So, I've been on Facebook lately. I got into Flair, which is just little buttons you can add to your corkboard. You can make your own or pull them off of the website.
The Flair is overwhelmingly "Twilight" related, but there's also lots of religious Flair, Jonas Brothers, Taylor Swift, emo Flair, and a whole subset of Chuck Norris flair (Chuck Norris can kill two stones with one bird; Chuck Norris' tears can cure cancer, too bad he doesn't cry).
There is also a new market in anti-Obama flair.
"I'll keep my guns, my money, my freedom, you keep the change."
"I hope I have some change left in 4 years."
And my new favorite:
"You didn't respect my president, why should I respect yours?"
Ok, fair enough. I had no respect for George Bush and dogged him at every turn. In all fairness, although I hated him the whole time, he did end up with a 30% approval rating, so I certainly wasn't the only one. But ok, I didn't give your president respect just because he was the president and you don't have to respect Obama.
But. Obama does have a 60-80% approval rating (depending on who you read) so he's not just my president. So I'm thinking the anger and disrespect is coming from a pretty small percentage of the population.
Maybe he's a love-him-or-hate-him president. If his approval is 60%, maybe 40% of the population loathes him, they're not just blase or intellectually against him.
I don't know. I don't care. I have nothing but respect for him and what he's done so far. I wish he would reach across the aisle a bit more, but I'm not sure it would help - it seems the republicans have decided to make a stand against him, although they don't have the political capital to change anything. Makes them look like spoiled children.
In fact, although this post was supposed to be about Obama, maybe it's really about the Republican party. Congress and Senate Republicans have stood, almost without exception, against everything Obama has sent to them. They have said it's because he has not reached out to them. They have come forward with rhetoric and sacrificial poster-children to explain why they are not voting for the bills. The issues they have brought forward have been blown far out of proportion and constitute the smallest portion of the bill.
And they are doing these things, things that they have been doing for 10 years, as if they still have the political capital for it to work. They pick out one item from a bill and vilify it when the balance of the money hardly matters and as if they have never stuck pork into a congressional bill. They use rhetoric to expose a worst-case-scenario or make a piece of funding sound ridiculous (money for field mice? it was funding for some California refuge thing).
And I would like to say to the Republican party that these tactics worked for years. From the age of Newt Gingrich through the first 4 Bush years, this stuff worked. America has started to grow weary, however, and the Obama election should have been a clear message that America is tired of the bull and vitriol. You might be energizing your very core 10%, but you're turning off everyone else. And you don't have the numbers in Congress to have it work.
So just as Gingrich recreated the Republican party into what it has been, so must the current party recreate themselves to function in the new political climate. I believe we are seeing the first part of that recreation right now on the floors of Congress as each bill comes through and that it will continue through the next 18 months until the mid-term elections. The mid-terms will determine if they have successful.
3 comments:
In a totally non-government respose: Was it Facebook or My Space (I -think- it's Facebook) that has that scary clause in their agreement now that anything you put on their site is their property to use as they wish FOREVER? Not just as long as you have something up or as long as you have a site with them, but actually for ever. Any picture you post? They can use it as they wish etc. Too f-ing scary.
It was Facebook, but they changed it back, until they can write it to not be nearly so nasty.
As for Obama and Bush. I think that if their goal is to put doubt in people's minds, then they are playing it pretty well right now. There are plenty of stupid people out there (still) who will play right into that fear stuff. Especially if things get worse for too long before they get better. Unfortunately it is going to wear people down. I certainly hope things improve, and people get that the downturn in the economy (and it not getting better right away) has everything to do with what was done for the last 8 years, not the last two months. You can't F it up that quickly.
I like those buttons. I don't like many politicians, even when they sound like they're trying to do good they usually end up screwing up, no matter which party they're in. I suppose you can't please everyone though.
To be fair though Bush didn't mess things up all by himself, he had help from an idle senate and congress (that was majority of democrats for at least a few of those years) who didn't do anything to change things.
It seems that many people like the status quo and they're afraid to change things. I like to change things up and try different strategies. If one thing doesn't work, try something else.
I say down with passing bills with so many lines a person knit picks everything and refuses to pass it for those reasons. I think each individual issue should be discussed and decided on it's own merits and not on a compromise of if you do this for me, I'll throw this in for you.
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