have his "Sista Solgha" moment, then I won't condemn you , it may help. But if this outrage is real, i gotta say you are just wrong.
If this is the problem, then I don't understand, because if we are saying that we must criticize PO because we think he's wrong, then that same principle applies to anyone else, including those doing the PO criticizing. That's just an application of the Golden Rule.
We have divided government in part because many of you didn't vote in the midterms to teach dems a "lesson" .the fact that we have divided government means that we can't get everything we want.
Yes, I would NOT like it if someone said something like this about me. The problem here may be the use of what is sometimes referred to as the "rhetorical you". It's NOT a good usage and it DOES get a lot of people in trouble, even me sometimes. It's pretty common nonetheless. "Rhetorical you" is not YOU, PA Democrat, it's more of a generic plural you, anyone. When I run across this kind of usage, I generally refuse to "wear a shoe that doesn't fit" so I usually ignore it, because I know the truth about me and, often, people being wrong about a rhetorical me doesn't matter to me unless I decide to make it matter. It is a bad way to say things nonetheless, so it is a good criticism to point out the kinds of confusion that it causes and to warn people about how damaging generalizations are. I think it is VERY harmful to accuse such people of being bad people. Most of the time they aren't; they're just bad at what they said, though use of "rhetorical you" is quite common.
I think the second part of that is something that both sides of this argument should say to one another much more often. Neither the anti-Obama nor the Obama supporters think we're supposed to get everything we want. We're so focused on this one bit CCPI that we're forgetting to communicate our assumptions about the bigger picture and that's causing us to creep each other out. I, for one, would like to hear much more about concrete possibilities to get as much of what we want as possible.
The President is not just President of the Democrats, he's everyone's President and he has to compromise. He has to get things done. We criticize the right for digging in on "principal" on such issues as taxes, we just cant understand how they cant see that the rich have to pay their share. That's their principled stand though, and we have to convince them to break it just as they have to get something that we don't want to give.
This is a fact. No one talks about this. I said some things about those other people who PO is president of in #43 above. Personally, I don't like the word "compromise", because of it's many negative connotations. From living with my corporate attorney husband for 8 years, I much prefer the word "synthesize"; "integrate" different value sets is also a useful way of thinking about this kind of task.
I like the other point here about digging in. Whether I agree with the Right or not, the honest ones amongst them think they ARE RIGHT, and even if they are wrong about being right, that doesn't matter if they can't/don't SEE that error themselves. Can that happen by force? Or is there a better way to get people to discover for themselves how they are wrong? In either case, as I said, the honest ones amongst them do, in fact, think, mistakenly or otherwise, that they are RIGHT, so as this poster said, they're dug in, which is exactly what we are doing, because we think we are right too. Just as in the principle that it is good to criticize the President when one thinks he is wrong, so also, it is good to take a stand when one thinks one is right. If I claim the right to be right, then I cannot deny that same right to anyone else, as long as they honestly do think they are right/correct. The best that can be done is for both sides to be as fully honest as possible about how/why they are right.
The give and take associated with changes in principled stands is also something that we should talk more about. I have been trying all week to get people to tell me what they would give, what thing they want would they give, in exchange for stopping the CCPI. I got only ONE answer to that question even though I asked it dozens of times. Fumesucker told me he'd give something he didn't want in exchange for stopping the CCPI, a weapons system, but that confused me and I didn't get around to asking him if he meant that he would accept a weapons system IN the budget in order to keep the CCPI OUT of the budget. The question remains open anyway: Would YOU lose Universal Pre-K in exchange for stopping CCPI? How about killing those Infrastructure jobs in exchange for preventing CCPI? What are we willing to "pay" to prevent CCPI is a realistic question. I am not insulted by it. I wish things were different, but they most definitely are not, especially when Democrats are saying they won't vote in 2014 the price of stopping CCPI, in terms of OTHER issues, becomes quite real.
The executive branch doesn't make legislation, the congress does, Many of you proudly profess to having help turn the legislative agenda over to the enemy by staying home in 2010.
Ignorance about that first sentence is something is see frequently; perhaps you can appreciate the concerns of those who are skeptical about other things such posters may say about the issues and about our situation, when those posters don't know, nor understand the consequences of this very fundamental aspect of "our" governance.
The second sentence is an egregious exaggeration. The appropriate thing to do is to ask for a definition of "Many", so people in the thread can see the problem. Yes, there are some few people around who have bragged on that very sore point about 2010, but I would not characterize some as equal to many. Once again, though, honestly, such exaggerations are pretty common, don't you think? Just ask the poster for the links or for a count. Call him/her out, preferably without insult, because insults reduce the effectiveness of one's rational case for what you're saying.
Please understand that the reason this is such a sore point is because it is literally a matter of life or death for a lot of vulnerable people and, unfortunately, there really truly is a cohort out there in the general population who quite honestly does think the best, quickest, cheapest, most effective solution to a lot of our troubles, climate change troubles in particular, is to get rid of a bunch of people and not voting is a significant step in the direction of letting the entire system crash and burn. And that's something I personally have heard people (Libertarians probably
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017111570 ) laud as the most effective solution to all of our problems.
The CCPI is not the end of the world. I'm in my 50's, have worked all of my adult life, and came from humble beginnings and am still just living check-to-check but i never just threw all of my faith for the future onto the idea of living solely on SS. It wasn't designed to be the end-all be-all.
I disagree strongly with this point of view, Okay, yes, other Democrats have done things similar to the CCPI, BUT those were different economic times, before our economy was hollowed out by Wall Street and Corporate Personhood exporting our jobs to foreign countries for tax breaks. That was before so much of the middle class were robbed of value in their real estate equity and in their investments, including their pensions and their IRAs and 401 k s, so this idea that Social Security was really only intended to be about 40% of your retirement resources simply does not hold any water at all. Especially when you add back in the additional fact that of all of those folks who lost jobs and lost investments, those who would have gotten back into the economy to build some of that back, CAN'T get back into the economy, so, yes, indeed, the WEALTHFARE Disaster Capitalists who own and run this country AND our political system do in fact OWE us for what they have stolen. Perhaps I am wrong, but I think there may be more ways than just Social Security to get that back out of the 1% and that's why I hope we Democrats can stick together to bring about the socialistic changes that we NEED in education and in health care, in our cities, and in mass transit.
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?) HONEST about what? about caring about cuts for the benefits of seniors? And, what makes you think that, just because the "LEFT" is trying to defend seniors from cuts in their benefits, that means that the "LEFT" is trying to block funding for Pre-K? Just because Obama seems to be proposing to cut one to fund the other doesn't mean that the "LEFT"s opposition to one means that it opposes the other.
Like your user name.
...is the new definition of "FIGHTING."
