The only way I can see the hatred is if you give credence to the Republican narrative over the past decade, which is about as unbiased as her autobiography would be.Originally Posted by elth
The only way I can see the hatred is if you give credence to the Republican narrative over the past decade, which is about as unbiased as her autobiography would be.
Husband and wife presidents is probably a bigger step in the wrong direction than sticking a maniac like Trump in charge. Not that he is a maniac, particularly, more a figure of fun. He's an American Boris, replacing intellect and wit with brash vulgarity and piles of money. In many ways, he's the most American thing since sliced Uncle Sam. Maybe not 'modern America' though, whatever that is. Whenever I see one of his supporters on the news they do come across a bit like the sort of deranged sex pests who support the pick-up artist industry and have a general chip on their shoulder about the non-subservient existence of women in the modern world - which I suppose would explain why women are wary of him, and Mert is such a fan.
I feel like a lot of the underlying Hillary hate is just basic venal misogyny which lurks under a lot of American society. As Elth says, she's no worse (really) than any other political asshat. Obama, Bernie and perhaps Bloomberg are the only ones in recent memory who would represent any real change from expected norms (and that basically only comes down to race and campaign finance source).
I wouldn't include Obama in that. He's knee-deep in corporate money and has been a fucking massive let down. Hilary's campaign and supporters have been crying sexism for months when faced with legitimate criticisms of her record and her policies. There's been a lot of whinging about the fact she's got so much grief about the way her campaign is funded when as you say, everyone's at it; she'd have a point if she was running against Biden or someone similar and was getting grief. Unfortunately she's running against the most liberal senator in the country so the contrast is plain for all to see.
Don't forget the FBI (headed by a massive republican) are currently conducting an investigation into her. Has a presidential candidate ever been indicted during an election campaign?
Depends whether you think the former is a good thing. Trump will probably see the Republicans lose both houses within two years and a progressive landslide in 2020.
I saw Obama described the other day - by the Guardian's Sir Michael White, no less - as a 'class act, but second rate president'. I thought that summed him up quite well.
'Hillary' combines vacuousness and arrogance in such a way that she makes Tony Blair look substantial. Still, we live in hope for that 'progressive landslide'.
It's crazy to me that people would think Obama's done a bad job. Republicans yelling at him doesn't mean a damn thing. Any one of the nuclear deal with Iran, actually getting the healthcare through, and being in charge of the stabilizing economy would have cemented the legacy of any other President.
http://www.forwardprogressives.com/4...esident-obama/
And even if you don't think what he did was good, it's impossible to argue that he hasn't been incredibly consequential. Especially given the stone-walling he had to stare down.
http://www.vox.com/2015/6/26/8849925...ory-presidents
He's the first president never to have had a growth rate exceeding 3 percent during any year he's been in office. You can chalk that down to circumstance and so forth, but his failure to make substantial reforms to the way the economy works is at least partly to blame.
Let's not forget the state it was in when he took it over. He stabilised the ship.
Again, individual influence, etc. But if you're going to blame him for one, you have to give him credit for the other. There are charts from the first article give a pretty decent picture of the situation he's left the economy in when compared to what it was when he got a hold of it:
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Again, how much credit you give him for that is up to you. But it's pretty clear that he's leaving the economy in a dramatically stronger position than it was when he got given it.
The 'she's just as shit as every other politician' defense has to be the lamest defense I've ever heard. Well, it's probably only behind the 'misogyny' one.
Obama's been fantastic on so many issues. "Growth rate" is a generally pointless stat for non-third world countries these days, and in any case as president your job is to try and set market trends, rather than control the entire economy. Ours has been doing quite fine since he took office; the Fed Funds rate is almost negative, and there's no need for any structural reforms at the moment. Plus, he's very good at directing national discourse, for better or worse. And doing that Iran deal knowing full well that he'd get shafted by most American media and politicians afterwards was ballsy as fuck.
I think Obama's achieved about as much as he could have within the system, and given the state of Congress. The criticisms that come in are that he hasn't changed the system well enough (hence Berniemania), and that he's betrayed the promise of 2008, both of which have some validity; but he's done pretty bloody well to achieve some of the things he has.
I don't know if Obama's the best president of recent years (can you ever know until years later?), but he is certainly the smoothest. He's basically a god among liberals, leading to the odd situation where Hillary gets lambasted for wanting to continue his policies, yet nobody will criticize the man himself. I think it's partly that liberals love him for being the first black president just as much as conservatives hate him for it.
This basically reinforces my point - I admit I don't get it, and someone who obviously viscerally hates Clinton calls it a "lame defense" without any further elaboration. I literally have no idea what you think is the problem with her, and you think that's even an attempt to defend her?
I'm not any closer to getting it because of whatever you think it is you're demonstrating with that comment.
Viscerally hate her :*****)
Obama would always look good versus the shitstorm that went before him, but versus what he ran on and the HOPE of 2008 it's been shit. Started from the centre on almost every issue, implemented a Republican healthcare plan, and is capping it off with a horrible attempt at appealing to them with his SC pick. I give him credit for his new approach to foreign policy, but generally it's been turgid incremental progress still restrained by corporate interests, to which he's as tied as anyone else.
He was hamstrung a bit by a Republican House of Representatives or something, kinda, sorta, possibly.
Jake Tapper @jaketapper 1m1 minute ago
Breaking -- @SpeakerRyan tells @CNN he cannot endorse/support @realDonaldTrump right now --
Ha! Apparently not since 1972 (George McGovern) has a prominent member of a party refused to support their presidential candidate...
LOL at the greatest war criminal of modern times refusing to endorse Trump.
Paul Ryan is the greatest war criminal of modern times?
Vladimir Putin is the Speaker of the House?
Bashar Al-Assad refuses to endorse Trump?
Donald Trump refuses to endorse Donald Trump?
You've cited Obama's economic record as a positive, and questioned why the Conservatives haven't undertaken similar steps to him to achieve the same success. What is your actual view on this, other than suiting the point you want to make on the day?
One of Obama's big problems is that he campaigned with a particular rhetoric that he was never, ever going to fulfil. HOPE and CHANGE are great campaign themes, but he's still going to go into work every day dealing with the exact same checks, balances and constraints as every other president. Getting any sort of healthcare deal through was good work, albeit he did so with a Democratic congressional majority and even then it was hacked away at. Still, he pushed it through and fair play. Iran and Cuba will both hopefully be successes, but those are still in the "too early to tell" stage.
Lack of clarity on Syria, and a failure to deal with Libya post-Gaddafi have been significant failures, in my view.
I'd agree with Ital that he's done well economically, particularly as I think we're all too prone to assuming politicians can actually improve the economy significantly through unilateral policies. He can't move global markets, much as he might want to. He helped to stabilise matters after the recession and Lehman Brothers, and beyond that there's probably not a huge deal he can do.
Ultimately he's faced a Congress which thinks he's some sort of devil, and Republicans who seem to have decided to block everything he wants to do out of spite. In that context, he's done as well as he can. He just raised expectations far too high in 2008. And he was following Bush, for fuck sake. Anything looked better at the time.
See, you posted your original thing about a war criminal right after Bernanke's post about Paul Ryan not endorsing Trump. It wasn't very clear.
Probably that it's positive compared to the Tories but not as positive as it could or should be.
Jeffrey Sachs wrote about this last year, and they're basically the same when you account for us 1) taking a slightly bigger hit in the first place; 2) being more exposed to shitty Europe; and 3) them rolling in cheap gas and oil.
Tories are scum, mate. Did you not get the leaflet?
The thing with Obama is that I think he more or less did the best possible job that could be done, which unfortunately fell a long way short of what he'd promised, and well short of what were with hindsight pretty unrealistic expectations.
But if I knew the future in 2008, I still would have said he was easily the best available candidate.
In the end, the big three are economic policy, social policy, and foreign policy. I think most of us agree that he did a decent job on the first two, and managed to do the best job he could have done given the circumstances. It's less than what he campaigned on, but obstructionist Republicans weren't a part of his campaign platform, either.
On foreign policy, he'd largely been middling out, with solid arguments for and against. But I'd say that Iran and Cuba knock it into favourable territory, and both of those will be important components of his legacy. It's not a slam dunk like the other two, because there's still questions over how Syria was handled. But to be honest, I don't know that it wouldn't have been a disaster no matter how it was approached.
Yep, that. Stimulus was the right thing to do, so he deserves kudos for that and for facing down the austerity-hawks within in the US. However what stimulus he did was too small and poorly directed. He also didn't do much to fix the underlying issues that caused the crash - he just basically fixed up the system back to the way it had been.
By comparison, the Tories descended into flat-earth territory, choosing an austerity program that is (to put it mildly) counter-productive and damaging to the economy. They've done this because of an ideological opposition to the concept of the welfare state itself, all the while posing as moderates.
He didn't really do much for blacks, did he? He also deported more people than Bush.
Righto.
:x
What a don.
Recent survey at Duke showed that only 1/3rd of people involved in Greek life (about 25% of the school) identified as Democrat (and most of those were probably in sororities). You just need to hang out with less poor people.
Yes, fuck the poor!!
Mug.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/publ..._41_clinton_39
Trump 41. Clinton 39.
He hasn't even gotten started.
I'm talking mostly about business owners and who I would deem predominately middle-class folk.
Also, is this week your "women are inferior" week? I'm losing track of the rota.
That poll is way out of line from all of the others.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epo...nton-5491.html
Unsurprising since Rasmussen is known for pro-Republican bias.
Clinton +6.5 with 6 months to go until Election day and he hasn't even started campaigning for the general election. Only an idiot would claim that Clinton was safe, the sort of idiot who thought Trump wouldn't ever secure the Republican nomination
Eh no, just statistics:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/120839/wo...dless-age.aspx
I think our entire fraternity had 1 democrat and 1 'moderate' and the rest were Republican/Libertarian.
Might be interesting to see how the markets react if he gets near the presidency. His comments on national debt the other day were a bit worrying to say the least.
He hasn't a fucking notion. It's different getting a party nomination compared to winning an election across the whole country. Most centrists / swing voters will surely be appalled at the sort of shite he comes out with.
'
You're talking about a frat at Duke, it's always going to be a pretty conservative place. Not really a representative sample.
I wouldn't say she's safe with definiteness, but even that would be less silly than pulling out a Rasmussen poll which is wildly out of line with every other poll.Clinton +6.5 with 6 months to go until Election day and he hasn't even started campaigning for the general election. Only an idiot would claim that Clinton was safe, the sort of idiot who thought Trump wouldn't ever secure the Republican nomination
A lot of things can change in the coming months, but Rasmussen's pointlessness is as dependable as ever.
Didn't 'The Donald' just say he would look at restructuring their debt (albeit in his usual piss-poor way of explaining things)? They could easily get away with that.
Yeah, I read that. The whole system is predicated on the US being the safest credit risk in the entire world. If he erodes that idea by trying to mess around with repayments, then that will have fascinating and very dangerous knock-on effects. Can't just declare bankruptcy to get out of it, either.
The whole system used to be predicated on them having enough gold to back up their currency until it suddenly wasn't.
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