Why I put my faith in President Obama over the Occupy Movement any day, any place and any time....

[BrentWil]

President Obama has brought this country massive change, at least in terms of our system. Health care, for example, is a step forward in getting price inflation under control and expanding coverage. We no longer have any Soldiers in Iraq. I could go on, but you get the point. I would argue that he has produced a good deal of change and has accomplished many reforms that were/are possible.

The occupy movement, on the other hand, has accomplish nothing. Its “leaderless” movement is cute, but in the real world it does very little. While some suggest revolution, this is unfortunate. First, we do have elections in this country. Simply because one cannot get the majority of the people or even the majority of democrats to agree with you isn’t a very good reason for revolution. This isn’t the “Arab Spring” where people can rally people around gaining a voice. Unfortunately, people do have a voice now. We just disagree with many of them. It takes hard work and effort to win them over. The vast majority of revolutions hurt the people they are supposed to help.

I will take change within the system any day. Does it require actual work and leaders? No question. It is a marathon. The occupy movement is trying to be sprint. However, it is a sprint on a treadmill and isn’t going anywhere. I will continue to move forward the way we have always done it. One painful step at a time.

[T S Justly]

1. Well, that's that. Thank you, Joe Biden. (nt) ... Oh, alright. Lol!

[glowing]

2. Why not co-exist? Finally, we hear about jobs and building America..

Before it was all austerity, cuts, and balance budgets....

[Hissyspit]

5. False dichotomies are more fun.

George W. Bush was a really big fan of them.

[BrentWil]

32. We can. I just get tired of seeing posts about the President and his failures. NT

[Cali_Democrat]

3. What I sense is a recent, coordinated effort to try and discredit the occupy movement

The movement will continue as long as the 1% continues to wage war on the 99%.

The occupy movement will endure much to the chagrin of many.

[Hissyspit]

4. The Occupy Movement has not accomplished nothing.

Whatever other valid points you may have, you completely undermine your argument right there.

[Confusious]

6. Massive change?

I think I got less then a half dollar in change in my pocket. Equals the amount of change he's done. Doesn't seem to massive to me.

Either you don't know what change is, or you've been huffing the propaganda. Real change would be separating the public and investment banks. I think another president did that, thou I can't remember.. Real change would be the repeal of free trade agreements that sell out the worker. Real change would be a national healthcare system. Real change would be fully funded schools, not based on property values. Real change would be fully funded basic science.


He's just propped this country up on crutches, and we're waiting for someone or something to kick them out from under us.

[sudopod]

7. Movement exists for 4 months

Y U NO SAVE WORLD?

[pa28]

8. Has accomplished nothing?

In my opinion the occupy movement shifted the focus of our national discussion from deficit and spending to income inequality. Our elected politicians were unable or unwilling to do as much. Popular movements have shaped policy in the past and it's time for them to play a role again because the "massive change" you mentioned is more a matter of opinion than fact.

I'm all for electing Democrats but I've lost my appetite for the faith based politics you seem to be advocating.

[BrentWil]

33. In the public, that was the first response, somewhat..

I agree. That first response is gone.

[madrchsod]

9. what ever.....

i guess we should go home and do nothing to move the country forward.

[LAGC]

10. The Occupy movement has moved the debate to the left.

Just like the Tea Party moved the debate to the right in 2010.

Without people holding Obama's feet to the fire, what's to stop him from totally selling out to corporate interests?

Occupy plays an important role, reminding everyone of the class warfare that the top 1% has been perpetrating on the 99% for quite some time now.

If we want Obama to govern more from the left during his second term, we need a grassroots movement to keep the discussion oriented in that direction.

Occupy helps far more than it hurts.

[2pooped2pop]

23. not quite like tea baggers movement

Occupy really is grassroots.

[ashling]

11. I don't trust either one

to bring me anything all by themselves. Neither operates in a vacuum. Obama has, with the help of Nancy Pelosi and a lot of others, brought some change in some areas, not so much in others.

What might have happened with the Affordable Care Act if instead of the just the Republicans being able to play off of the Tea Party idiots yelling at town halls, the Democrat had been able to spur support from within the Occupy Movement in the streets. Would we have gotten the public option? other changes? Maybe at least they would have kept Obama from "having to" back away from saying one day that he would not sign a bill without a public option - and the next acting like he never heard of it.

Obama said in his campaign that we are the ones we have been waiting for. We can't trust for anyone to brings us the change we seek. We have to be that change.

Judge Wilson and others talked at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 about "politics out of doors" The founders were very familiar with this concept and claimed it as a right granted to them by the English Constitution. The Tea Party has no concept of this. They have no concept of what the Tea Parties were about. The founders would have been very comfortable with the Occupy movement. It would have fit very easily into the world they knew. It can in ours today.

We need to be the change. Obama is the change. Occupy is the change.

Stay on your own course. Fight the good fight. No one is saying you should be in the streets or camping with OWS. But don't discount politics out of doors either.

[Tunkamerica]

12. You know I never took debate in highschool or logic in college but it seems to me

you're offering a false choice. You don't have to pick one or the other. Why would you have to? Do we also have to support either the Patriot Act or the terrorists? If we're not with you are we against you?

[msongs]

13. list of names of wall street bankers and insiders hired to run the OWS movement:

nevermind

[Capitalocracy]

14. "Unfortunately, people do have a voice now."

You might want to check your wording there.

[Art_from_Ark]

15. What a Freudian slip

[Puzzledtraveller]

28. first thing I noticed too

Though I do get what the OP was saying for the most part. The general post that is.

[kaitcat]

16. Do you really think we would be having the conversation now about income inequality without OWS?

Seriously? That Obama would have been able to talk about congressional insider trading or all of the other OWS memes that have all of a sudden made it into the national conversation?

Nice way to stir things up, though.

[JDPriestly]

17. Hey! The State of the Union speech showed that Obama feels the support

that the OWS provides him for a more populist, less Wall-Street-favorable policy direction.

Obama is not in control of OWS and is not necessarily supported by OWS and he certainly does not involve himself in it in any way. But OWS has changed the vocabulary of the nation enough so that we can talk about the underlying economic injustice that is impeding our progress.

Timothy Geithner is leaving the administration. And we are actually getting some sort of investigation into the conduct of the financial sector that led to the economic turmoil that we are in. Those are big steps forward.

No one can say for sure just what part OWS had in these developments, but in my opinion, it is partially responsible for the new consciousness about the price we are paying as a nation for the excessive economic inequality.

I feel a new, more positive energy arising in the Democratic Party, among grass-roots Democrats, and it is emanating from the Occupy movement. I'm not confusing grass-roots Democrats and Occupy. But as an active grass-roots Democrat, I feel inspired by the Occupiers. I didn't set up a tent, and I won't, but I understand what they are about and I respect what they are doing.

[ellisonz]

18. Why you gotta hate on the Occupy Movement?

I've got news for you, it takes voters, and activists to mobilize them, to win elections. You can't just buy the whole damn thing...

[girl gone mad]

19. Put your "faith" in any politician..

and you'll get what you deserve.

[Bonobo]

27. Incredibly obtuse and deluded OP indeed. nt

[MFrohike]

20. What are you talking about?

I was going to respond to this but it really doesn't make much sense. The point seems to be that you trust the president because that's how things have always been done. If that's the case, you really could have wasted a lot less words.

[lunatica]

21. Did you forget to include the sarcasm smilie?

Because without it this shows a level of remarkable delusion.

[HughBeaumont]

38. Not even remotely sarcastic.

That's what's sad.

[mmonk]

22. Do you honestly want to pick a fight with us?

I suppose there were some that put their faith in politicians during the Civil Rights struggles over Martin Luther King Jr and others as well.

[pinboy3niner]

26. I know a lot of Occupiers who will vote for Obama and work for his re-election

They also will be participating concurrently in Occupy actions.

For any Obama supporter to push an either/or, them/us notion between Obama and the Occupy movement seems self-defeating and ridiculous as a political tactic.

The "choice" is fallacious on its face, as the two are not mutually exclusive. And suggesting that the two are necessarily in opposition only serves to alienate people.

I'd rate the OP a big

[TBF]

29. Agree with this post -

It is like comparing apples and oranges. A political movement is very different from a political election. My support for Occupy (and particularly any adjacent union action) is very strong. I will also vote for Obama, because someone needs to run the country in the meantime while we are busy enacting change.

[Warren Stupidity]

24. 30 years of rightwing 'progress' is what we've had since 1981.

Through both republican and democratic administrations, democratic and republican controlled congresses the direction taken by the political system in this country has been steadily to e right. It is painfully obvious that our system of government has been taken over by and is now run for the benefit of a small group of every rich and powerful people. We have an oligarchy, if we can keep it, and we will keep it until there is organized opposition from outside the system that compels a new era of reform, as happened in the 30's and at the end of the 19th century.

[2pooped2pop]

25. If I could hand our government over to OWS

I would. There would be a period of adjustment, but there are very smart people within the group, and they really are for the people, by the people. I would, right now, allow them to take over, if that was possible.

[JHB]

30. Will you take both? And will you concede where the Administration has seriously erred?

Why does it need to be framed as one or the other? There is a range of perspectives here.

And would there even be an Occupy Movement if the administration had not made one huge strategic misjudgment right from the start: underestimating or simply dismissing the sheer deliberate obstructiveness of the present-day Republicans?

This isn't nit-picking over this or that policy, or wishing for bully-pulpit stuff. This is just about recognizing how the Republicans really act, what they have done during the Clinton and Bush* years, what they outright said they would do before Obama even took office.

Clinton looked forward, not back, and didn't press investigations on a host of Reagan/Bush1 scandals. That spirit of cooperation bought him nothing. Right from the start he was plagued by bullshit scandals ginned up out hot air just to keep a cloud of suspicion over him until they finally found something they could make into a weapon against him. And then they went ahead and tried to use it. Bush threatened to crucify any Democrat who tried to block his push for war. If they blocked him and anything happened, he would make it their fault. And the Republican Party backed this with Soviet-grade conformance. Congressional Republicans voted according to Party Line with a degree of unity worthy of the Politburo.

They have proven time and again that they stop at nothing to grab what they want, and stop at nothing to obstruct whatever they oppose at the moment. And they SAID they would do this to Obama.

So what was the plan to counter this? There doesn't seem to have been one.

[pinboy3niner]

31. WELL? Can you see now how your OP alienates Occupiers who are Obama supporters?

Is this just a drive-by post or is the OP author actually going to engage in the discussion he started?

[Bluenorthwest]

34. Always with the 'faith'. That 'faith' is the reason the President opposes equal rights for

millions of Americans. He says God wants him to oppose our rights. So thankfully there is OWS that is not preaching intolerant dogma.
It is not a choice one or the other, and your framing it that way makes you mendacious and unworthy of my trust. You claim that OWS, a few months old, which altered the political discourse, put the dialog where it needs to stay, on inequality, you claim they did 'nothing' and that it is 'cute'. You know what is not 'cute'? Some mainstream millionaire politicians sneering that his kind of person is superior to another kind, and that God agrees with him. Not at all cute.
So thankfully, the McClurkin/Warren roadshow campaign is not the only game in town. I'm so sick of the intolerance and the hate speech. Just sick of hearing it. Sick of it.

[dionysus]

35. why does it have to be one over the other?

[hobbit709]

36. Whatever

[HughBeaumont]

37. YEAH!! LETS ALL ELECT!!! THAT'LL CHANGE THINGS!!!!

[font size=6]GET EXCITED!! HOLY SHIT!! WHERE'S THE DEFIBRILATOR??[/font]

On the supposedly Democratic side, you have a "Free markets" guy who extended the two trillion dollar waste of time known as The Bewsh II Tax Cuts, which made a whole lotta wealthy assholes even wealthier and resulted in possibly the weakest period of job creation in nearly a century!!

For all his assertion of not believing in Trickle Down, he sure does a poor job of putting that into action, extending a useless and incredibly damaging piece of conservative horseshit that's never goddamned WORKED!!! It also means that a Democratic president is lending CREDENCE to this proven failed theory.

Curious, have any Wall Streeters been investigated? Taken to task for their crimes? Had their lives made even an atom speck less comfortable? Oh my heavens, NO!!! Can't do that!! What they did was LEGAL, you economic know-nothings!! Unethical, perhaps, but perfectly LEGAL!!

On the Republican side, we got Reaganite fascists (and let's not mince words, that's what they are) that would slit a poor person's throat in cold blood and have a martini and a good sleep after the laugh riot of firing a few thousand workers and starting yet another folly war.

Economically, there IS NO option.

You're voting not to be ruled by Bible.

[trumad]

39. Wow---this is the same thing my right wing Cousin told me the other day about Occupy

I just shined it off as ignorance on his part.

[hobbit709]

41. If both sides hate you, you must be doing something right.

GO OWS!!

[MadHound]

40. Gee, and how has that whole change within the system thing worked out for us?

Let's see, real world wages have been in decline for decades, the middle class is shrinking daily, the wealth gap has been expanding for well over a decade, our civil liberties are constantly shrinking, American citizens are being summarily executed, our environment has become ever more polluted, do you want me to go on?

We've tried that whole change within the system thing for decades now, and guess what. It isn't working. Continuing to do the same thing over and over, while expecting a different result each time has been defined as a form of insanity by some. Sorry, but I refuse to deal with such insanity anymore.