What Did Obama Mean by Change?

If you want someone to lead us singing folk songs, fine.



I wanted the person who was going to chase the money-changers from the temple to send them packing. But all I got was money-changers with more even money wearing cleaner underwear.



As a bonus, we got more unemployment, fewer people with health care, more dead soldiers, more tortured foreigners, more assassinated Americans, more homeless, and no one in the White House willing to take a stand on any crucial matters of economic justice at all.



Kumbaya......!
About Elections 2012
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Memorial Day Thoughts on National Defense

I don't think the key issue to make in today's budget priority debate is 'what is the point of our military defense?'



For instance, what good is it to have the best offensive military weapons to prevent people from invading our country and blowing up our infrastructure - while our infrastructure is ALREADY and literally falling apart due to old age and neglect? Is there really a difference between some terrorist blowing up a bridge in this country or having one fall down under its own weight?



I remember as a kid we would build competing forts. The goal was to build the coolest one. Build. What a silly, kiddie concept....



What is it that we are defending? Who is going to be able to pay the price for it - the Mexican and Chinese workers getting paid dirt wages in their respective countries to manufacture everything for us?



I fear the only interest for defense is the protection of our precious rich elite. I guess they can't pay taxes now because they know that as we digress into a third-world nation, they will need that money to pay their own personal armies to defend their castles from the serfs.
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Tommy Thompson, Wisconsin Senate Candidate, Accepts Corporate Board Chairmanship

I have to admit that reading of thompson's appointment to an uncompensated board position for some group in Florida barely moves the needle on my rage-ometer. But on the other hand, this one jacks it into yellow:



"[Thompson] is an operating partner with MTS Health Investors, a New York-based private equity firm specializing in the health-care sector."



I don't understand why the DSCC is raving about an uncompensated corporate board appointment while remaining mum on the 'dude is an active health care market investor and wants to be a senator' conflict of interest problem.



Oh wait, I know why - the DSCC is an incompetent band of bumblers with a terrible track record. With the awesome rhetorical and intellectual firepower of the DSCC behind her, Tammy Baldwin needs to ensure that her resume is in good order.
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Looking Over the Cliff

I heard we were going to owe $473 quadrillion-billion in 2018!!! Interest rates will be 7,020%!!!



It's all because of those welfare recipients and illegal immigrants.



Every month someone trots out this tedious bond vigilante thing. Each time, the vigilantes are 2 to 4 years away from hammering US bonds which will force us to borrow at high rates.



But I've been hearing this since 2008.



And they are STILL 4 years away. Just wait... another 4 more years... and you're SERIOUS... THIS time it'll be for real!....



And since 2008, the ACTUAL interest rate has gone DOWN.



But they're just around the corner..... waiting to pounce.....
About Fiscal Policy
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The Audacity of WTF

Maybe for you, voluntarily signing onto a program subjugating yourself to the wealthy, whose titans of industry have clearly and unequivocally proved to be actively destroying the economy, the nation's standard of living, and the country's overall stability doubles as patriotic and noble.



But it's really just a self-destructive demonstration of enabling that very likely elicits howls of derisive laughter at the Koch family cotillion - even though you may be the hit of your local Young Republicans meetings. You don't realize that you're the punchline of a really bad joke. And that is sad.
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JPMC About to Take Down Market Again

Only need to keep two names of people that Obama nominated/appointed in mind regarding this disaster: Tim Geithner and Ben Bernanke.

Even Paul Krugman gave credit to Obama for preventing a more painful market crash in 2008. However, it's clear that the decision to save this totally, completely dysfunctional system with no strings attached and then only impose heavily compromised regulations that were mainly to be subjectively executed by the two aforementioned protectors of the powerful - was/is a disastrous mistake.

Even though the Obama apologists will rant about how it's the fault of the obstructionist republicans, the fact remains that the demand for a systemic restructuring fell on his shoulders - his own staff and a Dem Congressional majority. And he failed.

He picked the wrong people (2 noted above) and the wrong strategies to get the job done. It doesn't matter that the effects of Obama's efforts (essentially changed nothing) was basically republican wishes. The fact is that republicans imposed their will on a President that had all the public behind him and a party majority.

The 'insider' books a tell the story of a President morbidly terrified of conflict whose motto is "do no harm." Well, by tip-toeing around our biggest problems, Obama's done tremendous harm.

Times like these demand that jellyfish like the President get out of the way for real leaders and visionaries. Of course, romney isn't the answer either. Right now, the inmates run the asylum.

How Odd That Mitt's Smitten With Clinton

We'd be in the gutter and we'd all finally be forced to confront the realities of how much of a farce our economy and our political institutions have become. It may not be the worst thing that can happen.



Millions of people love mitt romney. Similarly, millions of people truly believe that Obama is a tremendous, determined, leader and fighter for change when he has demonstrated the exact opposite just as clearly as romney has demonstrated his non-existent morals and his hatred of all who aren't rich or who don't genuflect properly to the rich.



Obviously, the folks in these two "blind faith" camps aren't in enough pain to demand better. Maybe a total economic collapse will bring about the requisite motivation.
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How Odd That Mitt's Smitten With Clinton

Seriously? How easy it is to forget that the tide went out.



In 2000/2001, I recall my crashed boat sitting besides thousands of other crashed boats. I also recall the new millionaires who conned investors into buying their flimsy "new economy" corporations, blissfully sailing on out to the Caribbean.



Yeah, it was a bubble. Just like the housing market bubble was a bubble. And clinton worked feverishly with his buddies to repeal Glass-Steagall to make the housing market bubble possible. Under raygun-omics and "free market theory," every economic upturn has effectively been a bubble. It's not "lucky" to preside over one in an 8-year term - it's inevitable. Difference is that, although he signed on to a trove of economically destructive policies (well, destructive to the US), clinton's tax increase did NOT harm the economy at all.



clinton's only positive legacy is that he delivered some critical evidence that, after the bush cuts and subsequent bubble eruption, proved the friedman "free market" acolytes dead wrong.
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Obama Can't Knock the Hustle

I hear ya, JRO.



I started off giving Obama the benefit of the doubt. Then I came to your position. And then I read Ron Suskind's book, "Confidence Men" which covers 2008 campaign times through around year 2 of Obama's term. After reading that, I have concluded that the President is just a boy in a man's job - hopelessly outmatched and outwitted by the entrenched powers.



But any way you slice it, the book and observable evidence clearly states that the President is the wrong man for the job - front man for the powerful or hapless fall guy.



I don't suspect that Suskind's mission is to make people like me less cynical about the President's personal policy intentions, because when I look at the polls, I can see that I am in a very small minority. He couldn't possibly make money on the book by hitting folks like me or maybe you.



Regardless, I will be writing in Bernie Sanders or some protest name in November.
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Hope and Hesitation in Obama's Sudden Conversion

I don't live in a perfect world. I live in the real one.



In the real world, people sometimes do and say dishonest things in order to trick you for their own personal gain. Some people/groups lie more than others. But lies are lies. Broken promises are still broken promises no matter how much someone wants to pretend that it really only depends on who broke the promise.



In the rose-colored glasses world you're in, the President's clothes are spectacularly woven and he is resplendent in near godlike perfection. He is infallible. When anything bad happens, it's CLEARLY everyone ELSE'S fault. If he breaks a promise, it's someone else who forced him to break it. He can do no wrong. He is the savior.



No, you don't want to come over to the real world. Out here, there's no room to build monstrously complicated victimization and conspiracy theories to cover up failure and misconduct. Illogical and easily debunked excuses quickly disintegrate - just like the emperor's clothes.



Stay in your world. You probably won't be able to handle the force of the real one's trauma.
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Congress Revolts On Obama Plan That Would Ban 'Buy American'

There is a mountain of evidence (books based on insider accounts) to suggest he is intelligent and well-meaning - but hopelessly and easily duped into trusting people who most worldly individuals wouldn't trust to guard a penny. He believes all people have good in them and they will do good things if trusted to do so.



Although this makes the President virtually as incompetent - and as corporation-friendly - as avowed corporatists like the bushes and the grand DINO himself, bill clinton, there is absolutely no evidence to show that he is a raving right wing free market ideologue like the bushes. If you levied your allegation on clinton, you'd have a pretty good argument - but you didn't.



Obama is a failed President because he is naive almost beyond comprehension and because he abhors conflict of any kind. These are devastatingly crippling traits that make it easy for the power-brokers to continue to get their way at almost every turn. It's fair to judge him this way because there is proof behind it - and it's tragic that so many people think highly of him when he is so incredibly ill-suited for the office.



You can feel free to rant on with an opinion unsupported by any facts. But in the future, please kindly spare me from enduring them.
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