Are you there God? It’s me, Gabe.

Actually, forget that. Now that I’ve read it to myself in a baby voice, it’s even more terrifying. I’m going to hide under my bed now.

Yes, but if you remember, in Starship Troopers there were all kinds of hurt feelings. Plus a gratuitous naked shower scene.

Rear Window XP

We few, we happy few, we band of honorary aunts.

Lawyer Mike, if you won’t rest your case, who will?

It’s still okay for us men to be empty husks, though, right? I can still live my entire emotional and intellectual life vicariously through my wife, right?

If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the precipitate.

Given my avatar and my username, this whole thing is way too close for comfort. Get out of my head, Videogum.

Hey, that’s fantastic. That’s exactly the kind of fact-based, rational response I’m dying for. I do disagree with you (I don’t think the individual mandate is unconstitutional, at least not moreso than helmet or seatbelt laws, and I think Russia turning Soviet is more about them than about us, but also self-contradictorially (?!) I think the recent election protests there are in part about global reaction to the green revolution, which we supported), but I really appreciate the response. You’ve given me stuff to think about. Thanks.

Completely agree:
1. first month post-election, acted to save the entire american economy. (I know, he wasn’t president yet, but if you remember, Bush stepped aside and let Obama and the Democrats work out the $700 B bailout. Ugly, sure, but I have friends at Goldman and JP Morgan, who at one point in late 2008 thought that the whole system might go down, like ATM’s stop working. It was that serious.)
2. Saved American Auto industry (again, ugly, because fuck them for opposing regulation forever, and then asking for a bailout, but they survived and are now profitable, and the importance of that can’t be underestimated.)
3. Broad based healthcare bill with provisions for universal coverage (again, super ugly, because there were many many compromises, but still something no other president has been able to do, and at least (if it survives legal challenges) creates the possiblity of fixing flaws within it as we go along. (Already, some paperwork requirements have been eliminated from the bill, etc.) Healthcare is largest percentage of GDP (I think. It’s up there anyway), and growing, so someone’s got to address it, and he’s trying to.
4. Restored (a little) Americas reputation internationally. A lot of people really hated us internationally, and thought we were really dangerous and stupid during the Bush years. I know Republicans don’t care about that, but the fact is, we need people in foreign countries to like us, or at least not hate us. There’s a strong argument that Communism fell because of blue jeans and rock and roll, as much as because of political pressures. Without good will among lots of people in the world, it’s much harder to get what we want.
5. Found and killed Bin Laden. (This was not easy and the decision to kill him without telling Pakistan was very ballsy and very, very serious.)
6. Supported the ousting of Gadaffi without losing American lives. Again, that was a very thin tightrope to walk, and in the face of a lot of opposition, he did it exactly right.
7. His DOJ has started to prosecute insider trading on Wall St. using wire taps and other tools of organized crime investigations. It seems like “no doy,” but this is the first time anyone’s done it, and hopefully, it will shake up a lot of folks on Wall St.
I haven’t mentioned a bunch of other stuff, but I’ll stop here. He’s easily the best, most effective president of my lifetime (middle aged), and doing all this in a time of increasing hostility and complexity. I DO NOT understand why Republicans keep saying he’s “in over his head,” unless that’s code for something else they don’t want to say publicly.

Can I just say, Gabe, that I’m always really curious about the same thing, and thank you Facetaco, for responding honestly. I do follow politics, but I don’t watch Fox, so I often find myself wondering why people hate Obama so much. I don’t quite understand why people are so opposed to healthcare for everyone. Yes, we can certainly debate the best way to do that (free market v. gov’t v. combination), but I’m always suprised by the vehemence. Who doesn’t agree that healthcare for everyone is a good thing? Do people really believe that poor people should be left to bleed to death on street corners, or die from curable diseases? Same thing with regulations generally: doesn’t everyone agree that the environment should be protected, and that there’s a role for the government in doing that? Otherwise factories will just pollute the shit out of everyting (cf. IBM pouring PCBs into the Hudson River in the ’70s). Happy to debate the optimal level of regulation verus efficiency, but who doesn’t think that pollution rules need to be enforced? And then there’s the whole religion thing. Most of the mainstream Republican candidates seem obliged to be skeptical of evolution, and to stress that it’s just a theory. That really, really troubles me, because it’s a denial of real, empirical, verifiable data in the name of religion. What else are you prepared to deny? After all, gravity is a theory, too (why does one mass exert a force on another mass far away? We don’t really know.) but it’s undeniable. Evolution is observable (you can watch it in generations of fruit flies in labs any day of the week.) When mainstream republicans insist that it’s only a “theory,” as though God creating the earth 7,000 years ago is an equally valid possibility, they’re faking, right? They can’t be serious? (And Facetaco, that to me is a much more troubling instance of people not taking the job seriously than someone hamming it up at the Apollo. It’s the Apollo for fuck’s sake. There’s a lot of history on that stage, and showing that you’re aware of it, and that it means something to you, in a way that’s also stylish and graceful is completely and utterly awesome, and not at all frivolous. No other president, (except maybe Bill Clinton, and he was so, so flawed), has had a direct connection to Black folks in this country, and it means a huge amount to see it demonstrated, even though, ultimately, it may not mean much in terms of policies, etc.)

I know, tl;dr. And this is not, after all, a politics blog. But on politics blogs, everyone’s all wound up and shouting, so maybe this is the perfect place to have an honest and low key exchange of perspectives, so thanks Gabe and FT.

“You better shut your fucking mouth and eat those goddam motherfucking Cherrios before I shove that bowl up your ass, you fucking piece of shit” — my 89 year-old grandmother to me when I was six.