Obama one year later

but top liberal writer thrilled with the new man in charge:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-11-03/rick-hertzbergs-victory-dance/

Hertzberg, of course, has voted for every Democratic nominee for president since Lyndon Johnson. Most of those ballots were cast with little reservation. But Obama offered particular enticements. For one thing, there was his muscularly liberal convention address in 2004, which appealed to the old speechwriter. There was Dreams from My Father. "When I read the book," Hertzberg says, "I knew this was not just speechwriting. This was writing. I knew that this was a book that could properly be called literature." Then-more to the point-there was the age thing. Hertzberg is 66, and, he thought, If not a great, liberal president now, when? "I'm at the stage of my career where one is spending one's capital rather than accumulating new capital," he says.

With Obama in office, Hertzberg says he will turn his attention to another of his long-time obsessions: the byzantine structures of American government. Triumphant Democrats have discovered that big victories in 2008 haven't instantly led to policy outcomes like, say, health care reform. In the British system, the public option would have been a fait accompli; in what Hertzberg calls our "ridiculously undemocratic" Senate, health care can be single-handedly dynamited by a Max Baucus or a Joe Lieberman.

"Right now, we have a situation where the human occupants are about as good as we're going to get," Hertzberg says. "So my attention goes back to the structure they're trapped in. That's what Obama and the Democrats are in the grip of now. And that remains to be fixed."

... and still, the U.S. feds are defending challenges to DOMA in the courts and DADT is still in place.

I'd have to think that a lot of Americans are disappointed - but at the same time, the challenges faced by the American government are really enormous - more so than most politicians are willing to talk about publicly.

the basics of a US healthcare reform passes the House,

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125765850379236569.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFT...

 all due to the election of Mr. O; happy anniversary!

 The vote was a victory for President Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), and moved them toward a goal that has eluded presidents for decades. Mr. Obama came to the Capitol on Saturday morning and assured Democrats they would remember the vote as their finest moment in politics should he sign it into law. "Opportunities like this come around maybe once in a generation," he said.

Its passage pushes Congress closer to the largest social safety net expansion since 1965, when the government created the Medicare insurance program for the elderly. The measure spends slightly more than $1 trillion over a decade to provide health insurance to an additional 36 million Americans and creates a new public insurance plan to compete with private insurers by 2013. It requires most Americans to carry insurance, creates a new exchange where they can shop for it and gives the lowest earners tax credits to help them pay for it.

Republicans described the plan as an unprecedented power grab that would raise -- not lower -- medical costs. They lambasted the legislation for creating new taxes and failing to curb frivolous medical malpractice lawsuits.

"Does this bill mean the government will take over running health care? Yes," said Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.).

 "But what's worse, this bill replaces the American idea with a European-style social welfare state."

Just curious what the "American idea" is that's too good to replace.

The political climate, as observed by Paul Krugman in the NYTimes today:Paranoia Strikes Deep By PAUL KRUGMAN

Last Thursday there was a rally outside the U.S. Capitol to protest pending health care legislation, featuring the kinds of things we've grown accustomed to, including large signs showing piles of bodies at Dachau with the caption "National Socialist Healthcare." It was grotesque - and it was also ominous. For what we may be seeing is America starting to be Californiafied.

The key thing to understand about that rally is that it wasn't a fringe event. It was sponsored by the House Republican leadership - in fact, it was officially billed as a G.O.P. press conference. Senior lawmakers were in attendance, and apparently had no problem with the tone of the proceedings.

True, Eric Cantor, the second-ranking House Republican, offered some mild criticism after the fact. But the operative word is "mild." The signs were "inappropriate," said his spokesman, and the use of Hitler comparisons by such people as Rush Limbaugh, said Mr. Cantor, "conjures up images that frankly are not, I think, very helpful."

What all this shows is that the G.O.P. has been taken over by the people it used to exploit.

Yeah, that Obama is a fresh change all right.  This is Dick Cheney/Bibi Netanyahu territory:

US mosques and New York skyscraper seized over Iran links

This article asks*, What happened to the community organizer Amercans elected President?

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24008.htm

*edit

I never thought of Obama as an American; I recognized him as a "Third Culture Kid" right away.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Culture_Kids

His experiences in other cultures may give him ambassadorial insignts and strenghts. But after he handed America to Wall Street, is there much left to save?

GV wrote,

"America was never his to give - anywhere."

Correct - America has been owned by bankers and holding off this crisis since, erm, President Wilson. 

Undoing the Republican mess: Celente, Max Kaiser and Peter Schiff say much worse is yet to come. 

Worse to come: Check this out.

http://ampedstatus.com/the-critical-unraveling-of-us-society

Why the Catholic hierarchy pushes political buttons in Washington

Obama will soon announce an expansion of the bloodshed and terror in AfPak.

I can't help thinking about the NDP in Ontario. Bob Rae had made all sorts of lofty promises, then got elected and inherited a bee's nest of troubles, and when he failed, everyone across the board lined up to kick his corpse a few times.

Then we got Mike Harris and Ernie Eves as a replacement. And in all likelihood, it'll be another decade, at least, before the NDP stops wearing it over what Rae wasn't able to do.

So ya, let's really wail on Obama. Let's make sure that he goes down in history as the most promise-breaking, lie-telling, half-assing flop of a President that the U.S. ever had. Mind you, that's not going to lead to a leftist revolution to install someone more committed, it's going to lead to a decade or two of uninterrupted White Republican Man rule. But that's gotta be better than a guy who wasn't even able to do a year's worth of miracles in nine months, right?

It has been announced the Obama administration will not sign the international treaty banning land mines. They will however commit 30,000 more troops to killing subsistence farmers and propping up war lords while sinking Pakistan into hell on earth complete with remote control mass killings.

It's so much more acceptable when "our guy" is the bastard is it not?

Everyone with me, "Obama my lord ... Obama. Obama my lord ... Obama. Oh, lord, Obama."

I guess if Sarah is the alternative, almost any crime is acceptable. Quite the scam they have going in that country.

There is no denying the integrity of your position peoples.  And it can never fail to be "holier than thou". But I don't know how that reverses the situation - particularly if you don't understand that the situation was created by folks to the right of Vlad the Impaler and your putative enemy can't fold the deck without guaranteeing even worse will prevail. What a wondrously impossible  moral world you dwell in. Possitively  Biblical.

Sorry U, but you ignore his attempts to put throug bills in Congress that are adultarated or destroyed by the Republican enemy and gutless Democrats. Perhaps we are reading different news accounts. That, plus the inflated idea that he could possibly achieve it all. He had to get elected, and he used the best marketing devices as Naomi Klein pointed out (in the Globe the other day) in a new edition of No Logo. But I can't believe that you bought into it completely - just as I can't believe he holds the power of a dictator, that there is no intervening Congress with all its "bought" politicos. Remember Mr. Smith goes to Washington? Course you do. And of course people like myself live in hope that the people I must not "demean" in your eyes, will finally awaken to reality and give him and progressive Democrats th votes to beat down the bastards in Congress. It took some bloody awful conditions in the 30s but by God FDR could tell the opposition to pee up a stump.

No, it will just get worse, chaps, until the vast pall of ignorance that has descended over that country (and pretty big acreages up thisaway) is lifted. And in the meantime, you don't have a corner on the pain department, believe me - just different ideas about causality.

Oh, puuuuhhhhhleeeeze, George. By your telling of it he has no power nor authority to maintain a single commitment he has made, such as, for example, no secret meetings at the White House. That is something his administration, and ultimately he alone, has authority over. And that is but one little and painless example. Signing statements are another. You want us to believe the great Obama has no authority at all. And if that is true, then two things: One, no point voting as, Obama/Palin? Don't matter. They have no real authority so the bogeyman factor is moot. Two, he knowingly raised false hopes just to get elected and collect a pay cheque. What do you really think George?

Canada's PMO has more power than the office of the U.S.pres., FM. Check it out (and wish us all luck).   Oh, and come down off the chandelier to read it, eh?  :D

George, I love ya man, but I fear you're a consumer of fantasies. No one expected nor demanded any miracles from Obama. What was expected was the same man who campaigned for president to be president. Instead, we have a pale imitation without so much as a fighting word for the fighting words he espoused during the marketing stage. It isn't that Obama can't advance the agenda of his election campaign, George. It's that he's not even trying.

He promised a public option (vowed it actually). He promised to renegotiate NAFTA. He promised no secret meetings. He promised an end to indefinite detentions. He promised "sunlight before signing" whereby a bill would be public 5 days before it was signed. He promised to reduce or eliminate the capital gains tax. He promised no administration jobs for lobbyists. He promised to support the labour Free Choice Act. And those are just the ones I remember. There are a lot more.

Chaps, if he caves and blesses the "election" in Honduras I will join your merry band of chuckleheads.  But I will never, never stop fearing his alternative waiting in the wings. (Which thought leads me to ask...can you name anyone in the Democratic Party that you might back?  The senior senator from Vermont, perhaps?)

I getcha. Obdurate fella, eh!  I'll disown Barack Hussein if need be but I'm not ready to fly the black flag yet. There are some very progressive voices down that way. (Not sure I could find that flag under the detritus of entervening years anyway).

And your question is like that we dealt with once in philosophy 101.  "When the judge says, his/her hands are tied, and it is necessary to sentence the guilty to....."  you say, "nonsense, the judge can resign from the case and the bench."  Always felt good in that period at the end of the 60s to retire from such scinitillating discussion and toke up on that note.  Didn't bother (then) to search my mind for real life instances of such paragons of virtue. They tended to disappear from the limelight...or any mention at all.

Anyway, up democratic socialismo in this "Fair Country", where a "real" alternative stands more than a chance of a snowman in hell.

So that's it? Obama's best qualification is his not being Sarah Palin or George Bush?  Shouldn't one hope for better?

George:

  "But I will never, never stop fearing his alternative waiting in the wings."

 Al:

"So that's it? Obama's best qualification is his not being Sarah Palin or George Bush?  Shouldn't one hope for better?"

U: "Thanks, George. I don't blame you for not answering my question. "

I will answer your loaded question, U, when you begin to speak to the issues I raise.

And Al, I add the Bageant bit, below, that I have already posted in another thread, because you will see that FEAR motivates me in my reluctance to roll the dice in Mulroney fashion (somethin that you folks also take to, strangely).

And here is the bit that you failed to comment on in the Sarah Palin thread, Al.  And this is why I cannot be so sanguine about the outcome as yourself, ands U, and FM, and a lot of other folks who just don't get what's brewin' down there in the hills:

And as Bageant says in yesterday's blog (again describing Sarah country):

"When World War Two started 45% of Americans lived on farms or in farming based communities. Ten years after the war only 12% remained on farms, and not much later it dropped to six percent. And believe me, they did not all leave willingly.

"The result is that we are into our third generation of underclass whites -- around 60 million of them. At one point in the 1950s when unions were at their peak, a large portion of these people briefly constituted a legitimate working class. Since then they have been ground back down into a malleable disposable work force with no real contours, no vision, no philosophy or principles of labor, zero negotiation regarding the price of their labor, and no avenues for self determination as individuals or as a class.

"They are that great white unwashed that educated liberals just cannot get their heads around. Liberal audiences ask me,  "Why are so many working class Americans non-union or anti-union?" Sometimes I reply that if you kick a dog hard enough and often enough, the dog will do any goddamned thing you want, whether it is "in his interests" or not. If the dog doesn't bite that union organizer, the poor fucking beast doesn't get fed at all.

Educated urban liberals never seem to grasp that most Americans no longer have access to the levers of self-determination. But then, I never expect the bourgeoisie to understand the legions of industrial serfs outside the gates. Nor do they much bother to try. After all, they've "got theirs." Education, safe working conditions, negotiable wages, access to real culture if they choose, progeny who will more or less continue their class patterns, even if on a somewhat lesser scale. When they look around their affinity groups and communities, they see only people like themselves. "Naw, we're not elites," they conclude.

"But the sheer gravitational pull of 60 million people circling the drain is starting to draw these elites who do not know they are elites toward the drainpipe. So now we are seeing academic papers with titles such as "Does a white American underclass really exist?" Lemme see now, are there any clues? Well, about 49.1 million people, most of them white, went without food at various times in 2008 (USDA). This is called "food insecurity" in government and academic circles. I suppose the 3.1 million folks sleeping under bridges, in cars, in shelters and cardboard boxes are experiencing "housing insecurity." This includes the 1.4 million homeless children attending our public schools. I suggest they start by asking these people if there is a white underclass in America. You know, get it straight from the horse's mouth. You don't know if you don't ask. I mean, hell, these people might all be just hobo-ing for a lark!

Whatever the case, I read a slew of these studies in the course of writing the new book. My conclusion is that the academic elites can hustle a grant out of any damned question you can think up, then write 70,000 words that not only do not answer the question, but lay the groundwork for further research into other ways to not answer the question.

Al, read the Bageant bit and see if the demographics of Republicanism today don't bother you a bit too.  And everyone recalls Brian at the time of the constitutional issue and his favouring a roll of the dice.

Still better than Palin though, eh George? She would have nuked Iran by now and imprisoned all the queers and invaded Canada.

Exactly, Ab.   Without economic collapse, Sarah would have been (as they say) "within a heartbeat" of the presidency. Aren't we all lucky ?(in some twisted sense of that word). 

Being able to high-five it with some folks from Jamaica on election night was some compensation. Something was improved there.

Congrats, U.  You got it. 

To be completely honest, I'm not sure we really were that lucky.

But next time, Obama won't be able to blame Bush - the Messiah, the miracle worker, the hopey changey man, had better deliver or he'll be gone. 

Compared to Obama Bush was a good guy. Expanding the wars, new military bases, and a coup in South America.

The unrepentant Marxist has a good piece called Barak Hoover Obama.

Proyect (the unrepentant one) concludes that Obama is more like Hoover than like FDR. Read the article for more details.

The supporters of Barak Obama should APOLOGIZE, says Rich Gibson, for getting it all so terribly wrong. Sounds good to me.

The following makes reference to Obama's appointment to Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan.

Of course, the Obama moonies will be making no apologies anytime soon. After all, Sarah Palin would have been worse, blah blah ...

They got it wrong by their capitulation to Obamagogery, by sidetracking a fightback into Obama backwaters, by waging war on the left (as well as the right - give 'em credit for that, OK) and claiming real and fundamental differences between the multimillionaires of the GOP and the multimillionaires of the Democractic Party, and so on. And, if the author is correct and Obama's failures will lead to a GOP President in 2012, then the gains are doubtful at best.

Incidently, the author writes for the  Rouge Forum which is a group concerned about right wing atrocities to education in the US. And there are plenty of those. It seems the Democratic atrocities are much the same as the Republican atrocities. And that's the heart of what Gibson seems to be saying.

But don't take my word for it. Send a note to the author directly and I'm sure he will provide a more thorough answer than me. 

Try rgibson@pipeline.com and check out his webpage at http://richgibson.com/

One big difference - and a very big one at that. During the next few years a number of Supreme Court Justices will retire. The question is who exactly gets appointed to replace them. If Palin gets to select the candidates I'd be very surprised if her picks weren't either anti-abortion or, at best, literalists who believe in interpretting the Constitution exactly as written. While the latter doesn't sound bad, I do have to say that every US lawyer I've talked to about Roe v Wade will tell you that it's simply bad law (and that's coming from pro-abortion lawyers, not pro-lifers). It's pretty much a given that, if the Court is full of Palin appointees that somebody, sooner or later, will manage to bring a carefully selected case to the Supreme Court and that will be the end of Roe v Wade.

Saying a people are the product of their culture is not to call them backward or deserving of "what they get", U.  Neither can you dismiss the meaning of the Supreme Court in either country. The right to abortion hangs by a thread in both. The "people of the U.S." do no want serious progressive change - he barely scraped by in an atmosphere where war and economic collapse dominated, and despite the appearance of someone who could somehow appeal to the marginalized and Christian right as authentic. The people want to be saved from the patently pathalogical.

And no babbler has said the best they can hope for is "a few court appointments."  Yer over the top with yer exaggerated, populist  appeals, old son.

We always have to fight to consolidate our gains. But to suggest that a court case could come along in Canada that re-criminalizes abortion is ridiculous. Yet, abnormal's scenario for the U.S. is not ridiculous at all. Social comparisons between the U.S. and Canada are like comparing the 19th with the 21st centuries. We shouldn't be smug, but we're not climbing down out of the trees the way they are down in that Inferno.

We'll have to agree to disagree on that. George, I think we generally have the same disagreement about the Canadian people.

That is literally - exactly - what several babblers said during the lead-up to the election last year. I can understand that you might have forgotten that, but I can't understand why you would vociferously deny it.

George, I'll tell you again to stop commenting about ME and start commenting on views or opinions of mine that I post here. If you have something in mind by the above statement - state it - otherwise keep it to yourself.

Same goes for this. Your analysis of my debating style is frankly boring, dull, obtuse. Do you have some selective quotation in mind that you'd like to challenge? If not, how about leaving me alone? I attack Obama, and you attack me. That's frankly childish and pathetic, besides being contrary to the rules around here. Re-read them if you don't believe me.

They could pattern it after the heartfelt apology the left gave to the province of Ontario after the ONDP reneged on all of their lofty promises. Obama's failing to bring about world peace, but the ONDP couldn't even insure cars!

Anyone have a copy of that apology??

Gibson outlined the Keynsian failures of the Obama regime, the horrific education atrocities by Obama's hand picked education gauliter, Arne Duncan, and so on. He claims this failure was predictable and, furthermore, that (in his country, the USA) the Obama "Moonies" directly denied that things would come out this way at the time. Seems pretty clear to me. Sorry if you're too "busy" to read my reply.

Sorry, I stopped reading at some point above. The Obama narrative has gone like this:

During the campaign when Obama began reversing his positions (i.e. Illegal surveillance), Obama-ites told us we must support Obama and put pressure on him after he's elected. He must take positions in opposition to his base to get elected.

When Obama was elected we were told not to put pressure on him or be to critical because he can only do so much even as be betrayed his own vows.

Now we're told, as he expands the Bush wars and engages in the same rhetoric of fear that he is better than the alternative.

And when a US activist writer says, no, the alternative would be much the same, the bogeyman of supreme court appointments are raised.

I can almost hear them sayin already, before the election cycle begins anew in 2012, the time to put pressure on Obama is after the election ...

From Gitmo to Bagram: Bad to Worse?

http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/gitmo-bagram-bad-worse

"Thanksgiving weekend's big national security story was the continuing operation of a 'black jail' at Bagram, where detainees [POWs] are held for weeks in completely secret detention. Not even the Red Cross are notified..."

Has Canada sent any 'detainees' there I wonder..?

http://www.progressive.org/wx120209.html

I wonder if the Dems will still have a majority in both houses this time next year? or I guuess a year January.

Obama has done a dexcent job so far.

Although  I am still annoyed Gitmo is still open and he sounded like Bush with his speech on Afghanistan this week. I also wish he would of put his foot down more on Karzai and that fraudulent election. I also do not like his unquestionable love for Israel either.

I hope he gets his health care passed and not a watered down version but it will be tough as many conservative democrats in the House and Senate.

But I would give him overall a 'C+ to a B minus' so far.  It can go up depending on Health Care and what he does on the environment.

I'd go with a C- but that's only because I'm feeling generous.

Meanwhile, he's beginning to duck the press.

http://tinyurl.com/y8q7q2m

Reality is, I don't think Obama has ever allowed uncanned Q&A with the press.  Whenever he stops reading from a teleprompter he manages to make Bush look coherent. 

He may be erudite, but he doesn't impress me as being all that bright.

As someone else has already stated, it's pretty clear that his autobiographies were ghostwritten and, if you've ever listened to him when he ends up "off prompter" he makes the worst of Chretien sound positively coherent [plenty of examples on YouTube].

As far as his background goes, we really don't know much beyond what he's told us in his books (and that doesn't hold together all that well). 

Whoops. Conspiracy stuff.  Have fun.

How those progressive Republicans can stand to be in the same vicinity with such a fellow is beyond comprehension.

here is where the real battle lies for his reform presidency,

and he may well win it before Christmas:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/12/07/the_health_care_race_to_christmas_99426.html

as the politics are looking somewhat better:

http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-treatment/the-best-sign-yet-lieberman-collins-are-board

But, by golly, he kept the bizarre, the obscenely ignorant, and the warped Christian element at bay, giving us a few more years, anyway. You see, there are folks out there, voters,  who fall under one of those descriptors (or all of them) who make reform really difficult, and our continued existence quite problematic.

And, of course, Hedges has got the liberal quite right. But like all Utopian scenarios, the question is how to get from here to there.

I'm talking about the movement from Here to Hedgeian society as you're aware, Al  Gosh, it would be nice...just don't confuse me with the mainstream, wealthy liberal south of the 49th, or with the average African American anywhere, like those who joyfully high-fived with me this time last year.