Justice Stevens says he will retire.

[Dinner]

If history is any guide it will happen very soon.

[-Jrabbit]

The only sure thing is that the replacement SCOTUS judge will sport a Hitler mustache. Especially if it's a female.

[Ecofarm]

Long before the election everyone knew 2-3 judges were on the line. No surprise here.

[DarkCloud]

>>The reason I'm a bit worried is Obama is always going out of his way to be a centrist instead of doing what his base wants him to do.

No he's not.

He talks like a centrist, but does not do any centrist actions (or at least any more than Bush- the leader of immigration reform efforts that liberal bastion Ted Kennedy and John McCain signed on to and which Obama claimed to support but did little practically to put his neck on the line for, because frankly at the time he knew which way the wind was blowing- and it was blowing against hard-working immigrants (as well as against less-hard-working immigrants) who wanted more rights).

Even the oil leasing situation is more of an agreement to agree. Things can change before 2012-- the announcement was pure political calculus-- which is fair, Bush and other presidents were allowed to do such things-- Obama is just better at BS-ing.

[Dinner]

Obama single handedly killed the public option by making a deal with big pharma back in 2009. The administration then stopped talking about the public option and began advocating for it being killed behind the scenes. If consider that "liberal" then what the hell would you consider centrist? As for immigration reform, which we need badly BTW, Obama hasn't put any thing on the subject forward and Congress doesn't even have such a bill pending nor will the issue even be brought up in an election year. I don't know where you got that read herring. The allowing oil drilling while pushing up CAFE standards is an excellent example of a centrist position.

In fact, I can't think of a single actual liberal policy Obama has given more then lip service too.

[Hauldren Collider]

Healthcare reform?

I will want to stab something fuzzy if you even SUGGEST that that bill was centrist.

[Dinner]

Dude, liberals wanted single payer and but compromised to a public option to buy into medicare at cost but the bill didn't even have that. Essentially the bill was just a moderate bit of insurance regulation reform along with a mandate that everyone had to buy into private for profit insurance. That's about as middle of the road as it gets.

[Hauldren Collider]

More like middle of the sidewalk on the left side of the road

[Dinner]

Dude, the entire bill, I mean the ENTIRE bill which was passed was all based upon the Republican health care reform proposal of 1994! Are you telling me the Republicans are raving leftists?

The only leftist compromise in the original proposal was the public option to buy into medicare at cost but even that got thrown over board so literally all we were left with was the basic 1994 Republican proposal. Yet the Republicans even lied about their own proposal and obstructed it. Obama gave away the house trying to appeal to Republicans and the Republicans still cut off their own noses to spite Obama. It's retarded.

[Hauldren Collider]

wtf? Lay off the acid, man

[DinoDoc]

Dude, liberals wanted single payer and but compromised to a public option to buy into medicare at cost but the bill didn't even have that.

What's the meaningful difference between that and determining what coverage people buy from private companies and at what cost?

[Dinner]

It doesn't even remotely dictate what coverage people nor at what cost. It does set minimum standards (I.E. every policy must including X) and it says insurance companies can no longer just dump people when they get sick after paying years of premiums but there is no part of it which says how much insurance companies can charge. That's the single biggest failing of the bill too because costs will continue to skyrocket since 40% of Americans literally only have one option, a monopoly option, where one insurance company controls the entire local market and so can charge what ever they want. Without real competition monopolists will continue to abuse people just as monopolies always do; that's why the public option to buy into medicare at cost was so important. It was the only real bit of cost containment we had but even that got sold out to the insurance company lobbyists.