Michael Tomasky writes: "This week has the feel of one that might become retrospectively pivotal. If indeed we are standing there watching as President Perry is sworn in two Januarys from now, and we're forced to ponder the what ifs, space will be reserved on that list for a week in which the administration made a boneheaded political mistake, presided over a jobs announcement with zero growth, and turned on a key constituency group."
President Obama leaves the podium after speaking to reporters on the debt deal, 8/02/11. (photo: Reuters)
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RESIGNATION NOW!!!!
Are you friggin' kidding me???????????? This president has had more opportunities to do the right things FOR the people of America, and at every turn, he backs down, or does the opposite, kowtowing to the corrupt Republibaggers and Big Business.
First he renders Bush/Cheney immune from investigation. Then, he doesn't close Gitmo. Then, he plays chicken over and over again with the Baggers about the debt ceiling. THEN, he caves into a "no, you, Mr. President, may not address the joint session of Congress" on the day he asked to (unprecedented) . Then, he continues to include oil and nuclear power at the top of the list of energy resource commitment. He gets us into Libya, stays in Iraq and Afghanistan, and NOW this?????????????
This is not the man I voted for. This is someone who doesn't really want to BE president for the next term. So some strong Democrat better get the cajones to run against him.
Look, if he came out right now and said, "You know, the way we resolve our debt problems to the benefit of our country and the poorest and hardest working among us is this: I am going to raise taxes on everyone making over $1 million per year to 90%," he'd win by a landslide! More than 80% of the American population would not only vote for him, they'd build an enormous monument to him!
(continued below)
...I'm sick...and this abandonment of tougher smog rules...well, it's gonna make a lot more people than me even sicker. I wouldn't doubt if he told the FDA to back away from holding Big Tobacco's feet to the fire in the face of Phillip Morris's lawsuit against them, EVEN THOUGH more than 500,000 people per year die, DIE, in America from smoking related illnesses, even if they never smoked.
Start looking for a new job, and I'm sure some of the Big Businesses you're propping up will take you in. And we'll go down the drain with the WORST Republibagger president we could possible get. You lost your power when you let off Bush/Cheney for their crimes. Do some real work in the last months of your presidency. Take a look: you're losing the ball game and it's simply because you're passing to the OTHER team who don't give a fig about you OR us.
If Perry is president we are so sunk, your heads will spin.
N.
if you have respiratory problems, start looking for another country. i'm serious. a friend with bad asthma told me he could breathe just fine in mexico for vacation. he ended up buying a house there.
anther friend found she could run on the beach elsewhere but starts gasping if she tries to run at home.
it's not our lungs- its the air! your lungs are telling you to get out of this toxic stew. your president is telling you he doesn't give a rat's ass about your vote or your life and he'd rather kiss some oil company's ass.
you owe it to your life to not owe it to your country.
Why are they suing on behalf of Fannie and Freddie? These corporations were at the helm of the crimes ... In bed with the Federal Reserve ... We should be suing them for not reviewing the Trusts to see that the mortgages were missing!
This is just another example of Obama's bank-run administration. www.deadlyclear.com
2009 inauguration, that our handsome eloquent
president had a backbone of straw.
Two suggestions:
1. Those of us in "non-battlegrou nd states",
which means all of us except residents of
Ohio, Floriday, and Pennsylvania, have a
Free Vote. Use it! Write in Michael Moore,
or Cynthia McKinney, or Elizabeth Warren,
or whomever. That is the way for your vote
to get attention.
2. Is there any chance of getting Al Gore
to primary Obama?
Best wishes,
Alan McConnell, in Silver Spring MD
On this note, however, Obama has been bullied by the republicans time after time and he high tails it away. He's just like a kid in school being slapped around. Stand up for those that brung you, already! You can't negotiate with bullies so STOP trying. Ack!!!
hey! that's why there's no editorials about his accomplishments
but, in fact there are. there are editorials about how he accomplished letting war criminals bush and cheney off the hook, how he accomplished betraying elizabeth warren, how he accomplished extending the bush tax cuts, the bush wars, the bush political prisons, the bush surveillance over the american people.
shall we continue? how he accomplished something no republican has ever managed to do: putting social security and medicare on the chopping block. that's quite an achievement!
how about how he managed to force the american people, under penalty of a fine, to buy health insurance from for profit companies to boost their bottom line?
how about involving us in more middle east wars?
and now, to reduce air quality standards to lower than they were under Bush!
just wait for him to accomplish destroying the environment for all time by allowing the keystone pipeline to go through. i'm sure you'll read a lot about that achievement.
When I was campaigning for Obama back in 2008, I don't think I was living in denial; I'd say rather that I was delusional. There's a difference. Today there is such a consistent record on the part of Obama of acquiescing in the things he promised to change that the only rational conclusion for anyone paying attention is that he is a conscious enabler of things he told us he opposed. He is not a man of good will. He is not honest. There is no reason to think he will behave better in his second term than he is behaving in his first. To vote for him this time would be to reject the things for which you voted for him in 2008. He has become the "No, I can't!" President. There is no reason for the Democratic Party to become the "No, we can't" Party.
If we nominate him again, it will be terrible--and we will deserve every bit of it. Our children, when they come into maturity as inheritors of a blighted world, will hate us. Justly!
Well, I remember 2004 and the day after Bush was elected, reading the headline in a UK newspaper that had in huge words, "How can 50 million people be so stupid?"
I was teaching a communications class at the time, and every voting-age student had been working their arses off to get Kerry elected after having judged every single debate between Kerry and Bush. They were stunned at the defeat...they walked into the room with their heads down, devastated, and fearful. They were right to be all of that and more, as it turned out, but what lifted their heads was vindication from a world who saw more than they thought the world outside America did when I put that newspaper cover on the big screen for them to see.
Then, we started talking about how we could never let this happen again...and the rest is history.
Yes, I voted for Obama, but I am more than disappointed, I'm frightened, because I know that HE won't win and a Perry/Bachmann team will. And that means Palin and Gingrich and a world we will never be welcomed to live in...or want to.
Find a Democrat with guts and savvy NOW!
mcmillan, I would only disagree with you in your description of Obama as "brilliant". The longer I observe him, the less I am convinced that he possesses any unusual powers of intellect; just the opposite, in fact.
Here's a fairly scathing - though admittedly right-wing - reflection on the subject:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904140604576495932704234052.html
WHY NOT AL GORE HE WOULD DO JUST FINE AND KNOWS WHAT POLITICS IS ALL ABOUT
There needs to be a primary challenge or at the very least an active, vibrant third-party candidate to give the people a real choice. If neither one happens there is going to be a Republican in the White House again no matter which corporate whore wins the election.
Never forget this dire warning from New Republic columnist John T. Flynn, who alerted America about an earlier sellout of a Democratic administration to these same sinister elite Wall Street forces:
"The test of fascism is not one's rage against the Italian and German war lords. The test is - how many of the essential principles of fascism do you accept and to what extent are you prepared to apply those fascist ideas to American social and economic life? When you can put your finger on the men or the groups that urge for America the debt-supported state, the autarchial corporative state, the state bent on the socialization of investment and the bureaucratic government of industry and society, the establishment of the institution of militarism as the great glamorous public-works project of the nation and the institution of imperialism under which it proposes to regulate and rule the world and, along with this, proposes to alter the forms of our government to approach as closely as possible the unrestrained, absolute government - then you will know you have located the authentic fascist."
"Never forget this dire warning from New Republic columnist John T. Flynn"
"When you can put your finger on the men or the groups that urge for America the debt-supported state, the autarchial corporative state, the state bent on the socialization of investment and the bureaucratic government of industry "
Your readers should understand that Mr. Flynn, born in 1882, died in 1964, was writing to warn people about FDR's "New Deal". His ideas had a certain relevancy to his time, but are truly out of context for the issues we're facing today. Even so, he did nail militarism as a "great glamorous public-works project"!
The notion that "debt" is the key economic issue is erroneous. Money, of course, is the artificial tool undermining true Progressivism. Corporate domination of governance is facilitated by "Money". And "debt" will be the road out of the hole we're in. Wealth confiscation, disinvestment of private capital, these are the tools FDR feared to use, Instead, he bought the country off with all the goodies of the New Deal, along with his worthwhile initiatives.
Republicans are good at demoralizing Americans because Americans have let them. If you don't like the mess we're in don't blame Democrats, roll up your sleves and get to work! Join your local Democratic Central Committee and get to work.
I agree. Those people getting arrested outside the White House for opposing the Tar Sands have it right. The protesters in Wisconsin have it right. I live in Massachusetts and I blame Democrat apathy for the election of Scott Brown, in spite of the fact that he ran the better campaign. If WE don't want it bad enough we don't deserve it.
It should be obvious to everyone by now that Obama is none of those things. He gives away the store not because he is outmaneuvered by the moneyed and powerful, but because he is one of them.
Have you noticed the great crowds of Republicans supporting Obama? I'm sure Rush Limbaugh's praise for Obama will have Republicans demanding that he be drafted as THE Republican candidate for president.
:End Sarcasm
I don't think he is weak, incompetent, or stupid. I think he is a realistic pragmatist faced with an amazingly coordinated opposition and a moderately weak set of allies in the Senate.
Yes, I agree - he was a bait-and-swtich candidate and is a jr. member and agent, virtually, if not officially for the corporate plutocracy, the elite. A lot of people have caught onto the emperor's old clothes and are onto it.
The question is whether this presidency is, or ever has been, afloat.
RESIGN Mr. President!
You're telling us to vote for Obama?"
Yes, I am. Not voting is a vote for the republicans. Write ins are a vote for the republicans. Voting for an Independent is a vote for the republican. Direct vote for a republican is an abomination. Do any of you Dems want Perry or Bachmann or Romney or Newt or Cain or Paul in the White House?
If we go with Obama because he is "the best choice available" = "the lesser of two evils", and if he wins we'll get even more of the same anti-democratic , rightward drift that we have already endured.
Any other electoral choice - don't vote, vote Republican (no way!), a third party - will give us the worst-available candidate actually occupying the White House.
We must fill Congress with true democracy-for-a ll patriots who want the best for "the average" person, or else whoever becomes president will continue to ignore of, by, for the people.
Most of all we have to face the reality that there are no immediately good choices in the presidential race, that whatever we do, there will be more pain and suffering, and the only meaningful question is what can we do to come out of this democratic decline better off than when we went into it?
In the context of this question, we must set a visionary progressive agenda that embraces the goals of both individual autonomy as well as communal concerns. We need both.
What makes anyone think he cares if he's re-elected. He's accomplished what he set out to do: he's amassed a lot of brownie points with the corporatists and oligarchs. Now he can get out of the hot seat and do $100,000 speaking engagements and sit on corporate boards and amass money for the Obama library.
It makes me furious. I think he is un-electable.
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