Alright, when I first heard of his latest petty, self-serving publicity stunt I yelled at the TV and hurled a perfectly good clementine against the wall. But I'm calmer now and I'm not mad at him for wielding power.
I'm mad at the administration for not wielding power.
When Joe was kicked out of the Democratic Party he could have hidden in a corner and sulked. Instead, he understood his strategic position and figured out exactly when and how to strike.
The president's problem is completely the opposite. He was elected with a mandate and momentum to accomplish momentous things, however he and his advisers chose to hang back on health care. What did they expect would happen? Who did they expect would fill the power vacuum? Of course the special interests and the Republicans and moderate Democrats flooded into the void. From the very beginning when the president and Rahm Emanuel said, "Everything was on the table," they invited chaos, disaster and assured their own powerlessness. If you run a campaign promising to change a broken system, how can you entrust the most significant piece of legislation of your tenure to that same system?
The Obama administration needs to course-correct immediately. He needs to make a series of bold, muscular, ruthlessly political moves immediately (reconciliation anyone?) to put the fear of god into all those puny adversaries out there that have been pushing him around with impunity.
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It was a means to an end and it looks like they are getting what they want.
Lieberman will cause the Dems to loose seats pure and simple. The question is are the Dems going to lie down and take it and loose more respect, or are they finally going to strip him of his positions.
Republicans beat the Dems not because people agree with their positions, but because people percieve them to be strong. Bush beat Kerry with the slogan "you may not agree with me, but you know where I stand." What did Kerry stand for? I voted for him because he is not Bush, but I would have prefered Dean.
If the Dems don't stand up for some principles and make a case they will never win. Stop negotiating with people who have no interest in working with you or you will loose.
Matt Taibbi spoke eloquently to this when we was on Bill Moyers' show last week. Here's what he said - "I mean, that's what George Bush did when he wanted to get something unpopular passed or something that was iffy. I mean, he just took, you know, if there were any recalcitrant members, he just took him in the back room and beat him with a rubber hose until they changed their minds. I mean, he could've taken Joe Lieberman back there and said, look, if Connecticut ever wants a dime of highway money again, you're going to have to play ball on this thing. That's what the president does."
This is where Obama is just straight up failing - as predicted, he's too cerebral, too cool, too enamored of the "can't we all just get along" approach to actually get things done. One may or may not have liked W, but he got things done the old-fashioned way - he used his power to ensure compliance. That's what Republicans do.
SOUNDS GOOD.
it's just that Obama can choose to stand up for what he believes in. Since he stands up and gives us nothing I have to surmise that Obama stands for nothing and is just another DLC politician. I believe that that is verified everytime every time I see (R)ahm mentioned in an article on how the WH has pre-planned deals with insurance and pharma. When I read about the WH visitors log being filled in advance of the Baucus Plan with the names of INs. Co. people and pharma people.
He wants everyone to 'get along' too much, he has focused on 'bipartisanship' too much at the expense of accomplishing the mandate he was elected to fulfill.
It is telling that when the health care debate was going on he was accepting the Nobel prize and giving yet another pretty speech. I think that is what we will get from Obama for the rest of his term, because I do not think he is strong enough to challenge the very entrenched power structure in D.C.
The bloom is off the rose pretty early.
He has two kinds of issues to worry about: end-of-the-world issues, and everything else. Last time we had a Great Depression, it ended with WWII. It's not clear whether Great Depression II would lead to WWIII, but if it did there would be no survivors. Global warming may have the potential to be an end-of-the-world issue. Peak oil may have the potential to be an end-of-the-world issue. Fixing the financial system is one step farther away: until it gets fixed it has the potential to cause another crash, which could lead to GDII which could lead to WWIII.
By my reckoning, he's been doing things in the right order and putting about the right amount of emphasis on health care.
University of California $1,591,395
Goldman Sachs $994,795
Harvard University $854,747
Microsoft Corp $833,617
Google Inc $803,436
Citigroup Inc $701,290
JPMorgan Chase & Co $695,132
Time Warner $590,084
Sidley Austin LLP $588,598
Stanford University $586,557
National Amusements Inc $551,683
UBS AG $543,219
Wilmerhale Llp $542,618
Skadden, Arps et al $530,839
IBM Corp $528,822
Columbia University $528,302
Morgan Stanley $514,881
General Electric $499,130
US Government $494,820
Latham & Watkins $493,83
there's a lot of banks in there, starting with Goldmine Sacks
Furthermore, if those are from Open Secrets, the donations are from people who work for those firms, not from the firms themselves. With a small legal firm where every employee donates $4600, even menial part-timers, you can tell it's from the firm. But when a company with tens of thousands of employees has donations under a million, it's not likely to be corporate money getting laundered through individuals.
When the teen is presented with an older Lincoln (as a prank prelude to a new Mercedes), and bursts into hysterics and her friends jump to her defense and say things like "oh, no... she was having none of that old gross car"...... like a temper tantrum from a spoiled teen is somehow justified.
Later when the Mercedes is presented the friends all comment for the camera about how the princess deserved a "sweet ride".
And somewhere out there some health insurance executives daughter is being thrown a $250k birthday party..... because his company denied your claim. And his lobby won in the Senate.