how is being characteristically partisan and uncooperative showing "balls"?

What makes this incredibly idiotic for the Repugnicans is the fact that their counterparts in the Senate are not playing the partisan card and therefore seem to avoid the political suicide. I sense that our president is undertaking this effort correctly. He is reaching out in a bipartisan way while instructing Pelosi to sharpen her teeth and attack when called upon. Very clever indeed.

That's amusing. We cannot know for certain now if the stimulus bill will have the desired effect or not. What we can know for certain right now is that it appears the new President reached his hand out across the aisle in an effort to accomplish something and the Republicans, in what's become typical of them, decided it was more important to score cheap political points than to work together towards that accomplishment.

There are still debates raging as to the whether or not it was The New Deal or World War II which ended The Great Depression, just as I imagine that when this depression ends there will be an ongoing debate as to the effectiveness of what Presidents Bush & Obama tried to stimulate the economy. What many will remember is that President Obama reached out his hand and offered to compromise, and the Republicans sulked in the corner.

Oh, I don't know. Most of the people I know with balls are terribly uncooperative.

AM NOT!!!

And nothing you can say will change my mind

This isn't about courage, Politicians are chickenshit by necessity.
But in the Bush years, the Republicans supported Bush and his ideas. There was no GOP opposition because they were in lockstep and totally cool with the Bush Agenda, not because they were afraid of Bush or their fellow Republicans. The small government Republicans are all dead and buried. The GOP is no longer the party of Lincoln, nor Teddy Roosevelt, hell, not even Eisenhower.
And the Modern Republican's complete lack of principle cost them.

Actually the vote for the Bill was Partisan.(All the yes votes were Democrat)
The vote against the Bill was Bipartisan. (All the house Republicans AND 11 DEMOCRATS voted no).

11 out of, what? 435 total members? real bi-partisan effort there.

Hmmm. I don't think you should take their interest as a compliment, but rather as evidence of the growing narrative of the Frankenliberal (to borrow FTR's term), one that smears progressive thinkers as unyieldingly partisan towards liberal spending initiatives despite their campaign promises to behave otherwise.

I am unsure why the author of this article would choose to fuel such a false narrative, but then again, this article depends on a lot of false narratives, like that Republicans feel like Obama treated them like dirt (they don't), or the tired fucking false equivalency that Obama is a machine politician akin to Richard J Daley. Even the premise that Obama only sacrificed family planning spending is false, as some posters and FTR have pointed out.

I'm sure Coulter fanatics were more than happy to pounce on the misinformed ravings of an article published on a alternative porn site. What I'm not sure of, however, is why we so often publish these types of ravings.

(I feel kind of dirty quoting FTR so much, but in these instances, his observations are useful.)

P.S. I found a pretty fucking great article on Obama's involvement in Chicago politics that was a fascinating read (it may have been posted to the boards before, but that was kind of before my time here). It's long as hell, but definitely worth looking at.

One reason why people who offer statements of the form "X is never the answer" are definitionally cretinous is they inevitably fail to identify what the question is that X is never the answer to.

What we do know from experience is that during the Great Depression, the initial institutional responses boiled down in large part to "balancing the budget", which turned out to be a really really really bad response in those circumstances.

its weird being proud of the president

I know, right? I've spent the last 8 years getting used to waking up disappointed and then retiring for the day still feeling the same.

Kinda makes you want to get your hopes up again.

et tu, Mr. Palast?

OBAMA IS A HOMOPHOBE

from that link:

get the fuck out of here.

Also:

This blog has 18 posts over the past month. Honestly angryfaggot, did Obama's choice of Rick Warren giving the convocation really enrage you so much, that you now embrace violent political strategies? Was A Purpose Driven Life really that bad?

Not many people around these parts like Obama's tepid (as you described them) policies about LGBT rights, but I imagine you'll be hard pressed to find someone who supports you bashing in windshields on cars with Obama stickers on them. This is as crackpot a scheme as that girl who carved the B into her face during the election.