One part of political debate I like is using images to make a point. Whether it is a chart or a quote image, these graphics hold on to the adage that a picture is worth a thousand words. They are also easy to share in social media. However one still needs to be careful one isn’t sharing inaccurate information. Don’t post or share any graphic unless you can confirm the accuracy of the information.
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Just like during the budget fight last December, the ruling oligarchy took it to the last moment to agree on a deal on raising the debt ceiling. “Good” for them. The deal though is a solution looking for a problem.
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As the Republicans drive us closer to the cliff of financial ruin, the fact is that the debt ceiling needs to be raised to pay for what has already been budgeted. Remember the government shut down crisis in December? Not only is this crisis a Tea Party wet dream, but the Democrats don’t get off the hook. Who’s bright idea came up with the need to cut the deficit while the economy wobbles after the gut punch in 2008 that led to 9%+ unemployment, tanked the housing market, and the largest income gap since 1928. What we are seeing isn’t just a GOP vs. Democrat battle, it’s the tyranny of the money majority.
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Governor John Kasich can be a pain in the behind because he is easily angered when diplomacy and tact is needed. I’m sure his supporters love that about him but for me it tends to make me think he’s unstable – like a mean drunk. To do my part to help make Kasich a one term governor, I used a couple of clips of his recent budget signing gloat-fest to make some pro-Democratic party messages. Enjoy!
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The preamble of the US Constitution says: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence,promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” That means the government should act in the best interests of the people and in a way that betters our lives such as protecting our health, liberty, and property. Some conservatives like Senator Rand Paul complain about a “nanny state” restricting our freedom to eat as much as we want when we want, waste energy, and to be homophobic no matter that doing all that might encroach on other’s rights.
Recently Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) said:
Sen. Rand Paul, in a tussle with an Energy Department official Thursday, complained about what he described as burdensome, “busybody” regulations that were forcing him to buy a bad bowl.
“Frankly, my toilets don’t work in my house. And I blame you and people like you who want to tell me what I can install in my house, what I can do. You restrict my choices,” Paul said.
The issue on the table was a 2007 law requiring a phase-in of energy efficient bulbs. Paul and others are trying to repeal portions of the law, arguing that it restricts the American consumer.
At a Thursday hearing on the issue, Paul — a freshman Republican who shares a libertarian streak with his father, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) — aimed his complaints at Kathleen Hogan, a deputy assistant at the Energy Department.
He began his remarks by asking Hogan if she was pro-choice. She replied that she was “pro-choice of bulbs.”
“The point is that most members of your administration probably would be frank and would be up front to characterize themselves as being pro-choice for abortion,” Paul said.
Toilets join light bulbs on Sen. Rand Paul’s list of necessities burdened by ‘busybody’ rules0
Setting aside the ridiculous point of comparing abortion to buying light bulbs, he isn’t the only cheap labor conservative to complain about government regulations that force you to change the behavior you are use to.
I understand Paul’s point about low flow toilets. Early models were clunky, but the current models are cutting edge and leave the old complaints behind.
I support the use of CFL or LED light bulbs over the old inefficient incandescent bulbs that haven’t really changed in over 100 years. I have several CFL bulbs and one of them I bought in 2003 and it is still working. I have not had to change a light bulb for more than 3 years now and I have seen a slight reduction in my electric bill. I plan on moving to the even better LED bulbs once the costs moderate a bit more.
What moron would want to spend money on old bulbs and give up savings on their electric bill? Sen Rand Paul I guess and other Luddites like him. Besides I would rather spend extra now for new technology and make that transition than be forced to do it later when we have to save energy either because oil is running out or some other nasty reason. I’m sure there will be someone who demands the right to pay $10 a gallon to gas up their old SUV that gets 5 miles to the gallon.
To me that is being stupid.
There is also complaints about the insurance mandate and other parts of the new health care reform law, belly aching about the First Lady’s efforts to curb child obesity, and the First Family speaking out against bullying.
They might have a point about the insurance mandate of the health care law over reaching by taxing people who don’t buy health insurance, but who would want to let insurance companies decide if life-saving procedures were cost-effective? Why do some people want to put profit over people? How is that moral?
At least if the government decided what was covered, those decisions wouldn’t be based on the bottom line. Just talk to people who spend hundred of thousands of dollars so they can have a few more weeks with their loved one. Compassionate people can’t and won’t put a price tag or profit over their loved one.
I don’t worry about rules and regulations meant to benefit the most people but I do worry, and find it ironic, that people like Senator Rand Paul thinks its okay to interfere in a woman’s health decisions while whining about the government doing that to us.
He would rather force women to have unwanted children, have the IRS police if tax dollars were used for abortions, yet doesn’t want to spend money to help take care of those children.
It seems when Democrats “overreach” they at least help the most people but when the GOP overreach they want to hurt the most people.
What is really a “nanny state”? One that tries to better the human condition or one that wants to be a selfish ass.
It started with a tweet and brought out how some are misinformed about history. One has to wonder why people tell or repeat lies that can be refuted so easily.
I heard about the Tucson shooting victim who was arrested for making a death threat to a Tea Party person at a taping for the ABC News Sunday news show “This Week” and sent off a flippant tweet:
Violent words from Right 20 from Left 1 – Death threat at ABC-TV Town Hall event Saturday
I wrote it because I knew that the people on the right and by extension the corporate media would hold that event out as proof that “both sides do it” which is actually a false equivalence. The violent rhetoric from the right far outstrips any coming from the left – if any from the left even exists.
Later a few of tweets pop up in my mention file:
@cadfile Keith Olbermann praised a man for threatening the life of a Tea Party member here
@cadfile As far as violent words. The left seems to confuse political metaphor with reality calling it violent words
@cadfile I see violence as a left-wing thing. The guy that flew airplane into IRS building was a Communist & SEIU beating a man up
And that was from just one person @m4zdaman
The truth is that Olbermann praised the man on his Friday show – a day before the incident as the article and a check of the show’s website shows. That means that m4zdaman thinks that Olbermann is clairvoyant. Nice trick – then why didn’t he stop it before it happened?
The IRS plane crasher wasn’t from the left and the SEIU beating was found to be a hoax.
Of course my question has always been why does the right have to use violent “metaphors” in political discussions. All I know is some men use violent words to compensate for a small penis or a questioning of their sexuality. I wonder if that is true for those on the right that use those unnecessary words. It just seems that those on the right want to be dicks for the sake of being a dick – kind of like Biff Tannen was in the Back to the Future movies.
Next I get a few tweets from @Weirdodo and @joegallant who like @m4zdaman seem to think flooding people with tweets somehow “proves” your intelligence or correctness. Here are the more ridiculous ones:
@cadfile Violent actions from left, 1000 to 1, http://tinyurl.com/the-real-KKK Gee, looks almost like current events!
@cadfile Um… KKK was the paramilitary arm of the pre-war southern Democrat party
@cadfile “The Klan attacked black members of the Loyal Leagues and intimidated southern Republicans and Freedmen’s Bureau workers”
So the false equivalence they are drawing is that the Democratic Party of the 1950′s and 1960′s is the same party that elected President Obama in 2008 and the KKK from the 1950′s and 60′s would support a black President.
Yes the Democratic party was in general made up of a large number of southern people who supported Jim Crow laws and segregation. Although it was a southern Democratic President who supported and got the Civil Rights Act passed. The KKK was a domestic terrorist group that was anti-minority, anti-immigrant, pro-white, right wing nationalists. They also supported Jim Crow laws and segregation.
Leading Democrats of the time were racist such as Strom Thurman, Jesse Helms, and Robert Byrd. Back then many white Southern politicians championed racial segregation. Thurman switched to the GOP in 1964 to support Goldwater and oppose the Civil Rights Act. Helms switched to the GOP in the early 70′s while Byrd stayed in the party but moderated his views.
The main reason the GOP changed to more conservative and racist was the Southern strategy where Republicans like Richard Nixon scared white voters in the south and they voted for Republicans. The more liberal Democrats then took control of the party and evolved as the opposite of the GOP. However there are still some conservative members just as there use to be more liberal Republicans back in the day.
So if we were going to humor @Weirdodo and @joegallant we could say that if the KKK existed today like they did in 60′s it would be the paramilitary arm of the GOP since it seems the GOP has the worst problem with a black President and a liberal agenda for health and social programs.
I think it’s funny that someone on the right has to go back to the dark days of the Jim Crow south which makes the false equivalence so obvious and striking.
Again in the past two years, coinciding with the Obama administration, the amount of actual violence coming from the right is off the chart. He is just a brief summary:
July 2008: A gunman agitated at how “liberals” are “destroying America” kills two and wounds four at a Unitarian church.
October 2008: Two neo-Nazis are arrested in Tennessee for a plot to murder Barack Obama and dozens of other African-Americans.
December 2008: A father-son team involved in the “patriot” movement try to extort a bank with a homemade bomb; they end up killing two police officers.
January 2009: A white supremacist in Brockton, Mass., rapes a black woman, kills her sister and a homeless man, and is captured while en route to a Jewish community center.
April 2009: A white supremacist and gun nut kills three Pittsburgh cops because he believed conspiracy theories about President Obama taking away his guns. He had been posting Glenn Beck videos on a neo-Nazi website.
May 2009: Another right-wing crazy in Okaloosa County, Fla., also fearing his guns would be confiscated, kills two cops before being shot dead.
June 2009: A Holocaust denier and right-wing tax protester kills a security guard at the Holocaust Museum.
July 2009: A woman takes a break from posting Glenn Beck videos on her MySpace page to case an Air National Guard Base in Long Island. Upon her arrest, authorities find an assault rifle, a shotgun and 500 rounds of ammo in her car.
August 2009: A man in Collier Township, just south of Pittsburgh, walks into a women’s aerobics class and kills three women. His diary states, “Good luck to Obama! He will be successful. The liberal media LOVES him. Amerika has chosen The Black Man. Good!”
February 2010: An anti-government tax protester flies his plane into the IRS building in Austin, Texas, killing himself and one other.
March 2010: Seven militiamen in Michigan and Ohio are arrested for plotting to assassinate local police officers to spark a new civil war. This is also the month that an anti-government extremist walks into the Pentagon and opens fire, wounding two, before being shot dead.
May 2010: A mosque in Jacksonville, Fla., is firebombed.
July 2010: A Glenn Beck fanatic loads his car with weapons and drives to the Bay Area to attack the offices of the Tides Foundation and ACLU. He is wounded in a shootout along with the patrolmen after they intercept him on a routine traffic stop.
September 2010: A Concord, N.C., man who refers to himself as the “Christian counterpart to bin Laden” is arrested and charged with plotting to blow up an abortion clinic.
The corporate media meanwhile is quick to downplay these events and other threats directed at Democrats or liberals.
I don’t really care if you are a Democrat or Republican but what does jerk my chain is if someone is obviously ignorant – especially about something so easy to check out.
The reality show celebutant addled public with an assist by a subservient corporate media machine helped elect a cheap labor majority in the US House of Representative and they ran on several points that included repealing the Affordable Health Care for America Act and cutting the deficit, it looks like if they repeal health care reform it will blow up the budget.
As ThinkProgress summed up the findings from the CBO, the GOP’s H.R. 2, the Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act would not only lead to higher out of pocket costs, reduced benefits and saddle employers with higher premiums. Over the next 10 years and beyond, budget-busting Republicans if successful would unleash a flood of red ink:
“Consequently, over the 2012-2021 period, the effect of H.R. 2 on federal deficits as a result of changes in direct spending and revenues is likely to be an increase in the vicinity of $230 billion, plus or minus the effects of technical and economic changes to CBO’s and JCT’s projections for that period…”
“Correspondingly, CBO estimates that enacting H.R. 2 would increase federal deficits in the decade after 2019 by an amount that is in a broad range around one-half percent of GDP, plus or minus the effects of technical and economic changes that CBO and JCT will include in the forthcoming estimate. For the decade beginning after 2021, the effect of H.R. 2 on federal deficits as a share of the economy would probably be somewhat larger.”
For his part, Rep. Cantor remains unencumbered – and undeterred – by the truth.
And what I don’t understand is why would elected officials be against lower premiums and better care from health care providers and insurance.
That’s the thing only crazy people like the tea bagger GOP would support worse health care and out of control costs.
A report released by the University of Akron’s Bliss Institute of Applied Politics maps out the Republican sweep of Ohio statewide offices and the open US Senate seat in 2010. The report, which includes maps, show the percentages of votes and turn out compared to the results in 2006. The numbers show that the turn out by Democrats was much lower in 2010 and that helped the GOP with their sweep.
“The pendulum has swung, this time in favor of Ohio Republicans,” John Green, Bliss Institute director, said in a press release. “Low voter turnout across the board and a poorly performing state economy contributed significantly to the 2010 Ohio Republican sweep.”
Akron U report maps GOP wins in November; contrasts results with 2006
It is clear that there was less voter turnout in 2010 than 2006 in almost every county. The East-West pattern emerges again in this map. There was, in general, less of a drop in voter turnout in the Republican-leaning western regions of the state as opposed to the Democratic-leaning eastern regions of the state. This indicates that Democratic-leaning counties had less-enthused voters compared to those counties that tend to lean Republican. It helps to explain why Democrats did so well in the 2006 state-wide contests and fared so poorly in the 2010 election.
Mapping the Republican Sweep: The 2010 Election Results in Ohio
The report doesn’t look at why people voted the way they did but it showed that when a particular party doesn’t turn out their candidate loses. It seems that’s election 101.
(click on picture for fullsize version)
The pundits and Republicans are wrong. The election result wasn’t a rejection of the Democratic agenda, 30% of the electorate stayed home, disappointed in the results of the Democratic majority. The GOP won by default – not by mandate.
A new CBS News poll finds that a majority of Americans are either disappointed by the outcome of last week’s midterm elections or simply don’t much care.
While 40 percent do say they are pleased by the election outcome, that’s a significantly smaller percentage than the 58 percent who were pleased following the 2006 midterm elections.
(h/t Daily Kos)
Still bad for the country but also means that Democrats should maintain their positions on issues like letting the Bush tax cuts to expire.
The 2010 election is not official but it looks like a bad night for Democrats both nationally and here in Ohio. The economy was part of the reason – people out of work – blame the party in power. I have some other thoughts on it.
It looks like the GOP will be sweeping all the offices in Ohio but at this hour Governor is still too close to call.
MSNBC had some exit poll info that showed the main reason for turning out the Democrats was JOBS JOBS JOBS. Anger at the government (the Tea party argument) was only 24%.
Genius Chris Matthews asks maybe if the Democrats had forced the GOP to fight for their ideas instead of letting them obstruct real economy recovery solutions and financial reform the results might have been different.
You think Chris??? Duh! Where have been for two years?
Lawrence O’Donnell was upset that the dirty hippies hurt Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas in the end.
No Larry, Blanche hurt herself being a blue dog Democrat and throwing labor under the bus.
The only good thing is now the GOP has their chance to try to govern. Good luck to them and may heaven help us all. They have been saying “No!” for so long they don’t have any real idea what they will do to “give us jobs”.
A good spin I would put on it is like a close football game. It is 21 to 20 with 3 minutes left in the game.
Your team is behind and is driving down the field. You end up scoring a field goal to move ahead 23-21 but there is 2 minutes left in the game.
Commentators usually ask “Did you score too soon?”
What then sometimes happens is the other team drives down close enough to kick a field goal and ends up winning 24-23.
In my world the GOP is the team that scored too soon since the 2012 election counts more than 2010.
We will see.
One note is that the GOP is not winning as many seats as they did in 1994 when the economy was not as bad as now.
I spent Saturday afternoon watching the “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear” and enjoyed it for the most part. But reading some of the tweets from the pundit class showed some of them missed the point. The only problem I had with it, is the idea that the political insanity comes from both sides equally. That’s a false equivalency.
People like David Corn and Talking Point Memo’s Brian Beutler seemed under the wrong impression that the rally was a GOTV rally and complained throughout that no one on stage mentioned voting. Mainstream media outlets also assumed it was a partisan political rally because they tripped over themselves to ban their employees from attending or participating in it.
Jon Stewart made clear that it was a comedy show to point out the problem of our current rancid political debate in the country not a GOTV show. It was definitely not partisan.
While I do agree that we need more civility, the rancid aggressiveness is one sided and the side that is most aggressive is the Tea Party/GOP side. They need to tone down thousands of percent more than those on the left side.
That is where Stewart is naive. There are two (or more) points of view but NOT all are equally valid. Most from the right are based on complete lies.
I agree we should work on toning down the rhetoric but progressives and others on the left side should NEVER drop our guard and hope and pray the right joins us in working together. That’s why the President and the Democrats are going to take a hit on election day.
How many times do we need to be beat up before people like Stewart get it?
The Tea Party/GOP thinks you are stupid and want to keep you that way. How else could the Big Corporate world, who back the Tea Party/GOP, convince you to vote against your own best interests? How else could you complain about government run health care before going to a doctor appointment paid for by Medicare? Why else would the TP/GOP candidates complain about deficits yet want to give bail outs and welfare to the Big Corps. The Tea Party/GOP doesn’t care about you.
They hope you don’t remember we had tax cuts from President Bush in 2001 and they didn’t help the economy. Ask yourself – where are those jobs that Bush promised? Over 8 years he only helped create a net of 3 million jobs. President Clinton helped create around 26 million in his 8 years.
They hope you don’t remember that they blocked any attempt to hold the bankers that crashed our economy accountable for their crimes. If the banks hadn’t been allowed to do what they did by the relaxing and non-enforcement of banking policy (changed in the mid-1990s by the GOP), and if the banks hadn’t relaxed their own standards to keep up the housing bubble, we wouldn’t be in this mess.
They want you to forget they got us into an unnecessary war in Iraq based on lies. There were no WMDs and Saddam Hussein had NOTHING to do with 9/11.
That is why the GOP lost in a big way in 2008.
Voting for the TP/GOP or staying home means one wants to continue the failed Republican policies of 2001-2008, messing with programs that help real people like the Health Reform Act and Social Security, and electing someone who wants to deny reproductive rights for women, for a start. Not to mention the other rights and liberties they want to roll back.
Since President Obama took office the TP/GOP voted against the unemployed, health care reform, small businesses, against a bill that would prevent medical expenses to be included in credit scoring, against veterans, and voted against the 9/11 first responders. And they are doing it funded by anonymous and in some cases foreign big business interests.
The TP/GOP doesn’t care about YOU.
Two years is not long enough to fire the Democrats. Bush and the TP/GOP messed up the country over 8 years. We almost slipped into a depression. Although not the best results, the Democrats passed a health care reform package, fiance reform, equal pay rights for women, helping bring the promise of the Internet to the country side, rescuing the auto industry from collapse, and much more even while the cheap labor conservatives in the TP/GOP said “No!”. And they said “No!” about everything coming from the Democrats.
The TP/GOP doesn’t care about YOU. They only care to make the rich richer and middle class extinct. They want to GO BACK to what the world was like before January 20th 2009. They want you to forget what it was REALLY like back then. They want to create a fascist state where the merchant class owns and rules the nation while us regular people SERVE them. The top six laws the TP/GOP think need to go away help a majority of people in this country. Voting for them means you don’t want social security, Medicare, Minimum Wage, and Unemployment Benefits to start.
If that’s what you want, if you want to prove you are stupid, then vote for the Tea Party/GOP or stay home, but don’t complain when you are not better off then you in 2012 then you are today.
I really don’t get it. The recently released “Pledge for America” is a 45 page reheat of current Republican talking points which themselves were rehashes from the past 15 years. Do they not remember the Bush years? Does the media? If people accept the pledge and elect Republicans we can go back to those days of Bush when the banks collapsed, we were fighting two wars without end, and health care costs were a threat to national security.
What will the pledge do?
* It pledges to continue the same failed policies that brought us the worst recession since the Great Depression. (Think Progress)
* It is an oath to Big Oil. (Wonk Room)
* It is a backdoor path to bring in Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) controversial budget roadmap that privatizes Medicare and Social Security. (Wonk Room)
* It repeals the Affordable Care Act and replaces it with provisions from the Affordable Care Act. (Think Progress)
* It endorses Arizona’s deputization of immigration law. (Wonk Room)
* It embraces a radical “Tenther” view of the U.S. Constitution. (Think Progress)What will it do to deficits and debt?
* American Progress’s Michael Ettlinger and Michael Linden examined the “Pledge” and found that implementing the plan’s proposals would increase the federal budget deficit and accelerate growth in federal debt. (CAP)
Even many conservatives don’t like the “Pledge” and when one of the supporters is a comedian who parodies the GOP mind set as his act then you know you have trouble.
I may have my issues with the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats but I sure as hell don’t want to go back to the Bush years when the GOP was in charge.
The mainstream media narrative seems to be a huge GOP victory in November. I would like to see the votes counted first but it might be bad for the Democrats. Are the voting public so forgetful of the Bush years that they will vote to have his policies again? Really? You have choice – continue down the correct road or go back to the nasty time of the Bush years.
Here is one example of the narrative:
Republican John Kasich has zoomed to a whopping 17-point lead in a new Quinnipiac Poll released today, an indication that predictions of a GOP landslide across the nation will come true.
The former congressman is up 54 percent to 37 percent over Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland, the largest lead of any poll to date on this year’s governor’s race. The Dispatch Poll published Sept. 5 showed Kasich ahead by 12 points.
Then there is this:
Greg notes two polls — the just-released NYT/CBS poll and last week’s National Journal poll — both of which show that voters believe the GOP would govern like Bush. According to the NYT/CBS poll, 47% believe Republicans would return to Bush policies compared to just 36% who believe they won’t. And according to the National Journal poll 45% believe that the GOP’s agenda is the same as Bush’s compared to 33% who don’t.
Really? Preventing a depression, getting basic health insurance to the 40 million who didn’t have it, restoring our reputation within the world, winding down the worse military mistake since Vietnam in Iraq and moving to end the 2nd worse in Afghanistan, and reforming a banking industry that almost ran us off a cliff, AND a large number of people want to go back to the Bush years? Really?
If you do then you are a fucking moron. Anyone who would lose their mind over basic health insurance for those without need to have their head examined and their brains replaced.
Those on the left who might let that happen by sitting at home by not voting – you are fucking morons.
Yes, I have had my issues with President Obama and the Democrats. Not because I hated their policies but because they didn’t go far enough. I wanted universal health care, breaking up the big bangs and jail for the creeps who fucked us over, jail for anyone in the Bush administration that tortured or allowed torture to happen for example. I didn’t get what I wanted but I am damn sure I don’t want the Republicans and their Tea Party branch to be in charge.
You all have a choice. Stand up for this country and what is right – stand up for our values or be a fucking moron getting fucked over by big business at every turn.
At the end of July, I wrote a post about President Obama’s video address to Netroots Nation – a group of liberal bloggers and Internet users. I complained that Obama and the Democratic leadership in Congress were not using their Congressional majority to pass laws that would actually help regular Americans. They had compromised too much with the GOP. It seems more people in the Netroots are coming around to my feelings.
I wrote:
The pundits have been complaining the President hasn’t been out banging the pots and pans about his agenda being passed and I think I know why. I think they know the bills – like Health Care reform (HCR) and financial reform – don’t mean anything to regular people outside of DC. HCR won’t really take effect until 2013 (one of the compromises that watered the bill down) and the financial reform didn’t punish the bankers that screwed our economy. You would think that any “victory” would have a ticker tape parade with a band and party favors but nope.
It’s as if the administration wasn’t surprised at getting limpy bills passed.
That’s what’s so sad. The Democrats pissed away their power these past two years. They had such great potential.
I am also mad because I have no alternative. I will have to hold my nose and keep these losers in office because the alternative – the GOP – is much worse. And the White House knows it.
Netroots, President Obama, and the Democrats – a sad rocky relationship
Ian Welsh, on Crooks and Liars, wrote an excellent essay that describes my problem with the President better than I did in my July post:
If Obama had wanted a $1.2 trillion stimulus, say, he should have asked for a $1.6 trillion stimulus. Then “moderate” Republicans and Dems could have negotiated him down $400K. This is basic negotiation, which anyone who has ever negotiated in a third world bazaar knows—you start off with an offer far higher (or lower) than what you’re willing to accept, and leave room for the inevitable haggling.
The same is true of health care reform. If you’re negotiating for a public option—if you actually want one, then you don’t throw single payer advocates out. You act as if that’s something you’re seriously considering, you talk about polls showing it has majority support, and you then “compromise” to a public option.
This sort of self-defeating, pre-negotation concession has been a repeated pattern for the Obama administration (assuming that Obama does seek Liberal ends).
Obama has a huge slush fund with hundreds of billions of dollars and all the executive authority he needs to turn things around.
If Obama is not using that money and authority, the bottom line is it’s because he doesn’t want to.
Putting aside the question of what Obama could have accomplished already, if he wants to help everyday Americans, turn around Democratic approval ratings in time for the midterm elections, and leave behind him a legacy of achievement, he can still do it. If he wants to.
It also seems Markos Moulitsas, founder of Daily Kos and one of the founders of the Netroots agrees:
This goes beyond “doing something”, and into the realm of actually doing something to excite the base. The administration has done virtually nothing designed to reward its partisans. Half measures and compromises with Republicans who voted against final legislation certainly doesn’t count. Failing to follow through on promises on everything from comprehensive immigration reform to DADT doesn’t help. Fighting to open up more shoreline to drilling doesn’t help. Lilly Ledbetter was a step forward, then the Stupak Amendment was two steps back.
In fact, from the beginning, this administration and Democratic congress seemed more concerned with “bipartisanship” for the sake of bipartisanship, than they were in passing the best possible legislation possible. Harry Reid came off the gate in 2008 by immediately whining about “60 votes” — something I don’t recall ever hearing from Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. The Obama Administration indulged Max Baucus’ “negotiations” with Republicans Mike Enzi and company, even as those Republicans publicly bragged that their entire strategy was to delay and obstruct.
People may whine about cable hosts and bloggers who point out these failings, and try to shoot the messenger. But we don’t have a noise machine like Fox’s. Rush Limbaugh reaches a third of the conservative base on a weekly base. There is nothing even remotely close to that on the Left. Limbaugh’s weekly audience is 20 million. Keith Olbermann’s is maybe a tenth of that.
No, this mess is the administration’s making, with a healthy assist from Harry Reid’s Senate. The shame is that Nancy Pelosi’s House, which did its job, will bear the brunt of the voter backlash. But the White House won’t be spared.
I admit I live in a sort of bubble since I read and participate in the Netroots. Someone who isn’t as super-informed like me might have a different view but my fear is since the mainstream media has failed in their job to report the facts, then it might be very bad for the Democrats in November.
I really don’t see a wave of incumbents being thrown out. In fact most of the incumbents who have lost lately were Republicans who didn’t fall into the Tea Party line.
I hope I am wrong and while there are some losses, the Democrats can try to pass their agenda but this time without sniffing the ass of the Republicans. The Democrats pissed away their opportunity to reform all the shit we put up with under President Bush.
The President knows what the issues are, as he said during his speech announcing the end of combat in Iraq:
Throughout our history, America has been willing to bear the burden of promoting liberty and human dignity overseas, understanding its link to our own liberty and security. But we have also understood that our nation’s strength and influence abroad must be firmly anchored in our prosperity at home. And the bedrock of that prosperity must be a growing middle class.
Unfortunately, over the last decade, we have not done what is necessary to shore up the foundation of our own prosperity. We have spent over a trillion dollars at war, often financed by borrowing from overseas. This, in turn, has short-changed investments in our own people, and contributed to record deficits. For too long, we have put off tough decisions on everything from our manufacturing base to our energy policy to education reform. As a result, too many middle class families find themselves working harder for less, while our nation’s long-term competitiveness is put at risk.
And so at this moment, as we wind down the war in Iraq, we must tackle those challenges at home with as much energy, and grit, and sense of common purpose as our men and women in uniform who have served abroad. They have met every test that they faced. Now, it is our turn. Now, it is our responsibility to honor them by coming together, all of us, and working to secure the dream that so many generations have fought for –the dream that a better life awaits anyone who is willing to work for it and reach for it.
Our most urgent task is to restore our economy, and put the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs back to work. To strengthen our middle class, we must give all our children the education they deserve, and all our workers the skills that they need to compete in a global economy. We must jumpstart industries that create jobs, and end our dependence on foreign oil. We must unleash the innovation that allows new products to roll off our assembly lines, and nurture the ideas that spring from our entrepreneurs. This will be difficult. But in the days to come, it must be our central mission as a people, and my central responsibility as President.
Speeches are nice but people want to see results – real results. They need jobs, they want the people who screwed the economy to go to jail, they want at least a public option in health care, and they want help to keep their homes.
If the Democrats don’t deliver then they better be ready for if not giving up Congress more obstruction from the GOP and that might hurt them going into the 2012 Presidential elections.
I wonder if the administration is even listening to what is happening outside of DC.