Your Uncle Dave’s often wondered if the Republicans threw the election by rigging voting machines (circumstantial, but been shown just too easy to do for a reason) and by nominating a doddering old fool for Prez (watch some of his speeches since then and say I’m wrong) and a wacko for VP because they knew they had screwed the economy and whoever was in the White House would be unable to fix it. And the Dems made sure it couldn’t be fixed by getting elected a first-rate speech reader and… well, that’s about it. And we fell for it all. Read the whole commentary for a no holds barred analysis of failure.
When Barack Obama rose to the lectern on Inauguration Day, the nation was in tatters. Americans were scared and angry. The economy was spinning in reverse. [...] In that context, Americans needed their president to tell them a story that made sense of what they had just been through, what caused it, and how it was going to end. They needed to hear that he understood what they were feeling, that he would track down those responsible for their pain and suffering, and that he would restore order and safety.
[...]
In contrast, when faced with the greatest economic crisis, the greatest levels of economic inequality, and the greatest levels of corporate influence on politics since the Depression, Barack Obama stared into the eyes of history and chose to avert his gaze. Instead of indicting the people whose recklessness wrecked the economy, he put them in charge of it. He never explained that decision to the public — a failure in storytelling as extraordinary as the failure in judgment behind it. Had the president chosen to bend the arc of history, he would have told the public the story of the destruction wrought by the dismantling of the New Deal regulations that had protected them for more than half a century. He would have offered them a counternarrative of how to fix the problem other than the politics of appeasement, one that emphasized creating economic demand and consumer confidence by putting consumers back to work. He would have had to stare down those who had wrecked the economy, and he would have had to tolerate their hatred if not welcome it. But the arc of his temperament just didn’t bend that far.
Gitmo is evil, the wars are evil, moving American jobs overseas is evil, moving American technology overseas is evil, wiping out the savings of generations of Americans is evil, destroying the American system of constitutional government is evil, and saying nothing about these things is complicity with the evildoers.
Well now we know the rest of the story! Obama is a great and inspiring speaker. He convinced a entire nation of Blacks,Whites, Hispanics to vote for him and he managed to become Presidents with hopes of bringing respect to this great Country of the USA. Instead we just have a Congress who is so inept at making decisions that we as a Country came only hours from defaulting in the history of the USA. Now that they have officially only raised the debt ceiling and yet again pushed the cost cutting aside another few months. Have we been downgraded by S&P credit rating because of our Governments lack of doing. Or maybe as our President told the US. Its up to us to fix this problem?? I think if we could as a nation we would probably fire most of them in Congress and find some people on the street to give it a go. I would tell the President to be the President and don’t push his job off on the US voter who voted you into to office in the first place!
#62, Instead we just have a Congress who is so inept at making decisions that we as a Country came only hours from defaulting in the history of the USA
We were not going to default. That was one of a multitude of lies being perpetrated to scare the populace.
I would tell the President to be the President and don’t push his job off on the US voter who voted you into to office in the first place!
The President can only sign into law what Congress sends him.
Obama started off with the bitter enmity of the right wing nuts. Much more so than any other President in history. The de facto leader of the Right, Rush Limbaugh even wanted America to fail, and he is getting his way. The Senate Republicans stalled over 400 bills.
The right wing nuts hate America. Especially those identified with the Tea Baggers.
He missed his opportunities and has too often went with his head, and not enough gut. He should have pulled the plug on those wars earlier. It isn’t going to get any easier and it will be messy no matter what. Just look at Vietnam and Korea.
Right now he’s loser because he’s trying to appease everyone by being a moderate Republican.
Dvorak is right. He was elected on jobs and the wars. He’s been tentative on both. Like Clinton, he became obsessed with health care and appeasing Wall Street and has used up all his political capital on that.
The only thing going in Obama’s favour right now is that the Republicans are doing far more damage to themselves because they are a bunch whiny, smug pricks.
Have fun with this election you poor bastards. You deserve better.
“What went wrong with Obama?” Answer: Nothing, people expected something different from a politician. What they got was, a politician. The only upside on the horizon is that the T party pretty much, contrary to alfphie, blew off any shot they had. When the elections roll around they will find themselves on the outside looking in. In one way because that acted stupidly, on the other the average voter is going to vote them out for someone who tells them what they want to hear.
You all are racists, you woundn’t say these things about white presidents.
Our Dear Leader is doing the best he can, so shut up and vote for him in 2012…so you can have much more of the same.
Just imagine how good that will be, then he won’t worry about being reelected.
Then he can spend all four years accomplishing his agenda, and not just the first 2 as this time, the remainder requiring he campaign.
A full four years of Obama’s programs…change change change…
Look the guy is a progressive. He doesn’t believe that you can drive businesses out of businesses or kill an economy by bad choices.
He believes that bigger government is going to solve it all. All yah gotta do is tax the rich and redistribute the wealth never mind the fact that if you take everything the rich make it still won’t cover what he wants to spend and they won’t be rich next year.
He is never going to believe that the biggest brake on the economy is him and his supporters and the choices they make.
You give this man what he and his supporters want and you will pretty much end up with the kind of paradise Fidel created in Cuba. If that is what you want go for it.
Of course there is the issue of the debt so I suspect we will end up more like Greece II. China can always use the White House and the Statue of Liberty as tourist attractions if they don’t up and decide to relocate them to China and we can turn over all or national lands/parks and natural resources to them that way the oil and coal the greens don’t want us using can be shipped to China to burn and we can walk or ride our bikes assuming you can buy a bike. The air might even smell better if they can keep the sewer systems and trash collection operational.
No more worries about medicare because it will be able to provide aspirin and lethal injections.
No more worries about SS because you will get a check and it might buy you a beer to wash your monthly aspirin down with.The seniors should die in droves during the winters and in droves during the hot summers so everything is going to be coming up rag weeds.
Just look at this way. If the old farts just go ahead and die the tax payers won’t need to pay as much SS taxes.
Seems kind of bleak for the under people but that is a socialist paradise in practice. Just ask the citizens of Moscow. Sorry if you don’t like what you asked for.
With respect to the article, it was clearly written by someone that has not read their history.
That is what we call a false dichotomy. He makes it sound like the government *chose* to not “create” jobs (as if it can create jobs in the long run). FDR spent eight years in the White House spending like a drunken sailor and yes even directly giving people jobs mopping floors and our unemployment was still higher then than it is now. Only by drafting every able bodied person he could find due to a total war were we able to pull out of the depression. Barry doesn’t have that choice.
Does anyone here doubt that statement? Anyone? The core issue, as always, is in the implementation. *How* exactly do we go about “putting Americans back to work.”? Road work isn’t it. Saving 30K/yr teacher jobs for six months (at a cost of four times that) isn’t it.
Ding! Ding! Ding!. We have a winner.
Indeed, the President’s stories are always lacking something but a villain isn’t it. Credibility is the the element lacking in all his stories. No one believes he’ll do what he says he’ll do or they believe he doesn’t know what he’s talking about so he doesn’t know what he’s promising.
In addition, article claims that somehow we did not care about deficits during the Bush years. What absurdity! Many people complained about the deficit; both Republicans and Democrats were screaming at the Medicare Drug bill. Bush’s approach was to rubber stamp anything Congress did as long as they helped him fight the war on “terror”. So Congress, having Daddy’s checkbook, threw a couple of keggers and here we are. Thanks to both parties.
In the end, the shame is that the first black President, a remarkable achievement in our history, is this guy. My hope is that black Americans (indeed people of any race) are not dissuaded by Barry’s abject failure as a President but will instead be encouraged by his election victory and to prove that they can be better than any President regardless of race and that Obama was just an aberration.
# 46 Dvorak said, “And nothing is accomplished.”
Oh, I think one thing has been accomplished. The Nobel Peace Prize has been shown to be a farce. Have they lost ALL credibility?
It was the Republicans that did this to us. It was the Democrats who ignored the problems and lied to us.
Who do we trust? The people that started this mess or the people who are continuing the mess?
Are there other choices? WTF?
#12 – Just to be clear. Social Security is a purchase I made through payroll deductions over many years of hard work.
It is not a socialist program.
Welfare is a socialist program.
Read “Blink” by Malcolm Gladwell.
Obama is the Warren Harding of the 21st century. We all voted for the man who looked and sounded exactly like what a President should look and sound like. We got caught up with the style and now we know the substance was worse than nothing.
#65 Foobar, what’s it like having blondes tell jokes about you?
Moderate Republican? He’s covertly destroying America via regulatory bodies and bankruptcy, giving progressives precisely what they clamor for, and is corrupt to the core.
He will take his ill gotten gains with him to some foreign land after the country collapses.
And then he might write a book, “How I took down America by giving her precisely what the progressives wanted.”
# 66 foobar said:
“Dvorak is right. He was elected on jobs and the wars. He’s been tentative on both.”
Not in Libya.
For which, he should be impeached.
And I won’t be voting for anyone who could have but did not introduce or support the necessary articles of impeachment.
Thanks for this post. Now we can see the political frenzies of each poster. Me? I am right wing. I never hide it. Others here are a bit cagey.
Social Security? I better get mine in a couple of years, or something bad will happen.
Obamacare? I give a shit. Medicare better still be there since I have been paying for it for years, same as Social Security.
Welfare? Fuck them. Make them work for money, like everyone else. There are streets that need cleaning, graffiti that needs removing, homeless that need cleaning. Can’t work? Get a family to care for you in exchange for something!
Taxes? FLAT TAX! Jeez! How simple is that? OR, national sales tax instead of Income tax.
There are solutions, but they would mean politicians would not get re elected.
#76 Nice description of a moderate Republican. You finally got something right.
#77 He’s not tentative on Libya? I agree that the US shouldn’t be in there but I have no clue what the current US policy is.
Weird, I don’t see Dullas licking the floor to defend his Messiah.
BTW, I thought the blog would be blocked behind the great firewall of china. Big surprise, is not.
#64 Oy! conFusion. Can you at lest change the tape? How gullible can you be? “The pukes control everything”; “The pukes will filibuster anything we do: yada yada yada.
Get it thru your thick skull: The guy is a failure
#72 We knew that one already. This is not the first “peace prize” given for political influences