It means you're a dangerous freak who needs watching.

Yes, it's a right. So is babbling on a street corner about the CIA, but it doesn't mean you're not insane and should be avoided and ignored as well.

Absolutely! The insurance companies know you'd just be irresponsible with your money if they didn't take it as well.

Um, that deficit news was announced a few days ago to very little reaction. So no, I don't think that's his reason.

The problem is that for some insane reason he wants to play nice with the GOP. When he should be ignoring them, like the idealess losers they are. He needs to wake up.

Obama. Dance with the one who brung ya.

I think the Democrats are so attached to this idea of being nicer that it's become a GOP-devised trap around their brains. By defining all strong and unilateral action as their own, the GOP has left few options for their opponents, without appearing to be like the Republicans. In addition, every time a Democrat acts decisively and with strength, because they have been defined as having neither of those qualities, it leaves it open for the GOP to say "SEE? They're DICTATORS! They're EVIL! That happy face hid a DEMON!" Whereas the GOP has the demon face on all the time, so somehow this makes them trustworthy, literally the devil you know. This is played out in every cable TV debate where the right-winger ends up wiping the floor with the left by claiming that the left is defined by being "understanding of the other side." Which the GOP takes advantage of by giving no ground of their own and forcing the hapless leftie, out of principle, to pretend the rightie has something resembling a point. The rightie gains legitimacy, the leftie isn't listened to, and whose message gets across? All because a party is afraid to look mean.

It's absolute bullshit that's turned our culture into the full-scale psychosis it's become. In an older America, Obama would be making sense to most, and his bill would seem sensible, even dull. In this new constant-news-assault world, it's anything ITS OPPONENTS DEFINE IT AS. The burden of proof is not on the psychos making indefensible statements. It's on the sane to DISPROVE the insanity. And anything that makes good TV wins.

And the overtly discredited, destructive GOP, whether in power or not, get to define the terms of all debate. If the Democrats do this because they believe the GOP's insanity represents most of us, I have to wonder--they don't think much of our intelligence either, do they? The difference being that the GOP know how to make use of the stupidity they've generated in us. And so they win. Because the fucking Democrats want to be nice. To THEM. Not us.

And the GOP? Oh, they have already made it plain that they have no intent of being nice or doing good for any of us, even their base, at all. But instead of taking it as a warning and treating them accordingly, we respect it as principle.

I wonder if most of us have even figured out how much has changed, how little makes sense. How insane we have become, how much time we waste on opinions that we would never have even considered as legitimate at one time.

Some ideas and worldviews are wrong, just wrong, no matter how many people may hold them. Consensus reality is NOT REALITY. Unless we let it be. We aren't under any obligation to respect opinions we know to be destructive. But we do. We let it go on. We don't laugh at them, we don't ridicule them back to the wilderness. We actually pretend they may have a point and we can discuss all this out.

We can't. And we shouldn't. What is best for America, not cable TV, is what we should be doing. But instead we treat the future of this country as frivolous. So probably we deserve this.

Oh, Jesus Christ, no. Give that a rest. Ralph Nader is a useless tool(of the GOP) and I don't know why anyone ever thought he could be president. As much as Obama is abusing my faith in him I would never, EVER back Nader.

He's listening to the same stupid DLC-ish advice about placating the Republicans, as though this will peel off any of them come election time. The same advice that gave us the Clinton era, two election humiliations and Joe Lieberman.

It's irrational, even insane. And cowardly. He believes he has progressives in the bag no matter what, so he doesn't need to listen to us. As though the fact we won't vote for the GOP will keep us from staying home should Obama prove to be the spineless idiot he's appearing to be.

He doesn't have to do this but he is. Perhaps placating the GOP has become such a habit that he can't help himself. Perhaps Rahm, fresh from hinting to the insurance companies that, if they won't contribute to the GOP, they'll drop the public option, is privately saying "Screw the progressives, what are they gonna do?" Perhaps he really is such a spineless twit. But he'll never win over the GOP and he's wasting his chance to effect real change, all for...what? Nothing.

I don't get it. Nobody else does. And the GOP is laughing their asses off, again, at how easy it is. These are people who would like to kill him, who no longer have any power. And yet he cares what they think.

I call that betrayal. And cowardice. And hardly canny politics. I am angry at Obama for his disregard for those who voted for him. And who will not bother next time if he lets us down on one of the most crucial reasons we elected him.