he still needs to sort out gay marriage, raise the top rate of tax up more (more than just letting the bush tax cuts expire, pass cap n trade, get troops back home, get tough fin-reg bill through and be tougher on big oil/other companies etc..

but he's doing well. healthcare should have have a public option and been tougher but it's still a huge achievement.

repubs have no reasonable candidate that can get nominated by their crazy base and also win enough swing-voters to win. with the economy getting better too.. people won't want to give the keys back to the neocons.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/

you realize the government overregulating the market is why the market is so crummy now, right?

Just want to point out that the biggest problem with the US government isn't the president.

FED and the congress is a mayor obstacle. Almost impossible to make the best decision for the "people" when the representatives need to look out for their interest parties (because without them they will not get any money or bribes).

I'd actually give Obama a B- or perhaps a C on overall foreign policy tbh, but that is because I would probably give Bush the same.

Unfortunately I think Obama will end up with a much lower score as he treats foreign policy more and more like Jimmy Carter.

Imo

I don't think there's any indication at all that he's going to get more liberal on foreign policy. Maaaybe a few token base-rallying positions before 2012 if the need be, but those generally don't fly for Democrats, so I doubt it.

As far as I can tell, he simply asked that this evidence be cited.

Top tax bracket is 35%. Why on earth do you think we should take more than 1/3 of somebody's paycheck? Shouldn't the government, at the very least, deal with the money it's getting in a more responsible manner rather than tax it's way out of fiscal idiocy?

Obama To Make Reassuring Eye Contact With Every Last American - theonion

Maybe, but afaict his narrative and approach is strikingly similar to Carter's. He has this whole foreign policy "reset button" mentality of sorts. Remember what happened when Carter took that approach?

I particularly don't like his disowning of terms like “radical Islam,” “Islamic extremism,” “jihad,” etc. tbh. I think this is a very dangerous idea, as is undermining our nuclear deterrence doctrine.

why the **** isn't this thread titled " Obama Presidency so Far......Fail or Epic Fail?" Every time I see this stupid thread I curse OP. Damn you, OP.

Those are rhetorical tricks. IMO his whole approach has been to use rhetoric that wins friends and otherwise not change any policies whatsoever.

It seems weird to me to think that it's VERY dangerous to stop saying Islamic extremism or the like. Nor does it undermine nuclear deterrence to say we only have enough nukes to destroy the world a few times over.

What would the "liberal" position on foreign policy even be at this point?

Montius,

Hi. New face around here, but it's clear that you really, really, really, I mean REALLY hate the towelheads, amirite? Would you care to spell out your feelings re: this matter in as concise and accurate a manner as possible?

Lots of things, but namely active denunciation of torture, fair and open trials for terror suspects, etc etc. Maybe a more rapid scaledown in Iraq, too, but that's in dispute.

..................

That's setting the bar pretty ****ing low if you ask me. So disappointing.

I guess. I mean those are the liberal positions I think people realistically expected could be taken by Obama.

I guess I'm more upset about the "realistically expected". It's like foreign policy is off the table totally, which is a big disappointment given I was basically just a anti-war democrat my whole life. Where'd they all go?

Don't worry, we're only 10 years into Afghanistan, once we get to 20 or 25 years people will realize how stupid it is--unless rats are eating their face in their post-urban shantys. Then whoever promises less face eating will get elected.

Catering to the liberal base on foriegn policy is political suicide.

They are rhetorical tricks very reminiscent of Carter's utopianist narrative.

His "Bush did it" bull**** narrative is getting quite old, too, imo.

Of course it is. It prevents any honest dialogue of the issue. This whole "we might offend someone" PC mindset is bull****. If "moderate" Muslims get offended by the US calling out these radical Islamicists or violent jihadists, the answer is not to stop using these terms, but to analyze why exactly such a "moderate" would be offended in the first place. If the answer is that it is because they are in fact sympathetic or apologetic to such asshattery, then there is a larger problem at hand than people getting butthurt over calling a duck a duck.

It undermines the idea of deterrence when you say that the US will not use nuclear weapons against states even if they attack the US with biological or chemical weapons.

I don't "hate towelheads."

I just don't like illiberal institutions. Islamo-fascism happens to very much fit that bill.

It's not about offending someone, it's about how offending certain groups might negatively affect long term US goals. Conservatives don't care about that because their long term goals involve more invasions, but it's not bull****.

Of course we CAN and do analyze why moderates feel ostracized by the constant association of their religion and terrorism, and since just about every group reacts exactly the same to similar circumstances, we can comfortably say that its' not exactly a mystery. And conservatives also feel it's important that if there IS some sympathy to the extremist cause among moderates - which there certainly is to some degree - then we need to call them out. Whereas I'd say that pushing them toward extremism is probably not the best strategy.

The problem here is that to conservatives, being able to say "Islamic terror" is important in and of itself, whereas I look at it as something that has no inherent value. You may want to make it abundantly clear that Islam itself is linked to terror. I think that's important too - but in a similar vein I'd like to go further and call it "religious terrorism," but that would suddenly strike conservatives the wrong way for some reason that is a total mystery to everybody.

Oh please spare me this "conservatives want invasions" crap. I don't buy that at all.

I also don't see why we should worry at all about offending fascist groups. We've seen how well appeasing those types works somewhere before I think....

If someone gets "pushed to extremism" because people call out violent jihadists or Islamo-fascists for what they are, then they weren't particularly moderate, were they? No, instead they were apologists and were part of the larger problem.

Why should the West have to appease, sympathize, or show indifference to radical Islam (whose extremism was the natural dividend of a region torn by enormous oil wealth, coupled with their own statism, tribalism, gender intolerance, and dictatorships)?

It is valuable because it is calling it what it is. It is addressing a not at all insignificant factor that drives this kind of behavior, and avoiding that is a terrible idea and very dishonest.

Look, calling Christian terrorism what it is is the right thing to do as well. The thing is, it isn't all that common, whereas "Islamic terrorism" happens with far more frequency around the world.

Gonna focus on this part.

Your first paragraph is baffling to me. It doesn't matter if they weren't that "moderate" to begin with (and by Western standards they probably aren't). Turning non-terrorists into terrorists is almost always a bad idea. I do not care that you think they were part of a larger problem. People feel allegiances with those close to them, especially when confronted by foreign power. When I'm in Europe I get suddenly defensive about American foreign policy to a degree where halfway through a conversation I'm wondering wtf has gotten into me. This is standard human psychology. To ignore this due to some stubborn idea that anyone is either totally with us or totally against us isn't just counterproductive strategically, it's ****ing ridiculous. I tend to spend time around a lot more moderate to liberal Muslims and Middle Easterners than the average person. To them, feeling as if they are besieged by the West is pretty standard because they feel that they are being constantly equated with terrorists and terrorist supporters. They look at the divide between terrorists in Iraq and non-terrorist militants in Iraq, for example, as being similar to that between the average US soldier and the ones that torture and commit war crimes.

And the conflation of toning down rhetoric with "appeasement" is ridiculous, too. What exactly are extremists getting out of it? Do they feel better about us or themselves? No, because it's not a rhetorical shift that is directed towards extremists. It's directed towards people who might feel as if they are torn between two sides they disagree with for different reasons, because we want them to edge toward us, not stagnate or move the other way.

Conservatives who argue these positions are basically succumbing to the same black and white, good vs. evil bull**** that pervades their thinking on foreign policy. "We should call it what it is!" But you dont' mean being as detailed as possible about what you're describing, you just mean associating the religion with terrorism. That's well and good, but I do not give even the slightest **** about ANYTHING except for outcomes. Extremism breeds extremism - al Qaeda representatives consistently say that GOP presidents are good for recruitment. Rhetoric heats up, threats mount, and uneducated kids who know little about Islam OR geopolitics get recruited into terrorist circles with more ease. There is not a single measurement by which this could be considered a good thing.

I'm still waiting for ANYONE (democrat, republican or otherwise) to come up a single thing he's handled well.