“The Last Moderate Democrat Calls it Quits”

I also am disappointed he wasn’t able to do more with his majority, and I feel he squandered some opportunities. At least part of that is his fault. As for the American voters of 2010, well, let’s just say I don’t think America will make that mistake again.

There’s a lot about the Conservative program that does have merit: government is too big, taxes are too high, regulation too much, spending is out of control, and the bureacracy is unmanageable. Liberals don’t necessarily disagree with this, I certainly don’t, but we need conservative discipline to rein in the government, to keep it under control. But there’s a lot about conservative philosophy I feel we need fear, also.

For both sides, the electoral; process is corrupted by campaign funding and lobbyists. That is the biggest problem of all

But there are fundamental things I believe in, too. I believe government does have a role to play, and that a major part of that role is protecting the people from corporate greed and private indifference. And I believe only government can do that, business, left to itself, will not. I believe the single most important force that creates wealth and prosperity is the American worker, and that is what is the government’s purpose to nurture, protect and promote. The American business commuity exists to harness and channel that force, but it is secondary to it. It plays a supporting role, an infrastructure. It is the man who does the work that counts. The business man plays a role as manager, leader, planner, investor, risk-taker and innovator. For that, he deserves to be rewarded handsomely. But the reason we HAVE a business community is to provide an environment for the worker to produce. They are what matters.

When the workers are not prospering, the country is not functioning properly, regardless of how well business is doing. And I do not believe that if business prospers the workers will automatically benefit. In fact, I think it is a deliberate lie. A thriving private sector is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a prosperous worker.

To use a military analogy, both privates and generals have their role in an army, and generals are very important. But the privates do the fighting and the dying. Its their war, that’s why we need an army in the first place, not to provide the generals with career satisfaction.

And I also apologize if I snapped out unfairly. I just have become very sensitive to being characterized as a fool, or a villain because of my political opinions, I may be wrong but I’m not stupid, and I am not a villain. I feel the way I do for a reason, and I have given it a lot of thought. I apologize for my error, but not for my motives.

I once was told by a man I greatly admire, a boatyard CEO and Naval Architect, what went into his designs. His answer was very instructive to me:

“Every yacht is a compromise, depending on its mission, you pay a price for every virtue, something is given up for every bit of performance. Every single design decision I make has a justification, objective or subjective, based on both its individual effect, and how it interacts with the rest of the boat. There is a reason why I do this instead of that, it may be a result of a calculation, or experience, or experiment, a business decision, or just guesswork, but I have thought it out and made that decision for a reason. The sea and the market will decide whether the sum total of those decisions works or not.”

Thats how he builds his boats, and runs his company. Thats how we should run a country. I don’t believe in formulas.

As I’ve said before, Obama did the right thing with implementing the stimulus plan although it could have been more productive.

But I believe this thread was about outreach and roadblocks. In 2009 the Presidency, the Senate, and the House were controlled by Democrats. There was no “roadblock” to passing the 2000 page healthcare bill, crafted in secrecy and with the final version dumped on the lawmakers with little time to read it. Democrats didn’t give a damn. It was RAMMED through Congress during the time of “the greatest recession since the great depression“.

Obama may have offset any beneficial effects of the stimulus with his healthcare bill .

If you want to blame someone for the roadblocks, blame the American voters of 2010…

You’re right though, you are entitled to your opinion and I apologize for the tone of my reply. It’s just that your reply to Tom struck a nerve in me.

Obama’s biggest failure was his inability to create a truly effective National Health Plan, like Canada’s or Australia’s. IOTW, I think he didn’t go far enough. I think he made some mistakes, like he really misread the depth of hatred and contempt the Right has for him, and the damage they are willing to inflict on the country just to humiliate him.

I doubt we would agree on what those mistakes were, but that is the nature of political disagreement and debate. I feel his foreign policy initiatives have been a great success. In other words, I think his first two years were pretty damned good, considering what he was up against, and who was determined to stop him.

You don’t have to agree with my political opinions, but neither you nor Tom have any right to tell me I’m not entitled to them because I fail to have the perception or intelligence that Conservatives do. It’s precisely that sneering arrogance that I find most repellent about the right wing. Particularly after the pantload they left us with.

You’re just going to have to get it through your heads that we live here too, and we are not afraid of you. If you don’t like how we Democrats are running the country, you’re going to have to vote us out of office.

And you know what? I’ve seen the best you guys can come up with, both in policies and personalities, and I don’t think you’ve got a bloody chance.

I’m sorry ER but that was a complete pantload. You simply overlooked Obama’s firsts two years and you can’t admit it.

But anyway, I’m tired of arguing about it. It gets us nowhere. No matter how much you deny it, political decisions are not the same as engineering decisions, any more than religious or philosophical decisions are. You can no more persuade someone to change political philosophies by analysis and logic than you can convert a Muslim to a Hindu by referring meticulously to religious texts and the testimony of saints. It’s not knowledge, its emotional preference, and that cannot be negotiated, it cannot be proven, it cannot be logically established. And if you can’t see that distinction, then there is something fundamental about reality that you simply cannot grasp, and I can gain nothing by arguing with you.

But I do find your creationist example deliciously ironic, because what I see in you is a UFO freak telling me about WHAT HE SAW WITH HIS OWN EYES and watching his frustration climb because I just don’t see how “obvious it is the government is trying to cover it up so we can’t see the TRUTH.” Sorry, but the mainstream media liberal elite is about as convincing to me as those black helicopter sightings.

Or perhaps an astrology fanatic would be a better example, they simply cannot understand how anyone could possibly reject the patterns and relationships that are so obvious to them in their charts and biographies but that I stubbornly and closemindedly even refuse to consider. (A clear example of my refusal to face facts and evidence!)

Tom you may be an engineer, but I’m a mapmaker. I create models of the world, representations of reality, for a living. I’ve also used those models to locate and guide myself through hostile environments where my life and those of others depended on my understanding and my awareness of my limitations.

The models I use and create are open to public inspection and constantly veriifed by those who use them for accuracy and precision. Some are positional and cadastral, surveyors, navigators and engineers depend on them for location and relation. Some are thematic, and are used by planners and officials to make decisions which affect budgets, taxes, lives and even emergency decisions. When I put my seal on a piece of work it was evidence in court, and I was legally accountable and potentially responsible for decisions made on the basis of that product, and the specifications and validity of its documented sources.

You don’t have to be an engineer to understand the nature of reality, or our limitations in presenting it accurately.

Tom, can’t you see that I see and explain your behavior using the same mental paradigms and models that you use to make sense of mine?
How can you claim you have some special access to knowledge that justifies your opinions and invalidate mine. We’re both entitled to call each other’s politics crazy, but when you claim mine has to be wrong because I refuse to admit the truth that you know to be true, that is a fanatic talking.

You once said that you feared the fanatic more than the criminal, because the criminal, although potentially ruthless and dangerous, was at least rational, he could at least be counted on to act in his own best interest. The fanatic was so convinced of the justice of his cause that it was impossible to predict or deter him. And he was capable of any evil as long as it advanced his noble cause.

This is not “opinion.” This is not “belief.” This is what occurred in front of me and millions of other people.

Did you even remember Rahm Emanuel? It’s not something Obama really wants remembered. Is that all it takes nowadays?

When people have to start erasing big chunks of reality to keep their keels level, they’re in trouble. We have had people here in the past a lot further along that road. Don’t go there.

Young-Earth Creationists believe they’re right, too. I spent a couple of years at 3M in a friendly argument with one, a fellow employee and a really good engineer. I didn’t change his mind, but I did learn a lot about the capacity of belief, even in intelligent people, in the face of overwhelming evidence.

Speaking as an engineer, that “three years” bit may show something bending past the elastic limit. Now that is an opinion.

That’s my opinion. I am not alone in the world in having that opinion, so I am inclined to think it has some validity, and need not be dismissed outright. Your disagreement has been noted. And there is nothing more I can do about that.

I might suggest that instead of bewilderment about why I insist on being wrong, perhaps you might profit in reflecting why I believe I am right. Heaven knows, I’ve tried to explain it to you, but you don’t seem to care. And there is nothing more I can do about that, either.

Remember Mr. Nice Guy’s “Republicans in the back seat?” “We won?” The GOP was told in 2009, in no uncertain terms, that they weren’t part of the picture any more, and cheering Democrats were celebrating what they hoped would be a generation of single-party rule.

“Three years?” Aren’t you forgetting two of them?

Two years where Obama got his own way on almost everything in legislation, and the only real opposition he got was generated by people in his own party who wouldn’t go along with it?

Obama didn’t want or need a “reach out” before the election of 2010. Which is exactly when Daley was hired, January 2011.

Do try to remember Obama’s first chief of staff during those first two years: Rahm “Rahmbo” Emanuel, whose primary characteristic was “reaching out” and coming back with one of your organs in his hand. A partisan political hit-man who has left to be anointed Mayor of the Democratic Republic of Chicago.

Now there’s Jack Lew, and good Democrats will wipe his history out of their brain as obediently as they do everything else.

Imagine their response to a Republican picking a Chief of Staff who made money at Citigroup on the housing collapse.