Monday, September 28, 2009

DITTO

What I've been saying in various posts in the past several months, is said differently and I think pretty well in this post on today's Huff Post.

9 comments:

Unacknowledged Legislator said...

Being an apolgist for this Wall Street warrior because he pledged to stop torture is really pathetic. Obama's weakness on health care has assured our very best shot at it will result in insurance industry supremacy for another generation.

Forget speeches. As any poet knows, anyone can impress with mere words.

Judge a man by his actions.

Obama's actions on healthcare were wrongheaded from the start, and he allowed the GOP to chew him up and spit him out all summer.

His record on the environment thus far is short sighted and not based on science. His Interior Secretary choice was a signal to business, "Never fear, business as usual is here."

He isn't ending Iraq anytime soon--again, talk is cheap... we'll give him that when we're the HELL OUT of there--Gitmo lives on, and lets just see how he handles the absurdity that is Afghanistan.

No mention in the puff piece of all the Patriot Act policies that he's rubber stamped from bush and don't hold your breath for any investigations let alone indictments on the zillion bush admin crimes that the people want handled.

Oh yeah, and the trillion dollar Wall Street Bailout has meant BIG BIG things for Goldman and AIG, BIG bonuses, big returns, but we've got years to go before his net job gains enter positive territory. The people are getting nothing so far.

Don't enable these democrat traitors. Fight for our will. Obama was given a mandate and hedges it in pro Wall Street, pro lobby ways at every turn.

The record shows that. Don't let your wishes that it were not so or your shame for being fooled by him (his entire career suggests a Harvard lawyer level of flipflop capitulation) make you see otherwise.

Our leaders are NOT leading. We need to be strong and do the leading instead.

Dudley Dittohead said...

Instead of reading weakling opinions of knee-jerk liberals on Puffington Host, here is some fact-based analysis that proves what fools ye mortals be:

Going Nowhere With Obama
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090810_nader_was_right_liberals_are_going_nowhere_with_obama

Stop Begging Obama To Be Obama And Get Mad
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/09/14

Obama On Climate: Is He Even Trying?
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/09/24-1

Obama the impotent
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/09/22-7

Obama Tepid On Public Choice
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/09/10-10

For All Obama's Talk of Overhaul, the US Has Failed to Wind in Wall Street
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/09/15-5

Now Make Me Do It
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/08/15-0

Obama Leaves Bush-Cheney Repressive Apparatus Standing
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/09/21-12

Obama's Great Afghanistan Gamble
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/05/obamas-great-afghanistan-gamble

Lally said...

Wow. Animosity from every side for Obama. Anyone of you ever run for office or organize any group well enough and large enough to impact any of the "real" changes you're looking for? You can criticize all you want, but what the writer says in the article I link to, and what I've been saying often on this blog, is still true. Yep, Obama hasn't done all I'd like to see him achieve and maybe he will or maybe he won't by the time his term or terms have ended. But he has achieved some things that have stopped or reversed some of the terrible things the last administration wrought, including the economic and two-war mess he was left with. Maybe you critics are simply too young or inexperienced to have been around when the left, including a younger me, were too busy criticizing and demanding major changes to realize the right was doing the legwork necessary to steal the country out from under us and cause worldwide damage greater than any Democrat ever had (i.e. laying the groundwork for the backlash that brought Nixon to power for example). Obama's faced with challenges most people I know would be wetting their pants over if they had to deal with them. He isn't a dictator folks, his will cannot be enacted by fiat. He's working with what he has and what he's been given. I'd like to see Rahm Emmanuel replaced, as well as others around him, and there are plenty of leftie blogs and critics who are calling for other changes in those he's surrounded himself with. But just go back and read the history of JFK's first term and what he tried to do (very similar actually) and see what his best efforts wrought. Obama knows what he's facing and it isn't just bloggers crying for their milk and honey, it's realtime power mongers capable of eliminating any opposition to business as usual. How he navigates that reality will be the measure of how much he can accomplish in his time.

JIm said...

Hi Mike,
Merkel won big. Sarkozy seems strong in France. Gordon Brown is a dead man walking. Corzine and Deeds could have serious problems in November. Obama's poll numbers, particularly on his socialist and big government initiatives are in the toilet. We may have a counter liberal/socialist/communist movement in the making. From a conservative's perspective we need to keep the Tea Party movement and the initiative of the Town Hall meetings alive. Those who believe in limited government certainly can not count on current Republican leaders to lead. Leadership comes from the people. It is helpful to see opposition on the left. Anything that weakens the Socialist and Chief, is good for the country and the world.

Butch in Waukegan said...

But just go back and read the history of JFK's first term and what he tried to do (very similar actually) and see what his best efforts wrought. Obama knows what he's facing and it isn't just bloggers crying for their milk and honey, it's realtime power mongers capable of eliminating any opposition to business as usual. How he navigates that reality will be the measure of how much he can accomplish in his time.

Wow!

Most don’t-let-the-perfect-be-the-enemy-of-the-good Obama defenders don’t acknowledge the existence of military/intelligence/corporate extra legal power centers, “capable of eliminating any opposition to business as usual”.

So we should support Obama because he literally has a gun to his head?

Lally said...

According to most of JFK's advisors, he learned his lesson with the military after The Bay of Pigs fiasco and no longer trusted them, or their judgement. They all believe he would not have gotten us so deeply involved in Viet Nam had he lived, and may well have found a way to extricate us so that the millions of deaths and horrible destruction would never have occurred. After LBJ got us deeply involved there and as a result of the opposition to that war declined to run for a second elected term, the anti-war protestors, including me and many I helped influence, began attacking Hubert Humphrey and supporting third party candidates, which contributed to Humphrey's loss, a man who I now believe would also have helped extricate us from Viet Nam. But under Nixon, we got more deeply involved in the war and millions more people lost their lives and even worse destruction occurred under our bombs (more dropped than in all of WWII) for the next several years! Those lives could have been saved if the idealists I counted myself among had been more realistic about what can be accomplished and what can't. So no, don't support Obama, in fact attack him and weaken him so he can be replaced by someone the powers-that-be can control even more and then take responsibility for what happens after that.

JIm said...

"So no, don't support Obama, in fact attack him and weaken him so he can be replaced by someone the powers-that-be can control even more and then take responsibility for what happens after that."

Works for me.

Butch in Waukegan said...

After LBJ got us deeply involved there and as a result of the opposition to that war declined to run for a second elected term, the anti-war protestors, including me and many I helped influence, began attacking Hubert Humphrey and supporting third party candidates, which contributed to Humphrey's loss, a man who I now believe would also have helped extricate us from Viet Nam.

Curious about what evidence you have for this assertion. Humphrey’s ’68 campaign was based on “winning” in Vietnam. Zinn believes Humphrey lost the close election “ . . . because [he] did not give a clear support for what the American people wanted, which was to get out of Vietnam.”

Humphrey returned to the Senate in ’71. Why wasn’t he a war critic as a Senator if he was going end the war if elected president?

One thing that bothers me about your Obama defense is there is no bottom. No matter what Obama does we have to support him because the Republicans are always worse. The Obama administration has been counting on this it-could-be-worse attitude (a congenital Democratic disease) to get everyone to swallow one dismal policy after another.

Anonymous said...

J.F.K. ignored the realities of Vietnam, and the councel of cold war strategists like George Kennan, to not get involved in the struggle between the Vietnamese.The result was that 56,000 young american souls were lost, a multitude of Vietnamese sacraficed, a country left destitute, and the military industrial complex even stronger. and finally it is where the crooks of Hallburtin, and Bectel got there start.
He began the 'give away' to the plutocrats, with his tax reforms.
He had a great PR, but the actual reforms were accomplished by Lyndon.