The Purity Test (stop shitting in the punch bowl)

[Robert Mahnke]

I didn't say that good ideas can never win, and good people will always
lose. I think Obama is a good person and he won his share of fights. The
ACA was certainly not perfect, but Democratic Presidents had been trying to
enact something like it for decades and he was the first to get it done. If
you don't like the fact that it was watered down, blame the moderate
Democratic Senators whose votes Obama needed to get it passed. Shirley
Chisholm could have been President and with that Senate what more could she
have done? And you hold up Franklin Roosevelt, but the programs he passed
were flawed too. Because of the ACA, people now expect the government to
make the health care markets work for them, and over time they will punish
Republicans for sabotaging the ACA (my expert prediction, worth what you
paid for it).

I worked in the DOJ from 2005 to 2010, and have more to say about the big
banks than you want to hear. It's a fair criticism. As invested as I
personally am in those issues, though, I really don't think they had much
to do with the mid-term elections in 2010. The Republicans who got elected
have been softer than Kleenex on big banks.

Obama was, for my money, the best President of my lifetime. He also made
some big mistakes. Both things can be true.

On Tue, Dec 19, 2017 at 12:47 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

> I don’t accept this idea that good ideas can never win, and good people
> will always lose . Franklin Roosevelt proves that wrong. Give people
> something worth having  and fighting for and they will support you.
>   Obama started with a majority and it seems to me he lost it when he
> failed to deal with the reckless lawbreaking of the Banks in the house-loan
> scam. His ACA turned out to be weak tea originally developed by Mitt Romney.
>
> I have not walked away from anything but wars of aggression and fossil
> fuel addiction.. You can support them if you like, justify them if you
> will. I will not.
> > On Dec 19, 2017, at 3:31 PM, Robert Mahnke <rpmahnke at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Anyone with a complaint about Obama from the left, which must include
> most of us, would have been disappointed with a Bernie presidency too,
> because any legislation he would have wanted to pass would have had to get
> through a Senate and a House like the one that Obama dealt with for the
> last six years, not the Congress of his first two years that passed most of
> his legislative accomplishments. The choice is to take what's on the table
> and keep working for more and better, or to walk away in disgust that
> fellow citizens don't share our priorities.
> >
> > On Tue, Dec 19, 2017 at 12:13 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Anyone who voted for anyone other than Hilary voted for Trump, and they
> are assholes.
> >
> > David Morris
> >
> > On Tue, Dec 19, 2017 at 12:04 PM Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> > Obama had 8 years to put out fires. He started more instead. The punch
> bowl is already full of shit and people know that. People did not vote for
> Trump. They voted against Hillary. That is what the polls show and that is
> what common sense says.
> > > On Dec 19, 2017, at 9:54 AM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > https://first-draft.com/2017/12/19/im-done-with-your-doug-
> jones-feelings-too-internet/
> > >
> > > "People I know and love are suffering and will suffer while we
> fantasize about having more than two parties, about not having to choose
> between the arsonists and the (dumb, underfunded, likely corrupt) fire
> brigade. Me and mine would like the fires out."
> > >
> > >       Virus-free. www.avg.com
> >
> > -
> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
> >
>
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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