.
So do I. For-profit healthcare is evil. Please enjoy this custom Palace graphic, which I append to posts wherein “Medicare for All” is mentioned:
That doesn’t mean Obamacare isn’t a huge step in the right direction.
It means exactly that. Obamacare entrenches the for-profit system; if it’s a “huge step” in any direction — and I don’t agree that it is — it is in exactly the wrong direction. Ferchrissakes, the blueprint came right out of a wingnut welfare operation, the odious Heritage Foundation. It’s a private-market “solution” to what should by all rights be the government’s problem to solve.
Being a pragmatist, Obama’s ACA is an intermediary step toward single payer not the final solution.
This is just flat out false. Please explain how the ACA is in any way a step toward single payer when it entrenches the existing for-profit system. An option to buy into Medicare (“public option”) would have been an intermediary step toward single payer health care. Unfortunately the conservative Barack Obama had already sold out exactly that (while pretending to support it) in his secret deal with pharma and insurance. If that is “pragmatic” in your view, then the word clearly has a different definition for you than it does for me. More to my point, the health care law that came out of Pelosi’s House had a robust public option. It was DOA in the Senate, though. Why? Conservative Democrats. You know: like Barack Obama.
Single payer wasn’t going to happen in one fell swoop.
That is why the public option was so critical.
There are PLENTY of people who have already benefited greatly from Obamacare so at least it’s doing something positive, which is saying something for today’s Washingtonian legislative products.
Agreed. However, there are still PLENTY of our fellow citizens suffering every day and dying unnecessarily, while we hand out billions in foreign aid to countries like Israel whose citizens enjoy universal health care. And there are also PLENTY of people losing their homes and life’s savings, becoming impoverished literally overnight for seeking necessary medical care for themselves and their loved ones. How exactly do you see the ACA putting an end to that?
Have I mentioned that for-profit healthcare is evil? For-profit health care is evil.
See where I said in my post that if you want single payer healthcare you are necessarily going to have to stop voting for (conservative) Democrats who don’t? Yeah, that.
Thanks for your comment. It’s always a pleasure to hear from you — even when we disagree.
