Your best buddy Sullivan offers a little perspective: http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/th…

I'm sure you're seen it, but would be curious to hear your specific disagreements.

Electrifying campaigner, spineless politician.

This fucking asswipe is making Jimmy Carter look like a great president. Go ahead and vote for him again - it's a free country. But I think I'll be voting for someone else.

Anyone who thinks that Democrats need someone who hates Republicans with every fiber of their being is the same as Republicans who hate Democrats with every fiber of their being.

You have bought into a two-dimensional stereotype of what the other side is supposed to be, but isn't, but you will never know what the other side actually is, because you put your hatred of it first, before reality. Every time you scream "no compromise!" you're echoing the other side's exact same scream.

You're part of the problem, not the solution.

Stick to relationship advice.

all voting democratic does is (barely) slow the movement of the federal government to the right. it does not bring the government left. if you are a progressive, voting democratic does nothing to advance your ideals, and imo is throwing your vote away. actually, it is worse than throwing your vote away, because it directly advances the opposition's cause. the only play i can see at this point for ultimately moving the government to the left, is to vote 3rd party. force the democrats to lose because of pressure on their left and they will respond policy wise. can't see how any leftward momentum can be gained by voting for them as the continue to go farther & farther to the right.

#5: FTW!

@6 Yeah, good luck with that.

@8 so you see voting democratic as a viable means for moving the federal government to the left? please explain how/why.

I'm sorry, but failed? The Washington Post doesn't know what the fuck they're talking about. Here's something that I know matters to you: The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. What's that? Oh, nothing much. It just made expanded the definition of hate crime to include crimes motivated by a victim's sexual orientation or gender identity. That's right, it didn't use to be a hate crime to beat up gays. Obama signed that bad boy into law.

And guess what? We're pretty much a two-party nation, with three branches. It's called checks and balances, and it's there for a reason. And Obama isn't able to get anything done with people blindly voting against everything he ever wants because they don't like him. But that's what's happening.

And read comment number 5, that bear knows what he's talking about.

The best thing we can do right now is get involved with issues we care about, vote, and wait for the old bigots and crazy people to die.

Remember that you're not required to vote for anyone. I'll never vote Republican, but I may not vote Democrat either. I for sure won't vote for Gregoire again, and Obama has just about lost me. There are always some interesting initiatives to vote on, but I may just leave President and Governor blank.

@4 As a member of the NRA board of directors, aren't you realistically voting Republican most of the time anyway? If you look at the NRA PVF endorsements there are relatively few Dem candidates that score highly (which should be pretty obvious).

@5 Well put. We can and should still be pissed off at the individual failures of the Obama administration, but you make a good point.

It is depressing, isn't it, Dan? And I think for our mental health, we might want to step away from it for a while, but it's hard to do that when one's undercurrent wants to know, "What are those fuckers up to now?"

I don't know exactly how this country got so very partisan to the point that any sort of progress gets slapped down. I don't know when the country got so nonchalant that it sits aside and lets someone chair a Congressional committee on global warming who believes global warming is all a myth because after Noah's flood, God promised he'd never destroy the Earth again. We're graduating kids from high school who can't spell Vietnam or find it on a map, but they can recite John 3:16 as dictum. We (Americans) are becoming the world's re-uh-leotards and laughing stock and so many members of Congress don't really care as long as those checks keep arriving. Don't believe me? Look at their net worth before they arrived in Washington and compare it to their net worth after a term or two. You can't tell me that's all speaking engagements.

Ready to move to Canada, Dan - where we are recognized as full citizens with all the rights and privileges of other Canadians? And where, I might add, government, while not totally squeaky clean, sure has its collective head screwed on right.

@9 The country swings between liberal and conservative in a regular cycle. Since WWII the US has been very liberal. It's swinging to the right now because that's what most people want. There isn't some suppressed liberal tendency in the country that isn't being represented. The Democrats in Congress are voting the way they are because they know that's what will get them reelected (i.e., what their constituents want).

You can't game the system to move it left if most people in the country want it further right.

Substantive change is usually slow and boring, plagued with set-backs and lateral moves. The ADD Nation approach you favor shoots itself in the foot by crucifying any leader who fails to produce miracles overnight.

By pushing this meme that Obama is a sell-out and a failure, you are helping to bring about the very sort of government you claim to be against. Causes do not gather political momentum through the apathy and disunity of their advocates.

The voters on the opposing side are patient and united.

Hernandez: Not always, no. You might be surprised.

"If that's the standard for measuring core principles let's face it, we will never get anything done. People will have the satisfaction of having purist positions and no victories for the American people!"

(see: http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/Obama… )

@17: Just about the whole NRA bit, can you tell me why you guys don't support waiting-period laws, or want to close the gun-show loophole?

Among the undesirable alternatives is "the failed one-termer who set the stage for the Tea Party's Mad Hatter".

This is gonna sound stupid but if you want the political climate to get better you need to start pretending its better. Your tone needs to carry one of hope and a (sorry) Can-do-attitude. This kind of optimism will help curb the tremendous amount of fear being generated everywhere by everything.

Nobody should accept fake hope as stopping place, we would all have to build real change and hope and crap, but the attitudes need a boost, even if its an imaginary one.

After Obama got elected we had that, nothing changed but everyone decided to change their feelings. It really helps in getting people motivated, it also helps make criticism of the president feel poignant, like its coming from a rational place and needs to be addressed.

Republicans decided to stop the pretense of playing fair, SO IT NO LONGER MATTERS WHAT PARTY IS IN POWER. In the future we need to elect rational people who don't want to use fear as a speaking tool.

Happily, VL. But I'm not going to de-rail the thread right now. Check back later tonight after things have died down a bit.

@5 that's just useless ideology of niceness. its a fantasy in our time and place. if you want your policies advanced you need a ball buster, whatever your viewpoint. that's where things are now whether you like it or not.

@19 You weren't asking me, but I'm a member of the NRA, and speaking for myself, I do support those things. (Also just to interject, lefties think of the NRA as some crazed group of rabid gun-lovers, but the actual gun nuts out there view it as being basically a liberal group of gun-hating collaborationist hippies.) I also support closing the gun show loophole. It's harder to get a driver's license than a gun license, even though guns are dangerous (although owning a gun is statistically far safer than owning a car).

The reason there's intransigence among gun owners, though, is because there's intransigence among anti-gun people. One thing that has been repeated so often it has lost all meaning - but still remains true - is that making guns illegal will only keep guns out of the hands of people who will only buy guns if they're legal. In other words, only criminals - people who are willing to break laws, by definition - will have guns.

People who own guns legally are not the problem. Gun violence in the US (and gun violence is a problem) is almost entirely a class/race thing. If ghettos didn't exist, if there was no gang violence, the US would have gun homicide rates comparable to those in Europe. (Although US rates aren't that much higher than they are in some European countries anyway, especially compared to places like South America and Eastern Europe.)

I'm not saying "it's the blacks'/Latinos'/Asians' fault," though. I'm saying that this country has a problem with poverty that is closely associated with race. We need to find a way to fix it. Making guns illegal will do nothing to stop gangs from getting guns.

The vast majority of people killing each other with guns do it with illegally procured guns, so naturally the people who won't have access to guns if they're made illegal (i.e., people who obey the law) see themselves (and their rights--it's in the constitution after all) as unfairly targeted. Trust me, all these people (and me included) don't want guns for any reason other than to protect ourselves and our families, for sport, and for hunting.

(Accidents involving children are tragic, but very rare. If you care about kids, make cars and pools illegal. That will save many, many, many more children's lives than making guns illegal.)

If the anti people were a bit more realistic about guns and stopped viewing them as an inherent evil and shuddering at the mere mention of them, and stopped demonizing people who own guns legally, the pro people would be more amenable to more stringent licensing laws. But the former is about as likely as the latter: i.e., not very.

@5: I'm perfectly happy with compromise if we start with two or more options that represent a range of social/political perspectives. The problem is that we're given the options Right-of-Center, Extremely-Right-of-Center, and So-Batshit-Crazy-Right-of-Center-I-Can't-Believe-You're-Not-in-Prison-For-Murdering-the-Gay-Man-Down-the-Street. When that's the starting position, there IS no "compromise" position that's actually a compromise. Take health care/insurance reform: we started with Single Payer (Left-of-Center, granted, as everyone buys-in via taxes and everyone is covered), Public Option (Right-of-Center, as it's an at-will public service, much like an at-will buy-in to fire department coverage or public higher education), full privatization with some regulation (what we had before Reagan and what we wound up with, solidly Right-of-Center), and no regulation (batshit crazy, and what we were close to before the bill. Public hospitals were never part of the legislative debate (and only part of the news-media circus for a day or two), nor was banning for-profit insurance, setting cost controls for health care as opposed to insurance, etc. Public Option IS a Right-of-Center compromise. Progressives aren't pissed because of a lack of compromise or unwilling to compromise, we just want Obama to stop capitulating. I realize I don't get my Socialist Utopia; they also shouldn't get their Laissez-faire corporate serf state.

@6: Either that, or vote in the primaries to get Leftier candidates AND vote in the general election to stop the faster Rightward slide. Given the rate at which the Republicans fuck things up and how long it takes to drag things back, splitting the party in two is an awesome strategy if you don't care about the generation of people who are going to be fucked in the interim. The unemployment rate for Black men in my city is over 50% right now: go tell them you're going to stop opposing the political forces that want to kill all social welfare programs because you're disillusioned with the slow Rightward slide of the Democrats.

Oops, did I derail the thread? Sorry.

@23 No, it's not. Like it or not, you live in a country that's approx. half-filled with people who disagree with you on a lot of things, and if you want this country to stay married, you're going to have to compromise. That's the way life works.

It's like he's playing poker but insists on showing the other players his hand before he bets.

@16 That is also a great point. The Republican base has been very patient over the last couple of years. Their reaction to the passage of health care reform was much more measured than I expected, for example (i.e. they didn't wallow in despair, they immediately started planning for an eventual repeal). More so than being angry and confrontational, the Repubs are winning the political battle because this time they are the ones willing to look ahead, while Dems are entirely lost in the self-pity of the moment.

@17 Well, in your case that does make a lot of sense. Your opinions certainly don't pigeonhole you in one camp or the other. I don't know how much loyalty the organization demands, or what shape that loyalty would need to take.

@16 I don't think we're pushing a meme that Obama is a sell-out and a failure, I think we're pushing the facts. Healthcare was a give-away to the insurance industry w/ only the slight possibility of future cost containment, banking reform has mostly been left up to lobbyists to write, and now we'll be throwing ~700 billion into the never to be seen again bank vaults of the oligarchs when we need all we can get for middle class relief, infrastructure and other actual societal goods. We've put off the hard decisions for too long and they're now just too gynormous to be solved incrementally over the next decade on the whims of corporate lackeys. We need strong progressive leadership, and that is what I’m working to bring about. Seeing our President consistently cave when he has public support and the facts on his side is inexcusable. #6 is right, slightly slowing down the inexorable right tilt of the democrats will not solve our problems.

@26 to compromise we need someone who can bust the balls of the bullies. "you live in a country that's approx. half-filled with people who disagree with you on a lot of things" exactly. explain that nicely to the other half and see if they care.

and personally i would love to see this country break apart so that, for example, eastern wa and or can do what they want and western cascadia can go where it wants. but im not crossing my fingers for it to happen in my lifetime.

Or, Will: It's almost like he knew he didn't have the votes in the Senate to invoke cloture without a compromise. (Or did we forget about that wee lil' detail?*)

*a detail that makes all the difference when trying to, you know, actually PASS some laws rather than just argue about them ad infinitum.

@30 You'd be surprised. They're willing to compromise on a lot of things. They're not that different from you.

@32 thanks for the lesson. by your tone i guess i must have my head up my ass and not know anyone who thinks differently than me.
in fact i think your 50/50 dichotomy is false. closer to thirds, with 2/3 willing to do what it takes to advance their agenda and 1/3 sit on the fence and just let the players decide. you im assuming are in that last 1/3.

@33 I don't know what you're talking about. My tone? I'm serious about you being surprised. You would be. They've compromised on a lot of things so far.

While I really didn't care for Obama's finger wagging at the liberal base, the fact remains that the proposal he *did* push for, with the $250K plus being exempted from the extensions failed Saturday's vote... The Republicans (natch) plus four Democrats voted against it. Those Dems? Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Jim Webb of Virginia, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin.

So... given that vote failed (and I'm looking at YOU, you gawdawful Senate) then what?

*facepalm*

This past week has really tied it up for me. I've been an enthusiastic activist for 15 years. I've marched, chained myself to fences collected signatures, provided programs for women's services, the elderly, and LGBTQ teens. I've voted in every single election since I was 18, no matter how insignificant.

But in the past 5 days I've just realized that for 10 years I've been struggling to wait for a progressive leader to put right what Bush put wrong. And that is never, ever going to happen.

I think my political side just died. But who cares? America isn't exactly a fun place to live. It kinda sucks. And Obama can go suck with it.

luke1249,

The general public may be willing to compromise, but no one in the Republican Party is. Time after time, the President has reached out to them -- to the point where he's angering those of us who supported him because we wanted THE OPPOSITE of what Republicans in Congress wanted. And still they rebuff him and call him every name in the book.

How can you continue to sit down and compromise with someone who says that you are going to kill old people to save money on health care costs? Yet the President continues to do just that.

Explain one area where Republicans are willing to compromise. I won't hold my breath.

@36 Progressivism in America isn't dead, we've been hating Obama for awhiles now, dude (He had me at not caring at all about any accountability for torture.) But it's nice to see more progressives waking up to the fact that Obama isn't our man in the White House. It's looking more and more likely he'll have to face an actual progressive in a non-rubber stamp primary. There's hope.

@36: If you've really spent the last 15 years doing political activism, I'm not surprised that you feel that America is not a fun place.

You've been trying too hard. Take a political break. Stop trying to change the world, and in particular stop reading news. All of it! (Even the non-political stuff is a lens that distorts your fellow human beings). Go skiing, go hang out in bars and make new friends, bake a cake for your mom or something. Have some mindless fun for a while. The fun is there to be had.

@39

Extuno@36 never said that his/her last 15 years were ALL activism. What a sad way to live you propose. When things get too hard, go skiing. Was that in the I Have A Dream speech? Or was it Kennedy's Inaugural Address?

Maybe if more people stopped having mindless fun long enough to actually realize what's going on in this country, it wouldn't be so hard to change things.

@40: Ha! I forget, but isn't 'the Pursuit of Happiness' on some important document or other?

You entirely missed my point :p

Love you Dan, and agree with you 95% of the time. But. We must work in the world as it really is, not in the world as we wish it is. A "strong Progressive leader" in the White House is impossible right now. It just is. The math is just not there for this and it sucks, I know. Baby steps is the best we can do right now.

There's a lot of generalization in this thread. I think it's important to remember that some people are angry because specific legislation has specific consequences that they don't like.

American politics isn't a case of two sides equally blinded by ideology facing off over stuff that doesn't matter. And we're not all just good people stuck in a misunderstanding, but would get along if we just sat down and listened and compromised.

The Bush tax cuts plus two wars plus an economy crushed by Republican (and Clinton) deregulation of banks caused our country's debt to spiral out of control. It's not subject to opinion or partisanship. It's basic math and historical record.

The economy still hasn't recovered, and tax revenue is down. Extending tax breaks now to people that don't need it is a bad idea.

If you find yourself thinking 'but the rich create jobs with those tax cuts' you are ignoring the obvious fact that we lost these jobs with the tax cuts in place. 'Trickle Down Economics' has been proven time and again not to trickle down. Banks rescued by TARP aren't loaning. And the tax breaks Bush gave to the rich didn't make it to everybody else.

So by extending the tax cuts, we increase the deficit, which shrinks the value of the dollar which means the pay Americans earn buys less, and it does nothing to put people back to work. It's a bad idea. And that's why everyone that cares about the future of the majority of Americans (%99.9 of us) should be against extending them.

Compromise has no value in itself. It can be good or bad. Bipartisanship has no intrinsic value as a legislative tool.

Progressives are mad, not because they are stupid or crazy, but because bad policy that hurts this country is being enacted. I'm not mad at Republican leadership because I'm a progressive, I'm mad at them because their policies hurt me, my family, and my community, and they are lying about it. I'm not mad at the Republican base because I'm irrational, I'm flummoxed by them because they continually vote against their own better interests and the interests of this country.

Teachers in my county haven't gotten a raise for the past 3 years, and even though our taxes aren't going to go up again, neither will our salaries... again.

Obama's a pushover, but not showing up to the polls in 2012 isn't the answer. The answer is to bully this idiot into doing what needs to be done. He needs his feet to be thrown over the fire. We need to get angry, very angry.

Before anyone says "Republicans ruined this country," take a look around. How ruined is everything? Compare it to any country in the world. If the Republicans have been as hell-bent on destroying this country as people here portray them, then they're doing an awful job, considering the fact that they've been in control longer, over the sixty-five years since WWII ended, than the Democrats.

Newsflash: the Republicans aren't the evil people you think they are. They care about the country. They aren't destroying it, either. They have different priorities, but almost everything you believe is important, they do too.

Let me know when you get here, Bauhaus, I will take you for donuts and help you pick out snow tires... :)

Anyway, Venomlash, to answer your questions.

I know you don't want to hear this, but it's important to distinguish between a right and a privilege. I don't need anyone's permission to exercise my rights. Privileges can be granted or taken away at the government's pleasure. A driver's license is a privilege; gun ownership is a right.

Waiting periods. Aside from the foregoing, when people need a gun, they often need one right fucking now. Try telling someone who's being stalked, or whose life is being threatened, that they should just chill out and wait a while before buying a gun. I'd rather not be the one who has to tell them that.

The "Gun Show Loophole." First of all, there really isn't such a thing. Dealers who sell guns at gun shows are bound by the same laws as if they were selling a gun in a store. And dealers make up the vast majority of people selling guns at gun shows. Regardless, I, as a private citizen, have an absolute right to sell a gun (or give one, for that matter) to anyone I want to, as long as I don't have a reason to suspect them of being under-age or a felon. I can legally do this in my house, or even on the street. Why should the fact that I'm at a gun show make any difference? Notwithstanding that, very, very few guns bought in that manner are ever used in crimes. On top of that, as much as I disagree with the laws, most states now have laws banning individual sales at gun shows. There's no need for more legislation.

I hope that answers your questions.

@48: If it's every American's innate right to own a gun, why do we outlaw felons from owning guns? Surely there are limits to every right; we can exercise our right to free speech, for example, so long as we do not cry "fire" in the proverbial theater.
To address your claim that waiting periods endanger people, I'd like to remind you that if someone feels they are in immediate danger, they always have the option of going to the police during the three days or so that most waiting periods last. If someone is in dire need of medication, we still make them get a prescription. Why? Because some things should not be distributed willy-nilly. Firearms, being highly dangerous in the wrong hands (or untrained hands), deserve some amount of regulation.
In response to your statements about gun shows, I'd like to remind you that 50-75% (the usual range of estimates as to the proportion of vendors at gun shows who are in the firearms trade) is hardly a "vast majority". It does not matter how many of the vendors are full-time gun sellers, for that matter; a convicted felon wishing to buy a gun at a gun show will be able to acquire one if there are any non-dealers selling.
I would like to know from whence you claim the absolute right to sell firearms. The Second Amendment only guarantees the right to "keep and bear arms", not to deal in them. Private property is private property, of course, but it is the government's responsibility to regulate the exchange of certain goods when public safety demands it.

Luke1249... you mentioned hunting and your words reasonable enough. How do you justify going into the constantly shrinking wilderness, and killing the animals you find there?

How do you choose which animals deserve to get shot?

How does it make you feel?

I'm not entirely clear how your government works. Doesn't the president have some kind of political superpower to make things happen even without the support of the senate or whatever? If he doesn't have any power, why do you guy's spend billions of dollars electing one dude over the other?

@50 I don't hunt, but look into the issue of hunting and conservation. Hunters control populations (shooting out of season or an animal which you're not allowed to shoot comes with very big fines), and licenses and permits go to maintaining that wilderness. Contrary to popular belief, the wilderness is not actually shrinking in the US. Other places, Brazil etc., yes. The US doesn't have that problem, partly thanks to hunting organizations. Believe it or not, one of the strongest voices for wilderness conservation in the country is the much-reviled Ted Nugent.

As to how killing animals feels, animals that are hunted and eaten live natural lives and die quickly. If you're a vegetarian concerned about animal welfare, the LAST people you should be going after are hunters, and the first should be the massive slaughterhouses where animals are born into lives of slow torture and are then killed by machines that don't even check that they're dead. You should also put Kosher and Halal facilities at the top of your list, since those animals are killed without even the numbing electric shock that other animals get.

@51 No, thank god.

This isn't a political compromise, this is bending over plain and simple. The President isn't the only one either, Republicans are bending over for the richest people in this country, the only ones who actually get to decide things. Anybody who thinks this is only a small step backwards has completely lost their sense of logic. I don't know about you, but this is one of the main reasons I voted for the guy, so that the rich would stop having such a stranglehold on every dollar in this country. Just wait until 2012 when Obama gets reelected and then.....what? What exactly is he going to do for us then? I can't wait.

Hello everyone my name is Elizabeth,i came across this man called Dr.Ogungbe through a Lady here online and she said he helped her bring back her lost love,i don't believe in this but i come to think about it and use faith and hope to contact this man last 2 weeks,i have lost my husband for 2 years even he is trying to get married to another lady in Italy,Rome..i quickly rush and email dr.Ogungbe for help and i thought its still a freak because i don't really believe he can bring him back to me because its too long we have contacted each other,we only comment on each other status on facebook and when ever he come online he has never talk anything about coming back to me,now i really believe that there is Magic and Dr.Ogungbe is a really God sent and has Magic because all these things is still like a dream to me,Dr.Ogungbe told me in the first mail that everything will be fine,i called him and he assure me,i have so many doubt but now am happy,i can't believe my love broke up with his Italian lady and he is now coming back to me and he can't even explain how everything goes all he said to me is that he want me back,i am really happy and cried so much because it was just like i am born a new and am really happy and my entire family are happy for me but they never know whats the secret behind this...i want you all divorce lady or single mother to please contact this man for help and everything will be fine i really guarantee you..i have tell 2 of my friends who are in unhappy relationship and they have seen solution in few days ago...if you want to contact him you can reach him through (dr.ifaogungbe@live.com) (+2348131210107) that is where you can get to him and i assure you it gonna work fine with you and you will be happy
i am out of words am just happy and i will be happy forever because i can never have any problem having this man
Elizabeth is my name