U. S. Politics II

[El Chico]

Just as I thought...the last 7 years was a giant case of the American people sticking their collective head in the sand...

[Joanna vander Poele]

[quote name='El-ahrairah' post='1652207' date='Jan 16 2009, 21.11']Farewell, soon-to-be-ex-President. May the hindsight of centuries judge you fairly.

Well met, soon-to-be-President. Where I old enough, my vote would have been cast against you last November. May the next four years prove you worthy.[/quote]
Huh. If I too could vote (and was American, for that matter), our votes would cancel each other out :fence:

[Annelise]

10 Bush pardon's to watch for and Politico's odds (includes former IL Gov George Ryan). Anyone making bets?

[url="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0109/17595.html"]http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0109/17595.html[/url]

[Maltaran]

[quote name='Annelise' post='1653921' date='Jan 19 2009, 15.33']10 Bush pardon's to watch for and Politico's odds (includes former IL Gov George Ryan). Anyone making bets?

[url="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0109/17595.html"]http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0109/17595.html[/url][/quote]

Scooter Libby is the next Marc Rich, other than that I don't know.

[Commodore]

As much as the left despises Bush, his lasting legacy will be laying the foundation for a Hugo Chavez like nationalization of the private sector, handing over the keys to Obama and a Congress willing to build on that foundation. The combination of government and corporate power has never been stronger, with one funding the other with campaign contributions while recieving billions in corporate wellfare in return (Obama's inaugration will be funded by millions of dollars from financial institutions that received bailouts). Obama will have a trillion dollars to distribute to the private interests of his choosing.

The cult like worship of Obama as the vessel for all of our hopes and dreams is frightening enough that I choose to tune it out entirely, not wishing to be saturated in something I'm powerless to stop. I imagine many here felt the same way after Bush was elected/reelected. I haven't watched a minute of news since the election.

[DanteGabriel]

[quote name='Commodore' post='1654819' date='Jan 19 2009, 23.03']The cult like worship of Obama as the vessel for all of our hopes and dreams is frightening enough that I choose to tune it out entirely, not wishing to be saturated in something I'm powerless to stop. I imagine many here felt the same way after Bush was elected/reelected. I haven't watched a minute of news since the election.[/quote]
The Christofascist cult worship of Bush was far more worrying. Obama's fan club will sour on him when the rubber meets the road and they will reconcile themselves to the fact that Obama makes mistakes. There are still a ton of Bush apologists out there who were willing to tolerate unspeakable levels of criminality and incompetence because they thought Bush had the Mark of McJesus upon him. At least Obama's not claiming a divine mandate.

And at least Obama's fanboys (wherever they may be, because they're not on this forum, but I'm tired of having this "Obama cult" debate with people like you who blithely make these bullshit generalizations) are placing their faith in a smart, competent person instead of a spoiled cumstain of a chronically upward-failing fratboy who fucked us all because he couldn't get the approval of his old man.

[The Progressive]

[quote](Obama's inaugration will be funded by millions of dollars from financial institutions that received bailouts)[/quote]

You could always count on commodore to disseminate the latest wingnut meme from Hannity and Limbaugh et al.

[The White Wolf]

[quote name='Commodore' post='1654819' date='Jan 19 2009, 22.03']The cult like worship of Obama as the vessel for all of our hopes and dreams is frightening enough that I choose to tune it out entirely, not wishing to be saturated in something I'm powerless to stop. I imagine many here felt the same way after Bush was elected/reelected. I haven't watched a minute of news since the election.[/quote]

You mean [url="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1208/16292.html"]these[/url] [url="http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-warren19-2009jan19,0,7157406.story"]cultish[/url] [url="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98348261"]worshipers[/url] of Obama?

Yes, they are clearly ready to accept anything that Obama does as the right thing no matter what. :rolleyes:

You admitted you haven't watched a minute of news since the election; how about you get educated before making blanket statements about things you have no admitted knowledge about? k, thx.

[Commodore]

[quote name='Pax Thien Jolie-Pitt' post='1654938' date='Jan 20 2009, 00.55']You could always count on commodore to disseminate the latest wingnut meme from Hannity and Limbaugh et al.[/quote]


[url="http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=6665946"]LINK[/url]

[quote]The biggest group of donors were none other than the recently bailed-out Wall Street executives and employees.

"The finance sector is well represented, despite its recent troubles," Ritsch said. "Those who worked in finance still managed to pull together nearly $7 million for the inauguration."

The donors will get some of the best seats in the house for the inauguration, as well as admittance to some of the best balls and other events.[/quote]

[The White Wolf]

[quote name='Commodore' post='1655036' date='Jan 20 2009, 06.48'][url="http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=6665946"]LINK[/url][/quote]


Lets see, 7 million divided by 700 billion is .... 0.00001 or 0.001 %. So Obama is getting 0.001 % of the federal bailout money if ALL of that came from there. In addition, is it really surprising that those in finance have donated a lot? Bush got over [url="http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/1394"]5 million[/url] from the financials in 2004. These guys play a big part in EVERY presidential campaign/ inaguration. Edit: One might as well say that Bush's inaguration was funded by millions of dollars from those who received benefits from the Bush tax cuts.

[The Iceman of the North]

[quote name='Triskele' post='1654407' date='Jan 19 2009, 22.37']There was another report which suggested that Bush was done with his pardons which surprised me.[/quote]
Apparently he didn't pardon anyone, but commuted the sentences of two border patrol officers doing time for shooting a drug smuggler:

[url="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/washington/20sentence.html?scp=1&sq=pardon&st=cse"]Bush Commutes 2 Border Agents’ Sentences[/url]
[quote]The decision to commute their sentences appeared to represent a relatively safe yet high-impact action for Mr. Bush, who has been especially sparing in his use of his constitutional pardon power.

Still, the decision came as something of a surprise not only to the agents’ supporters, who had believed their chances for clemency were fading, but also for lawyers in other criminal cases who had been lobbying hard at the White House and the Justice Department on behalf of dozens of people seeking clemency.

A senior White House official said that the commutations announced on Monday would be Mr. Bush’s last acts of clemency before he leaves office.

There had been speculation that Mr. Bush might act in a number of high-profile cases, including those of I. Lewis Libby Jr., the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, and the financier Michael R. Milken, both of whom were convicted on felony charges.[/quote]

I have to admit that the concept of Presidential Pardons is something I can't really see the moral and ethical justification for. At least on this I appreciate how sparing Bush have been with this power trough his reign.

[danro]

White Wolf

Yes, you could say that. But then you'd be assuming that it is still wrong if a republican does it.

[potsherds]

[quote name='danro' post='1655132' date='Jan 20 2009, 15.02']White Wolf

Yes, you could say that. But then you'd be assuming that it is still wrong if a republican does it.[/quote]
Haha! I love it when even non-Americans pick up on the hypocritical stances of the Republican party. :D

[The Iceman of the North]

[url="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/nyregion/22caroline.html?hp"]Kennedy Withdraws Senate Bid[/url]
[quote]Caroline Kennedy announced early Thursday that she was withdrawing from consideration for the vacant Senate seat in New York, startling the state’s political world after weeks in which she was considered a top contender for the post.[/quote]

So who is likely to take Hillary's seat now?

[Usotsuki]

Andrew Cuomo: because that would really annoy the Kennedy family.
Steve Israel: because the Governor owes him.
Nita Lowey: because she's been owed something since Sec of State Clinton superceded her in 2000.

[TrackerNeil]

[quote name='Commodore' post='1654819' date='Jan 19 2009, 23.03']The cult like worship of Obama as the vessel for all of our hopes and dreams is frightening enough that I choose to tune it out entirely, not wishing to be saturated in something I'm powerless to stop. I imagine many here felt the same way after Bush was elected/reelected. I haven't watched a minute of news since the election.[/quote]

No, Commodore. What worried me when Bush was reelected in 2004 was that the American people had placed their trust in an administration with a track record of incompetence, ignorance, arrogance and corruption. Unfortunately for the nation, the various fuck-ups that most dramatically demonstrated these vices - Iraq and the ghost WMDs, Terry Schiavo, botched Social Security privatization, Valerie Plame's outing, Harriet Miers' ill-considered nomination, Hurricane Katrina - did not arise or gain national attention until after 2004.

Hero worship doesn't bother me when the hero is at least somewhat worthy of admiration or respect. It's when that adulation is directed towards a chowderhead that I get concerned.

[DanteGabriel]

I figure this is the right thread, now, for substantive bits about how the new administration is handling things, so here's a fairly informative article from Joe Klein at Time on the approach Obama is taking to the challenges he faces, and some nice notes about how his style differs from Clinton and Reagan, and how he's assimilated Hillary Clinton into the operation:

[quote name='Joe Klein article']Quietly, the Obama transition team reviewed every government agency "to find out which specific programs were working and which weren't." It was a terrifyingly brisk and comprehensive process, especially compared with the dust storm produced by the last Democratic President, Bill Clinton, during his chaotic transition period. "During Clinton's transition, you had all these people writing ad hoc papers about what to do at this agency or how to deal with that policy, but that was an extension of how Clinton's mind works," says one of the many Obama aides who is a veteran of the Clinton Administration. "Clinton had this great horizontal intelligence. He could pull an idea from a meeting he had in northern Italy and apply it to spreading broadband service through Iowa. It was amazing but not exactly efficient. Obama is more vertical. He pushes the process along, streamlines it. We had one 25-to-50-page policy paper for every agency."

Well, that's Democrats for you. It's hard to imagine any Republican President since Reagan wanting to rummage through all that paper, or being fastidious enough to care about the strengths and weaknesses of every federal agency. If government was the problem, as Reagan suggested, the solution, theoretically, was less of it -- and since reducing government proved impossible, as opposed to reducing taxes, there didn't seem to be all that much interest in actually making it work more efficiently. By contrast, Obama and his eclectic team of appointees give the impression of being positively intoxicated by the prospect of figuring out how everything works. Obama's closest aides like to say he isn't a "wonk" like Clinton, immersed in policy details to the point of immobility, but clearly the new President has a breadth and depth of policy interests, especially in comparison with his immediate predecessor.

In some ways, the most surprising of his appointments -- Hillary Clinton, the new Secretary of State -- has emerged as an exemplar of Obamism. At her confirmation hearing, Clinton seemed completely prepared on every imaginable topic, orderly, undramatic and yet willing to propose some radical changes in the State Department's structure. She seems intent on tilting the department away from its stultifying bureaucratic orthodoxies and toward solving specific problems. To do so, she will appoint no fewer than five, and perhaps more, high-profile special envoys who will do the heavy lifting and share her spotlight on the most vexing foreign policy problems -- former Senator George Mitchell to calm down the Middle East, Richard Holbrooke to deal with the Afghanistan-Pakistan nexus and others for Iran, North Korea, the global-climate-change treaty negotiations and possibly another for the ever forgotten neighbors to our south.

Clinton, who can be spiky, has re-emerged as a natural diplomat. When she heard that Holbrooke and General David Petraeus had never met, she invited them over to her Washington home on a Friday night before the Inauguration. The two men spent two hours in front of a roaring fire with Clinton, getting to know each other, talking about the diplomatic and military division of labor in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Clinton's was an Obamian gesture -- enticing the lion to lie down with the lion -- the sort of attention to detail that seems to have been replicated across the policymaking spectrum during the Obama transition.[/quote]
[url="http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1872924-1,00.html"]http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/...72924-1,00.html[/url]

Perfectly highlights some of the stuff I was saying about what differences you can see in government when the government is staffed with people who think good governance is possible, rather than a bunch of mercenary hacks there to help each other pad their resumes.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

DG,

[quote]Perfectly highlights some of the stuff I was saying about what differences you can see in government when the government is staffed with people who think good governance is possible, rather than a bunch of mercenary hacks there to help each other pad their resumes.[/quote]

I'll be delighted when real streamlining starts to occure. However, what happens when the President butts heads with a Congress chomping at the bit to enrich their own political fiefdoms? Can the President stare them down as Carter failed to do?

[url="http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/01/22/president.tension/index.html"]http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/01/22/pre...sion/index.html[/url]

From the link:

[quote]Pelosi's biggest problem with the president's agenda is the silence she's hearing when President Obama is asked about former President Bush's tax cuts.

During the campaign season, Obama proposed repealing the Bush tax cuts on those making at least $250,000, but now it's more likely that the president will delay any tax increases on the wealthy until 2011, when the tax cuts expire.

The Obama team says that in the middle of a recession you don't, in effect, raise people's taxes.

Pelosi, however, doesn't buy that argument. She wants to see them rolled back now.

"We had campaigned in saying what the Republican Congressional Budget Office told us: Nothing contributed more to the budget deficit than the tax cuts for the wealthiest people in America," Pelosi said in an interview Sunday with Fox News.

A spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called Pelosi's statement "false," and cited a recent fact check by the St. Petersburg Times disputing the House Speaker's claim that tax cuts for the wealthy are the biggest contributor to the budget deficit.[/quote]

[The White Wolf]

[quote name='Ser Scot A Ellison' post='1658421' date='Jan 22 2009, 13.08']DG,



I'll be delighted when real streamlining starts to occure. However, what happens when the President butts heads with a Congress chomping at the bit to enrich their own political fiefdoms? Can the President stare them down as Carter failed to do?

[url="http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/01/22/president.tension/index.html"]http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/01/22/pre...sion/index.html[/url]

From the link:[/quote]

I hope he can and think he can. Obama is an immensly popular figure right now while Pelosi & Reid are not and congress as a whole deffinitely is not. There may be some give and take, but I think Obama is going to give less and take more.

[DanteGabriel]

[quote name='Ser Scot A Ellison' post='1658421' date='Jan 22 2009, 14.08']I'll be delighted when real streamlining starts to occure. However, what happens when the President butts heads with a Congress chomping at the bit to enrich their own political fiefdoms? Can the President stare them down as Carter failed to do?[/quote]
Well, of course that's the million dollar question, but Obama's shown himself to be an adept political maneuverer and he's got Congressional lion-tamers like Rahm Emanuel and Tom Daschle working for him. I think Obama's shown that he's no Carter.

And if it comes down to a direct confrontation between Obama and Pelosi or Reid, I'd lay my money on Obama.