Obama's Drastic Changes

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New page covers up my post.

Let's not forget to mention that most Keneysian Economists agree Obama's stimulus was FIVE HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS TOO LITTLE. Apparently, appeasing the spitball chucking and paper airplane throwing Republicans was more important than results.

You have to understand, Orwell, "socialism" has been redefined.

Old meaning: Worker self-managed factories and society.

New meaning: Anything Limbaugh, Hannity, Glenn Beck, or Michael Weiner Savage disapprove of.

Quite a misdiagnosis.

Obama's actual problem is that he is funded by financial industry executives with every interest in keeping things the way they are. Actual, he has no problems so much as a lack of committment to progressive legislation.

Obama came into office under the mantel of "bipartisanship". This was simply another way to reestablish Clintonian style "Third Way" centrism, capitulation, and triangulation into America.

As skyfather84 pointed out, Obama has no intention of ending America's involvement in torture - he'll simply outsource it to the more traditional third world terror states, in keeping with tradition.

There is one person - even if he has an oversized ego - who saw this (well, several, but he's one of the prominent ones).

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-bC7F7gD4g[/youtube]

This is the stance progressives need to take - lobbying congress.

Ever progressive should be disillusioned with the spinelessness and triangulation from "optimistic" leaders like Obama or JFK (or RJK, if he lived to turn his back on his supporters).

If the Republicans take back power any time soon, that means the end of the American superpower once and for all. It is impossible to run a powerful country with such an ideology. Breaking the country into the smallest pieces and believing infrastructure to be a luxury is a recipe for disaster.

As far as I can tell, the people who expected massive, sudden changes under Obama were in fact the right-wingers (note: not "Republicans" - there are apparently still some sane people in the Republican party, not just the far-right nutbars), who were terrified of the changes they thought they saw coming.

And when those changes failed to materialize, they began to mock Obama for "not doing anything..."

(Kind of like the argument I've been having with one of my less - er -gifted nieces, who after the election claimed that Obama would be engaging in Chicago-style politics, and now is complaining because Obama hasn't in fact used his influence to jump his daughters ahead of others to receive swine-flu vaccinations.)

Two more notes: The Democrats still don't have that semi-mythical "supermajority" (the one that presumes all Democrats will always vote the same way on everything, the way Republicans did under His Majesty George Bush II and his Prime Minister Cheney); Ted Kennedy died while Al Franken was still trying to get the Republican loser for his seat to give up, and Massachusetts law apparently does not allow for an interim appointment.

And the "Obama bailout package" I hear decried so often (the one that gave $700 billion to banks) was in fact conceived and passed under Bush. Obama's main contribution to that has been to hold back some of the money, so only about $500 billion has been spent on it so far, leaving some money for the various stimulus packages. (There was some that was supposed to come to Seattle, WA, about 60 miles from here, for a vital road-building package, but the City Council and the state's governor are still enamored of a concept to replace a crumbling viaduct on an important local highway with a tunnel, dug behind a damaged seawall next to Puget Sound, in a seismically-active area, which is what started the viaduct crumbling in the first place... I have to imagine that there are a fair number of such projects around the country, while the money was supposed to go toward "shovel-ready" projects.)

Obama's supporters voted for "change." The landslide victory gave him a mandate to implement real reform, and now. Whether or not we were 100% behind Obama, we were all thrilled when he promised, on his first day in office, to usher in a new era of government transparency and close down the torture camp at Guantanamo. The entire biology department at my university looked forward to increased investment in the natural sciences and valuable medical research. People hoped for equal rights for gays and lesbians, and for a restoration of the civil liberties that had been eroded under the Bush administration. Obama has delivered on none of these so far, despite having a clear mandate from the electorate to implement major reform. He in effect conceded to the losers in the election by insisting on this bipartisanship crap, letting the minority party hold up policy decisions unnecessarily. FDR rammed his legislative agenda through against the wishes of the Republicans, and Clinton once passed a budget without a single Republican vote. Obama needs to decide whether he will act in the interests of the people who elected him, or the people who opposed him.


The Democrats control both houses of Congress. They should be able to pass some meaningful legislation.


It always amuses me when Bush worshippers criticize Obama's bailouts- all they are is a continuation of Bush policy. Again, no real change.

In the wise words of that great philosopher, Will Rogers, "I don't belong to any organized political party. I'm a Democrat."