Obama the most radical president we've ever had as a nation.

The Koch brothers gave an interview with the Weekly Standard. It includes this nugget,

Obama is “the most radical president we’ve ever had as a nation … and has done more damage to the free enterprise system and long-term prosperity than any president we’ve ever had,” David Koch is quoted saying in a story posted late Friday on the website of the Weekly Standard.

I thought Obama was pretty centrist. Sure he pushed through a pretty anemic version of health reform, but was that more radical than Social Security or Civil Rights?

There's also this.

David’s brother Charles Koch said of Obama: “I’m not saying he’s a Marxist, but he’s internalized some Marxist models — that is, that business tends to be successful by exploiting its customers and workers."

I think it's incontrovertible that there's at least some measure of exploitation of workers going on in America. At least the middle class is getting poorer while the upper crust is getting richer. But labeling reality a "Marxist model" is a nice way to inoculate yourself from criticism.

Any chance you'd like to link to the article?

Damn, I thought I did.

Here it is, http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0311/51978.html

The very idea that any President could be elected who was truly offensive to the business interests of the country would be laughably absurd if there weren't people who will probably believe this tripe.

Obama is a professional politician, who has recieved millions of dollars in campaign donations. A large amount of that has come from monied interests. The idea that such interests have been so ignorant and/or stupid as to support a Senator and later a Presidential candidate who was antithetical to their interests is such a lie it falls into the 'Big Lie' category.

And a business that actually paid its workers exactly what they were worth, and charged exactly what their product cost to produce, would not last very long.

How are these things measured anyway? The overall left drift of the US--on certain topics, not others--may mean that in some technical sense Obama is the most left-wing president. On health care, for example, we're farther "left" now than ever, so I suppose by definition he's the most-left wing president on health care.

But measured as against his times or by his temperament? Measured by the real degree of change he wants or is capable of? Compared to, say, Roosevelt? Obama's a fuzzy puppy!

There's a difference between paying your employees what they are worth and charging customers what the product cost to produce.

The Kochs must be feeling proud now that their money bought favorable votes in Wisconsin. I look forward to hearing more from them.

I hate rich people. They're so fucking whiny.

Since Obama was inaugurated, the Dow Jones has increased more than 50% -- from 8,000 to more than 12,000; the wealthiest recieved a massive tax cut; the top marginal tax rate was three times less than during the Eisenhower years and substantially lower than during the Reagan years; income and wealth inequality are so vast and rising that it is easily at Third World levels; meanwhile, "the share of U.S. taxes paid by corporations has fallen from 30 percent of federal revenue in the 1950s to 6.6 percent in 2009." During this same time period, the unemployment rate has increased from 7.7% to 8.9%; millions of Americans have had their homes foreclosed; and the number of Americans living below the poverty line increased by many millions, the largest number since the statistic has been recorded. Can you smell Obama's radical egalitarianism and Marxist anti-business hatred yet?

Then there are those whom Obama has empowered. His first chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, is a business-revering corporatist who made close to $20 million in 3 short years as an investment banker, while his second, Bill Daley, served for years as JP Morgan's Midwest Chairman. His Treasury Secretary is undoubtedly the most loyal and dedicated servant Wall Street has ever had in that position, while Goldman Sachs officials occupy so many key positions in his administration that a former IMF and Salomon Brothers executive condemned what he called "Goldman Sachs's seeming lock on high-level U.S. Treasury jobs." Obama's former OMB Director recently left to take a multi-million-dollar position with Citigroup. From the start, Obama's economic policies were shaped by the Wall Street-revering neo-liberal Rubinites who did so much to serve corporate America during the Clinton years. Meanwhile, the President's choice to head his Council on Jobs and Competitiveness -- General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt -- heads a corporation that "despite $14.2 billion in worldwide profits - including more than $5 billion from U.S. operations - did not owe taxes in 2010": an appointment the White House still defends.

Some of these trends pre-date Obama, but few have been retarded during his presidency, while many have accelerated. Whether one finds this state of affairs desirable or not, no rational person can describe them as the by-product of a Marxist, business-hating egalitarian.

Obama is a professional politician, who has recieved millions of dollars in campaign donations. A large amount of that has come from monied interests. The idea that such interests have been so ignorant and/or stupid as to support a Senator and later a Presidential candidate who was antithetical to their interests is such a lie it falls into the 'Big Lie' category.

Not at all. You're confusing "monied interests" with ...well, something else. Big businesses are always supporting anti-business interventions, etc.; they hurt their smaller competitors more than them. And they can always rely on bailouts from their friends when they do get in trouble. They don't operate in a free market -- and they don't want to.

>8 codyed:

True about the whiny, but it's the sense of victimization that can spell more trouble in the long run.

No, there is no 'free market'; (at least not if corporations get a say) but businesses don't generally support causes, or politicians, who promote agendas not to their liking.

In your example, the 'anti-business' policy would ultimately benefit them by ending competition, so it's not truly 'anti-business' from their point of view.

"Business" is not a monolithic block of interests. "Big Business" largely supported health care reform. I would suppose that "Small Business" doesn't give a rat's ### whether stricter regulations are imposed on Wall Street firms. "Big Oil" is opposed to alternative energy. "Big Agribusiness" is not.

All business interest contend for largesse from Washington; that's what makes the game interesting. What is good for one business isn't always the best for another.

Most of the interests agree, however, that less (or no) regulation and low (or no) taxes are in everyone's interest...

I try not to add to Koch brother resources in my purchase of toilet paper or roof shingles. Mutual funds in my retirement account probably invested in some of their ventures--probably devilishly difficult to avoid them there?

Susan Estrich in a recent column has this to say, which seems odd:

It's my friends, my fellow travelers, whom I can't understand. I’m part of the "strongly approve" (of Obama) crowd… I think he has been a strong and forceful leader who has pursued precisely the agenda he said he would as a candidate. Indeed, it's hard to think of a president since Ronald Reagan who has hewed to his campaign agenda as closely and as effectively as Obama.

Actually, many lefties are anywhere from irritated to outraged at some of the ways he hasn't lived up to his campaign promises, cf. shutting down Guantanomo. And of course there's the matter of military intervention in countries with oil (Whatever happened to "It's all about the oil!"?)

Wowser wowser...impeachment:

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0411/GOP_lawyer_circulates_Obama_impeachm...

Republicans discovered impeachment as a strategy to undo elections during the Clinton era. Michelle Bachmann, the Tea Party "repealer" candidate, may well ride a wave of impeachment fever to the Oval Office in November 2012.

>15 Carnophile:

It's my impression that calls for impeachment have come to every recent president, and earlier and earlier with each successive presidency. People were calling for Clinton's impeachment before Whitewater, Bush before 9/11. There was even a movement to impeach Bush, Sr., for the First Gulf War--now known as the "Iraq war that went awesome!"

"Impeach him!" used to mean something. With the general elevation of rhetoric I think it just means "I dislike" now.

>8 codyed: Excellent post, so true. If Obama is a Marxist, or even a progressive, or even a liberal, then I'm a flying, green-dotted zebra. Obama is a slightly right-of center centrist, who works for the banking industry. Let's face it. We've been duped.

The only reason I would vote for him again is if the repubs put in Bachmann or similar to run against him. I prefer slow decline to going down in flames. But that is not saying much...

>5 timspalding: The overall left drift of the US--on certain topics, not others--may mean that in some technical sense Obama is the most left-wing president. On health care, for example, we're farther "left" now than ever, so I suppose by definition he's the most-left wing president on health care.

Tim... what?

I think the enormous drift to the right in the US is what has taken me completely by surprise. I have no idea where you see a left-drift? The republicans in congress right now make Bush look like a liberal. Really. I almost miss him. He was a nut, but his congress seemed so rational compared with what is going on now.

Obama is Bush lite (he mostly does the same things, but talks a good talk, and occasionally throws a bone to liberals to keep them "happy"). The health care plan was Newt Gingrich's plan from the nineties (which was right wing then), and is now sold as a left-wing plan. Even "socialist".

Left-drift. Come on!

Please explain what you are talking about...

#19: Myself not being a believer of there being much distinction between left and right, perhaps authoritarian drift is more accurate?

Obama is a slightly right-of center centrist

Oh, come on. That's just framing. Maybe within a global political context he'd be "right of center." Within a Soviet context he's right of right. So what? Within an American context, however--which seems appropriate considering he's an American president--he's left of center. If not, then center isn't actually in the center of political opinion, which is just leftist wish-fulfilment at the expense of useful labeling. Words either have meanings people can agree on, or they're just private fantasies.

I have no idea where you see a left-drift?

Well, the US medical system is more socialized now than at any point in it's history. I don't equate that with "socialism" per se. The US system is far from Canada's, let alone Britain's. But the more control the government has over something the more socialized it is.

Authoritarian is definitely the trend in current policies, and seems to be quite independent of party.

I believe the principle difference between Republicans and Democrats is that Republicans have trouble with extremists on the right in their party, whereas Democrats have problems with social leftists in their party. Both parties simply represent different types of business interests these days.

21> So he got a medical insurance reform act passed that increases gov't control over medicine by a certain amount. But on financial reform he punted and let the Wall Street lobbyists write the legislation they wanted. He hasn't ended the wars or closed gitmo prison. Overall, he doesn't look like a leftist to me.

>22 BruceCoulson:

No, I think he's left of center. The center would be the right-most Democrats and left-most Republicans.

Count me among those who think Obama's rhetoric has been nothing short of false advertising. The reality is center-right. He can make speeches but he doesn't fight. His economic team concerned me right off the bat. This country needs to expand its tax base--not make rich people and financial instutions and multinationals richer and more unregulated than they already are. I seriously doubt I'm going to be voting for him again--though there is no chance I'm going to vote for anyone the GOP puts up.

Of course Clinton wasn't a Progressive either.

From Salon:

A study by Princeton political scientist Larry Bartels provides some insight. Bartels found that senators are "very responsive" to the views of the wealthiest third of their constituents, "somewhat responsive" to the middle third, and not responsive at all to the third with the lowest incomes (to the extent that the opinions of the wealthiest constituents can outweigh senators' party affiliations in determining their voting records). It's true that Republicans are nearly twice as attentive as Democrats to the preferences of the wealthy, but both parties are equally indifferent to the opinions of their lower-income constituents.

Of course, it's not exactly news that the rich are politically powerful, but even so, the estimates of just how much power they hold can be staggering. Northwestern University political scientists Jeffrey Winter and Benjamin Page estimate, in a paper titled "Oligarchy in the United States?," that "the top 10 percent of the population has about as much material-based political power as the entire bottom 90 percent." And one important effect of this power has been a gradual shift of mainstream fiscal policy discourse toward policies favoring -- surprise -- the rich.

To see how far the debate has shifted, you just need to look at what's on the table in the current showdown: Progressives are asking to increase the top two tax brackets from 33 and 35 percent to 36 and 39.6 percent, while Paul Ryan's "Pathway to Prosperity" proposes cutting taxes in the highest bracket to 25 percent. That is, Democrats are merely asking that taxes on the rich be returned to what they were at the beginning of the Bush administration, which is still just slightly more than half of what they were at the beginning of the Reagan administration, while Republicans are pushing for rates lower than they've been since immediately before the Great Depression.

In the American context, Obama is a lefty because, well, relative to America's righties, he's closer to socialism or something like that. Liberals are the sympathetic arm of the rich. Conservative's are the rich's useful idiots.

>77 timspalding:
Liberals are the sympathetic arm of the rich. Conservative's are the rich's useful idiots.

Yow! If I was keener on "intellectual property," I'd say you should copyright that one. As it is, I'll just plagiarize it.

Cody won't object, he's anti-intellectual property. I'm still waiting for the royalty payments on my hedge fund joke.

I think his publishing it here establishes his copyright if it has not already been published by someone else.

Robert

I hate liberals and conservatives by Cody is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

So I guess e-mailing my Senator's not going to do any good. What should I do? Join some ultra-liberal organization?

"the top 10 percent of the population has about as much material-based political power as the entire bottom 90 percent." And one important effect of this power has been a gradual shift of mainstream fiscal policy discourse toward policies favoring -- surprise -- the rich.

The problem is, many people will interpret this as a problem with "the rich" instead of what it actually is -- a problem with "political power".

The problem is, many people will interpret this as a problem with "the rich" instead of what it actually is -- a problem with "political power".

True. The "rich" are the most oppressed group (oppression measured by tax bracket).

If that's how you measure oppression, but that's not what I meant. There's no way to correct this sort of thing while still having political power. Believing that there are "bad people" in power and you could vote for "good people" who wouldn't behave the same way (just with a different preferred group, who would soon be rich in place of the current rich) is the height of foolishness.

>31 codyed:
Naw, I'll stick to plagiarism. I'm not a lawyer and just one step ahead of grandma re technology, and irony about irony I get too much of at my workplace. "Licensed creative commons?"

The Exiled has a couple articles that will make you hate rich people if you don't already. The first one riffs off the recent ThinkProgress article by Lee Fang about how Koch Industries is manipulating oil prices. The second article goes into detail about how the rich use agricultural property tax breaks to cut their property tax bills to a fraction of what it would be if they did not use those tax breaks. That has negative implications for school districts which rely on local taxes.

So let me get this straight: large numbers of people (I don't know if you, codyed, are one) are worried that oil is going to run out soon and believe that governments should institute all sorts of taxes to push the price of oil up to reduce current use so it's available in the future (and to somehow maintain the current climate). But if private companies store oil to reduce current use and make it available for the future (and somehow maintain the current climate) they're E V I L. {Is it because they do it without stealing from people? If they had armed thugs going around "taxing" people to pay for the storage or something, that would change it into a good thing, maybe?}
And if "rich" people manage to avoid being victims of theft, they're E V I L.
And ....

That's assuming, of course, that these rich, noble folk are hoarding oil for the express purpose of making it available to the market during those times in which supply is low or demand is high. Koch Industries is well networked in the oil industry, and that probably doesn't hurt their ability to make every seeming international incident or geological rumbling seem like an apocalyptic event that requires their benevolent hoarding. A free market, indeed.

I guess you weren't struck by the irony of rich, noble folk using the coercive, jack-boot power of government to ensure that they don't pay their full property taxes or maintain a regulatory environment that benefits them.

Post 27 is an interesting read in light of this.

That's assuming, of course, that these rich, noble folk are hoarding oil for the express purpose of making it available to the market during those times in which supply is low or demand is high.

It doesn't matter a jot why they're doing it. The effect is the same.

I guess you weren't struck by the irony of rich, noble folk using the coercive, jack-boot power of government to ensure that they don't pay their full property taxes or maintain a regulatory environment that benefits them.

Those are two entirely different things. They shouldn't be paying taxes at all (nobody should; taxation is theft), so anything they can do to avoid taxation is fine. If they're doing anything to "maintain a regulatory environment that benefits them" at someone else's expense, that's bad; but the one has nothing to do with the other. (And in the second case, government is ultimately at fault anyway; they can't impose regulations without support from government)

The American "rich" have suffered from the greatest amount of theft that has been recorded in the history of the world.

>42 theoria: My heart goes out to those poor saps. Those poor rich.

Now in Michigan, they just cut the clothing allowance for orphans, and the support for disabled people who live by themselves, as well as the earned income credit for poor working families and other goodies of the lower classes who always steal from the lords of the manor. Serves them right, those thieving orphans and disabled - how could they ever think they could get away stealing from our poor billionaires?

I think we should have indentured servitude again, don't you think? It is positively stealing when these people demand working wages and some health insurance for their measly 80 hours a week of work!

Just a Modest Proposal...

J. Swift

Indentured servitude is a silly idea. It would make the owners actually responsible (from a financial standpoint) towards the owned.

The current system means that the losers in the current system can be beggared even further, and then blamed for failing to take care of themselves.

A (partial?) list of some of Obama's about-faces: Guantanomo, wiretapping, etc.

..."kinetic military action" against oil-rich nations...

(Except that Bush got Congressional approval first).

The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.
- Barack Obama, Boston Globe, Dec 20, 2007

Yep, a real radical, that Obama...

So radical that he basically keeps in place every single policy of his predecessor. Despite being of the opposite party. Cooperating with the enemy; that's radical!

#45

Maybe not so radical after all.

Obama is radically black. Obama has a radically different and scary name.

That is all there is to this radical amount of opposition to him.

The rest is smoke-screen bullshit.

The ones who scream the loudest that his color or perceived "otherness" are not the issue are the ones who have the most problem with both. They are liars. And, yeah, most of them are just lying to themselves - the worst kind of lying.

Their bullshit gets so damn tiresome.

The policies mentioned in my foregoing posts, and other policies like them, a few years ago were proof positive, per the Left, that Bush was either pure evil or a drooling moron.

Now Obama is continuing those policies. So...?

So now, quite a bit of the left finds the fact that Obama continues these policies wrong, but still consider him a lesser evil than the man that preceded him.

It's not rocket science, Carny.

#51: That's actually an excellent illustration of how democracy is like battered-wife syndrome.

All in all I think we are better off without McCain as CIC. That guy is the biggest load to haveever come that close to being POTUS.

>51 Jesse_wiedinmyer: Yet they refuse to call him pure evil or a drooling moron, solely because he's their bastard.

It's not rocket science, Jesse.

No, they simply believe that much of the good that he does does something to mitigate the bad.

You still can't get past posting without sweeping generalisations about "lefties," "liberals" and the like, can you?

Your posts used to be a hell of a lot more cogent and rational, Carny. What's up? You're starting to sound like a cut-rate Beck acolyte.

Or are you just trying to compensate for Codyed's swing to the middle?

>55 Jesse_wiedinmyer:
No, they simply believe that much of the good that he does does something to mitigate the bad.

So bombing people in oil-rich countries isn't pure evil as long as the President who does it also modifies health care legislation. Or whatever. OK, noted.

You still can't get past posting without sweeping generalisations about "lefties," "liberals" and the like, can you?

"Right-wingers are racist!"

Your posts used to be a hell of a lot more cogent and rational, Carny.

Oh, ouch, Jesse. Ouuuuuch.

Some right-wingers ARE racist; which I why I don't feel comfortable in being linked to them. I consider myself a conservative, not a reactionary, and certainly not racist.

With that, I feel that Obama is a good person; but a poor President. He is unwilling to exert the power of the Presidency to accomplish his goals, and lets people (such as the military) dictate terms to him, rather than the other way around.

Take DADT. Other Presidents, faced with a similar issue (segregation) handled it simply. They told the military, "You're integrating now." And that was that. Oh, there was (and still is) racism in the ranks; but no simple order can handle that issue, only time. But instead of letting the military drag things out, the prior Presidents gave an order, and let the generals and admirals sort things out.

So, no, Obama didn't institute the policies; but I'll leave it to moralists and philosophers whether it's worse to begin a bad policy, or to maintain such a policy. It's bad, Obama should have done something; and he hasn't, and likely won't.

Since your gave me a mature response, let me give a mature response to your response.

I agree that there is in general a difference between starting a policy and continuing it. I think it depends on the policy. Regarding war, for example (whether in Iraq or elsewhere), it does seem that given that your predecessaor jumped into quicksand, and we are up to our hips in it, that extricating ourselves isn't as easy as not jumping in in the first place.

That said, though, that doesn't apply to Libya. It also doesn't apply to things like wiretapping, which are easier to discontinue than a war. Many of candidate Obama's supporters elected him specifically to do away with things like that.
To their credit, they're exprssing disapointment over President Obama's reversals on some of these issues. However, with not nearly the intensity of rhetoric they applied to Bush (e.g., Bushitler,etc.).

I voted for Obama, much for those reasons; I disliked (and still do) the current state of affairs.

And I don't expect miracles; obviously some problems (such as the budget) require both time and the cooperation of hundreds of others.

But you are correct; there is much Obama could have done, and could still do, to change the policies of his predecessors. I'm not seeing any indication that he will do anything of the sort. Instead, he seems to be accelerating the trends which I found so repugnant under Bush. I don't see how having Obama's hand on the wheel of state is much of an improvement. Although to be fair to myself and others, there wasn't any way we could have really known in advance this would be the case, whereas McCain most certainly would have continued those policies.

I agree that being a Democrat, and 'caring' shouldn't exempt you from criticism for bad policies.

#61 being pretty much exactly what I'd said in #51.

Is there anyone here who is that much an admirer of Obama? It does not seem like it.

Does someone here really think Obama is all that radical? Then you, sir or madam, may just be an asshat. Please check with your family physician before continuing to post here.

Most of us here seem to be lesser of evils voters.

republicans and teabaggers have proven themselves so evil I have no qualms about voting for Obama.

If someone does not agree, then fine. Let's all remember to vote and let the lesser evil win. That's the American way.

So, is there something I left out?

What about voting for C'Thulhu?

> 64

Sure. Since I live in effing red state, why the eff not?

Let's all remember to vote and let the lesser evil win. That's the American way.

Explains why evil keeps winning, I guess...

> 67

So, you voted for Ralph Nader the last three times, I'm guessing - or was it for the libertarian douches? or you an anarchist who thinks voting is for losers? Or wtf?

I voted for Obama last time and I knew he wasn't as progressive as I'd like, but I thought he might keep a few more of his campaign promises than he did.

>68 jjwilson61:

He will. But he needs more time in office. And you can give it to him! :)

#68 - Dude, Obama is only 27 months into a 48 month term. You're talking like his time is up next week.

#69 - LOL I like that attitude. Let's see it on a tee shirt.

>70 clamairy:

Yeah, but the productive period of any presidency--leaving apart foreign relations--is always the first half. Obama is sliding fast into campaign mode now, just as any president does. That does not bode well for people who think he's going to make politically risky moves like clearing out Guantanamo, etc. Leftward moves are particularly unlikely. He is not going to face a challenge from the left, after all.

It looks like Obama just wrapped up a second term: he got Bin Laden.

Yup! He's in.

Holy shit!

I guess this means that now we can leave Afghanistan.

Just kidding!

We have unfinished business in Monaco. Stay the course.

Started its own thread: http://www.librarything.com/topic/115401

Anxiously awaiting a CNN live stream.