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Obama's 'Transformational' Presidency? Nowhere in Sight
Obama's Chance to Be Next FDR or Reagan Fading Fast
WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama's dream of being a historically transformational figure like Franklin D. Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan may be slipping from his grasp.
To be sure, he's already made one lasting mark that changed the country's course - his election as the first African-American president broke a centuries-old racial barrier.
He also could break through with bold new initiatives that change the course of history, as Richard Nixon did late in his first term when he opened U.S. relations with communist China.
However, Obama's quest to usher in a new liberal era - one with major new policies and a growing Democratic voter majority punctuating a shift away from the conservative era that Reagan ushered in - is in trouble and may be disintegrating.
Health care? His best hope now is a Senate plan that would leave millions still uninsured, dashing his promise of universal health care, and even that may already be out of reach.
Legislation to fight global warming? Stalled in the Senate.
Forging peace in the Middle East? Hasn't been able to get the region's adversaries in the same room, let alone close to agreement.
Ending venomous partisanship? Washington is more polarized than ever.
Leading his party to an enduring majority? Right now, it's heading in the other direction.
"He's tried, but to this point, he's failed," said George Edwards, a scholar of the presidency at Texas A&M University. "He got things done, but they're not the historic things that are transformational."
Obama himself set the bar higher than merely getting things done. He didn't want an "in-box" presidency that simply reacted to problems, nor did he want to ride to re-election on popular but small measures.
During the campaign, for example, he spoke admiringly of Reagan for having such a transformational impact, even if he disagreed with Reagan's course.
''Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that, you know, Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not," Obama said in January 2008. "He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it.''
When Obama spoke about expanding access to health care, he vowed to finish what Democrats since Harry Truman had tried to do.
In one speech, he invoked the memory of Lyndon Johnson signing Medicare into law, with Truman at his side. "History shapes men," he recalled Johnson saying that day in 1965, "but it is a necessary faith of leadership that men can help shape history."
In another speech, Obama signaled that he'd be such a leader. "I don't want to wake up four years from now," he said in 2007, "and find out that millions of Americans still lack health care."
Yet the Senate version of health care legislation that Obama has endorsed would leave 23 million without insurance, according to the Congressional Budget Office. With the Democrats' loss of their 60th Senate vote, and with it their filibuster-proof majority, it's unlikely that even this measure can get through now even if Obama and the Senate could get the House of Representatives to go along, which Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has said won't happen.
How did Obama lose the chance, so far at least, to enact the history-changing parts of his agenda after he won the biggest popular majority of any Democrat since Johnson in 1964 and came to office with big Democratic majorities in Congress?
He faced three main problems:
- The recession forced him to spend time and political capital on a stimulus plan that may have reduced job losses, but didn't stop them.
- A year-long fight over health care, with buyoffs for select lawmakers, looked like politics as usual, scared Americans already skeptical about a government racing deeper into debt and produced no results.
- Obama misread the political landscape at home and abroad and overestimated his ability to bend people his way.
Reagan, by comparison, swept into office with a broad national appetite for cutting taxes - a grassroots tax rebellion had started earlier in California - and for a big buildup in defense spending; Democrat Jimmy Carter already had started one.
With that mandate and a less polarized Congress, Reagan focused on his core objectives and was able quickly to push through the tax and defense policies that helped shape his presidency and transform the country's politics.
Johnson also moved quickly after the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963 and his landslide 1964 victory to enact what he called the Great Society - a sweeping expansion of civil rights legislation, coupled with the creation of Medicare and Medicaid, the greatest expansion of government social welfare since FDR.
"Obama in the end didn't have that luxury," said Linda Fowler, a political scientist at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. "The economy was such a mess, it derailed the other domestic items on his agenda. And he had to use a lot of domestic political capital on the stimulus. Now he's kind of used up his window."
Whether Obama's $787 billion package of tax cuts and spending stopped the economy from getting worse is hotly debated. However, it hasn't transformed the country in the way that Reagan turned a historic tide against big government, nor did it launch a new era of government intervention into the economy comparable to Roosevelt's.
Much of the stimulus spending is on one-time infrastructure projects such as road and bridge repairs rather than a big change in government's role in society. Also, Obama's tax cuts are temporary; Obama now proposes to extend them one more year.
"I wouldn't call it transformative because it's short-term," said Edwards. "It's ephemeral and it's designed to be ephemeral. And, there's no support for doing it again."
Further hurting his prospects, Obama's stimulus, along with bank bailouts enacted under former President George W. Bush, added to the national debt and helped create new grassroots pressure against more government spending.
What's more, by reaching for so much in a bid to be a modern-day Reagan or Roosevelt, Obama may have risked ending up more like a latter-day Carter, with a Democratic Congress unwilling to follow him.
White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel thought the recession created a broad but temporary opportunity to enact the entire Democratic agenda, and he helped push Democrats from swing congressional districts to vote for ambitious health care and global warming proposals, only to see them watered down or left to die in the Senate.
"If he doesn't get significant health care reform, it's going to be very difficult to accomplish much domestically in the remaining three years of his term," said Richard Shenkman, an historian at George Mason University in Virginia.
"He'll have the Carter problem. Members of Congress will have taken very hard votes on this, and if there's no payoff, they're going to look out for themselves and abandon him and his leadership."
Ultimately, Shenkman and others said, it's too early to say for certain whether Obama will become a transformational leader. They all agreed, however, that it looks less likely today than it did a year ago.
Said Shenkman: "If I were making bets at this point, aside from his election, I would very much doubt that he's going to be much of a transformative figure."
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106 Comments so far
Show AllYet another article by another author who labors under the assumption that Obama really meant to do what he said (or what we thought he said) in his campaign
Agree. In addition, there are a lot of people that will hold out hope on Obama until the day before he leaves office, even hoping he'll change on his last day, because they see the world as only Democrat and Republican and restrict themselves to no other option other than supporting the Democrats, even when the Democrats don't serve their interests. Obviously, when the Democrats know that, they also know they can do whatever they want and still get support for a certain base.
He never intended to be transformative. Obamageddon was put into office by the financial elite.
He is doing exactly what he has been paid to do.
Why do you continue to cling to the wrong belief that he desires change we can believe in?
Yes. We need to throw them all out. They don't represent us.
Forgive me for being negative.
I voted for Obama thinking and believing that he would move our country in the direction of peace, economic reform, and preservation of the environment.
Soon after assuming office, Obama announced his intentions to help Israel in every way possible and he appointed Bush leftovers to run the economy. He appointed Rahm Emanuel to manage his presidency. He totally bungled healthcare reform which he now calls "health insurance reform." He has escalated the futile war in Afghanistan and increased the Pentagon budget.
I acknowledge that Bush left him a mess. I acknowledge that too many Democrats in Congress are in corporate pockets along with their Republican colleagues.(My apologies to the exceptions like Grayson, Sanders, etc.). I acknowledge that our country has many problems. But this man who wants to be transformative has done very little to transform America in a positive direction.
JMALH,
I too have acknowledge that our country has many problems. I think anyone who isn’t brain dead knows this. The questions are what are we going to do to fix the problems? Will we have the courage and the will to fight? Will we as a generation pick up the sword and fight those who by their actions and vision seek to destroy the Constitution?
A lot of people voted for Obama for the very same reasons as you did. He didn’t earn my respect so I didn’t vote for him. As time has passed I am glad I didn’t. I knew when he broke his promise of saying he would vote against FISA and in fact voted for it, that his word didn’t mean anything. If a man would lie before he was elected President than he would lie after being elected President.
I feel in my heart that America is at the crossroads and If we don’t act now to take our government back for the people; that we will have passed the point of no return. Like the Pipe Piper who led the children to their destruction, I feel America is being led to their destruction. We have a Congress where the majority are in corporate pockets and the few honest and honorable men and women many times are outnumbered and can’t get passed Bills that need to be passed.
Chrisy58,
I'm not sure what would be the best course of action for but I do believe that any change must come from each of us citizens. In my own life, I hope to live more frugally, help others more, and work on a few issues (realizing that there are many more issues that need attention). For example, I would like to support campaign
finance reform and the peace movement. See: http://peaceoftheaction.org/
Jeevee
These are all subjects that are of vital importance, Chrisy. How about adding the essentials of serious efforts to reverse climate change (if possible) and limiting the huge, ominous overpopulation that plagues the planet?
The two things you mentioned are of great importance. On his website, Nader mentions these issues which are of political importance: http://www.votenader.org/issues/. I think there are probably about 20 or so very important problems/challenges facing us.
In my previous post, I was trying to figure out what one person might do. I believe that I could work on one or two issues but not all of them. I hope that all people working hard on the few issues (that most interested them) would end up covering everything that needs to be done. I believe that our future is in our hands because so many of our so-called leaders are failing us.
"I believe that our future is in our hands because so many of our so-called leaders are failing us."
Right you are, but herein lies the problem. We shouldn't have "leaders," yet we do. We elect one leader, our president. Whorebama was elected under the notion that he would keep his campaign promises and if that were not possible he would fight for them. What we got instead was closed door deals with repugs, insurance, and big Pharma. We get honed down legislation, stalled legislation, and compromise after compromise all for the sake of "Passing" some sort of bill...somewhere. All I ask for is a fight for what 70 percent of this country wants. One person, especially the president, can make a difference, if he chose to fight instead of cower. Our "representatives" need term limits. They aren't the leaders they've made themselves into be. They were never intended to be such. However, all change will begin with us.
Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number —
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you —
Ye are many — they are few.
— Percy Bysshe Shelley,
This article keeps all the prevailing myths in motion, that Reagan was some kind of great innovator who shrank government, when the truth is quite the opposite. Government grew to unprecedented proportions under Reagan, but there is no MSM reporter who's ever gotten the memo.
Obama has pretty much promised to be even more "conservative" than Reagan and is fulfilling that promise. He's either a complete idiot or he never intended to bring about real health care reform at all. Because if he was "sincere" in his efforts to get universal health care (whatever that means) then he couldn't possibly have done more to guarantee it would never happen. He has only sought to appease the insurance companies and pharmaceuticals, at any cost to the irrelevant people. The fact that his corrupt plan is far worse than nothing will apparently never dawn on this great promoter of change. The Republicans have killed it for all the wrong reasons, but that it should be killed is beyond argument.
And his Wall Street-friendly economic plan will do literally nothing to seriously jump-start the economy, get people back to work or create good jobs. Then there's his warmongering "defense" budget and his dedication to Bush's war on a tactic (terror) which have driven his whole agenda into the ditch. This is the most inept, bumbling president we've had since Bush. He's corporatist to the core and will never be anything else.
Loved your post except had to say that Bush set the bar pretty high for bumbling ineptitude and I don't think Obama is nearly as good, especially since Bush bumbled his way into getting everything his corporate masters wanted...whoops, now that I think of it they're still getting everything they wanted
The old Direction Dilemma:
These writers always miss a point that they unknowingly bring up themselves.
Reagan and FDR?
They never realize that it is self-evident that we can't go in two opposite directions at the same time.
This is Obama's Direction Problem.
Yes, Obama is a house divided against itself.
Rich: I could not agree more! Well said! I was going to write a similar post until I read yours. Paul
Indeed. I was going to copy/paste some of the more egregious mythical misstatements -
= Obama's quest to usher in a new liberal era
= "He's tried, but to this point, he's failed," said George Edwards
= Obama himself set the bar higher
But why bother.
Actually, it looks like Obama IS going to be a second Ronald Reagan - and that is a very disturbing and distressing thing!
but we wer warned!. Recall the interview where Obama said he admired Reagan - referring to the 1960's -70's social programs and popular antiwar activism as "a time of excesses".
The transformative power that is changing this world forever is soprahuman.
It is taking place in the hearts and minds of millions of people at this hour.
Its presence will soon enter the Public Eye and become universally known in the form of: Thoughts.
What are trajectories going in all directions at all times, yet moving not? They are words, thought and unthought, spoken and unspoken.
The unanalyzed arbitrariness of the enigmatic is, and yet is not, the invention of post-Foucaultian sexuality.
http://writing-program.uchicago.edu/toys/randomsentence/index.htm
Leland: I agree, it is in an emerging universal consciousness that Paul Hawken speaks about in BLESSED UNREST and also David Korten in The Great Turning, the Buddhist scholar Joanna Macy, who coined the term the Great Turning, Wendell Berry, the late Thomas Berry, and many others. It is inevitable. We are in the belly of the capitalistic beast, so it is not that apparent to most Americans who are yet to mature with a higher consciousness.
It should be blossoming in the U.S.right now, all of us can be part of it......... massive creative nonviolent civil unrest to denounce NO MORE WAR by the U.S. war mongers, the powers that be in the U.S., the CIA, the Pentagon, and the wealthy all powerful capitalists who are more powerful than President Obama. They all make money by making war. Civil unrest is the only way to confront the war mongers and the only way to create a genuine democracy in America.
This shift in universal human consciousness is coming from the people, not the rulers at the top. Why why why do we continuously look for leadership at the top when such change can only come from below, the people. It rests in the power of the human spirit and in the human imagination.
See you in SF on March 20th.
Certainly he's a transformational President! Thanks to initiatives undertaken (or not undertaken) by Barack Obama, millions of formerly middle class Americans are being transformed into peasants.
Agree!
What in the world is everyone complaining about? Obama IS a transformational president. He transformed Bush's second term into Bush's third term.
Good point!
The makers of at least one Karnival float in Germany think that Obummer is in for a hot time:
http://lh5.ggpht.com/__zoKJ77EvEc/S3WE0MQ3slI/AAAAAAAAChg
/_P9-rKL1QSA
/cologne-carnival%20(1)%5B2%5D.jpg?imgmax=800
you have to piece the url back together.
"Leading his party to an enduring majority? Right now, it's heading in the other direction.
"He's tried, but to this point, he's failed."
Excuse me . . . he hasn't TRIED because his campaign in '08 was a lie from beginning to end.
"During the campaign, for example, he spoke admiringly of Reagan . . . "
That's because he is Reagan, minus the brown suits and the jelly beans. Give it up already! The Democrats ARE the Republicans!
RIGHT!!!
Democrats and Republicans, at least in Power, are the same thing - controlled by the same interest, MONEY & POWER.
They do NOT care for the people, most of them anyway. They say one thing and do another. This should be common sense already, but apparently it is not, as seen by the election of Obama.
He forfeited the opportunity for his to be a transformational presidency the moment he switched from Barack Obama The Populist to Barack Obama The Betrayer, because without mass popular support no way was he going to bring about change we can believe in. What's the lesson from this betrayal? Given that time's running out on account of perpetual war + global warming + economic collapse = doomsday, that it's up to us, the what sort of world, cause we can't put our trust in some "great" leader to come along and do it for us.
This is an insipid article, and what's interesting is the author did not bother to mention the massacres that are going on with drone bombers and the obvious moves, from Obama's own words, toward FULL SPECTRUM DOMINANCE. That means a lot more attacks, occupations and war. Thousands more innocent people will suffer terribly or be killed in the coming months and years.
In addition, the people of Gaza are being exterminated a little at a time, and we are supporting, with billions of taxpayer dollars, the building of a steel wall being sunk 60-feet down to "prevent smuggling" from Egypt into Gaza, and that clearly means that no food or medicines or other relief is going to get through to the Gazan people either. NEVER AGAIN, eh? Mr. Obama is already a criminal guilty of egregious violations of the human rights of innocent and totally vulnerable people. Disgusting! Just another genocidal policy.
Obviously, I have no use for this man. In the beginning it was so good to hear inspiring words from a seemingly intelligent person. Now I not only do not think he is emotionally intelligent, but also not even mentally intelligent or competent to lead in the broadest, most enlightened sense.
Clearly he is just another hack for the mega-banks, the mega-corporations and the zionists, who happen to be cozily connected with each other in too many instances.
Morality is morality; decency is decency.
I no longer listen to Mr. Obama because he always talks about American values and the great qualities of hard-working, decent Americans. If there is one thing that absolutely turns me off, it is HYPOCRISY and further that the person speaking doesn't even seem a little bit embarrassed or uncomfortable from the b.s. he is spewing over the airwaves.
Unfortunately most of the people who work for him or are his party's cohorts are the same.
On the other side are similar people who get more vicious by the day.
That does not leave us or the rest of the world in a very safe place.
/cm
Wonderfully well-said, CM. Brava! Goddess alone knows whether we'll throw off our torpor in time to save at least some of the innocents in the world.
I can only hope all the malefactors live long enough to stand in the dock at the ICC and hear sentence pronounced.
Excellent post, Cee Miracles.
The Democrats never had a 60-vote majority in the Senate.
If Obama had pushed FOR single payer instead of against it, he mighta coulda been a contender.
Somthin's gonna give. One wonders if the so-called health care debate was the greatest domestic diversion in history; what legislation was passed and signed that we never heard about from the MSM that may make us rue the day?
-30-
The only transformational aspect of Obama's presidency is his becoming Public Enemy #1 and #1 International Terrorist. The bankrupting of the middle and lower classes is a continual process that started in the mid 1970s, a process Obama merely furthers.
"Ending venomous partisanship? Washington is more polarized than ever."
Ending venomous bi-partisanship would help.
bi-partisanship scares the hell out of me!
it can only lead to sellout to the corporate vampires.
I believe in fact that obomba is proving his courage - in sticking up for the banksters and by taking the wealthy's side in the class warfare we're in -
obomba is doing what he truly believes in - the consequences be damned!
selling out the country to the highest bidder.....
and allowing the federal gov to be used as a police arm of goldman sachs
it used to be that the corporations were part and parcel of the federal gov..... now the gov is part and parcel of the corporations.... a subtle change but of huge consequence
We've been hornswoggled and hoodwinked. The guy got us all thinking he was some great black hope...JAML is right too. I even heard Obummer say he wasn't getting too involved in the health reform debate because he said he'd prefer to leave that up to the congresspeople...cause they are more in the pockets too, and then he doesn't get blamed for the millions still having no health plan.
Leave all the meat and dairy products on the shelf...there's a health plan starter...oh ya, and soda pop!! Are you kidding me???
Stonepig -- your fine comment reminds me of a part in the story of Jesus Christ:
the judgment of him before whipping and torture and crucifixion ..by Pontius Pilate who served the Roman Empire as governor of Palestine:
OBAMA is like Pontius Pilate...very CAUTIOUS in protecting his special place in the pantheon provided by his masters...so that if the American people were the "christ" to be judged on what happens to them...
Obama , like Pontius Pilate says:
: " I WASH MY HAND " of responsibility towards the people..
so long as he can keep his "safety".
finally - that is what OBAMA really is:
a SMALL man who will NEVER stick out his head for another human being. and THIS is what America's LEADER is.....it's really shameful.
Jim Glover, your comment was great! And I agree, this is a "Poor Barack" article. We needed to elect the right person for the job, and we didn't have that choice. Obama wasted a year thinking if he just kept on compromising with the Republicans, they would support him. Even when he gave them essentially everything they wanted, they turned their backs on him. Their game plan was to bring him down with obstruction, and it's working.
He also brought much on himself, which Steve Thomma didn't even mention, by making rescuing the banks at the taxpayers' expense his highest priority. This crippled anything else he may have had in mind, and infuriated the public. His wars may be unpopular, but the bailout has the public enraged. And his recent discovery that we need jobs, and his tepid effort to provide them is not going to rescue his Presidency or the Democrats at the midterms.
I think he could still turn things around if he went public explaining clearly what Medicare for All would provide, cost, and save, including adding almost 3 million new jobs, and told everyone to vote for candidates at years' end who are committed to support that, and laid out a bold plan for a new green economy that would get us out of this boom or bust cycle that Timmy is promising us we can look forward to every 5-7 years (whoopdedoo) and replace his Republican Wall Street economic team with a green team, then he could transform into a bold leader, standing with our greatest Presidents. But he won't. Ralph nailed it when he said Obama has a conciliatory personality. That does not define a leader.
I wonder what Obama would have done, faced with the crises that FDR, JFK and LBJ rose up to and I cringe. No Social Security, no Medicare, Cuba full of Soviet missiles pointed at us. Now we have our own crises, and Obama is blowing them right and left. We have the wrong person at the wrong time. But hey, at least we don't have whacko Palin a heartbeat away from the Presidency. But it's a shame if that's all Obama is good for.
When the people fear their government there is tyranny,
when the government fears the people there is liberty.
~ Thomas Jefferson
So, it was okay to have a bunch of US missiles in Turkey pointed at the Soviets?
Bringing Obama down would be a very good thing as it implies all his programs to further expand Empire will fail as will his domestic plans to increase the level of Fascism already present, while further impoverishing the commonfolk.
The only thing that has been Transformed is:
OBAMA's barely hidden Neo-con, Friedmanite Disaster Capitalist, Senator Wanna-be-War Security State President
to OBAMA's official dyed-in-the-wool Neo-Con, Friedmanite Disaster Capitalist, Former Senator War-Security State President.
and of course the other transformation is:
from SENATOR "uncle tom" Obama
to PRESIDENT "uncle tom" Obama...
I am so so sick of the FDR comparisons .... Obama is not even 1/10th the president that FDR was.
FDR was not afraid to take on the powers that be.... in fact he said he welcomed their hatred....
1. he employed 4 million workers in 6 weeks
2. ended casino banking
3. raised the top tax rate from the 25% of the 1920's to 70%+ tax on the rich!
Heck he ended prohibition as one of his 1st acts....
the reason? because he knew that the wealthy had their high-class liqour and thought that the working class deserved their beer.....
FDR was a president that thought about the poorest of the poor and Obama has NEVER mentioned the poor.... only the meaningless drivel about the "middle class"
the best way to help the middle class is to help the poorest rise to middle class status....
SCREW OBAMA.... he's no FDR - and quit with the stupid-ass comparisons......that comparison is about as relevant as saying with a little more practice this old white guy can turn into michal jordan!
ain't gonna happen!
hell obama is proving to be Hoover not FDR or Reagan so stop with it already!
the COWARDICE and mendacity of "Dear Leader OBAMA" is on full display if anyone compares him to FD Roosevelt, indeed.
add to this:
while roosevelt "socialised" some aspects of the US economy ..he became a THREAT to the fascist corporatists and privatizers...so much so that a group of the most powerful industrialists, led by the DUPONTS secretly asked General Smedley Butler, already the most highly decorated war veteran Marine ....to become the new president in a COUP...
General Smedley Butler, clearly become disillusioned with CAPITALISM -- he derisively called it "OUR BIG BOSS...of our Gangsterism : our Supernationalistic capitalism" -- after having "suspended my own conscience for 30 years knowing that what we do is EVIL" ....REFUSED.
they could have had HIM killed and he knew that coz that was the kind of job HE did FOR them.
The Democrats are the Republicans and the Republicans are the Democrats.
The whole two party system is a Joke and It is Broken to the point of no return.
There are 330 Million Americans, far too many people, voices and opinions to be ruled by
two factions of the same dirty bird.
We need to end the Democrat/Republican rule and have Multiple parties in this country.
Libertarians, Minarchists, Green Party, even a socialist party as long as it isn't based around a central Bank/Central Government.
We also need to go back to the way the first few Presidential elections were ran, where the Winner is the President and
whomever comes in second place becomes Vice President.
This whole idea of Obama/Biden, McCain/Palin or whoever/whoever, that needs to stop - the guy or gal, who comes in 2nd should be the VP.
The President should NOT have all this executive power like he possess today. The whole point of having a Congress, a Senate and an Executive office, is to divide the power and have a sense of checks and balance. Giving all this power to one person, is basically a Dictatorship.
We need to, we MUST END The Federal reserve system and this system of Debt-Based money and printing money out of nothing. All this system does is debase our moneys worth, ie inflation and the decreasing of purchasing power. When printed, the people at the top get the full value of the dollar, ie the Banks, the Too BIG to Fail Corporations, the Military Industrial Complex, etc., by the time it gets to the public it is literally worth about 4 cents to every dollar. We need sound Monetary policy to save this country.
Also, we Need to END these WARS. Part of the fed res, printing of the money is what is keeping the Military Industrial Complex alive. Until we END these two useless functions of government, the federal reserve and the Military Industrial Complex, America will continue to slip down the slope and into a bottomless pit.
And until we END these corruptions, we in this country will NEVER have any sort of Universal Healthcare, or educational facilities that actually Educate rather than just indoctrinate, and spit out obedient little serfs.
Whether you like it or not, if the pill is too hard to swallow, you just have to gulp, because what I said here IS the way to save this country. Otherwise we are just on an endless losing path.
peace. love. anarchy
Great comments!
in fact - one might as well say:
the Democrats and Republicans EXCHANGE underwear all the time....and they don't even wash them first.....all they do to check it's OK and there are no suspicious-looking white powder that terrorists might have put in .......is SNIFF them before they put them on............ewe!
"Obama's quest to usher in a new liberal era" Oh brother the shit is really getting deep around here!
Another idiot referring to a corporatist as a liberal. I guess they will never give up.
Mr. Tranformational Prez is transforming Iraq, Afghanistan, and part of Pakistan into a wasteland, seething with hatred for Americans. In the process, he may well transform the U.S. into a wasteland of its own.
Obama is a total LIAR and a traitor to our cause. He needs to be removed by us, not the republicans. This guy has been a charlatan fake since day one and works for the dark side. Fuck him.
************Okay Harry, now tell us how you really feel ????
the worst excuses I hear from democrats is " obomba wants to do the right thing - but if he tried the powers that be would kill him"
imagine a soldier saying that " i'd love to fight in your war - but heck I may get killed so I'm not going to do it"
and the soldier would end up in solitary confinement in the brig......