Thursday, November 04, 2010

The Opposite of Leadership

President Obama signals that he's willing to compromise on the Bush tax cuts.

Gumption is not in his vocabulary, let alone his blood corpuscles. Since his disastrous caving on the Public Option for health insurance (which more than anything else caused the very real "enthusiasm gap" in this election cycle), we know what his "willingness to compromise" means.

He gives up without a fight. How can anybody be enthusiastic about such a presidency?

7 comments:

oatz said...

Free Slushies for everybody!!!

Anonymous said...

I'm enthusiastic about Obama! Since when was compromise a bad thing? When in life did someone get everything they asked for, without compromise? DEMs didn't lose because of Obama, they lost because they elected Obama and expected HIM to do ALL the lifting! It's OUR job to implement the changes and force our officials to do what we want.

You better start supporting Obama and Perdue if you are a Democrat--they are all that's left from a complete bulldozing of our Government.

brotherdoc said...

The #1 goal of McConnell and the GOPers in the Senate is to deprive Obama of a second term, so if you thought it was hard for Reid to get anything passed with 60 votes, try it now with 51 or 52. NO, repeat NO initiative that might give any positive credit to O will get past McConnell. So, let's just all watch to see what the Teapublicans can do over the next 18 months. Cut taxes? Easy, O is going to let them have that. Of course it will raise the deficit but they don't care, it will make the rich corporate donors happy. Create Jobs? Reduce the size of the Federal government? Hardly the place to start if you want to improve the job #s. Cut the deficit? Only by slashing Medicare and Social Security, which means the elderly won't back them next time. End Obamacare? O might work up the energy to veto that, but if it went down maybe we can get Single Payer in another decade or so. So there's really nothing good that will happen anyway between now and 2012. Revenue and spending bills originate in the House, according to our beloved Constitution. Over to you, Bayner and Madam Foxx. Get off your a**es and actually put some proposals on the table, you don't have Nancy Pelosi to kick around any more. O will just give them enough rope and they will hang themselves--at least that is the only strategy I think he is willing to pursue right now. Let's hope it works.

YetAnother said...

i saw this on the other site. Thought it was interesting

"Liberalism was rejected, but not by the voters. Some voters may have been fooled into thinking they were rejecting liberalism, but did the Democrats even attempt a truly liberal agenda?

Did the Democrats pass a stimulus package as large as liberal economists Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz and Nouriel Roubini said we needed?
Did the Democrats pass Cramdown or a WPA-style jobs program?
Did the Democrats even put a single payer health care plan on the table? Did they fight for a public option?
Did the Democrats reject the generals' request to further escalate the war in Afghanistan?
Did the Democrats shut down Gitmo, secret renditions, or domestic spying?
Did the Democrats end Don't Ask Don't Tell or the Defense Of Marriage Act?
Did the Democrats even begin to address immigration reform?
Did the Democrats pass Cap-and-Trade or respond to the BP oil disaster by ending deepwater drilling?
The list could go on and on.

Ignore the pundits and remember the battles over the issues, including the battles that never happened. The voters didn't reject a liberal agenda because they didn't see a liberal agenda. Many wouldn't know what a liberal agenda looks like, because no one has bothered to show them one."

brotherdoc said...

Wow, YetAnother, you found a great quote. Bet JW agrees with you, too. It's a sign of how far America has shifted to the right since Ray-gun that these things are rarely talked about in Dem circles. Socialism is the bogeyman 24/7 on Fox but of course there's no truthiness (as Colbert would say) in calling Obama a Socialist. The lonely voices on the American left--and true Socialists are mighty few!--are constantly denigrated as somehow coercive and threatening to freedom. In fact there's hardly anyone around any more to speak up for the little guy. The EEvangelical churches concentrate on saving souls, not filling lunch pails. The Republicans tell us that somehow we will all succeed b/c it's a free country. Well, it's a lot harder now than a generation ago and it's not b/c America has gone socialist, or the government has taken away our rights. Rather it's that the puppet masters have been feeding themselves at the govt trough and distracted the people with scary social issues (kept in the background this year), or scary sounding things like deficits, death panels, and death taxes, or, scariest of all, Islamic Terrorism. All this hides the simple fact that government subsidizes the rich and penalizes the poor on virtually every level, from farm subsidies to no-bid defense contracts, from mortgage-interest tax deductions to tax write-offs for oil and gas, and on and on. Little will change so long as we keep our current two-party system, which has not really been shaken up for many years before this TP thing emerged. What we need on the left is a "Subsidized Enough Already" movement--a SEA party. No more govt handouts to the rich.

Brushfire said...

Brotherdoc - You said it.

Anonymous said...

Speaking of Sell outs? Boy are those tea party members real suckers///////


Tea Party favorite Leader Senator Demint [ Dimwit] South Carolina sells out Tea Party after one day on raising the National Debt limit.....http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/1110/110310nj3.htm