What the "do nothing" Obama is up against

Alright, let's talk about Obama. What did you think of his widely celebrated speech in Cairo and how has his record since matched up to it?

And his policy record so far? Is it different from his predecessors?

Blown out of the water. Again. But plenty will still say that the Pres. is a flea-hop closer to "freedom". And that's all that matters. lol.

"God Helps Those Who Help Themselves."

The Tea Party is complaining about government spending, but it was under GW Bush that the budget deficit rose to just under $1 Trillion. Obama is being blamed for being a typical "Democrat tax and spend" type, but  it is allways the Republicans who spend the most money. It even happened under Reagan.

I guess when government does warmongering, then Big Govt. is okay, but spending on anything else is not. There is a huge appetite for war in America, but they fail to recognise their biggest enemies such as climate change and ocean pollution, acidification, etc..The world, and America, would be in much better shape to weather the future if they would quit with the military gig.

Sigh

Yes, this black president should"start the re-election campaign in the Gulf" states of MIssissippi, Alabama, Texas, Louisiana... those states whose white voters grew up respecting colour and where the polls show a tendency to continue in that vein.  Of course the liberal can overlook such nasty, offensive statistics, make them go away at the tap of a keyboard.

Tiresome is the constant comparison with FDR...despite the personal and historical differences. FDR had millions of unemployed workers in hand, wanting government solutions.  Raher different today, Palin and her teapartyers.   In the vernacular, get real.  :)

Want more women in American politics? Be careful what you wish for, you may get it!

This year, there are 239 female candidates running for Congress, rivalling 1992's "Year of the Woman". They are spitting mad, motivated by dark psychic energy, typically ultra-reactionary – but increasingly effective on the campaign trail. All of last month's big primary races were won by women – Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman (California), Nikki Haley (South Carolina), the Neanderthal cave woman Sharron Angle (Nevada) and a lone Democrat, Blanche Lincoln (Arkansas), who beat off a challenge from a liberal Democrat man.

Traditionally, women Republicans have played an important but backseat role in party politics. We haven't yet produced an American Margaret Thatcher … but it may happen sooner than you think.

The continuing saga of a nation where tax revolts were institutionalized:

From today's NYTimes:

"If no tax legislation is passed, all the major tax reductions passed under President George W. Bush in 2001 and 2003 will expire, with rates reverting overnight on Dec. 31. The top marginal income tax rate, for example, would go back to 39.6 percent from 35 percent now, with corresponding increases in rates for lower income brackets.

Given the partisan gridlock of recent months, there is a chance that the battle could go down to the last minute, or even - in the face of a stalemate - that the tax cuts could be allowed to expire completely, a development that Republicans are already heralding ominously as the largest tax increase in history and that lawmakers in both parties say could be the worst outcome.

From both political and policy perspectives, the tax issue is dizzyingly complex, and even some of Washington's most grizzled legislative operatives say they cannot predict the outcome.

Some liberals want Mr. Obama to keep his promise to raise taxes on the rich, and the White House's budget forecasts rely heavily on rolling the top income tax rates back to their pre-2001 levels. Some fiscal hawks warn that extending the tax cuts would add more than $2 trillion to the federal budget deficits at a time when the national debt is becoming an economic concern and a political issue. Political economists are fiercely divided.

So are Democrats. In recent days, fiscal conservatives like Senators Kent Conrad of North Dakota and Evan Bayh of Indiana expressed support for extending the tax cuts at all income levels, at least temporarily.

Senior administration officials said there was no interest in such a plan at the White House, which intends to have Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner lead an effort to make the case that continuing tax breaks for the rich will not help lift the economy, but eliminating them will help reduce the deficit."

Do you read history? They plotted a coup against FDR. If Bush led a coup in the wake of 9/11, Obama consolidates it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/opinion/25rich.html

http://www.readersupportednews.org/opinion/42-42/2506-free-speech-takes-...

I still think FDR unfortunately "saved" America from socialism.  McCarthy only mopped up the last of the true socialists from the 1930s. Barbara Kingsolver centers her novel, The Lacuna, on this. Sample dialogue: ' "I could see that, if I were a Communist. Luckily for you, I am not...Look, I know you're not a Communist...What you are,' he said when I came back, 'is controversial'." Kingsolver told a CBC radio audience the other night about her search for the reasons for the closing of the American mind back then.

M'Lord Black shows us in his FDR biography how FDR accomplished the defeat of socialism through active government participation in the economy (and of course, a war) , and Galbraith was one of the folks who brought Keynes to the rescue (Richard Parker's bio on Galbraith shows him as a young "price czar" in the two years leading up to war.

Yes, there are Republican households where an edict has been in place - for a few generations since FDR - his name is never to be mentioned. And, of course, there was a plot. As someone said, history may not be a plot, but history is littered with plots.   :)

But yes, FM, I'll have to read more history of that time and place.

And yes, Jingles, them Dems sure want to get re-elected this fall...no comment on the state of the  American mind in that, of course.

The Democrats are still hoping that the wealthiest 2 or 3 per cent of Americans will have to pay higher taxes when Dubya's 8-year-old tax cut legislation runs out, but Republicans and some Dems say no to the idea:

"WASHINGTON - Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner pressed the case on Sunday for letting Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans expire later this year.

In appearances on two television programs, Mr. Geithner said that letting tax cuts expire for those who make $250,000 a year or more would affect 2 percent to 3 percent of all Americans. He dismissed concerns that the move could push a teetering economy back into recession and argued that it would demonstrate America's commitment to addressing its trillion-dollar budget deficit.

On "This Week" on ABC, he said, "We think that's the responsible thing to do because we need to make sure we can show the world" that America is "willing as a country now to start to make some progress bringing down our long-term deficits."

Mr. Geithner added, "I do not believe it will affect growth."

Most Republicans and some Democrats in Congress strongly disagree and have pledged to launch an all-out effort to extend the tax cuts for people of all incomes. The cuts were passed under President George W. Bush in 2001 and 2003. Supporters of extending the cuts for everyone argue that raising taxes on any group, particularly one considered crucial for creating jobs, could endanger a precarious economic recovery.

Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, spoke about the administration's plans in an appearance on "Fox News Sunday."

"The safest thing for America would be to have a provision passed this fall that said no tax increase of any kind for 2011," said Mr. Gingrich, who is considering a run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012. "I mean the fact is, everywhere I go - and I've been in 10 states in the last 14 days - businesspeople say to me over and over again, 'I will create no new jobs in this environment because the uncertainty is too frightening.' "

In the land of the free, where the pres. is making himself the friend of the high income crowd (by letting their tax rate rise to the pre-Bush figure) that also happens to pull the levers on the major corporations, here's the developing situation, from today's NYTimes:

"Let the Spending Begin

The starter's gun went off last week in the squalid new race for unlimited campaign cash. The Federal Election Commission approved the creation of two "independent" campaign committees, one each from the left and right, expressly designed to take advantage of the new world of no rules.

One committee is being set up by the Club for Growth, the conservative advocate for low taxes and less government. The other will be run by a new group with close ties to the Democrats called Commonsense Ten, which says it will raise money from individuals, corporations and unions. Because both are obviously completely independent and would never dream of coordinating their efforts with those of any political party,(my appreciative ) they will be able to spend unlimited amounts, thanks to the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision earlier this year.

Both committees, and others like them, will also be able to collect unlimited checks from their donors. A little-noticed decision in March by the federal appeals court for the District of Columbia said there is no longer any basis for limiting contributions to independent committees, known as 527's. The old contribution limit of $69,900 every two years apparently abridged the free speech rights of well-heeled donors."

From the NYTimes:

WASHINGTON - The Senate on Tuesday refused to take up a bill that would require more disclosure of the role of corporations, unions and other special interests in bankrolling political advertisements, after Democrats failed to persuade even one Republican to support it.

The bill was drafted in response to a Supreme Court decision in January allowing unlimited campaign spending by corporations and interest groups.

President Obama and Democratic leaders have been seeking to use the Republicans' opposition to the bill to portray them as beholden to corporate interests. Republicans, in turn, say the Democrats drafted the legislation in an effort to gain an advantage in this year's midterm elections.

But the bottom line was that the court's decision now stands, helping define the November election and, perhaps, campaigns in years ahead. Democrats pledged to try again in September, but the bill's chances seemed dim.

The official tally was 57 in favor to 41 against, with Democrats falling short of the 60 votes needed to defeat a Republican filibuster. But the Democrats were actually just one vote shy.

Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, a Connecticut independent who caucuses with the Democrats and expressed support for taking up the bill, was absent to attend a funeral.

Top 5 Social Security Myths

Getting bombed on Obama

Paul Krugman in NYTimes today:

"The point is that a large part of Congress - large enough to block any action on jobs - cares a lot about taxes on the richest 1 percent of the population, but very little about the plight of Americans who can't find work.

Well, if Congress won't act, what about the Federal Reserve? The Fed, after all, is supposed to pursue two goals: full employment and price stability, usually defined in practice as an inflation rate of about 2 percent. Since unemployment is very high and inflation well below target, you might expect the Fed to be taking aggressive action to boost the economy. But it isn't.

It's true that the Fed has already pushed one pedal to the metal: short-term interest rates, its usual policy tool, are near zero. Still, Ben Bernanke, the Fed chairman, has assured us that he has other options, like holding more mortgage-backed securities and promising to keep short-term rates low. And a large body of research suggests that the Fed could boost the economy by committing to an inflation target higher than 2 percent.

But the Fed hasn't done any of these things. Instead, some officials are defining success down.

For example, last week Richard Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, argued that the Fed bears no responsibility for the economy's weakness, which he attributed to business uncertainty about future regulations - a view that's popular in conservative circles, but completely at odds with all the actual evidence. In effect, he responded to the Fed's failure to achieve one of its two main goals by taking down the goalpost.

He then moved the other goalpost, defining the Fed's aim not as roughly 2 percent inflation, but rather as that of "keeping inflation extremely low and stable."

In short, it's all good. And I predict - having seen this movie before, in Japan - that if and when prices start falling, when below-target inflation becomes deflation, some Fed officials will explain that that's O.K., too.

What lies down this path? Here's what I consider all too likely: Two years from now unemployment will still be extremely high, quite possibly higher than it is now. But instead of taking responsibility for fixing the situation, politicians and Fed officials alike will declare that high unemployment is structural, beyond their control. And as I said, over time these excuses may turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy, as the long-term unemployed lose their skills and their connections with the work force, and become unemployable.

I'd like to imagine that public outrage will prevent this outcome. But while Americans are indeed angry, their anger is unfocused. And so I worry that our governing elite, which just isn't all that into the unemployed, will allow the jobs slump to go on and on and on."

That's the Times' Nobel prize-winning economist stating his concern for workers' future and laying the blame on Congress.

And he didn't once have difficulty in expressing himself and having to resort to the vernacular of the monosyllabic set.

Bad bunch for sure.

Democratic Surge In Polls Is Just Noise

GV,

Those polls tell me that books like this are a "must" read for Americans. Time is running out for them, and the more of the same BS from Obama just ain't gonna cut it.

The Anti-American Manifesto

by Ted Rall

a new manifesto for an America heading toward economic and political collapse. While others mourn the damage to the postmodern American capitalist system created by the recent global economic collapse, Rall sees an opportunity. As millions of people lose their jobs and their homes, they and millions more are opening their minds to the possibility of creating a radically different form of government and economic infrastructure.

But there are dangers. As in Russia in 1991, criminals and right-wing extremists are best prepared to fill the power vacuum from a collapsing United States. The best way to stop them, Rall argues, is not collapse-but revolution. Not by other people, but by us. Not in the future, but now.

http://www.amazon.com/Anti-American-Manifesto-Seven-Stories-Press/dp/158...

Amy Greene, grandaughter and daughter of Tennessee ministers tells NYTimes readers what it's like there today:

"Some of my first memories are of sitting in my grandfather's church, a little cinder-block building tucked in a thicket, listening to his voice ringing in the rafters. After my grandfather died, my dad took over as pastor. I never heard either of them mention politics from the pulpit, even though at home, in a family that has been divided between Democrats and Republicans going all the way back to the Civil War, there were some heated discussions. My dad always said that it was biblical to pray for our leaders, but not to campaign for them in a house of worship.

As an adult, I visited other churches in the valleys and hollows of my community. One in particular stands out in my mind, because it reminded me so much of my grandfather's church. It was nestled in a copse of shade trees beside a creek, its frosted windows shining. Going into the vestibule was like coming home. I knew the words to every hymn the congregation sang.

But this was in 2008, with the presidential election around the corner; when the preacher took the pulpit, he admonished his flock to remember their Christian values and vote Republican. I haven't gone back since, but I keep encountering the same kind of religious lobbying. Not surprisingly, the only enthusiasm I've seen for the primary is a lone Zach Wamp sign sunk into the weedy lawn of a church near the highway.

This is the opposite of what my grandfather and my dad and Appalachian preachers of their ilk tried to teach - a devotion that is as much a part of our mountain heritage as the land, that can't be reduced to campaign propaganda, that shouldn't be exploited for one vote or one issue. It's way too big for that. I just wish politicians and pastors would stop making it so small."

Amy Greene is the author of "Bloodroot," a novel.

You should read Gregory Baum's Catholics and Canadian Socialism: Political Thought in the Thirties and Forties, al-Q.  Or maybe you did and don't want to set your own experience in historical context. :)

Anyway, U.S. southerners are now Republicans on the side of God, apparently.  And the colour of the pres's skin will likely come to be seen as a factor, y'all hear now.

Never heard politics from the pulpit in the RC church I attended as a child.  Never heard one denunciation of the crimes being committed at the time by western states around the world for that matter.  It was all about the potential wickedness of the congregation and the general public, about the need for unquestioning obedience to a system of control that had likewise spread its genocidal destruction around the world.

Or perhaps the phenomenon of clerics making political pronouncements during church services isn't terribly unusual.

Surely this is a direct result of fear of Palin and her Nascar Following.

Obama touts miners’ union, praises ‘clean coal’

A Democrat describes the political environment in Washington...sounding much like the Copnservative obstruction in Canada's Parliament:

"Instead of engaging in a real debate about how to address the challenges we face, Republicans have turned to obstruction, no matter the issue, and then cry foul after the fact. They claim to want an open legislative process with more consultation and debate, but the truth is they simply don't want to pass anything.

Meanwhile, conservative television and talk radio programs are full of false anger, intended to scare Americans. I think some genuine frustration at this misleading tactic is overdue.

That's why I got mad last week. That's also why I'm going to fight for this bill when we come back in session in September. I'm still angry. Playing politics on important issues is never right. But on health care for 9/11 responders, it's an outrage."

Anthony Weiner is a member of the House of Representatives from Queens and Brooklyn.

And like the president, he can't call those media out for the business-controlled, populist, devious purveyors of lies that they are. The gormless MSM, of course, must remain beyond reproach for anyone seriously attempting to gain elected office, there in the land of the free, or here.

"So how did the media and Palin...?"   "Does he pet you?"  You "really don't get that one?"    What happened to your world view, FM?    It would now look at home in a redneck's rectum.  Taking your conversational style from Limbaugh?   :)

You have strange ideas about the power of the presidency and the role of the media...and the prevailing opinions out there among the electorate.  I'm close to finishing up Barbara Kingsolver's The Lacuna, a look at 1930s and 40s Mexico and America. Your take on the place of Obama: "so because everybody loves him what he says is good," is a quaint take on a president who is being blamed by the opposition for exactly what he does not represent.  The GOP is readying Jeb Bush for 2012.  What do you do with an electorate so goddam gullible, whether it's the 1940s or the next millenium?  Do you not read about the situation in Congress? The man is trying to enact the most progressive legislation that he can in the face of racial hatred and economic despair at the situation created by a series of Conservative administrations with a completely privatized future in mind.  

It's "tiresome" for you? Then take up a book of U.S.history that actually explains how we got to this bizarre and frightening situation.  Try to imagine undoing generations of propaganda in the advancement of capitalism by an individual up against that structure.  And hope like hell that he can accomplish just a little bit. The masses of America didn't elect a socialist, they will not elect a socialist. That idea went out with Eugene Debs.  But the madness there now has to be countered with something.

All I'm doing in this thread is presenting accounts of what is actually happening. If you can't see that the enemy of your enemy Obama is far, far worse, a far scarier prospect, then you are a puzzle indeed.  (By the way, Joe Bageant's new one, Rainbow Pie: A Redneck Memoir is coming out in October.  An early review says Bageant describes in memoir what Harper Lee had to present in a fictional account of life. Or maybe you haven't read Deer Hunting either). 

http://www.truth-out.org/an-honest-look-obamas-first-year61629

Konrad Yakabuski writes in the Aug. 7 Globe and Mail, Obama "is aking Congress to return income-tax rates to their pre-2001 levels for households earning at least $250,000 while extending the Bush tax cuts for those making less than that. He will need the support of every Democrat in the Senate, almost all of them in the House of Representatives, and at least a few Republicans to do so.

"Right now, however, official Washington is engaged in a game of chicken. Republicans insist they will never vote to raise taxes, conservative Democrats are distancing themselves from the Obama plan and the White House warns everyone of the political fallout if Congress fails to act." an automatic tax hike for all on Jan. 1.

And of course, if the Republicans are more successful in the Nov. 2 midterm elections, it's back to Bushenomics and greater debt.    Which puts the Conservatives another step closer to their goal of privatizing the planet.

We can be sure Steve is taking notes.

A Globe editorial today, "GOP forgets its history" : "One of the great and defining characteristics of the American Dream - the birthright of citizenship - has come under threat amid the furor over illegal immigration. Republican politicians leding this charge should rush up ontheir own party's history. That United States citizenship should be granted to anyone born within its boundaries wasestablished in the aftermath of the Civil War. The 14th Amendment, along with other Reconstruction amendments ending slavery and enshrinement of the right to vote, were meant to ensure states could not deny freed slaves the privileges of citizenship."

Many GOP sentators, including Arizona's John McCain, are now set to challenge the 14th Amendment, with amendment in mind.

Obama is a black guy, "hampered" by U.S.history, among other things, like vast ignorance mixed with racism and great disparities in living standards and opportunities, and the detritus of finance capital's greed and near collapse, none of which was of his making.  And of course there are even some naive people who elected him who don't understand why he doesn't call out the troops against the GOP. But they don't understand much about political democracy period. 

Anyone reading something like Barbara Kingsolver's The Lacuna(this author wanted to know why America was retreating up its ass in terror today)  - or anyone who has read the unexpurgated history of immediate postwar America and McCarthyism - knows many Americans (and Canadians) were sent back to their countries of origin in the communist witch hunts of the periiod. You won't see the Globe using those examples for background to editorials, however. Best to forget all that.

Yes, obviously it's all a "crooked shell game" played out with one of the recently emancipated in charge.   Y'all never know what may bubble up in the heat of a Mississippi summer... in deed or thought.

A Canadian before Obama's kangaroo court in a concentration camp Obama promised to close.

In the spirit of recent babble threads, I would say "show trial" would be preferable to "kangaroo court," but either works fine.

What's with all the pounding on Krugman?   The same arguments about expectations that apply to Obama also apply to him.  He got the Swedish Bank Prize (the correct title).  That's the imprimatur of the establishment.  He is very much a FTA/NAFTA supporter.  If anything, it's a surprise for him to line up with Digby, who is doing her damndest to get the Democrats to pay attention to their leftish supporters.  He occaisionally points out things like lying about WMD, but mostly he writes about economics, well, he IS an economist.  Why would you expect him to move outside of that field?  If you want a rational attack on the security state, go read Glenn Greenwald.

Is this the right thread to commemorate the opening day of Omar Khadr's kangaroo trial - the very first trial ever in front of the military commission which the liar and coward Obama promised to abolish?

Good grief, George. The good ship Obama has burned to the waterline. It's indistinguishable from many of the other rotting hulks on the water. You can still make it to the independent shores ... but you've got to let go of that rubber ducky and take a few strokes to freedom.

I certainly can't provide facts to counter Greenwald (whereverhe's coming from on the political spectrum), And I have not followed the debate back in spring of 2009.  Maybe he is a "liar", although I will not concede "coward."  Just getting on a platform exposed to the lunatic fringe down there refutes that one.  And particularly given his skin colour.

This is not so much a defence of Obama, but of democratic figures who have been desperately trying to prevent that country from slipping over into open fascism.  Dependent as it is on military production and deployment, that could easily happen without some of the liberal figures who have withstood the temptation to cave to a misbegotten public opinion, which itself is afraid to be branded "un-American". We all know that for a long time, Republican and Democrat have been hard to choose between in the parlour game of Capitalism.  But with entry of the neo-con project to do away with public institutions, and the appearance of Bush junior and a populist grouping of marginalized anti-givmint white Americans, a winner-take-all Libertarian leadership, all played out with the new rules of Reich's Supercapitalism - where everyone watches the fortunes of the market - we're in a new game.

I had hoped that by putting forward the fantastic impediments to political resolution of so many issues that some folks might want to engage in a balanced review of events south of the 49th, but it seems the simplistic just hjas too much easly appeal : an attack on a leader who may, after Nov. 2, have even less power to affect change - or carry through on the hopeful platform that he unveiled two years ago. We knew he could not propose a command economy, but we (I) didn't realize the extent to which finance capital and the Republican media could force modification of so many programmes. Everyone's future depends on economic health, and if you can't bring that about, bugger off, is the prevailing thought.

But I invite you to actually suggest how he could have brought Congress - including so many on the right wing of his own party - to heel.   I'll bet folks are just busting a gut to explain how he could break that dependency of the U.S. on China's cheap goods and its purchases of Treasury bills, explained by Morgan.  

In the meantime, I'll keep posting "what Obama is up against."  

And yet he is following some rather pale footprints.

American capitalists love cheap labour in China. But it's wrecking the US economy while Washington wages cerrtain protectionist measures against Chinese imports. And they disallow Chinese investments in the most promising sectors of US economy. It's nothing like our crooked NAFTA deal where US corporations and rich people have majority ownership and control of a number of key sectors of Canada's economy. China has real leaders bargaining shrewdly in their own interests. I think they've chosen to stop financing US Military buildup around China and former Soviet countries. Deal's off, and Chimerica will be getting a divorce.

Fair enough. And I'll keep posting how Obama is a fraud who, yet again, convinced good, well meaning people to throw their lot in with a war party that will roll over their lives en route to delivering what remains of their humanity to corporate mills to be pressed into one dimensional orifices that eat what their fed and shit money.

A good test is to ask yourself whether any presidential candidate in the last 50 years has sounded as left-wing (for the U.S., I know...) during the election campaign as Obama. I'm assuming he was sincere.

BUT...

The President has to work with the House and the Senate. He can't, all by himself, change every aspect of government policy - the system was designed by people who didn't trust any one individual that much. That should be borne in mind.

Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon both did a lot more for progressive causes.

Since Reagan however there has been one mode of governance, more or less.

"Without looking up actual speeches, I'd guess that JFK, Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Richard Nixon and George McGovern all made noises more leftish than that empty "hopey changey" thing."

Looking up speeches by any GOP figure today would be enlightening.

I think George W. Bush was secretly a Trotskyist.  Of course, he was simply "up against" too much, what with a congress ready and raring to go to war, and the same rich bankers as Obama is up against.  And he's done more to convince me that he's a Trotskyist than Obama has done to convinve me he is a progressive - he did surround himself with old Shachtmanites.

Someone please explain to me how George W. Bush could have brought Congress - including so many on the right wing of his own party - to heel. I'll bet folks are just busting a gut to explain how he could break that dependency of the U.S. on China's cheap goods and its purchases of Treasury bills.

Until then, I'll keep posting about what George W. Bush was up against.

Also, I have a similar theory that Stephen Harper is a supporter of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist)

There are examples of when the Yanks have actually been not as far to the right on some aspects of social sector spending, public sector economy and money policies compared to our colonial administrators in Ottawa. Marauding multinational energy companies and big money interests in general have found our federal stooges to be very pliable and easily manipulated over the years.