Why? The Democrats run the House and the Senate. Is Obama already fighting with his own party? It sure looks like it. Is he trying to turn 3 million people into those lobbyists he despised during the election? It sure looks like it. Is Obama quickly running out of political capital? It sure looks like it.

“Is Obama quickly running out of political capital?”

Dream on, wing nuts, dream on.

But that’s exactly the point… he is trying to turn 3 million ordinary citizens into lobbyist and squelch the noise coming from corporate concerns. The promise of this campaign and this president was that we would all have a voice in this government and that our public policy would no longer be dictated solely by the most rich and powerful among us but would be the voice of ALL of America. We see results from the last 20 years of “conservative thinking”… it doesn’t work and I believe that the majority of us are willing to give this president some time to undo the harm.

Jed Clampett

We now get to see how inconsequential the talents of a community organizer really are. This is exactly what he needs to do. It would be even more effective if he took the case to the people of how we got in this economic predicament; the laws that were passed to make it possible; the way government organizations were unfunded and understaffed in order to make them useless. Then perhaps the people would recognize just how proud of their Republican’t leadership they should be.
Unfortunately, that would lead the pigs to start an all out overt war to replace the covert one they are conducting on the American people’s government.
Despicable bunch of libertines.

Greg, if Obama is just following through on a campaign promise to reform the way the government interacts with the people, why do you immediately assume it’s because he’s running out of political capital?

The guy, in a short time, is living up to the promises he made during the campaign. This should surprise nobody. In fact, are you REALLY going to complain about a president that wants to know what’s on the minds of the people? This president is ‘talking’ to us. The last president told us to go shopping. No wonder we’re in an economic mess………

I like our president and support him, but I am growing impatient. I don’t understand how anyone can say he is living up to his campaign promises. He violated his promise to give the public notice before he signs bills just days after taking office. He talked endlessly about change in Washington and went and re-hired the Clinton squad. He talked about not hiring lobbyists and nominated several for cabinet positions. He changed his definition of income brackets. He promised a windfall profits tax on big oil, but has reneged on this too. We should have seen this coming when he reneged on campaign finance reform. I think Mr. Obama has the potential to be one of the finest presidents in this nation’s short history. The time is ripe for reform and we are desperately looking for leadership after the many failures of recent years. If he continues though with making and breaking promises people are eventually lose trust in him. I for one find it disturbing that he is so ready to break promises that appeared to be made in earnest and that the public is not willing to call him on it. I find this more threatenning than the real meat and potatoes of any policy he might put forward.

Cappy: The ‘change’ you talk about can be defined in many thousands of ways. It all depends on how you interpreted the message. Besides, I think it would be almost impossible to find someone in government who HASN’T worked for Bush or Clinton at some point.

If the only ‘promise’ he’s broken was the public notice of bill signing…….boy isn’t that a fresh ‘change’ from the last administration?

He didn’t reneg on finance reform.
He has barely even begun to formulate his energy policy, so we might want to wait on the oil subsidies.

But, you’re right. You are growing impatient. That’s quite obvious with the accusations……

What the problm with Obama.
Already two months after inagurasion and he still hasn’t solved all our problms with a miracle yet? What good is a holy chosen one if he can’t magically create experenced people with no links to previous polytitians he should go back to polytitian school, you don’t make promisis and then try to keep them, regardles of experienced advice should have learned from Bush and Cheiney, lie about everything, make them big lies, and the people will believe it all

Call me naive, but I interpreted change to be that the Obama was going to take a fresh look at things and apply a new set of premises to tackling old problems. I don’t see how this can be accomplished with the same Washington insiders at the helm. It is crazy to think there are only a select group of people out there with the qualifications to run the government to the extent that fresh talent can’t be found. That’s the kind of thinking that gets us into these messes. I said the same thing when Bush hired Rumsfield and Cheney and I say it now. Also, Coach kind of blatantly ignored my point about hiring lobbyists. Obama has shamelessly gone against his own policy on this. Oh, and Coach should go out to the Obama-Biden website and have a look at the energy policy described there. It had up until recently boldly called for windfall taxes on big oil. Some time during the last few weeks it was removed. In their own words: “For decades, Washington
has failed to solve this problem because of partisanship, the undue influence of special interests, and
politicians who would rather propose gimmicks to get them through an election instead of long‐term solutions that will get America closer to energy independence.” If proposing and reneging on windfall taxes isn’t cheap gimmickry I don’t know what is. Like I said, I support the president. He has the smarts to do some great things, but he is off to a lousy start. I feel like he has really put one over on us if he is going to continue on in this way. We have to call him out now so this kind of stuff doesn’t just become business as usual.

Well, Cappy. Yes, I would call it naive to think Obama was going to be able to end oil subsidies. My only concern is that other industries get subsidized at the same rate or better than oil. Industries like solar, geothermal, wind, and natural gas to name a few.

As far as lobbyists are concerned, again, I think it would have been naive to think that some lobbyists wouldn’t make their way to cabinet positions. What matters is where they came from. Bush gave defense and oil lobbyists positions, and we went to war over oil. The real question for you, is to what extent will these ‘new’ cabinet members enforce their agenda, and what will THAT be.

And, besides all that: His presidency isn’t even two months old, and he’s followed through on more promises than broken.

Coach-
Weren’t you the one who was always railing against Bush for not ending oil subsidies? I have to agree with the dupe, Obama made many a proclamation about his so-called policy on lobbyists. Don’t you remember all that stuff about revolving doors? Anyway, he didn’t just let a few in, he went on a lobbyist binge. I think something like >10% of his staffers have been registered as lobbyists at some point since 2005.
William Lynn, formerly vice president of government operations and strategy at Raytheon is deputy Defense secretary. He was registered up until last summer. Daschle was a big-time lobbyist. Mark Patterson, registered as a Goldman Sachs lobbyists until last spring is Geithner’s chief of staff for crying out loud! Hey, it doesn’t really bother me. I think that it takes people who understand industry to inform policymakers. Still, I have not been the one railing against industry influence-peddling in Washington for eight years. And of course, I think it’s hilarious that even this early in his presidency it is clear that Obama can’t live up to his own self-imposed ethics rules.

Capistrano-
What makes you ‘like our president and support him’ if it is so obvious he is a bullshtt artist?

Obama’s next message will probably be to get those 13 million people to buy bonds, since the treasury is now printing money, because there are not enough new bond holders for all these projects the Democrats want. This is getting countries to pull the plug on the dollar as the UN is already in talks of dropping the dollar because the treasury is just crashing the dollar (even though it’s been on a decline since the 1900s, but now it’s offical policy) and causing fuel prices to rise as a result.

Bloodly: I may have been riling against Bush for not subsidizing other energy markets, but I do realize that subsidies serve a good purpose. Yes, I would also admit, that I don’t think we need to subsidize oil anymore. But, I think it would be an enormous stretch to think that, coming into this thing, the Obama administration would end oil subsidies and have zero lobbyists.

But, again, as always, conservatives are railing about a single-digit percentage. It’s either support the top 5% earners in this country, or rail against less than 10% of his cabinet being lobbyists. That’s a major dropoff from the last administration, YET ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF CHANGE.

Something to ponder: Look at what it is that is unnerving conservatives, compared to what was unnerving liberals during Bush’s tenure:

War, torture, wiretapping, rendition, domestic negligence, etc. vs. Domestic spending.

Coach-
With regard to your comparison:

‘War, torture, wiretapping, rendition, domestic negligence, etc. vs. Domestic spending.’

This is word play. I could just as easily frame a similar comparison indicting the current administration and Congress by phrasing their current policies as say, attacking individual liberty; compromising the integrity of the currency; confiscating and redistributing wealth; cronyism; etc. At any rate, I am no Bush apologist. I fully acknowledge that he was a shtty president and a poor leader, but that doesn’t have anything to do with my disdain for what is currently underway in the Federal government. Bush merely set the stage for the tragedy that is now playing itself out.

Cap and trade is now projected to cost the American people nearly $2 trillion over 8 years in new taxes so he can spend $120 billion over eight years on alternative energy. Even still with this new money, he plans to run up $1 trillion more a year than Bush and his plans alone will add a projected $15.3 trillion to the national debt by 2019. $1.2 trillion of that will be from extra health care costs according to Obama. Much of that isn’t even going to be from bailout money. It’s so bad, that Obama can’t find enough rich people to tax and bond investors that the treasury is now printing money to by the bonds which is causing the dollar to drop like a rock. Generally when Republicans left, the expenses stopped (the exception was the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan). When Democrats leave office, their expenses keep on going years after they have left. If those 13 million really love Obama, they better get out their check books and put their money where their mouth is and pay for all these new projects till they can’t pay no more.

Jed Clampett

I wonder how much the Formad spent on subsidies for the oil industry over the last 8 years. How about big pharma and agriculture?
In the last decade, more has been done to monopolize key industries and systems, leaving us with huge corporations that set themselves up as single points of failure, making themselves ‘too big to fail’ and then precipitating a failure that throws the entire system into chaos, from the chaos they can make hefty profits for themselves personally; they get to keep past salaries, they take losses in stock value as a loss which they can use for deductions in their taxes, they hide and destroy evidence of illegal and morally questionable accounting practices and pass on losses to the taxpayer, which is a general enough entity that it seems no ‘real person’ is being harmed.

Nothing more than an elaborate shell game designed to keep the rich getting richer and the poor in a position to accept any job at any price.

How horrible was Barrack’s comment on the Special Olympics? It was sad. Presidential??? NO

I guarantee there won’t be a peep in your biased, one sided publication, and that’s a crying shame. Time to look at both sides Rolling Stone.

Kern-
Barry 0’s Special Olympics comment is nothing more than a useless artifact for political correctness pukes to latch onto. The President is at the center of a massive power grab; the CEO in charge of the biggest LBO ever perpetrated and all you can do is draw attention to his commentary on his bowling score?

Jed Clampett

And whose policies created the conditions that made the ‘biggest Leveraged Buy Out in history’ necessary?
Formad and their friends in congress of course.
Those greedy bastards in ivory towers really shot themselves in the foot and didn’t even realize they were doing it, they thought they were merely making a bundle on imagined value.
Good point on the dissembling though, there are much bigger issues at hand than a careless comment on a variety show. We need to find a way to block their attempts at dividing the populace and work together to find intelligent solutions.
When are we going to start seeing the perp walks and indictments? oh, yea, it was all legal, congress made sure of that over the last decade.

Jed-
You are mistaken. This buyout is totally unnecessary. As for who is to blame for all of this, I personally think it is mainly the fault of the investment community for moving as swiftly as it did into uncharted territory without a modicum of due diligence. Self-regulation would have saved companies billions. Designing systems to track risk would have cost money, but would have been worth it in the long-run. If the government were not pumping billions into these failed enterprises, we could probably count on the ones left standing to commit to these measures. Some of the proposals coming out of the Fed for a systemic risk authority are a great step towards resolving these deficiencies. In no way does this require the kind of buyout that is underway. You of all people surprise me in your support of it. All this will lead to is further consolidation of the oligarchy. At either extreme, left or right, the oligarchs have what conditions they require to maintain and increase their control of the means of production.

Blood for Oil

If the comment was made by Bush or anyone from his administration, it would have been a major story and created rampant sensitivity (all warranted). The fact that it’s gone pretty much under the radar is mind boggling. Goes both ways my friend. It was a comment that was insensitive and irresponsible, and if you have any sense of morality, you would admit that.

Kern,

News flash: Obama IS human. I believe he apologized for it. Like Ole said, in light of the ‘real’ problems of the world, focusing on that is inane.

Ole,

While I don’t disagree about your favoring NOT bailing out those companies, perhaps, just perhaps, there’s something we don’t know and the Curad (Current Administration) does. Could it be that to NOT bail those companies out would result in a total collapse of the economy? We already see what’s happening in the support sector of the auto industry. And they’re still afloat. Sortta.

If financial institutions world wide belly-up, the dominoes might never stop falling. And what’s the benefit to that? Tear it down and start all over? Methinks that is NOT a viable alternative.

I deplore what’s happening but I’d like to think it’s the lesser of two weevils.

Frankly, I think giving all that money to the ‘deserving’ people would have been nice, but probably equally futile.

Just what WOULD ensue if AIG, et al were allowed to fail?

PS Ole

I don’t argue/disagree there’s a power grab underway but if you’d just seen the radical right turn the most powerful/developed country into a banana republic, wouldn’t YOU try to do something to prevent it from happening again?

Aren’t the Dems merely emulating what the GOP has been doing for several decades?

And what’s WRONG with saying I bowl like a spastic? If Obama wasn’t the Prez, nobody would give a Good God Damn. Question: Was Obama wearing his flag pin when he said it? If so, it’s OKAY.

DD-
I don’t think there is any uncertainty about the economic chaos that would ensue if banks and other businesses were allowed to fail. There would be incredible civil unrest worldwide. My fear is that the fear of permitting this tension to resolve itself will result in the emergence of a culture of ruling elites that will sooth the populace into submission while consolidating its base of power. The right has been in the process of creating a dog-eat-dog world that functions largely on profit. This system is harsh and unyielding in many ways, but forcing people to make survival decisions is, I think, superior to a system that promises to make those decisions on behalf of the populace. I would prefer a system where government is manipulated from time to time to one where government is viewed as THE solution. The idea that a country is its government is nationalistic – an ideology I thoought was invalidated in the multifaceted failures of Nazi Germany, Spain, Portugal, Communist Europe/Russia, Cuba, North Korea.

One bad parent doesn’t make all bad.

What you suggest is a return to feudalism.

News flash Blood for Oil of Olay:

Obama is President and shouldn’t be making irresponsible and insensitive comments like that. Stop making excuses for him.

El Cap,

If the penalty was 1 USD for every slip of the tongue, Georgie Porgie would owe about the same as he spent on ‘his war.’

Get a grip everyone; we ALL do it. Believe me, Obama will takes stones and arrows over this because it is the nature of our ‘bi-partisan’ politics.

Personally, I think retarded folks are just as cool as the rest of us. I can’t tell you how many times a retard has brightened my day. It’s no wonder, though, that there is so much concern about insensitivity and misunderstanding when we are expected to treat the subject with solemnity, not recognizing that the shtt they do is sometimes a bit silly.

I, as well, bowl like a spastic except om Wii where I bowled a 287.

Look every person on here has lost sight of what is really important! When, oh when, will we get out of Vietnam? Is it too much to ask of our president to hear the cry of the people? Not to mention the whole JFK mystery—I’m just sick of not getting any closure–sick, sick, sick! The ONLY bright spot in my day comes from thinking about how funny Gerald Ford was when he would fall down! Do you guys rememeber when Tiny Tim got married on TV? Now that was NEWS!!!Anyway, I digress, does anyone in this entire country feel like the Civil War was a little too “one sided” and why in the name of all that’s groovy did they ever cancel the reality show–Shaquille? Please help me understand!

Why would we lobby congress to support his budget? Because Obama said so is enough for his blind followers, but for the rest of us this so called budget is a joke. Obama is just another crooked politician, no better then the scapegoat Bush.

Jed Clampett

I’m mistaken? What the hell are you talking about? This is priceless, I wonder how you can deduce from all I’ve posted in the past that I’m in favor of bailing out the bastards that destroyed the world’s economy… but then I know your tactics in debate and recognize that you wish to saddle me with your old views, as if they were mine to begin with, and at the same time take up my position as if it had been yours all along.
You’re like a poster child for all the negative steps in debate. Well, at least you’ve come around to recognizing that this whole thing is nothing more than the oligarchs making a power grab at the cost of the American middle class. Perhaps sometime in the future you might be able to accept the truth as to how it was foisted upon us. But I’m sure you won’t be able to go that far.
This whole economic fiasco would have been much cheaper to just make the small investors whole in this process and all the contracts written in bad faith considered null and void. Including the screwed up subprime mortgages. That is the right way to deal with those toxic assets, not closing them out by giving the crooks all the money they wanted to make by writing immoral and sometimes illegal contract in the first place.

Remember sometime back as I was regretting the appointment of Geitner due to the fact that he was one of the architects of the collapse? Now we see what the problem was in that. Bernake had studied the Great Depression, apparently he just wanted to learn how to make the robbery more perfect.

Bloody, you must be royally entertained in front of the mirror all day, huh?

Here’s a little food for thought, fund managers pulled down 22.7 billion in tax deferred profits in 2007. They pulled down 11.3 Billion in 2008 even with the economic collapse under their belt… in the meantime, the ranks of the poor increased by 15%

Yea!! unfettered capitalism!
who gives a damn about the rest of the people as long as we are rich.

“And whose policies created the conditions that made the ‘biggest Leveraged Buy Out in history’ necessary?”

From thi

Jed Clampett

It’s a fool that takes one sentence as indicator of someones philosophy while ignoring all the rest of a vast body of work… or a liar, one that lies to himself and then riles against the lie. Or that finding an action a necessity is the same as approving of it. Considering the positions adopted by those who would drown our voices out with BS, I tend to think you belong to both groups… a self deceiving fool.

I’m mistaken?

Cappy is impatient and I don’t blame her. Where is the change, god damn it? Looks to me like the same old ship of fools. We might as well have voted for Sarah Palin. Sheesh!