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  1. #16
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    Default Re: The BigAss 2nd term thread

    Quote Originally Posted by Is He Ill
    So....If he was a republican, why did you dislike him?
    I'm not a fan of big government republicans.

  2. #17
    College superstar kNicKz's Avatar
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    Default Re: The BigAss 2nd term thread

    Quote Originally Posted by longhornfan1234
    Libs are constantly denying Obama is really a republican(Obama's first term)
    Obama signed two extensions of the Patriot Act, signed NDAA into law (allows for indefinite detention of U.S. citizens without charges), assassinated an American citizen (Bush didn't even do this), kept Guantanamo open (after promising to close it in his first year), kept Monsanto people high up in the FDA (Christine Escobar), still raids legal medical marijuana facilities (after saying he would stop this practice), tripled the number of troops in Afghanistan (morphed it from an anti-terror campaign to a nation building campaign), kept Bush's guy running the federal reserve , extended the Bush tax cuts, opposed any effort to re-institute Glass-Steagall , mandated all citizens make a purchase from a for-profit company (rehashed REPUB. idea from the early 90s), send more illegal immigrants back to Mexico than Bush, kill lists, pharma deal, Affordable Care act was a 90s repub idea. Also...he doesn't give a fvck about the environment.
    yep. but his party has blue on instead of red so we're getting change LOL

    If you are truly a liberal to the core, there is no way you can endorse this man...

  3. #18
    College superstar kNicKz's Avatar
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    Default Re: The BigAss 2nd term thread

    like really really conservative dudes see bush as a liberal, really really liberal dudes consider obama conservative

  4. #19
    Perfectly Calm, Dude KevinNYC's Avatar
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    Default Re: The BigAss 2nd term thread

    Quote Originally Posted by longhornfan1234
    Libs are constantly denying Obama is really a republican(Obama's first term)
    Longhorn, given how spectacularly wrong you have proven yourself here over and over again, you truly have no right to facepalm anyone. And you know that.

    Even if one were to concede every point above, it still wouldn't move him to right of Bush. It's also a cherry picked list. And leaves out tons of things he did do. If you had said Obama was an Eisenhower style of Republican, you'd be closer to understanding him. Now let's look at your laundry list.
    assassinated an American citizen
    I think this qualifies him as a centrist. Let's face it no one is shedding a tear over the death of the father, the son yes.

    Obama signed two extensions of the Patriot Act,
    Yes he did. He also had the Justice Department enact several reforms from a bill sponsored by Pat Leahy and Rand Paul that never got to a vote. So policy has changed, but the law has not. Politifact rates this a compromise.
    signed NDAA into law (allows for indefinite detention of U.S. citizens without charges)
    I've dealt with this stupidity before. The NDAA does a lot of things. The main thing it does is lets us pay for our military. There would be a shitstorm if this thing didn't go through. It also passed with veto proof majorities of 93% in the Senate and 86% in the house. If you read your Constitution, the president is not a king. The controversial provisions were not put by Democrats and opposed by Obama before and after the bill's passage. So your argument boils down to he lost a political battle.

    Which is the same thing you can say about Guantanamo. Again he's not a king. He couldn't even get his own party to support him on this and Congress shoved the following language into another spending bill
    Sec. 1032. Prohibition on the use of funds for the transfer or release of individuals detained at United States Naval Station, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.....
    Sec. 1034. Prohibition on the use of funds to modify or construct facilities in the United States to house detainees transferred from United States Naval Station, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
    You can find a balanced view of Obama's similarities to and difference with Bush on counterterrorism here.
    kept Monsanto people high up in the FDA (Christine Escobar), still raids legal medical marijuana facilities (after saying he would stop this practice), tripled the number of troops in Afghanistan (morphed it from an anti-terror campaign to a nation building campaign), kept Bush's guy running the federal reserve , extended the Bush tax cuts, opposed any effort to re-institute Glass-Steagall , mandated all citizens make a purchase from a for-profit company (rehashed REPUB. idea from the early 90s), send more illegal immigrants back to Mexico than Bush, kill lists, pharma deal, Affordable Care act was a 90s repub idea. Also...he doesn't give a fvck about the environment.
    You got the Monsanto thing backwards, Escobar is a critic of Monsanto, not the person in the FDA
    He didn't say he would stop the medical marijuana raids, just not go after small timers who were operating legally (i.e. non-profit in CA. They were still required to follow state law, which a lot of these operations were not.

    You got the Aghanistan thing wrong. He refocused on counterrorism in Afghanistan (and used it as base to go after Al Qaeda in the Pakistani tribal areas.) Anyhow he campaigned on that, it wasn't a surprise. He did get rolled by the generals on the timetable.

    You may want to look at the current tax rates, especially the top marginal rate.

    Bush's guy running the Federal Reserve just told Congress that he agrees with Paul Krugman.

    As for Glass Steagal, Obama has had Geithner on his team, but also pushed for Elizabeth Warren to head the Consumer Finance Protection Board....this is the type of thing I'm thinking of when I say you are cherry picking.

    Also if he didn't care about the enviroment, what was all that screming from the right about green jobs and cap and trade?Also
    t he day after the November 2010 elections made clear President Obama’s greenhouse-gas legislation was doomed, he vowed to keep trying to curb emissions linked to global warming. There’s more than one way of “skinning the cat,” he told reporters.

    Since then, Obama has used his executive powers — including his authority under the 1970 Clean Air Act — to press the most sweeping attack on air pollution in U.S. history. He has imposed the first carbon-dioxide limits on new power plants, tightened fuel-efficiency rules as part of the auto bailout and steered billions of federal dollars to clean-energy projects. Obama’s standards for new vehicles, said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, rank as “the biggest move to get us off our oil dependence by any president ever.” The rules, which took effect this year, will require the U.S. auto fleet to average 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025.
    I have to say I think my absolute favorite is to pretend that Republicans would have pushed for the Affordable Care Act....yes they may have come up with it in the 1990's but only as a way to prevent the Democrats from passing their plan.
    Last edited by KevinNYC; 03-02-2013 at 04:10 AM.

  5. #20
    Perfectly Calm, Dude KevinNYC's Avatar
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    Default Re: The BigAss 2nd term thread

    Gotta give him props for being honest. Romney said it kills him that he is not president.

    Both Romneys said he would be more effective at navigating the current political moment.
    “I’ll look at what’s happening right now, I wish I were there,” Mitt Romney said. “It kills me not to be there, not to be in the White House doing what needs to be done. The president is the leader of the nation. The president brings people together, does the deals, does the trades, knocks the heads together; the president leads. And – and I don’t see that kind of – of leadership happening right now”
    .....
    Ann Romney said her husband, had he won, would have solved the sequester by now.
    “I totally believe at this moment, if Mitt were there in the office, that we would not be facing sequestration right now,” she said.
    I think the quote by Ann Romney is interesting. Basically saying that the Republicans would have avoid sequestration if the president was a Republican. Seems to reinforce the view that the current Congressional Republicans put political success over solving the problems of the country. This basically confirms what was exposed in Robert Draper's book about the House where he exposed a private strategy meeting among republican Leadership on the day of Obama's innauguration. The strategy was essentially to oppose everything Obama would try to do and turn him into a failed one-term president.

    ...revelations about a private dinner of House Republicans on inauguration day in 2009 in which they plotted a campaign of obstruction against newly installed president Barack Obama.

    During a lengthy discussion, the senior GOP members worked out a plan to repeatedly block Obama over the coming four years to try to ensure he would not be re-elected....
    Attending the dinner were House members Eric Cantor, Jeb Hensarling, Pete Hoekstra, Dan Lungren, Kevin McCarthy, Paul Ryan and Pete Sessions. From the Senate were Tom Coburn, Bob Corker, Jim DeMint, John Ensign and Jon Kyl. Others present were former House Speaker and future – and failed – presidential candidate Newt Gingrich and the Republican strategist Frank Luntz, who organised the dinner and sent out the invitations..... "We've gotta challenge them on every single bill and challenge them on every single campaign."

    The Republicans have done that, bringing Washington to a near standstill several times during Obama's first term over debt and other issues....They would also ....demonstrate united and unyielding opposition to the president's economic policies, ....
    Frontline not only confirmed that the meeting happened as Draper said, but got Frank Luntz and Newt Gingrich to go on the record and discuss the meeting on camera.

  6. #21
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    Default Re: The BigAss 2nd term thread

    Quote Originally Posted by KevinNYC
    Gotta give him props for being honest. Romney said it kills him that he is not president.



    I think the quote by Ann Romney is interesting. Basically saying that the Republicans would have avoid sequestration if the president was a Republican. Seems to reinforce the view that the current Congressional Republicans put political success over solving the problems of the country. This basically confirms what was exposed in Robert Draper's book about the House where he exposed a private strategy meeting among republican Leadership on the day of Obama's innauguration. The strategy was essentially to oppose everything Obama would try to do and turn him into a failed one-term president.



    Frontline not only confirmed that the meeting happened as Draper said, but got Frank Luntz and Newt Gingrich to go on the record and discuss the meeting on camera.
    That quote just makes Romney sound naive. Here is a good Ezra Klein video about why its stupid.

    http://www.nbcnews.com/id/45755883/n...13650#51013261

    And here is a good rundown by Klein on how Republicans have been stalling on sequester talks.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...h-republicans/

  7. #22
    Perfectly Calm, Dude KevinNYC's Avatar
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    Default Re: The BigAss 2nd term thread

    Quote Originally Posted by Jailblazers7
    That quote just makes Romney sound naive. Here is a good Ezra Klein video about why its stupid.

    http://www.nbcnews.com/id/45755883/n...13650#51013261
    Good Ezra Klein clip. I reference that idea that the president is not a king upthread. I particularly liked when he called out this tweet by a reporter
    Ron Fournier @ron_fournier

    Can handle Bin laden, not Boehner?
    As Klein rightly points out, we handled Bin Laden by sending Navy Seals to kill him. Is that what this reporter is suggesting he should do to John Boehner? The reporter later doubled down after being called out on this stupidity by saying that Bin Laden didn't compromise just like Boehner.

  8. #23
    Perfectly Calm, Dude KevinNYC's Avatar
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    Default Re: The BigAss 2nd term thread

    Giant article on Medical Costs in Time magazine that is getting a lot of attention. One of the themes of the article is that how Medicare buys the same services, far more cheaply than private insurance....that is hospitals are ripping off people with private insurance.

    I got the idea for this article when I was visiting Rice University last year. As I was leaving the campus, which is just outside the central business district of Houston, I noticed a group of glass skyscrapers about a mile away lighting up the evening sky. The scene looked like Dubai. I was looking at the Texas Medical Center, a nearly 1,300-acre, 280-building complex of hospitals and related medical facilities, of which MD Anderson is the lead brand name. Medicine had obviously become a huge business. In fact, of Houston’s top 10 employers, five are hospitals, including MD Anderson with 19,000 employees; three, led by ExxonMobil with 14,000 employees, are energy companies. How did that happen, I wondered. Where’s all that money coming from? And where is it going? I have spent the past seven months trying to find out by analyzing a variety of bills from hospitals like MD Anderson, doctors, drug companies and every other player in the American health care ecosystem.

    When you look behind the bills that Sean Recchi and other patients receive, you see nothing rational — no rhyme or reason — about the costs they faced in a marketplace they enter through no choice of their own. The only constant is the sticker shock for the patients who are asked to pay.

    Yet those who work in the health care industry and those who argue over health care policy seem inured to the shock. When we debate health care policy, we seem to jump right to the issue of who should pay the bills, blowing past what should be the first question: Why exactly are the bills so high?
    Some examples of inflated bills
    Gauze Pads
    Charge for each of four boxes of sterile gauze pads, as itemized in a $348,000 bill following a patient’s diagnosis of lung cancer

    Test Strips
    Patient was charged $18 each for Accu-chek diabetes test strips. Amazon sells boxes of 50 for about $27, or 55
    Last edited by KevinNYC; 03-04-2013 at 06:22 AM.

  9. #24
    It is what it is TheMan's Avatar
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    Default Re: The BigAss 2nd term thread

    Quote Originally Posted by KevinNYC
    Good Ezra Klein clip. I reference that idea that the president is not a king upthread. I particularly liked when he called out this tweet by a reporter

    As Klein rightly points out, we handled Bin Laden by sending Navy Seals to kill him. Is that what this reporter is suggesting he should do to John Boehner? The reporter later doubled down after being called out on this stupidity by saying that Bin Laden didn't compromise just like Boehner.
    That's actually a great idea that that reporter seems to suggest...have Obama send out a Navy Seals team and off Boenher, then watch the GOP opposition crumble and all of them fall in line

    Obama should then announce it in a press confrence and give mad props to that reporter for the awesome idea
    Last edited by TheMan; 03-04-2013 at 01:11 PM.

  10. #25
    Perfectly Calm, Dude KevinNYC's Avatar
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    Default Re: The BigAss 2nd term thread

    The CIA nomination passed the Senate Intelligence Commitee 12-3.

    I guess he'll be confirmed easily.

    Also I liked this headline on Google News

    Jurors in New York "cannibal cop" trial get some comic relief

  11. #26
    Perfectly Calm, Dude KevinNYC's Avatar
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    Default Re: The BigAss 2nd term thread

    It seems they did give the info on the drone program to the Senators that asked for it and those Senators voted for Brennan
    http://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/pre...ling-documents

    And

    From Mother Jones

    The attorney general reserves the right "in extraordinary circumstances" to authorize lethal force, such as a drone strike, against a US citizen, on US Soil without a trial.
    As members of this administration have previously indicated, the US government has not carried out drone strikes in the United States and has no intention of doing so. As a policy matter moreover, we reject the use of military force where well-established law enforcement authorities in this country provide the best means for incapacitating a terrorist threat. We have a long history of using the criminal justice system to incapacitate individuals located in our country who pose a threat to the United States and its interests abroad. Hundreds of individuals have been arrested and convicted of terrorism-related offenses in our federal courts.

    The question you have posed is therefore entirely hypothetical, unlikely to occur, and one we hope no president will ever have to confront. It is possible, I suppose, to imagine an extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary and appropriate under the Constitution and applicable laws of the United States for the President to authorize the military to use lethal force within the territory of the United States. For example, the president could conceivably have no choice but to authorize the military to use such force if necessary to protect the homeland in the circumstances like a catastrophic attack like the ones suffered on December 7, 1941, and September 11, 2001.

  12. #27
    Perfectly Calm, Dude KevinNYC's Avatar
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    Default Re: The BigAss 2nd term thread

    Funny clip of Bill O'Reilly losing his mind. Start at 1:50

    Apparently Bill thinks if he shouts loud enough his own ignorance about Obama's policies will go away.

    He gets so angry that he won't admit that Medicare is a "specific" government program.


    Another good clip from Lawrence O'Donnell is this one where he shows a bunch of clips from Fox Business Network the day after Obama's election blaming a one day drop in the Dow on Obama. He also shows clips of the "Romney rally" from October last year. He contrasts that with clips from today when the Dow hit a new high and suddenly no one mentions Obama at all.
    Last edited by KevinNYC; 03-06-2013 at 11:06 AM.

  13. #28
    Perfectly Calm, Dude KevinNYC's Avatar
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    Default Re: The BigAss 2nd term thread

    Quote Originally Posted by The Macho Man
    I don't know much about Rand Paul but I think I'm predisposed to hating him because his name is Rand.
    You've done good Macho Man. I'm going to overlook your willingness to fund a Michael Bay movie.

  14. #29
    Apparently likes anime reppy's Avatar
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    Default Re: The BigAss 2nd term thread

    Quote Originally Posted by KevinNYC
    Even if one were to concede every point above, it still wouldn't move him to right of Bush. It's also a cherry picked list. And leaves out tons of things he did do. If you had said Obama was an Eisenhower style of Republican, you'd be closer to understanding him. Now let's look at your laundry list.I think this qualifies him as a centrist. Let's face it no one is shedding a tear over the death of the father, the son yes.

    Since when does public opinion have anything to do with whether or not a certain action is legitimate and where exactly such action would place one on the left/right dichotomy?

  15. #30
    Perfectly Calm, Dude KevinNYC's Avatar
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    Default Re: The BigAss 2nd term thread

    Quote Originally Posted by The Macho Man
    If you don't like Bad Boys 2 there's something wrong with you.

    My friend is all over Paul's nuts. Give me reasons to dislike him besides his stupid name so I can talk shit to my friend and not sound like an idiot.
    The "Friends of Hamas story" was pretty funny
    http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/20..._actually.html

    http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/f...icle-1.1268284

    Conservatives who wanted to stop the Chuck Hagel confirmation started pushing this rumor that Hagel had spoken to or accepted money from "Friends of Hamas." They demanded the White House respond to this rumor, instead the White House just hung up on them.

    Two problems with the rumor.
    1. Friends of Hamas doesn't exist
    2. The whole thing started as a joke that the conservative didn't understand
    http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/f...icle-1.1268284


    He's also named after psychopathic troll who wrote these long turgid books where nobody acts like a human being. And the troll who was a scathing critic of "the Welfare State" got Social Security and Medicare payments under her married name. One of her earliest attempts at fiction was inspired by a child murderer who she seemed admire very, very much. She wrote of the character she based on the child murderer that he
    is born with a wonderful, free, light consciousness -- [resulting from] the absolute lack of social instinct or herd feeling. He does not understand, because he has no organ for understanding, the necessity, meaning, or importance of other people ... Other people do not exist for him and he does not understand why they should."
    You can read about his truly horrific crime here.


    I would just make a bet with him: That you watch part one and part two of the movie based on her most famous book (there's at least one more part still to be filmed) together and for every minute that is entertaining you pay him a dollar and for every minute that is not entertaining he pays you a dollar.
    Last edited by KevinNYC; 03-07-2013 at 12:37 AM.

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