Why do you like Obama?

[Torie]

He works out.

[WhyteRain]

You have to understand the anti-rationality and pure emotionalism of the Left's leading lights.

Jonathan Chait, the leftwing extremist and Obamabot, said it best in The New Republic in 2003.  In essence, liberals like Chait hate conservatives like Bush because they remind them, painfully, of the boys who got all the girls in high school.  Basically, it's the same reason why many liberal women hate Sarah Palin.

This is why liberals fail so disastrously in government.  They base so many of their decisions on emotions of hate and fear that normal people left behind before age 25.

Whats that got to do with Liberals liking a good looking cool guy like Obama?

You're right.  I realized a few minutes after posting it that I was describing just the "Bush hatred", not the "Obama love".  The "Obama love" stems from the same source though.  Liberals read Obama's biographies and loved what they saw -- a mixed-race guy who rejected the heritage of the white American people who succored him, but not a guy with a scary "Ebonics" accent like Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton.  Liberals loved to read that Obama

"I ceased to advertise my mother's race at the age of 12 or 13, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites."

White liberals eat this sh**t up.

To avoid being mistaken for a sellout,I chose my friends carefully.The more politically active black students.The foreign students.The Chicanos.The Marxist Professors and the structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets.We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets.At night,in the dorms,we discussed neocolonialism,Franz Fanon,Eurocentrism,and patriarchy.When we ground out our cigarettes in the hallway carpet or set our stereos so loud that the walls began to shake,we were resisting bourgeois society's stifling constraints.We weren't indifferent or careless or insecure.We were alienated.

For liberals, this stuff was Obama's best feature -- "He totally rejected white Christian civilization -- he's one of us!"  To the rest of Americans (the 80%), this stuff was a bug.  Liberals were pissed to discover this.  It's why they've gone from quoting Obama's books to despising anyone who does.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Ivy league educated black man who is successful,

[politicus]

You have to understand the anti-rationality and pure emotionalism of the Left's leading lights.

Jonathan Chait, the leftwing extremist and Obamabot, said it best in The New Republic in 2003.  In essence, liberals like Chait hate conservatives like Bush because they remind them, painfully, of the boys who got all the girls in high school.  Basically, it's the same reason why many liberal women hate Sarah Palin.

This is why liberals fail so disastrously in government.  They base so many of their decisions on emotions of hate and fear that normal people left behind before age 25.

Whats that got to do with Liberals liking a good looking cool guy like Obama?

You're right.  I realized a few minutes after posting it that I was describing just the "Bush hatred", not the "Obama love".  The "Obama love" stems from the same source though.  Liberals read Obama's biographies and loved what they saw -- a mixed-race guy who rejected the heritage of the white American people who succored him, but not a guy with a scary "Ebonics" accent like Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton.  Liberals loved to read that Obama

"I ceased to advertise my mother's race at the age of 12 or 13, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites."

White liberals eat this sh**t up.

To avoid being mistaken for a sellout,I chose my friends carefully.The more politically active black students.The foreign students.The Chicanos.The Marxist Professors and the structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets.We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets.At night,in the dorms,we discussed neocolonialism,Franz Fanon,Eurocentrism,and patriarchy.When we ground out our cigarettes in the hallway carpet or set our stereos so loud that the walls began to shake,we were resisting bourgeois society's stifling constraints.We weren't indifferent or careless or insecure.We were alienated.[/i]

For liberals, this stuff was Obama's best feature -- "He totally rejected white Christian civilization -- he's one of us!"  To the rest of Americans (the 80%), this stuff was a bug.  Liberals were pissed to discover this.  It's why they've gone from quoting Obama's books to despising anyone who does.

You realize he is being ironic in this passage? Its clearly written tongue in cheek.

[WhyteRain]

We've had, what, five Ivy Leaguer presidents in a row?  And none of them holds a candle to the guy from Eureka College.

And, no, I'm not jealous.  I went to a flagship state university on the G.I. Bill and my twin sister's son just graduated from Harvard Law last year.  But one thing I've learned about highly-credentialed people (and as a newspaper reporter, I had an exclusive four-hour interview with then candidate George H.W. Bush who made a point to tell me that he was Phi Beta Kappa), is that they often think they are smarter than they are.

In my experience, leaders who think they are the smartest people in the room usually aren't very good leaders.

[WhyteRain]

You have to understand the anti-rationality and pure emotionalism of the Left's leading lights.

Jonathan Chait, the leftwing extremist and Obamabot, said it best in The New Republic in 2003.  In essence, liberals like Chait hate conservatives like Bush because they remind them, painfully, of the boys who got all the girls in high school.  Basically, it's the same reason why many liberal women hate Sarah Palin.

This is why liberals fail so disastrously in government.  They base so many of their decisions on emotions of hate and fear that normal people left behind before age 25.

Whats that got to do with Liberals liking a good looking cool guy like Obama?

You're right.  I realized a few minutes after posting it that I was describing just the "Bush hatred", not the "Obama love".  The "Obama love" stems from the same source though.  Liberals read Obama's biographies and loved what they saw -- a mixed-race guy who rejected the heritage of the white American people who succored him, but not a guy with a scary "Ebonics" accent like Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton.  Liberals loved to read that Obama

"I ceased to advertise my mother's race at the age of 12 or 13, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites."

White liberals eat this sh**t up.

To avoid being mistaken for a sellout,I chose my friends carefully.The more politically active black students.The foreign students.The Chicanos.The Marxist Professors and the structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets.We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets.At night,in the dorms,we discussed neocolonialism,Franz Fanon,Eurocentrism,and patriarchy.When we ground out our cigarettes in the hallway carpet or set our stereos so loud that the walls began to shake,we were resisting bourgeois society's stifling constraints.We weren't indifferent or careless or insecure.We were alienated.[/i]

For liberals, this stuff was Obama's best feature -- "He totally rejected white Christian civilization -- he's one of us!"  To the rest of Americans (the 80%), this stuff was a bug.  Liberals were pissed to discover this.  It's why they've gone from quoting Obama's books to despising anyone who does.

You realize he is being ironic in this passage? Its clearly written tongue in cheek.

Oh.... Then what did he really mean? 

[Bull Moose Base]

We've had, what, five Ivy Leaguer presidents in a row?  And none of them holds a candle to the guy from Eureka College.

And, no, I'm not jealous.  I went to a flagship state university on the G.I. Bill and my twin sister's son just graduated from Harvard Law last year.  But one thing I've learned about highly-credentialed people (and as a newspaper reporter, I had an exclusive four-hour interview with then candidate George H.W. Bush who made a point to tell me that he was Phi Beta Kappa), is that they often think they are smarter than they are.

In my experience, leaders who think they are the smartest people in the room usually aren't very good leaders.

Huh?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

You have to understand the anti-rationality and pure emotionalism of the Left's leading lights.

Jonathan Chait, the leftwing extremist and Obamabot, said it best in The New Republic in 2003.  In essence, liberals like Chait hate conservatives like Bush because they remind them, painfully, of the boys who got all the girls in high school.  Basically, it's the same reason why many liberal women hate Sarah Palin.

This is why liberals fail so disastrously in government.  They base so many of their decisions on emotions of hate and fear that normal people left behind before age 25.

Whats that got to do with Liberals liking a good looking cool guy like Obama?

You're right.  I realized a few minutes after posting it that I was describing just the "Bush hatred", not the "Obama love".  The "Obama love" stems from the same source though.  Liberals read Obama's biographies and loved what they saw -- a mixed-race guy who rejected the heritage of the white American people who succored him, but not a guy with a scary "Ebonics" accent like Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton.  Liberals loved to read that Obama

"I ceased to advertise my mother's race at the age of 12 or 13, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites."

White liberals eat this sh**t up.

To avoid being mistaken for a sellout,I chose my friends carefully.The more politically active black students.The foreign students.The Chicanos.The Marxist Professors and the structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets.We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets.At night,in the dorms,we discussed neocolonialism,Franz Fanon,Eurocentrism,and patriarchy.When we ground out our cigarettes in the hallway carpet or set our stereos so loud that the walls began to shake,we were resisting bourgeois society's stifling constraints.We weren't indifferent or careless or insecure.We were alienated.[/i]

For liberals, this stuff was Obama's best feature -- "He totally rejected white Christian civilization -- he's one of us!"  To the rest of Americans (the 80%), this stuff was a bug.  Liberals were pissed to discover this.  It's why they've gone from quoting Obama's books to despising anyone who does.

You realize he is being ironic in this passage? Its clearly written tongue in cheek.

Oh.... Then what did he really mean? 

Presumably that that had, indeed, been his attitude in college, as college students who feel marginalized are wont to have. Why should there be any indication that that has any effect whatsoever on the charmingly pedestrian and wholesome domestic life that the Obamas by all indications currently lead?

[WhyteRain]

You have to understand the anti-rationality and pure emotionalism of the Left's leading lights.

Jonathan Chait, the leftwing extremist and Obamabot, said it best in The New Republic in 2003.  In essence, liberals like Chait hate conservatives like Bush because they remind them, painfully, of the boys who got all the girls in high school.  Basically, it's the same reason why many liberal women hate Sarah Palin.

This is why liberals fail so disastrously in government.  They base so many of their decisions on emotions of hate and fear that normal people left behind before age 25.

Whats that got to do with Liberals liking a good looking cool guy like Obama?

You're right.  I realized a few minutes after posting it that I was describing just the "Bush hatred", not the "Obama love".  The "Obama love" stems from the same source though.  Liberals read Obama's biographies and loved what they saw -- a mixed-race guy who rejected the heritage of the white American people who succored him, but not a guy with a scary "Ebonics" accent like Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton.  Liberals loved to read that Obama

"I ceased to advertise my mother's race at the age of 12 or 13, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites."

White liberals eat this sh**t up.

To avoid being mistaken for a sellout,I chose my friends carefully.The more politically active black students.The foreign students.The Chicanos.The Marxist Professors and the structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets.We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets.At night,in the dorms,we discussed neocolonialism,Franz Fanon,Eurocentrism,and patriarchy.When we ground out our cigarettes in the hallway carpet or set our stereos so loud that the walls began to shake,we were resisting bourgeois society's stifling constraints.We weren't indifferent or careless or insecure.We were alienated.[/i]

For liberals, this stuff was Obama's best feature -- "He totally rejected white Christian civilization -- he's one of us!"  To the rest of Americans (the 80%), this stuff was a bug.  Liberals were pissed to discover this.  It's why they've gone from quoting Obama's books to despising anyone who does.

You realize he is being ironic in this passage? Its clearly written tongue in cheek.

Oh.... Then what did he really mean? 

Presumably that that had, indeed, been his attitude in college, as college students who feel marginalized are wont to have. Why should there be any indication that that has any effect whatsoever on the charmingly pedestrian and wholesome domestic life that the Obamas by all indications currently lead?

He said he did these things "to avoid being mistaken for a sellout".  So what you're saying is he's now doing the opposite so to be mistaken for a sellout?  That makes sense.  Otherwise we have to suppose that he's actually sold out and become an adherent to upper-class white American male cultural conventions.  Which would be worse -- that he's actually sold out his college-age principles or that he's merely pretending to?  I'm really not sure.

[milhouse24]

He passed Universal Health Care, so Small Business owners can get more taxes and not hire more people.  More taxes, mean more unemployment, but more benefits for the unemployed, so that's nice. 

Wake up liberals, small business owners are not hiring because they fear the high taxes from Universal health care, not because they can't hire any new people. 

They think Obama will institute more taxes that swamp small business owners and corporations.  What's the point of hiring new people, when you have to use that money to pay off government taxes?

[LastVoter]

He passed Universal Health Care, so Small Business owners can get more taxes and not hire more people.  More taxes, mean more unemployment, but more benefits for the unemployed, so that's nice. 

Wake up liberals, small business owners are not hiring because they fear the high taxes from Universal health care, not because they can't hire any new people. 

They think Obama will institute more taxes that swamp small business owners and corporations.  What's the point of hiring new people, when you have to use that money to pay off government taxes?

This Republican meme....

[WhyteRain]

If some Obama supporter were to say that "the investor class is deliberately not investing because they want to punish Obama and elect a replacement", I would not be able to disagree.  (I think that makes more sense than the idea that the Republicans in Congress won't pass bills due to the same motivation -- after all, a bad economy hurts all elected officials, not just the ones at the very top.  Besides, the GOPers have passed lots of bills only to see them personally killed by Harry Reid who, when he's not busy not passing a federal budget, won't permit votes on them in the Senate.)

If you go back and watch that "Rick Santelli rant" that launched the Tea Party (or at least named it), you'll see that Rick was standing in a trading pit and the traders were cheering him.

[Redalgo]

I like everyone as a default until given reasons not to. In the case of President Obama, I find his personal background, charisma, and general demeanor in public more charming than not, and he probably shares my values insofar as his concerns center on showing compassion and seeking justice for people - especially those who have been wronged by the established moral order. Also, having spent my entire life under administrations that are either conservative or of a neo-liberal, Third Way bent, I consider a progressive President in general an exciting rarity (even if they are somewhat moderate in practice and cannot translate a lot of their policy objectives into realities).

The political perspectives of President Obama are more of a mixed bag to me. His views on global warming, minimum wage increases, net neutrality, parental responsibility, representation for the District of Columbia, rights for the disabled, sex education, stem cell research, and women's rights seem agreeable and, among other things, at least some of his positions on environmental, foreign aid, health care, immigration, LBGT, nuclear non-proliferation and abolition, racial, tax, trade, and welfare related issues are appealing to me, as well. Though he is not my first (or even second) choice for President this year, Barack Obama is still a pretty decent, likable guy so far as I can tell.

Given enough research on the fellow there would be things to turn up that I would almost certainly consider repugnant, but in general one cannot reasonably expect human beings to be squeaky clean paragons of virtuous perfection – especially when one goes through their entire past with a fine-tooth comb. It would take a big bombshell of sorts to turn my opinion of the bloke around one-eighty at this point, though I will cede that I have grown gradually more disenchanted with him on grounds of his policies over the past few years. Still, that much is just a result of me being squarely to the administration’s left on a lot of issues – not Obama himself being a horrible person.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

He's not Bush.

Oh he's not so so different in the international arena than Dub.....

[milhouse24]

He passed Universal Health Care, so Small Business owners can get more taxes and not hire more people.  More taxes, mean more unemployment, but more benefits for the unemployed, so that's nice. 

Wake up liberals, small business owners are not hiring because they fear the high taxes from Universal health care, not because they can't hire any new people. 

They think Obama will institute more taxes that swamp small business owners and corporations.  What's the point of hiring new people, when you have to use that money to pay off government taxes?

This Republican meme....

Actually, the new liberal meme is "8% unemployment" is the "new normal"

Obama is changing the rules of the game, meaning that the economy stabilizes at 8% unemployment with increased government benefits to the poor and unemployed. 

Congrats everyone, we are now living in France.  Obama is great because it could have been a lot worse, right. 

[pbrower2a]

* better job creation than BushII despite post-GFC and GOP Congress (the "it's not as good as it should have been" argument basically shows how little they understand how deep the GFC went)
* got rid of DADT
* defending planned parenthood
* lowest rate of government spending growth since I don't remember when
* Improved standing in the International community (conciliation vs separation and isolation)
* got Healthcare reforms passed (something that evaded, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter and Clinton)
* Wall St reforms

....

This. Plus Lilly Ledbetter (I still for the life of me can't understand why republicans hate this so much), S-Chip, etc. Plus I really like him as a person:  he has a compelling life story and has inspired a lot of young people. It's so peculiar to me the absolute demonization of Barack Obama who rose from nothing to the presidency, unlike Bush, Clinton, and the whole rest of the crew...

It's because Corporate America makes profits off enforceable exploitation and does not want the booty of such exploitation taken away. Think of why Corporate America hates unions. It claims that it likes to negotiate individually with workers on their merits as workers, one-on-one. Of course it is anything but one-on-one; the corporations have experts on staff to determine how weak a bargaining position a worker has so that such can be exploited.

Remember the ethos that corporate bureaucrats who have no intimacy with working people have: no human suffering is excessive if there is a profit to be derived from it. 

Scenario: you are a 23-year-old man working in the shipping-and-receiving department, and your wife just had a baby. The experts find that out and one of them tells you that in view of your needs you can afford to make an investment in the profitability of the company -- a 20% pay cut.

Collective bargaining prevents such abuse. It does not prevent a corporation from giving special breaks to those who are unusually competent -- like promotions to positions with greater responsibility or requiring more skill and of course higher pay. 

Do you prefer that workers do their jobs well -- or that they concern themselves largely with watching their backs from corporate elites?   

[The Mikado]

Sotomayor and Kagan.

[Donerail]

He's not Bush.

Oh he's not so so different in the international arena than Dub.....

Well aware, which is why that's the only reason I could think of for liking him