Bobzmcishl's Comments (320)

“Too bad McGovern lost in 72. Thosands of American boy's would be alive today.”

“Naomi Klein is the best writer of political events in the country today. Her comments mirror what most of us progressives feel but don't express as well as her. I still back the president but my grade of him in this first year is a B-, and for the reasons Klein cited. We were expecting the reincarnation of a combination Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt and got ourselves a Kennedy. Great on rhetoric but lacking in real accomplishments. What is disappointing is the total lack of imagination coming from both the White House and from the Congress. They all seem to lack a real boldness of not only ideas but of executing what little ideas they do have. Obama should have given the Republican's a real reason to call him a "marxist" and a "socialist".”

“Lowering the minimum wage hurts the economy. Study after study has shown how increases in the minimum wage have actually helped the economy. Workers earning the minimum wage spend almost all of it thus creating the "trickle up" effect which helps the entire economy. The dirty little secret is that increasing the minimum wage adds a miniscule amount to the overall cost of goods and services. Amazing how Republican politicians with their vaunted "business acumen" constantly get it wrong. How could so many of these politicians not taken any economics courses in college?”

“So we waste over 4000 American lives, thousands of injured American's, hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, and over a trillion dollars, based on a foolish assumption that Sadam would give aid to terrorists whom he despised. Saddam was a not a Muslim fanatic and did not trust fanatics. The Iraq war is up there with Vietnam as one of the biggest mistakes in American history.”

“I can't speak for all of the grassroot supports of Obama and for health care reform, but for me personally, we were asked to get behind reform without being given a clearcut message of exactly what we were supposed to be telling our fellow citizens when we were phone banking. During the election, we had excellent talking points to respond to questions posed by citizens. There were and still are too many conflicting messages being sent out by the White House and the Congress. The one health care issue we were united on last year was "universal health care" coupled with "single payer option". Now we have a mismash of several bills that no one can really explain very well. I have to blame Obama's point man on this. Obama put his faith in the wrong person.”

“This article presumes that we progressives somehow don't know the Palin right wing viewpoints and the Washington Post is doing all of us a big favor by running her views. That's like saying Fox News is doing us a favor by showing us Glenn Beck. We already know the convervative viewpoints ad naseum. We lived them for eight years under Bush/Cheney. Give us a little more credit for paying attention. We don't really need a D.C. version of the N.Y. Post.”

“The "teabagger" movement is overblown for starters. It is focused in mostly red states and they draw from the same right wing mentality that has always voted for Republican's. The media, mainy Fox News created this so called movement. And the more they protest, the more obvious it is how wacky they are and extremist. Too much has been made of the off year election with featured a mediocre campaigner in Virginia who thought he could win without Obama and a Governor in Jersey who was a disaster. Obama is the real strength of the Democratic Party and if does what he did in 08, the Democrats can minimize their losses in 2010. And if the economy continues to improve, it will be even easier.”

“Cite one example! Olbermann takes great care to research his facts.”

“I don't care much for the Olbermann- Hannity comparison. They are not close to being comparable in their extremess. The progressive side of the ledger has no equal to the stupidity of the "birther" movement , the attacks on Acorn, attacks on labor movement, cries of "socialism", and the pitting of the rural areas of the country against the urban areas. Olbermann has also been very critical of Obama. You seldom heard Hannity critical of President Bush. And on a larger scale, MSNBC has never sponsored something as offensive as the so called "tea party movement" and then called it spontaneous. Fox News is in a class of its own, and any comparison to other cable networks is ludicrous.”

“Good points but it goes even further than that. Look at the people closely who are lining up to buy her books - 100% white and from areas far removed from our large cities. She appeals to an America that didn't even exist 50 years ago, yet in their minds, she represents the fictionalized America they imagined. They want that America back but that world was gone over 100 years ago. Tweny percent of our population seems to be in a permanent state of denial.”

“Bob: You nailed it in this article. Sarah Palin is about as acomplished as Dan Quayle only better looking. At least here in the SF Bay Area, we have a sense of reality:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/11/19/DDHJ1AMAC3.DTL

According to this article, only one person purchased "Going Rogue" at the main Borders store in San Francisco, and he was from Montana, out here to attend a convention. The independent book stores aren't carrying her memoir at all. No wonder she is not appearing here or anyplace else on the West Coast.”

“You probably weren't around during the Great Depression. I wasn't. But I did hear the stories from my parents and grandparents and my wifes mom. They all worshipped FDR and what he did to put people back to work. They actually hated the Republican Party and Herbert Hoover. That feeling lasted for decades until big business learned how to better manipulate the public by using spokespersons like Ronald Reagan to get the message of free market capitalism back into vogue. My 96 year old mother-in-law told me during the last election that the Republican's once again would be out in force to screw the working man. FDR actually saved capitalism from itself, just as Obama has, and neither president has received any credit for it. In 1932 the circumstances were more dire, as many citizens totally lost faith in captitalism and found communism/socialism to be an attractive alternative. Then as now, there was the corporate class with their fascist tendencies, who loved Hitler, including Henry Ford, Thomas Watson, and Joseph Kennedy, and were anti-semitic. FDR should be up on Mt. Rushmore with his cousin Teddy, but of course their isn't room for him. Obama is no FDR nor a Teddy, but he is not George W. Bush either which is a step in the right direction.”

“I must be out of the loop. I never heard of any of these people.”

“Good article. I had never heard of Sarah Palin until McCain picked her. When she gave her nominating speech at the convention I remember how appalled I was at her ridiculous comments intended to jazz up her conservative base. They were totally devoid of any intellectual comment, and just a rehash of Republican bullet point jabs at Democrats. She came across as a true lighweight, a female version of Dan Quayle. Yet where Quayle was immediately trashed by the media, Palin was treated as if she had given a speech worthy of Winston Churchill. I kept saying to myself, did the media watch the same speech that I just watched? Even today, we have warnings from pundits like Eugene Robinson talking about how we should not underestimate Sarah Palin. I look at it the other way - let's not overestimate Sarah Palin. She is what she is a real lightweight who would be a disaster as President. She really would make George W. Bush look like a genius. Today on "The View" they were complaining about the cover of Newsweek which shows the photo of Palin that was used in Runners World. This is ridiculous - she wasn't forced to pose in that costume, and Newsweek is smart enough to know that sex sells in America and will sell a lot of magazines. The big beef here is with the media - they love Sarah Palin and want to use her to sell whatever it is they are selling.”

“The "sane" members of the Republican establishment are in a bind. Somehow the wingnuts have taken over control of the Party with the consent of their leaders, and people like Brooks are paralyzed, as are McCain and Lindsey Graham. McCain by picking Palin opened Pandora's box, and now they are reaping the rewards of that disastrous decision. Now the rest of us sane people are constantly exposed to extremists like Palin and the media is loving it, since they know how polarizing Palin is and how much media enthusiasm she can generate. However the country is not well served by all of this, and it makes our country look like it is populated by a bunch of doofuses.”

“I didn't know that a second policeman was involved until watching Oprah yesterday and saw the two of them. Good to know that the facts have finally come out. The military version of these events cannot be taken at face value it seems. Just look at the Pat Tillman travesty and the Jessica Lynch incident. I do give credit to the networks for being very cautious about reporting what actually transpired, especially with the original erroneous reports of multiple gunmen involved. Now we have to be wary of our Congress wanting to rush to judgement and start picking out scapegoats.”

“This cold blooded killer had all of the advantages the United States could offer. He enlisted in the Army and had all of his education paid for by the Army which allowed him to become an officer and in a prestigious occupation. His training should have given him the ability to remain calm under undue stress. There is a weak link in here somewhere. If he was given an "unsatifactory" performance review, why was he promoted to Major and why would he be assigned to Afghanistan rather than in a position where he could be more carefully evaluatied. His superior officer(s) should also be called to account. There seemed to be a lot of warning signs that went unheeded. My understanding is that a bad review in the officer ranks at that level is grounds for removal from the service. The Army must be so short handed they are compromising their own standards. This is another sad day for America.”

“I remember as a child, my step-father being laid off and I became worried about what would happen to our family. Children, like many adults fear the worst, not knowing about financial safety nets and savings, and the ability to carry on and get another job. It's ok to be honest but at the same time explain how the family will get through it. Children can accept that and their fears will be greatly reduced.”

“The ratings for Limbaugh and Fox News are not relevant to Obama's rightfully going after them. After all, there are only so many yahoo's to go around and if the wingnuts attract a few more, so be it. Obama is after the larger audience of people who can discern the difference between news and propaganda. The message is that America is bigger than Fox News and Limbaugh and he is not going to let them get away with pushing an ideology at odds with the well being of the United States. Obama saw the damage that networks like Fox News caused by their Iraq war jingoism and anti-hispanic, anti-gay, pro-white movements. To say nothing is to pretend that the stupid utterances of Fox and Limbaugh carry some truth. It is way beyond time that a bright spotlight was shown on both of those bigoted zeolots.”

“Sad to read this story. Last Fall one of the best things about working on the Obama campaign was the number of young people that were heavily engaged in working to get Obama elected. Waves of young supporters manned phone lines and knocked on doors for Obama and it really paid off. Plus it enegized us older campaigners to do better. Personally it gave me the feeling that the future of America was going to be ok after all. I hope Obama can restart that enthusiasm.”

“Fox News is a joke. No other network comes close to them for biased reporting.”

“Geithner was a colossal mistake by Obama. What was he thinking? Treasury should be headed up by someone with zero ties to Wall Street. Instead we get someone who personifies Wall Street. Listening to the chatter today on CNBC it is apparent that Wall Street really is in a separate universe from the rest of us. The CNBC folks and their guests were wringing their hands over the pay czar actions and bemoaning government interference into the free market. They are way out of touch with the anger in this country and the real hardships faced by the millions of Americans who don't have jobs, don't have health care, in danger of losing their homes, and watching their financial savings evaporate. Today, Wall Street would not have a chance in hell of getting a bailout. We would rather just watch them fail, and then start over again by rebuilding our country with people who want to do honest work. All of the major banks should be broken up and made not too big to fail. All of the regulations removed in the last decade should be put back in place. Geithner and Summers should be fired and replaced by people that live at least a thousand miles from downtown Manhattan.”

“Kyl is an embarrassment.”

“I was disappointed in Ed's response to your calling out of the ridiculous balloon coverage. We are in a very critical stage on health care reform and Afghanistan decision making and the networks are showing us a dumb balloon floating around. The networks need to get some more serious people in charge and are capable of telling us what we need to know.”

“I agree. Don't complain as Obama starts putting his plans into action. In the meantime I like having an articulate president.”