Because, based on your smug dismissal of people who disagree with you, I'm guessing you'll jump on the craziest third-party candidate who runs in order to "punish" the President for not being something he can't be.
Because, based on your list of Obama's sins against Progressive ideology, you don't know enough to make reasoned or nuanced decisions about the direction our country needs to take.
Because I'm not even able to tell if you're a Democrat, or a Libertarian, or a troll, or if you're just another lefty with a rage on who doesn't know how to focus that rage at the people who created the mess we're in.
Just as an FYI, this is not aimed strictly at the person who wrote the STFU diary, that was just a starting point for things I've been saying and thinking for quite some time.
UPDATE: So far, the most interesting thing I'm finding in the responses of those who are appalled by some of my arguments is that they've not taken any specific points I've made and refuted them clearly. A fair number have resorted to personal attacks, unsurprising I guess. What does surprise me is that I'm being called a Republican, after 3 years on this blog posting frequent diaries and even more frequent comments. I guess if you have nothing else, that's as good a strategy as any? I don't know.
Let's start with all the noise about President Obama being in Wall Street's pocket, because of who he chose to lead Treasury. The #1 reason you ought to know that's not true is the lack of financial support his campaign is getting from his buddies on Wall Street and in the financial sector.
There's your answer, right there. But let's go one step further, with a little parable:
You've just taken command of an enormous ship, which is steaming fast into an underwater mountain range that will tear out the bottom of your ship. You can't turn this ship fast enough, based on what you know about how it works (which is considerable), so you decide to look to people who might be able to advise you on your next decisions.
In Stateroom 1 you have a few people who have been telling everyone it's impossible to build a ship this big. Stateroom 2 holds a group of people who have been talking about the riskiness of building a ship this big and changing the design as you build it. In Stateroom 3 you have people who were involved in the actual build, on and off, who know exactly what was changed in the design, what materials were used, and how the behavior of the ship is likely to have changed from what it initially was meant to be.
Who do you talk to, when seconds count? It would be useful to talk to the people who knew that the design changes were risky and dangerous, but they don't know exactly what those changes were. You could probably chat with the people who told you it was a dumb idea in the first place, but that wouldn't change anything, even if you were wishing someone had listened to them in the first place.
If you want to save the ship, save lives, head off the worst levels of disaster, you talk to the people who know most about what might have gone wrong here, don't you? Isn't that common sense? You may be pissed at them for not blowing the whistle and preventing this mess, but do you let your righteous anger stop you from learning everything you can? Is it worth it to prove a point about the stupidity of the architects when that proof will hurt people who were never involved in the planning? I think not.
We look irrational when hatred of Timothy Geithner causes us to repeat lies, (he worked for Goldman Sachs) and when we can't credit him with things like making a profit off most of the TARP loans. We look more irrational when we don't know that the TARP bailout wasn't a sinkhole for taxpayer money, and hasn't added significantly to our debt load. We look childish when we're not aware that CEO compensation was in government hands for as long as any company still owed money to the taxpayers, thus the speedy payback. This little add-on to Bush's Bailout appears to have been recommended by the ever-evil Timmy G. Hmmm, maybe he wasn't the devil's handmaiden?
I understand the outrage about the War on Terror. I don't understand how that got to be President Obama's fault. I also don't understand how intelligent people can blithely ignore terrorism as a serious threat.
Indefinite detention should be extremely rare, but I'm not willing to see it gone altogether. If you have enough solid data to know that someone is a danger to the civilian population in this country, but all of that evidence that was properly collected has been tainted by the fact of torture being used on this person, what's the sanest response? You can't use your good evidence because of someone's else's idiotic choices, you know this person can harm innocent people, you know trying him means you're likely to have to free him. It would be lovely if doing the right thing paid off, but that's not how the world works.
I'd be willing to bet large sums of money that if any of the current detainees were released and they designed and carried out a terror attack that killed your family and friends you'd be screaming about the idiocy of letting known terrorists go free. What works on the plane of the ideal doesn't always work on the plane of the real. I'd be willing to bet that you wouldn't be quite so angry about assassination as a tool to fight terrorism if OBL was the living architect of the successful deployment of a dirty bomb in your home town. I'm pretty damn sure you'd be raging about bad intel and the failure of the administration to keep America safe (if you managed to survive).
Before you get your mad on about detaining and/or killing American citizens, would it be possible to try to differentiate between Mr. Rogers and Anwar al-Alwaki? There ARE good guys and bad guys, and bad guys sometimes have to be stopped before they do more damage to innocent bystanders. Incarcerating them may not be the best solution.
Part of our problem with terrorism is that we pretended not to know it existed until 9/11. It was, for most of us, a little problem in foreign countries, and most of them probably deserved it anyway.
Well, there's a case to be made that our idiotic foreign policies were enough to make us a deserving target for terrorists, so maybe the right move is to not interfere with us getting our just desserts? Do we just agree with OBL that our financial sector is so corrupt it deserves to be destroyed, and write off the not corrupt victims in the Twin Towers as collateral damage? That doesn't work for me. I'm not grieving the death of OBL, or any of his top deputies.
I'm tired of hearing about the evils of drone strikes. I don't much want any of my loved ones to be victims of IED attacks, I don't think it's smart to be a Commander in Chief who doesn't recognize that you fight technology with technology. What's the value in putting more soldiers in harm's way? And are you seriously defending Pakistan's sovereignty? "Drone strikes in countries we're not at war with" means Pakistan, for the most part. The Pakistan that took billions of Foreign Aid dollars and funneled them into building nuclear weapons to use against India, while promising to help us find and root out terrorists. Really? Respect their borders? The Pakistan that protected OBL, Al Queda, and the Taliban? The Pakistan that most probably isn't efficient enough to protect those nuclear weapons, or keep them out of the hands of terrorists? I'd be pissed as hell about drone strikes in France, or Great Britain, or even Turkey, but there's no One Size Fits All foreign policy for a world in which terrorism is a constant and growing threat. It's shifting, and variable, and terrifically unsettling, but let's not make fools of ourselves by jumping on wobbly wagons because they sound Progressive, or liberal, or more respectful of national sovereignty.
I'm a fan of Star Trek in its various iterations because I love the idea of a United Federation of Planets dedicated to peace. I love the little things Roddenberry promoted, like an Earth with no money, no dedication to profit, but a planet that dedicates it's resources, natural and human, to exploration, spreading peace, and fulfilling humanity's ultimate promise. I also appreciate that, well into the 29th Century, there's an admission that not every culture will embrace peace quickly or easily, that there are still battles that will be fought, there's still a need for photon torpedoes and phasers because violence and greed and bigotry are huge forces that need to be accepted as reality, and fought as cleanly as possible. My preference will always be for a Universal Federation of Planets, with no rogues states. I'm smart enough, though, to know it won't be a quick and easy process to achieve. I know that because I see it, every day.
Now let's talk energy policy. The same people who claimed President Obama would never force BP to pay for the Gulf Oil Spill (oops, wrong again) are now busy claiming that he'll OK the Keystone pipeline down the road. And you know what, he just might, now that new pipeline regulations and inspections are in place, now that new guidelines for environmental impact permitted for pipelines are in place, now that the EPA is stronger than it's been in decades, he just might strip the GOP of yet another moronic talking point by okaying that pipeline, as long as it meets all current standards, because the company that built Keystone 1 is sure as hell not going to invest the money Keystone XL would require because they can't make a large enough profit on it.
The people who are yelling about opening up new areas to drilling have missed the fact that the most vulnerable areas are still protected, that those new regulations they apparently know nothing about will make most of that drilling a financial sinkhole for oil companies, and that he remains very busy over here, out of the spotlight, creating a strong business climate for those who are gutsy enough to invest in alternate energy development.
How long do you think his tacit nod to Natural Gas development will survive the revelations of the dangers of fracking? Once again, strip the Republicans of a propaganda tool, and let reality guide the process. Should he be helping the Republicans win elections by scaring people to death, or should he be respecting the innate survival instincts of We, The People by insisting that the facts come out so we can make sensible choices?
(Isn't one of our major problems as a nation the fact that so many of our citizens choose ignorance over feeling the helplessness the nature of our issues engenders? We're not naturally stupid people, but we are very vulnerable to fear-mongering and sound-bite politics.)
This is Obama's style, and it's working for him, for us, and against the Republicans and their corporate owners.
Every time President Obama "caved" on keeping tax cuts for the wealthy he gained the more important ground - continuing unemployment benefits, continuing tax cuts for the rest of us, continuing to pay our bills (and avoiding a planetary crash), with the added deliciousness of slipping more funding for Pell Grants into the pot.
And, every single time, he saddled the Republicans with their clear preference for protecting the wealthy from paying a fair share over any other national priority. They'll burn the entire country down to protect a few thousand rich folks, and there are very few people who remain unaware of that reality. This is the first time the Republicans stand fully revealed and it's hurting them badly.
Swaggering, bullying, yelling - yeah it would have been satisfying for a minute or two, but it wouldn't have changed the wider narrative and that's the most important change, the thing that's critically necessary if we're to pull back from the dive off a cliff that leads us to third world nation status.
Back to the financial sector. For the first time ever, shadow banking institutions are regulated. Most of the bad loans that contributed to our financial crash were written by shadow banks and mortgage brokers/companies. There was no oversight, there were no regulations, they can be charged with no crimes. With Richard Cordrey's appointment, the CFPB has full authority to regulate and reign in that segment of the financial sector, and he's already begun the process. You might prefer to believe it's just an accident that this was ready to put in place the day he was appointed. I prefer to see a more realistic possibility - that President Obama protected and nurtured the CFPB from day one, made use of Elizabeth Warren's prodigious gifts during the set-up phase, kept Congress out of the loop WRT funding for the new department, and chose the best possible man to lead it, freeing Elizabeth Warren to become a strong force in Congress.
So how is any of that proof that Obama is BFF with banksters? You really have to twist yourself into knots, or tell a lot of lies, to make that case. Sadly, there are "respected" "progressives" who do both, and poison the well for those who aren't lying or pretzled.
I strongly suspect that they're not only not Progressives, some of them seem to have a desire to trash the whole Progressive movement because incremental change isn't as romantic and exciting as fiery revolution, especially when you're far removed from the consequences of fiery revolution.
If you've been seduced into believing that destroying what we have is the only answer, I'd recommend that you make sure you have a foreign residence that's easy to get to before you start throwing bombs and shooting up Wall Street.
Or the rest of us could hope that you'll develop the grasp of history required to understand that revolution nearly always results in severe harm to the very people you think you're saving, and that most of the Noble Revolutionary Leaders end up being the new 1%, and are generally far worse for the 99% than the old 1% could ever hope to be.
The American Revolution was an anomaly. Just ask the French who suffered under Napoleon, or the Russians who starved for decades after Lenin fought for the People's Paradise, or the Iranians, an amazing people with a profound and meaningful cultural heritage, who are living lives of physical and intellectual desperation under a regime that despises who they really are. We could be those same people, with little possibility of undoing our mistakes.
Here are a couple more things I'm tired of hearing about. The Public Option, which was weak tea compare to many parts of the ACA. Single-Payer. He Wouldn't Fight For Single Payer!!!! - which may become a real possibility as more and more Americans discover that our health care system is a mobfuck that mostly succeeds in enriching a few, while killing far too many. And that discovery will be driven by the effectiveness of the ACA over time.
Once you get your first refund check from an insurance company that overcharged you, you're likely to start wondering how much too much you've paid over the years. You're likely to wonder why so many people worked so hard to convince you to hate this legislation. You're likely to get it that your boss didn't get you the best possible health care plan, it was the cheapest one for him, which makes it not so easy to defend our existing system.
If we haven't been effective in teaching people how the ACA is now helping them and will come to benefit them even more, we're working against achieving our ultimate goal, which I always thought was a single-payer plan. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe the reason we can't sell this initial change is that we've been fully infiltrated by people who have sold us the idea that imperfection is enough of a reason to destroy it. And who would those people be? I'll leave that to you to parse out.
There are a lot of reasons to be angry with how things are right now. There are very few reasons to blame them on President Obama, unless you know in your heart that you'll be richer if rMoney is in the WH next year.
Don't tell me Obama didn't close Gitmo, tell me you're pissed at the Democrats who voted to keep it open because they're so scared of being accused of being soft on terrorists.
Don't tell me the NDAA was a singularly wretched and utterly new piece of legislation. This has happened every year since the AUMF was overwhelmingly passed after 9/11. This version was actually far better on protecting individual rights than those from the past, and IT WAS VETO PROOF. Hmm, how could that have happened, with a majority of Dems in the Senate? I wonder who I might have better reason to vilify?
Focus all your frustration on one person, and you can fool yourself into thinking you have more power to change the system. It's an illusion, but given the enormity of the problems we face, many will choose the illusion rather than gird up for the long battle.
Actually accepting that we're deep in a hole that will take years to dig out of is scary, and irritating, and often infuriating. I would rather take the reality side of the coin, not because Obama is the perfect President, but because he's done an incredible amount, against nearly insurmountable opposition from both sides, that gives me hope for the future. I'm willing to be one of the boots on the ground he needs in order to turn this country toward sanity and away from destruction.
I'm willing to take the time to look underneath the noise and the frenzy to see what might be most true. I think there are a whole lot of people here who are doing exactly that, and I thank Goddess/Great Spirit/ the power of light and love for each one of them. I'm not feeling particularly charitable toward those who perpetuate myths and lies, and I really can't be guilted into playing nicer with them. That's a gift that's come with age.
One more thing, please don't tell me "This helps", at this point. I've been trying to point out the importance of eking out the truth for a long time, and I'm no longer interested in gathering in those who are choosing to disseminate lies and foment dissension. I don't care to provide links to people who can use Google themselves, if they want to. I'm baffled about how people can possibly slam President Obama for not using the bully pulpit or getting his message out when they're the same people who bemoan our corporate media environment. It exists or it doesn't, don't choose what you "know" based on your annoyance level with the president. Don't tell me he hasn't done so and so when I can find proof that he's done it, and I'm a lousy search artist. Don't ask me to be tolerant of faux revolutionaries who somehow believe they'll be spared the horrors of revolution, not when I know my ass will be in a ditch and I'll be scrambling for scraps of food - if I live.