Where exactly did he say he was going to fix their f%# ups but he didn't want to hear a peep out of them?  Do you have an exact quote?  As for pushing an agenda he knew they disagreed with, of course he did, that's what he campaigned and got elected on.  Is he supposed to just abandon everything because the other side (the side that lost), disagrees?  And there were meetings with Republican leadership.  The republicans wouldn't compromise, at all, so they did eventually get left out.  Which they then complained was the dems doing.

As for the uniter part, that was G.W. Bush's campaign slogan, not sure why you associate that with Obama.

I realize "uniter, not a divider" was Bush's saying, but Obama promised to do the same thing. I use Bush's words because they were so often ridiculed by a lot of the same idiotic pundits who fell for Obama's nonsense about governing in a bipartisan fashion. How on earth would a party line Democrat straight out of the Chicago machine bring anyone together? The Democratic primary itself was unbelievably acrimonious, largely because the Obama camp insisted on calling the Clintons "racists" at every turn.

Woah, wants to work with people?  Republicans wanted absolutely nothing to do with the "affordable" health insurance bill.  It was supposed to make it more affordable, and people are already seeing 40% rate increases.  I can see why they didn't want to work with the democrats.

Yes, it's really tragic that Obama didn't have a liberal Congress to help him accomplish what he wanted...

Oh, wait.

Yeah, except in all of our history of trying that... it's never worked.

Kensyian economics has never worked... It didn't work under FDR, It didn't work under Nixon... all it ever does is create a double dip that prolongs the recessession and makes things worse.  It will happen again here.  We had some good GDP growth this quarter but it was all due to inventories rising in quanitity higher then expected.  Which means it will be a drag in further quarters likely leading to a big double dip.  Private spending will decrease with public spending... because the incentives to spend will disapear.

Furthermore, we're recovery from a downturn in the economy that was caused by government intervention causing a downturn in realesetate markets across the country, that cause the derivitives market to crash.

The economic downturn's problem was basically government interefereing and causing problems that the banks couldn't account for, because such problems were unheard of and impossible to happen in normal circumstances.

Here's a secret.  You can't lower healthcare costs with universal healthcare.  Insurance companies only make like a 7% profit margin.

Well unless you want to go after the pharmecutical companies and biotechnology companies.

Which is just stupid... because that would GREATLY reduce medical research spending (Us i currently the only one doing a big amount of research, being 84% of spending)... net result?  In a few years, the WORLD'S healthcare is worse off.  Even the show the West Wing knew that and they were about the farthest thing from Republican friendly as you could get.

Sure it's more even coverage... but it's just worse all around.  I'd rather live to 80 and someone else to 100, then for us both to die at 70.

Making health insurance more affordable is just a lie to pass something they wanted passed.  Or th ey just haven't looked at healthcare to hard to realize it.

Other countries can get away with it only because the US is doing the research... and even then  I wouldn't call their plans "affordable" as their isn't a time where the rising costs are a problem for said countries.

Though without new treatments I suppose rising costs would mostly stop.

The real sad thing is thinking about how much better everyones healthcare would be if NOBODY had universal healthcare.

We might have cures for things like cancer already.

We can't switch to a europeon style system without first figuring out how to stop the vast defunding that would happen in it's wake.  It can't just be "well the government will just have to spend more" because we've already seen that not work in Europe.

When facing budget problems due to increasing healthcare, government isn't going to increase money to make their budget problems worse... no matter how many people it will save in the long run.

I know we've already hashed this out in another thread.  I just wanted to point out that your last 2 paragraphs are far from the consensus, and are more in the minority, of the real cause of the global economic downturn.  That cause being the unregulated derivatives market was itself the problem.

Except... it's not the minority viewpoint.  I just don't think you understand the arguements of the people who blame the derititives market primarily.

Which is, if it wasn't for the derivititives market then real estate downturns wouldn't of caused as big a crash.

It's the exact same viewpoint.  It just depends on if you want to put the blame on the first few dominoes or the rest that fell.

Considering the first few provide no benefit... while the rest (the deritivitives market) are repsonsible for most of the wealth in the world....

Ask anyone, and they'll tell you the derivitives crash was caused by real estate being down in all sectors which is virtually unheard of, and never really happened in the history of real estate.  Derivities are build and balanced so that there will always be something in each one that will back up the failures even a vast majority in each one fails.  However when they ALL fail.   Nothing in the world is going to stop that.

Blaming the derivitives market would be like blaming a company from protecting itself from fire burning down some it's factories, but not protecting itself from fire burning down all 8 factories across the country simaltaniously.

People blaming the derivitives market are really blaming them for not factoring in the governments incompetance and inability to not damage the country in knew and unthought of ways.

Derivitives CAN NOT crash by themselves.

Derivitives are basically like playing Roullette where you have 3-1 odds on Red and Black.

So you bet on Red and Black and for every 100 you bet you get 300.

The ONLY way you lose is if 0 or 00 comes up in a very statistically unlikely number of chances.  Like 100 times in a row.  Basically something that's never happened before... without a rigged system.

Which is why you want to avoid rigged systems.

People and least of all governments don't have perfect insights... so fixing it so it's all black now, might lead to problems in the future.

As was the case with the real estate market.

Or to put it another way.

Say Bill gates comes to you and says.... "I bet you a billion dollars that if you pull out a coin and flip it 50 times,   It will land heads everytime."

Would you do it?  I would.

Now I'm assuming your not a billionaire here... so you obviously can't cover it if it DOES land heads everytime... but the likelyhood of that happening is soooo remote... you pretty much have to take that risk.

Heck it's even better in the derivitives case, because it's not bill gates giving you a billion dollars... it's a billion dollars of wealth being added to the world... which improves everyones lives through investments, jobs and economic growth that wouldn't happen before hand.

You've just got to be careful of someone slipping in a two-headed coin and disrupting the natural order of things.

well i don't want to get into a debate so i won't read anyones post and i'll try not to post anything worth debating!

i agree? Dem's have lost there edge and most of there principals, but Rep: are just mindless idiots anyway so we lose until we can get bipartisanship which won't happen for another decade.