I promised a new post last week… well here it is. It has taken me a while because I had to formulate it in my mind and in my heart before I could write it.
I have really been hurt and angry over some of the stuff I have seen and read. Oh the stuff from Jane Hamsher and some of the so called rabid left I have long come to expect. It is from so many of you, who have decided now that the President is a failure, he needs to fire his staff, you can’t support him unless he does this or that. He needs to be primaried in 2012, it just goes on and on.
Then the President does something you like and it is all roses again… You know that is what I have always heard called “Fair Weather Fans”.
It just seems you can’t make up your mind whether you like him or not. Now I am not saying you have to be his cheerleader constantly. But to call for a primary against him today, then praise him tomorrow. That is just a little over the top. No wonder the Republicans are getting such a foot hold with people.
When the Democrats can’t stand together, and stand behind our President, why would the Republican’s want to support him? Why would the Independent’s support him?
Just one of the things I saw everyone having a hissy fit over was the President’s proposal of a spending freeze. Everyone on the left was up in arms over this, without even knowing what he was fully considering. No one had read it, no one knew the details, they just knew it was a bad deal and so they attacked.
First it doesn’t take effect for another year. Second, it is very strictly targeted and will be just as he promised in the campaign, a scalpel, not a hatchet. It is not so much a freeze as a reorganization of the budget. He is going to take out programs that don’t work and waste money, and then use that money that is saved for programs that need it. That makes sense to me… How anyone can’t see this as a good thing doesn’t understand how budgets work.
Matt Osborne, at
OsborneInk did a wonderful piece on this. Here is some of what he said about it and how everyone is reacting.
But perhaps this “move to the right” isn’t what it seems? Obama froze administration salaries, which doesn’t add up to much but certainly has the right optics. Noting that details are still unknown and the freeze will not affect health care reform or a second stimulus, Oliver Willis makes a strong argument that the oh noes are premature:
I don’t personally like the framing of these issues in one that favors conservatives, that is a fight versus government spending. Not at all, and in an ideal situation a Democratic president should laugh at the idea, knowing that everyone with common sense understands the long term value of government investment in the American economy and social safety net.
We do not live in this ideal world. We live in a world where, as I noted above, the people across the spectrum hold contradictory ideas within their own minds about what constitutes rational public policy. If some are concerned with spending, it seems the least harmful way to do this is to have a bone thrown their way that will actually lower *some* spending without harming the president’s domestic agenda.
Is it less perfect than a pony? Sure. Would President Jed Bartlett do it? Probably not, but real life isn’t a pitch-perfect Aaron Sorkin script and a fade out after 60 minutes of plot.
Put another way, I’d suggest that this is more of the same nuanced empiricism that makes lefties scream about “unclear” Afghanistan withdrawal dates and the public option. I’m willing to lay odds the whole thing will be forgotten a year from now — in fact, if the Senate passes a public option through reconciliation no one will be talking about this the next week.
Frank Schaeffer weighed in on this entire thing with his anger too, and I have to say he took you all to task much more than I did. But he was my inspiration. Here is Mr. Schaeffer's entire post.. It is almost a letter to you all... I would hope you read it and take it to heart.. Of course I believe some of you are suffering from the same syndrome as Limpballs has... Anticardiocitis... No heart.. That almost has to be what it is.. because you are the only opinion that matters and you can't see anything except what you write and you don't care what anyone else points out they are wrong and YOU are correct.
Anti-Obama Lefty Perfectionists Killed Us In MA
By Frank Schaeffer
Congratulations to the Left of the progressive movement and the Democratic Party: You just shot us all in the foot. You contributed to the Democratic loss in Massachusetts.
I’m a former Republican who ran from that hate-filled movement years ago. I am a heartfelt Obama supporter. And I am also and Independent Massachusetts voter.
I blame the ideological purist Left who have worked so hard to undermine the Obama presidency for the MA debacle. You set the stage.
The Left of the progressive movement couldn’t wait patiently for change. They wanted everything Now! They couldn’t ever see a glass half full and the possibility of improvement on the health care reform bill; it had to be prefect Now!
Gay rights moving ahead slowly weren’t fast enough! The fact that our president inherited the mess that landed on his desk didn’t move his Lefty critics to root for him, pray for him, and wait for him: No! It was “You’ve failed!” You’ve sold out to the banks! We're still at war! And all this only after less than 12 months in office!
Well, you got what you paid for. By giving aid and comfort to the extreme right – “See even his own supporters don’t trust him!” – You have emboldened the nuts. You also have sapped drip-by-drip the enthusiasm of Obama’s actual grass roots supporters (like me) who are not part of the "progressive elite".
You of the Obama-hating Left (yes I used that word -- hating) are both short-sighted and unrealistic.
Well, thanks ya’ll! See you in no-health care, no-gay rights, eternal-dumb-wars Sarah Palin’s America.
Now, I believe he told us how he really felt.. But he is correct.. If we keep this up.. We are opening up the door for all the Palin's, and the Republican's to get back in power.. Already according to the polls, people seem to want the Republican's to take the Congress back... Is this what YOU WANT? Keep up the good work.. That's what is going to happen.
I can’t remember this kind of wishy-washy attitude about a President before. Even when Bill Clinton was confronted with Monica, then impeached, people stood behind him. They supported him. No one, and I mean no one, was fighting and shouting he should do this and do that, he should fire this one or fire that one, he should step down.. Well except Republican’s. But NOT DEMOCRAT’S. The Democrat’s stood with him, oh there were some who didn’t… but the people… common people rallied around Bill Clinton.. Why are we not rallying around Pres. Obama?
No other President has ever.. Let me repeat that…
NO OTHER PRESIDENT has ever faced the problems that Pres. Obama has faced this first year. NONE. Everyone he inherited from his predecessor. From 2 wars, both mismanaged, to a terrible recession, the worst since the great depression, to rising unemployment, which is being corrected by the actions of this President.
Pres. Obama has done more for this country in the first year, than most have done in 4 or 8 years. Yet no one gives him credit for it. He has brought us back from the brink of disaster, he has slowed unemployment by 10%, from 700,000 + a month to way less than that. Yes, we still have lots of people out of work, but it is much better than it was. He is honoring the agreement made to bring all the troops home from Iraq, in fact the Marines are leaving now, and all combat troops are to be out by the end of August. He has followed through on his planned escalation of the war in Afghanistan, much to the dismay of some of you, who wanted him to pull out of there. However he did say he was going to do just this.
Plus the list of accomplishments legislatively he has gotten done… all with little to NO Republican support, is very good. He has had a VERY GOOD 1st YEAR.
