Friday, March 5th, 2010 Dear President Obama, I understand you may be looking to replace Rahm Emanuel as your chief of staff. I would like to humbly offer myself, yours truly, as his replacement. I will come to D.C. and clean up the mess that's been created around you. I will work for $1 a year. I will help the Dems on Capitol Hill find their spines and I will teach them how to nonviolently beat the Republicans to a pulp.
LANGUAGE WARNING: Today’s story is uncharacteristically blunt, and from this moment forward we will be using lots of inappropriate language in making our points.
It is by now fairly well known that Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s White House Chief of Staff, had a bit of a blow-up with liberals who were ready to start running ads against “blue dog” Democrats who were working very hard to shut down the health care reform effort.
Now we’re not gonna get in the middle of that argument today; instead, since we’re finally getting a chance to talk, I figured me and Rahm could get a few other things out of the way that have been on everyone’s mind for the past year or so.
After the much advertised "bi-partisan" forum on healthcare it seems to me one glowing fact remains for the American people to be blinded by. Republicans simply have no interest whatsoever in changing one of the most costly and least effective healthcare systems in the world. They also care very little about whether millions of uninsured Americans recieve coverage and ultimately seek Emergency Room treatment for illness, passing the cost on to everyone else. Now, it is time for Democrats to take off the gloves, come out swinging and fight with every power at their disposal to pass true healthcare reform.
A poll just released by New York Times/CBS today had some interesting findings. Despite the Tea Party movement, President Obama is still viewed much more positively than the Republicans or Congress. It found that Americans have not forgotten about George W. Bush and that being an incumbent this year will be toxic. It also gave insights into what the Democrats should do in the coming months to stay in power.
Once again, Republicans are playing politics with many Obama nominations. They seem to forget the old saying "to the victor goes the spoils" and refuse to let the not so new President set up his Administration. No place anywhere needs new vision as much as the National Labor Relations Board, and although Obama has a qualified candidate nominate for that board, Republicans are doing all they can to block him because he is labor-friendly.
All through the healthcare debate last year Republicans made one thing perfectly clear. They simply would not accept any kind of meaningful reform and indeed just sought to delay the problem by making President Obama and the Democrats mad. Now, one leading Progressive is scoffing at the idea of bi-partisanship on healthcare and is offering the suggestion that could have saved healthcare if it would have been fought for, the public option.
I guess the lessons of last year have not completely set in. All the lies about "death panels" and "death books" and all the right-wing lunatics shouting like idiots at town-halls must be a distant memory. That is because it seems as if the President seems determined to repeat the failures of last year. Has he not learned when you reach out to Republicans all you do is pull back a bloody nub??
While I have been disappointed with and ripped into President Obama on occasion the Republican response to his new budget completely defines hypocrisy. Before saying anything, they should consider exactly who got us into the mess we are in- THEM. Their control of our government was a disaster for our country.
I watched Barack Obama's State of the Union address last night January 27, 2010, (the video is after the page break) and did my best to be objective as possible. It's tough to be objective when you've worked so hard to help elect Barack Obama and then feel he's let you down from time to time during his first year. My journey started with Barack Obama September 14, 2006 when I shot video of him in Louisville, Kentucky and continued until he was elected. Click here to view the videos I've shot of him during this journey, including his announcement in Springfield, Ill. Getting back to the State of the Union. I felt that Barack Obama distanced himself from the Left and Right ideologues. The GOP Response is After the page break.
As a Democrat it makes me just a little sad to write this but as a Progressive seeing what was coming out of Washington after Blue Dogs in the House and Corporate Democrats in the Senate poisoned the process it makes me happy to say that for the time being Universal Healthcare is dead in the Congress. I say this as an uncovered American who desperately wanted real reform, but saw the process devolve away from me to how to pass out more Corporate Welfare. In the end, the bill that would have come out of the "House of Lords" known as the U.S. Senate simply scared the hell out of me.
We are used to always hearing about some idiotic drivel coming from Glenn Beck. It has become quite customary for him to insult the intelligence of the American people and even the mindless drones who believe him who have no intelligence on a regular basis. Now, not only does he show his complete and total ignorance on the mindset of President Obama, but he is comparing Progressives in this country to Marxists.
With the current setbacks in election results President Obama is trying to retool his message and offer measures to give relief to the middle-class. While some of it sounds good, to me it seems as if it will fall short in really helping some middle-class folks. Another huge problem is it seems to not address the real underlying problem, the RE-BUILDING of our middle-class which has been disappearing.
The White House Blog In this week’s address, President Barack Obama addresses the Supreme Court decision to further empower corporations to use their financial clout to directly influence elections and vows that "as long as I'm your President, I'll never stop fighting to make sure that the most powerful voice in Washington belongs to you."
With a few victories under their belts, Republicans are celebrating pretty hard. They believe this means that Americans have forgotten about the terrible job they did of governance before the last two election cycles. They see themselves as poised to take back control of the government later this year and in 2012. However, before popping too many Champagne corks they should reassess the public mood.
Jon Walker over at Fire Dog Lake makes a very effective argument about why learning the wrong lesson from the defeat of Martha Coakley in yesterday's Massachusetts Senate race will lead to disaster.
Not only will Democrats lose badly if they adopt this strategy, but they will be laughed at. Republicans never had 59 Senate seats, and that did not stop them from passing the legislation they wanted. Trying to explain to the American people how, despite controlling everything, Democrats cannot do anything, because a mean minority of 41 Republican senators won't let them, is a message that will go over like a lead balloon. If you try to use that excuse, people will think elected Democrats are liars, wimps, idiots, or an ineffectual combination of all three.
Barack Obama inherited one of the biggest messes in the history of the
United States of America. Two wars and a collapsed economy, just to
mention a few. When Barack Obama was running for President he said
change wouldn't come easy and he would need help. So what have we done
to help him and cover his back? I ask this question because I've
watched the progressive community allow the Tea Party folks to own the
streets and take over the Town-Hall meetings during the spring, summer
and fall of 2009. I was on the streets and at Town-Hall meetings to see
this first hand. Not only did I see it, Mike Watt and I shot photos and
videos of these events and Richard Dillon wrote about them eloquently.
