General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: An open letter to folks like myself who cannot in good conscience vote for Obama [View all]Spider Jerusalem
(21,786 posts)Obama never actually claimed to be a progressive. His record and his campaign gave no indication that he would be governing from the left; if you feel betrayed and disappointed it's because you saw what you wanted to see instead of what was actually there. Obama is a centre-right moderate; I have not been especially disappointed by his actions in office because I didn't have false expectations. And I'm not exactly sure how you expect him to've enacted 'progressive' policies without the votes in Congress to pass them; imposing an agenda you happen to approve of by presidential fiat and completely ignoring the Constitution and separation of powers is just the sort of thing that you'd be screaming blue murder over if a Republican were doing it.
As to your laundry list of various complaints about Obama:
This is within the scope of existing law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Commissions_Act_of_2006
You may disagree with the law (I do, personally), but expecting something different to happen without sufficient political will to overturn the act (either by the Supreme Court or by an act of Congress) is frankly, well, naive. As the Military Commissions Act is an act of Congress it's not within the President's authority to act contrary to the law by saying "well no actually we won't follow the procedure set out here".
Which is different to a president appointing a GM executive to the Department of Commerce or a former JP Morgan banker to the Treasury how, exactly?
See Paul Krugman on free trade and comparative advantage, here: http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/ricardo.htm This amounts to "I don't understand economics".
One's view on this largely depends on whether you accept the argument that the drones are being used to target "enemy combatants" in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Like it or not, the US is at war in Afghanistan against an insurgent enemy. Whether you think we should be there or not (I don't) some level of collateral damage is unavoidable and targeting with drones means fewer American casualties.
Which is disappointing but then the expansion of the national security state tends to go in one direction; it's not any different to the use of domestic wiretaps of civil rights organisers by the FBI under JFK.
No US president is going to investigate putative war crimes that may have been committed by his predecessor or by American troops. The most that might happen is a few token trials of individual soldiers for specific actions without any recognition that those actions were due to any official policy.
"Fraud" is by and large an overstatement. There was a lot of money lost in questionable investments in the financial crisis; the actions that led to that money being lost were all perfectly legal thanks to deregulation of the financial sector.
Because not ensuring liquidity and the overall stability of the banking system would be a much better option.
You know who FDR appointed to head the Securities and Exchange Commission? Joe Kennedy.
The votes weren't there for single payer, and the ACA was the best option available. Sometimes you have to be a pragmatic incrementalist.
It's great that you've reconsidered your position, although considering the state of American politics generally, I would seriously have to ask you: do you have any viable options? Your ideal candidate would be someone who'd never get elected. So your choice is: someone who does a lot of things you don't like, but who nonetheless manages to do some good and arguably even 'progressive' things, or someone whose ideology you oppose completely whose administration would be reactionary and would do nothing at all that could be described as progressive. The lesser of two evils may not be what you want but it's better than the alternative.