Obama’s progressive creds.

Booman and Bowers like what they see.

On “progressive” health care reform from the horse’s mouth:

I think that’s unfortunate because when you actually look at the bill itself, it incorporates all sorts of Republican ideas. I mean a lot of commentators have said, you know, this is sort of similar to the bill that Mitt Romney, the Republican Governor and now presidential candidate, passed in Massachusetts.

On progressive war-making in the “good war:”

“We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat,” said Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who became the senior American and NATO commander in Afghanistan last year. His comments came during a recent videoconference to answer questions from troops in the field about civilian casualties.

On progressive economics (Neil Barofsky):

…even if TARP saved our financial system from driving off a cliff back in 2008, absent meaningful reform, we are still driving on the same winding mountain road, but this time in a faster car.

On progressive civil liberties (via the civil liberties extremist, Glenn Greenwald):

Eric Holder’s Justice Department stood up in court today and said that it would continue the Bush policy of invoking state secrets to hide the reprehensible history of torture, rendition and the most grievous human rights violations committed by the American government. This is not change. This is definitely more of the same. Candidate Obama ran on a platform that would reform the abuse of state secrets, but President Obama’s Justice Department has disappointingly reneged on that important civil liberties issue. If this is a harbinger of things to come, it will be a long and arduous road to give us back an America we can be proud of again.

These are mere data points, but utterly representative data points.  I could go on all day.  The point is that Obama has put health care revenue streams above health care, continues the meaningless bloody slog in oily regions of the world, has completely failed to reform the vastly corrupt financial system at taxpayer expense, and walked all over human rights and civil liberty concerns to protect the culpable ruling elites.

To excuse any of this as “pragmatic” indicates a belief that good policy is NOT good politics, and the latter reigns supreme.  Such a belief system is not reality-based in the long-term.

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  1. Herbert Spencer wrote, “The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.” We have done precisely that.

    The same goes for progressive enablers.

    • Edger on March 31, 2010 at 01:42

    republican republicans be worse than….?

  2. partisan tribalism, turn off their values and scruples as it applies to the political arena.

    I have no problem with what you’re saying, because, to me, it is truly the truth.

    What happens however when one’s political and leader oriented philosophy leads them into having to exercise basic double talk in order to justify their philosophy and their position?

    Yes, Obama’s a progressive, some of my friends would aver, while also acknowledging simultaneously the sheer number of things he is doing that are exactly what Bush would do, or things that cannot in any conceivable sense of the word “progressive”.

    There are some things that Obama has done that you could call somewhat “progressive”, but these are slow, grudging, highly incremental things that to me are the exception rather than the rule .. the tiny items I would have to acknowledge as progressive flavored in no way makes up enough of Obama’s actions to characterize his entire administration.

    I never learned how to look myself in the mirror whilst deliberately spouting doubletalk.  For one thing, I just can’t even try to do it without turning crimson.  I never mastered the art of actually bald faced lying because my conscience pesters me no end.  And to compartmentalize and not lie in real life while lying politically in the name of some far off “greater good” in my eyes doesn’t help.  A lie is a lie is a lie.

    And in many instances these are the very people, who support and love Obama, that they in the administration want to attack and kick to the curb whenever possible.  They want to work with Republicans.  They want to trash talk liberals.

    How long are they going to be able to skip down this garden path that way?  When Obama supporting progressives are led past the gates of hell, will they have a crisis of conscience and confidence?  Or will the stink of defeat and compromise and surrendering principles one by one (until there’s nothing left) turn them into, at long last, right wingers without one last ounce of regret at the very end?

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