By JohannG - he wants to “freeze the budget” at the current spending levels. That is like saying I want to just keep bleeding out. I voted for this son of a bitch and I could not look at his face without becoming sick to my stomach. He says “he will veto any bill that reaches his desk that falls short of serious finance reform but the lying son of a bitch opposes reinstating Glass-Steagall, opposes moving 600 trillion dollars in “derivatives” onto visible exchanges and he says that “banks have paid back most of the money we lent them”? That is of course unless you count the real figure invested, $4.7 trillion and we still don’t know what happened to the remaining $4.7 trillion?
I hope the vermin in congress watched the Diane Sawyer interview in which he claimed not to have cut a deal with drug or insurance companies and blamed those deals on congress. As a despised lame duck he will do the least damage until 2010 when the congress gets their well deserved blood bath and 2012 when Obama becomes a one term president!

Imagine all the accolades directed to President Obama tonight after a full year of representing the American people and the world with his drive to betterment.The continuing Quagmire in Afghanistan that has
conclusively become a Foreign Policy disaster ,the continued violence in Iraq and the inevitable shift in Global strategy that the previous administration considered a -walk in the park-.Well welcome to the unpredictability of the Real World ,where even Smart Bombs are Stupid and Institutionalizing has taken the meaning of a -lesser education,where Gun -Boat Diplomacy has become rampant ,somewhat like
Corporatist Hollywood and the virulent nonsense that is being depicted and promoted with such blind Faith ,that none exists at all.Let us be witness to weakening of the Constitution that held sway in our lives
our thoughts our family our neighbors ,only to be waylaid as some Olden Thing that no longer has credence in this Modern World a relic of the past ,long over due to be Supplanted by the superior Caste
of modernity.Lets all rebuild, expand ,promote Imperialism ,espouse capitalism ,but call it Democracy because it sounds good -actually it echoes the the Soviet System - with Stalinism and the Comintern
simultaneously spreading it,s vulgarities to the unaware until ,like a serpent the venom is injected and the body -of a nation - is overcome to suffer a lengthy weakening of it’s Communal Immune system .Where
simplicity is considered passé because ,perhaps it has maintained and sustained generations for so long that a dollar figure has more to offer than several generations of sustainability and community ;somehow
this has become a detriment to Progress ,although the Geopolitical Chess game remains paramount and wars abound .

TAO Walker…you are exactly right !!!!!!!!!!!!

Just like Bob, I am disappointed by the many missed
opportunities and broken promises. It takes a guy
like Obama to announce a freeze on domestic spending
while ignoring out-of-control military expenditures.
In fact, Bush’s (and now Obama’s) Secretary of Defense, Gates, recently assured the Pentagon that
its budget will continue to grow, no matter what.
Bailing out Wall-Street while ignoring those who are
really hurting, continuing and expanding pointless
foreign wars, adopting Bush’s rationale for
indefinite detention and denial of due process rights
in the name of the (stupid, stupid stupid) “War on
Terror”, the list goes on and on. What a bunch of hapless but articulate clowns are those that run this great nation! All I can do is not vote for any of
them next time around. But in a two-party system, any
vote for a third party is wasted. The system is
rigged. Any ideas? Anyone?

Yes, Obama, his administration, and the democratic controlled congress have intentionally made choices which they did not have to this year; choices in favor of deepening poverty for most while increasing profits at the top; and this corporatism is backed by anti-environmental policies, and 6 murderous, criminal wars.  They are 100% responsible for their actions; they are rich and powerful, and they had a strong mandate to go in a very different direction; they intentionally chose not to, at their peril.  They are corporatist war criminal scum.

” Obama distracted progressives with a grand crusade for health care reform that reasserted the fundamental fallacy of the previous health reform effort of the Clinton years: Give the insurance companies a captive universal market under the absurd illusion that we can control costs without undermining their greed with a competitive government-run option.”

I would like to make a clarification, which if understood by every American, would dramatically change the debate on health care.

There are two vast powerful forces driving up the costs of health care in this country
1. An increasingly toxic environment-dirty air, unclean water and polluted soil are causing more people to get sick every year with expensive-to-care for chronic conditions: an example is thyroid cancer in children.

2. The abysmal Quality of care provided is the number one human cost factor after toxic environments. In the reports listed below, Low Quality of care is attributed to large social structures, hospital systems, insurance groups and professional associations.

“The U.S. health care delivery system does not provide consistent, high-quality medical care to all people. Americans should be able to count on receiving care that meets their needs and is based on the best scientific knowledge—yet there is strong evidence that this frequently is not the case. Health care harms patients too frequently and routinely fails to deliver its potential benefits. Indeed, between the health care that we now have and the health care that we could have lies not just a gap, but a chasm.”

http://www.iom.edu/~/media/Files/Report Files/2001/Crossing-the-Quality-Chasm/Quality Chasm 2001 report brief.ashx

“Health care in the United States is not as safe as it should be—and can be. At least 44,000 people, and perhaps as many as 98,000 people, die in hospitals each year as a result of medical errors that could have been prevented, according to estimates from two major studies. Even using the lower estimate, preventable medical errors in hospitals exceed attributable deaths to such feared threats as motor-vehicle wrecks, breast cancer, and AIDS.”

http://www.iom.edu/~/media/Files/Report Files/1999/To-Err-is-Human/To Err is Human 1999 report brief.ashx

Dear Big Jess and prole and Nelson and Kathy et al:

  We must presume from your comments that you would now prefer “the other guy” as Pres ...
with the leisure of 20-20 hindsight, of course. So “your guy” John Bomb-Bomb-Bomb-Iran McCain was worthy of the title “decent and well-intentioned politician” ???  As John Macenroe in that horrid rental car commercial would say, “You cannot be serious!”
  The truth is that any candidate with an ounce of sense would have ditched the entire campaign last year ..... exactly WHAT did Obama “win” ?  In fact, at one point McCain did suspend his efforts for a few heartbeats down the stretch of the election, then jumped right back in.  McCain “won” by ducking all this grief.  Now Johnny, like all you Tuesday afternoon quarterbacks can safely sit back and declare all your shoulda-coulda-woulda claptrap. 
  I applaud Mr. Scheer for admitting disappointment and a bit of continued dim optimism. 
  What amazes me is why ANYone would give a speech tonight since the entire content has already been revealed, analyzed, and puked back up.  Supposedly everybody already knows what Obama will say - and we can likewise predict (and ignore) the entirety of the Republican response ..... you know, the same tired mantra they have spewed since Reagan was in knickers. 
  All the elections are predictable along with what set of INactivity will occur after the votes are miscounted….. regardless of what “party” gets an advantage.  e.g. Anybody who was surprised that Mr. Cosmo would beat Ms. Ho-Hum Coakley should go back to watching I Love Lucy reruns as a source of innovative ideas.

  Gee do you think the Republicans will really cut spending when they are in power ?  I predict they will spend out the kazoo on “defense” and cut corporate taxes to the quick.  (It doesn’t take a Kreskin for this.)

Scheer said Obama is decent and well intenioned.
Well,  Obama complete sell out to big finance/corporations is neither decent nor well intentioned. His coddling of Wall St. and the health care industrial complex is despicable.
Besids, he reneged on every promise he made during the election campaign and forgot completely the common folks who penned their hopes on him. Is being decent is equal to being a liar and a deceitful.??!!

I’m tired of the idolizing of FDR!  Who agrees?

Franklin D. Roosevelt was nothing but a spineless War-Time president just like
Lyndon B. Johsnon and just like our current commander in chief.  The only
reason the New Deal or The Great Society existed was because (like someone
else said) there was fire in the streets!!!  I agree with Howard Zinn in that we
need to find real everyday heroes to take our inspiration from instead of the
false idols and idiots of the past which our history textbooks like to ram
through our collective skull! 

I heard about OB’s unoriginal plan to wean us off domestic spending!  I’m sure
the Tea Baggers are toasting to it!  After all, their main concern is that we
spend as much money on our useless defense as we can (that’s fine), but
spending for the Tea Baggers hits a dead end when it comes to helping poor
working class peoplel!  I will listen to the State of The Union speech tonight
not with optimism but with a safety belt to keep me down and to restrain my
outrage!

If you’re looking for a truthful State of the Republic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQts21QiKTQ

It’s interesting to ‘hear’ Robert Scheer and others here ‘cop’ to being “disappointed” with Barack Obama, et al.  They’re generally reluctant, though, to find any real reasons to be that way with their own selfs.  Even those who acknowledge theamericanpeople’s problems to be for-the-most-part of their own making, are stuck in a superficial framework that prevents them from connecting their own personal degenerative domestication with the worsening condition their overall CONdition is in….or from reaching any organically functional recognition that they are, in actual fact, “all in it together.”

“Individual”-ism is a death-trap for Human Beings because we do not occur (and are not viable) in Nature as such.  The hot-house called “civilization” has allowed, temporarily, a mass indulgence in the illusion of “individual”-ity, by waging an all-out assault on the Living Arrangement of our Mother Earth to build and “energize” the damned thing.  That process is coming to its inevitable DEAD END, though, as the idiotic CONtraption collapses of its own internal CONtradictions….abandoning billions of helpless, hapless “individuals” to their solitary fate.

Even now the system’s plutoligarchs are practicing their usual ruthless brand of “life-boat ethics,” as already at-least 40% of the subspecies homo domesticus has been to-all-intents-and-purposes cast ‘overboard,’ in a vain attempt to keep the damned thing ‘afloat’ long enough for the self-chosen few to engineer some kind of escape mechanism.  Most of the rest of the “huddled masses” are already somewhere in-line to walk that ‘plank,’ and even some over-educated, kowtowing members of the professional classes are beginning to suspect they are not going to get any exemption just because they jumped so enthusiastically onto the bandwagon of “globalization.”

So the virtual ‘air’ here in cyberspace is filled with the bitching-and-moaning of recently mostly quite complacent “individuals” who foolishly bought-into the great CON-game of the privateering pyramid schemers (who theirownselfs act always in CONs-piratical CONcert), which promised to make ‘em all autonomous, self-sufficient “stars”....at somebody else’s expense.  So its hard to muster much sympathy for the suckers who were all warned from childhood that, in “the-market,” nobody ever gets anything for nothing.  Today the ‘bill’ is coming-due all over the “civilized world,” and the price is figured in various species of institutionalized degradation….as preludes to varieties of ignominious demise.

This Old Indian has sometimes been scolded here for suggesting there is no remedy to be had, for what ails our tame Sisters and Brothers, inside the “global” CONcentration camp.  Lately there are a few who seem to’ve come to see the common-sense accuracy of that observation. 

So maybe the chances are improving for them to take the next ‘step,’ which might be to realize The Medicine they need is in their own essential Humanity, and its given place (as a free wild component in Her Immune system) in the Living Arrangement of our Mother Earth….in the organic form of ‘community’ that goes with it.  One thing for sure is that we won’t have to wait much longer to find out….one way or the other.

So how does Barack Obama figure into that ‘scenario’ except as one more securitized “....prisoner of (his) own device”?

HokaHey!

I think Devon Noll’s got it about right.

“The state of the”… presidency is just miserable, no matter how Scheer sugarcoats it. After a very cursory recap of just a few of the myriad dismal details, Scheer still can defy logic and his own purposely pared-down indictment and arrive at the contradictory conclusion that, all-in-all, his president still is “a decent and well-intentioned politician.”  Whether through scheer (punned) stubbornness or misguided loyalty, these kinds of left-handed apologetics for a sleazy, two-faced pol cum president are simply insupportable. So not surprisingly, Scheer can provide no supporting evidence of such benign intent on the part of his erstwhile fallen angel – it’s just a grotesque tenet of faith now. Scheer’s left to fall back on ludicrous quasi-religious explanations to try and convince anyone who will still listen, at least himself, if no one else, of the ineffaceable righteousness of his political messiah. It’s not Obama himself, you see, it’s obviously (at least to Scheer), “the demons of that fatal opportunism that led him to turn over the economy to the likes of Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner.”  Further, “Peter Orszag, who is overseeing those cuts, is, like Summers and Geithner, a disciple of former Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin.” Ah, yes, betrayed, as it were, by “disciples” in Scheer’s new political gospel. And to add to the medieval imagery, “Obama knows of Summers’ devilish role, during his time in the Clinton administration.” A celestial struggle with Summers cast in the role of the devil (for which he is admirably suited), and pure and innocent Obama as the savior (for which he is somewhat less than admirably suited). All that’s left now is for Scheer to recount the epic story of Obama wandering alone in the desert fasting for forty days and nights of agonizing soul-searching ...’Get thee behind me, Satan!’ 
  But even after Obama’s “wasting many trillions on Wall Street and the Pentagon” and seeking to “balance the biggest indebtedness in U.S. history not by cutting from that greasy pork but rather into the bone of our civic life, found in funding for schools and other desperately needed social services”, the worst thing that self-proclaimed Obama ‘sucker’ Scheer can think to sputter at his unholy president is a pathetic, ‘shame on you’??!! He should be crucified! And then Scheer can complete his metaphorical fifth gospel in style, with the Second Coming of Barack and The Final Judgement and salvation for all his true believers like Scheer.

Mr. Scheer, you have written a powerful and wonderful analysis of our current
situation.  I am so disappointed in Obama’s leadership and inability to
distinguish between what WILL help the american populace and what is a
detriment to improving our economy, reputation, and ability to function as a
republic.

We are lost as a nation.  Throwing more money into the streets of war,
spending our tax dollars to pay bonuses to bankers and rich guys, because, my
goodness, if we don’t it is a breach of contract, and negotiating back room
deals to support the disproportionately high costs of medicine in this country
compared to other nations.  Well, we are in a pickle. 

Obama, Geithner, and oh yes, Justice Roberts, etc. are Harvard educated men.
They are supposed to be the whiz kids.  Isn’t this group of brain power required
to take ethics classes there?  This sad. A difficult time.  I think we have lost our
country.

By RAE, January 27 at 11:57 am

But you’re right, I tend to get going and forget punctuations
and the rest of it when I know I should just put it in single
sentence format as some do and I would not hesitate to guess
many people just pass over what I comment because of this.

I pass over comments because of the sheer size of the
comment.

But hey, thanks for trying to read, well, comprehend what I
wrote.

Dear Bob,

Is there anyway we can get a party… even just a few minority seats… that isn’t evil at all, instead of the lesser evil?

I know you’re a bit older than I, but is the prospect of having government that isn’t evil untenable? I know you once were more of an idealist, let’s shoot for 1 calorie evil next election together. If we could get 10-20 people in the house and 4-5 senators like B. Sanders we might lighten the evil a bit.

I mean really we have to get over this whole republic thing, it’s so passee, can’t we get a labor party going in this nation or some party that has at it’s core a modicum of the people’s interests at heart? Just a smidgen of love for the economic production units that work hard to make the drones that keep our great nation safe for democracy.

Devon J. Noll wrote, in part: (Mr. President…)“Make it clear that the gloves are off, that you will not tolerate the DNC scuttling what is best for America, and that you will no longer tolerate the GOP policies of obstructionism defeating the things that need to be done to clean up their mess.”

I would love to see/hear him do this but I don’t think it will work… for two reasons. You get a lot more flies with honey than with vinegar - people simply do not react positively to threats, even when they’re in the wrong. The just dig in and things get worse.

And secondly, there are still more than enough fully armed mentally deranged biased and prejudiced hot heads wandering loose in American society to ensure Mr. Obama’s tenure in the Oval Office is way less than 4 years, if you get my drift.

The President must walk softly but carry a big stick. I wouldn’t have his job for all the gold that may (or may not) be in Fort Knox. But I sure wish him good luck.

One line needs changing in the article: a shift of tense:
“represent the lesser evil” re now, but I’d say it’s
no longer true and should be “represented the lesser evil” at the time of the Nov. 2008 election.

The Democrat’s need to start governing while they still have overwhelming
majorities in the Congress. Their ineptness in dealing with Republican
intransigence is appalling. They need to step up and deal withi fillibuster threat
in the Congress. Let the Republican’s try and do that and the whole country
will see their stupid tactics for what they are - an attempt to hold hostage the
American people. These dumb polls that show lack of support for Congress -
50% of that is from disenchanted progressives who formed the backbone of
Obama’s support in 2008. The other 50 percent didn’t vote for Obama in the
first place. The House seems to be in good shape but the U.S. Senate
leadership need’s to get their act together. They are an embarrassment. I
disagree with the thesis that we didn’t need to bailout Wall Street. Once you
read “Too Big to Fail”, you realize how close we came to the whole house of
cards come tumbling down. It would have been a world wide castrophe. There
is no doubt that we would have seen 20-25% unemployment, and 30% real
unemployment. Even after TARP we are still in a fragile state, but at least
Obama got the market back on its footing and jobs will soon follow. We are
actually doing better in job recovery than most recessions. Obama’s big
misteps were giving too much leeway to Congress in setting the health care
reform agenda. He overcompensated for the Clinton errors in 94. That said, it
is hard to overcome 350 million dollars spent by health insurers to defeat
reform. No wonder six Democratic presidents have been unsuccessful in
dealing with health care. The Afghanistan surge is also a huge mistake. That
won’t gain us anything except more U.S. lives lost and more money down the
drain.

And Obama and Biden are head and shoulders above Bush and Cheney. We just
went through the worst decade of economic growth in 200 years, including the
loss of six million manufacturing jobs, zero real wage gain, and a wider
disparity between the ultra-rich and the poorest in our society. Bush
squandered billions of dollars in unnecessary tax cuts for the benefit of the top
1%, and lost another trillion dollars on the Iraq war. Where were the teabaggers
when Bush eliminated the nice surplus when Clinton left office.  Why are white
senior citizens out demonstrating against Obama when they have been the
biggest beneficiaries of government entitlement programs - are they going to
help reduce the deficit by giving up their Medicare and Social Security? I think
not. You have to wonder what it is they are really angry about since they
themselves have it better than most in our society. When did the whites in our
society start becoming oppressed?

Incrementalism, bipartisanship, inclusionary, dialogue, respectful debate, honorable opposition are all fictions.

The crux of the differences = involvement vs. commitment. the progressives are interested in outcomes and products, i.e. the eggs.

The corporations act and behave as though it’s their bacon on the line. After all, if it’s eggs and bacon, and you’re the pigs…

ElkoJohn, how much longer do you think the Status Quo can last?

ElkoJohn…..Just what do you call kickin ass?
Oh!bama isn’t any worse than any you mentioned.

I never, not once, thought that I would ever be
defending Oh!Bama.  To say that he doesn’t have
giant gonads is funny stuff though.
He is a corpocrat just like JFK, FDR, LBJ, AND
TEDDY BOY THE HUNTER GUY.

Beerman, believe you got it right, we are in the
same mess as always….Just going back to Upton
Sinclair’s jungle , thats all.

Abe Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, JFK & LBJ
managed to kick some ass against all odds.

Let’s face it,
the Congressional leaders of the
Democratic Party are compromised
and incompetent and
Obama doesn’t have the right stuff to kick ass.

The Democrats govern from the right
and the Republicans govern from the far right.

Get used to it.

Fraudulent emotional tactics are stock and trade at a State Of The Union address. The patriotic scoundrel thing? You bet. Appeals for selfless sacrifice from the ‘proles’ is always good for standing ovations and furthers recruitment for future wars, against those pesky militants that never seem to go away.
Meanwhile, over at the Pentagon, those boys are really digging in deep. They know that no matter who is the titular head of the pageant government, their Long Term Plans are firmly in place. Rumors abound in a secretive way. There is talk that Nikola Tesla’s deathray weapon has been perfected. And the Earthquake Machine? Don’t even mention you heard this… Let it be suffice to say it gives a whole new spin on the meaning of the shock doctrine. The research labs are full of people who wake up in the morning with the thought: there must be some new clever way to destroy people, one that accomplishes the mission without disturbing the value of the real estate.
President Obama already knows that the late playwright Arthur Miller’s assessment was correct: A U.S. President has to kill in order to be legitimate with the people. So there will always be “the right war” at the right time, which of course is forever.
George Orwell and his famous Nineteen Eighty-Four, had the structural layout correct, when he described The Inner Party, The Outer Party, and The Proles. But if he were around today, I think he would be amazed at the sophistication of Corporate Totalitarianism. Here, you do not need a physical crack down of free speech. A more effective tool is to simply deprive you of money. The Gresham’s law of paid marketing determines which ideas are valid.

I don’t believe that we really need to make President Obama the issue. I think that would be a mistake.

It’s obvious that he’s overwhelmed realizing how little acutual power he has, and that our government is a wholly owned subsidiary of Wall Street.

As long as they own our government, and own the polichickens from top to bottom then America will keep on heading toward third world economic status.

It’s the economic structure of this country that is warped by the corporations and their running dogs, so dropping money from helicopters, will do next to nothing.

When your falling from 30,000 feet without a parachute, words and prayers are little more than a delusion, cold comfort at impact.

Get real Mr. President, we have reached economic terminal velocity already, waving your arms around and striking a noble pose will not help.

Rae,

Your most welcome.

Wow! Samosamo.

I don’t know how you did it but I think your “paragraph” should be submitted to the Guinness Book of Records. There should be some sort of recognition for someone who can assemble such a non-stop string of virtually unrelated words and phrases which, no matter how times read, makes no sense whatsoever!

Congratulations!

Ardee:It seems rather obvious that, at best, Obama is simply not up to the task
at hand, at worst he is just another tool.
—————-
He is both Ardee. Not only is he not up to the task and also a tool but he does
not have the capacity or experience to realize the precarious situation our
country is in and that the people who he relies on do not have the interests of
our country in mind.
*********

ITW:I may be crazy, but I’m a lot more forgiving of his actions to the banks than
most—and many of them (not AIG) have paid the Government back
________
It ain’t over ‘till it’s over ITW. Housing prices are still declining, who knows the
play of numbers that make the bankers look good. There is no transparency.
They will be back for more.
As to Obama’s doing a Bill Clinton and learning from his mistakes, no way. As
one poster remarked, this guy is an empty suit. To that I add that those who put
him in the While House run the show and their priority is not the people of
America.
*********

thebeerdoctor:If you take a closer look at the monstrous evil committed daily in
the name of national policies, where the insatiable greed of a culture of death
takes precedent over everything else; then it is worth considering that such
hideous actions are still not worth the price of true human despair, because the
inherent banality of such brutality reveals that the Corporate State demands that
it be taken seriously, no matter how many lies and conceits are required.
—————-
Of course the hideous actions committed daily in the name of national policies
are not worth the price of true human despair. However, we the people are not
calling the shots, the Corporate State that demands to be taken seriously is in
control and their priority is not “the people.” They want more power, more
control. True emotion and feeling are a weakness, not something to strive for and in fact a detriment to their goals.
That is where we are headed and if you really look, where we are.

This is a well written and well-intentioned piece, but , as many of the commenters here note, it is almost impossible to overlook what Obama displays as an obvious shortcoming. Put simply (and to back up a generation)Obama is demonstrating the “Peter Principal”: he has reached the level of his incompetence.

Our elected people are as useful as tits on a boar hog once
they achieve glory land, and actually downright constitutionally
criminal which doesn’t mean squat anymore since that ‘goddamn piece of paper’ has been basically eviscerated, so in any way it
can be viewed, the people are responsible for electing
responsible people to office at all levels instead of re-electing
the samosamo crap election after election after election so
much so that trying to salvage the electoral process, it will
most likely need become evident that it will have to be re-
invented and where would that happen, in our crooked and
broken government and all of a sudden we all look down and
see our foot own foot prints and realize we have just been
walking in a circle.

One glance at the deep divisions that infect the commenters here is enough to convince any sentient being that Americans are their own worst enemy.

There is no winning or accomplishment while everyone pulls in different directions.

You elect a leader following the most convoluted, bizarre and dragged-out ritual of any on earth, and then set out to undermine almost everything he/she sets out to do according to his/her stated intentions during the campaign.

And you expect the State of Union to be anything but chaos?

The problem, as I see it, is there are far too many cooks at the broth. As a paraphrasing of the old, and now quite politically incorrect shibboleth goes - everybody knows how to be the Chief and nobody wants anything to do with being an Indian.

I suppose that 60% of a federal government’s discretionary spending on the military should be expected when that government declared war on a noun, ASKA,“the war on terror.”

My question is what are the citizens of the nation going to do?  I once read that it is not the responsibility of a government to keep the citizenry from errantry but it is indeed the responsibility of the citizenry to keep the government from error.  Think about it!!

“Someday our president, whom I still regard as a decent and well-intentioned politician”
How can you be so stupidly blind.. This liar will be spreading more lies tomorrow night. I hope we can see the polls on how many will not be watching.
The Simpson’s will make more sense than this arrogant, lying, pandering, impeachable bastard.

Hey everybody, “Rollerball” was on cable last nite. I suggest everyone not familiar with this prophetic film watch it and catch a glimpse of where we are headed (or are nearly there) A few large corporations in control of all governments and markets, while an idiot public spends all it’s time addicted to a ridicules and violent sport.

Lets hope hollywood doesn’t get them all right, for we will all be having a side of soylent green with our rice.

Mr. Obama may be “a decent and well-intentioned politician”, but as the old saw goes, the road to the Hot Place is paved with good intentions.

Inherit the Wind….I love you and God bless your
innocence.

Inherit The Wind, January 27 at 8:56 am

There must come a time when you recognise that this is Obama’s mess and not the remnants of the Cheney administration. After one year in office he has failed, and miserably ,to change the course set by the previous administration. Continuing to blame Bush is rampant partisanship and nothing less.

Certainly Bush left this nation enmired in a swamp, yet was it Bush that forced Obama to surround himself with Wall Street fat cats? Was it Cheney who told Obama not to take a leadership role in health care? Who forced Obama to continue rendition and torture while saying he was going to end it?

Enough with the apologies,ITW, you are far too intelligent not to see clearer. It seems rather obvious that, at best, Obama is simply not up to the task at hand, at worst he is just another tool.

The dumbest, most patronizing words in pundetry are “...our president, whom I still regard as a decent and well-intentioned politician”.  They seem to be a mandatory statement that precedes all criticism of the president. 
Let’s get real.  After one year of changing nothing except to put progressives into a state of denial and complete withdrawal, what is so “decent” about our president?  How does anyone know that his intentions are good?  I would say that Obama has achieved what George W. could not achieve, which is to completely disarm progressive opposition to the continued dominance of the neoliberal corporate regime.  Are more war, increased poverty, lower wages, more carbon, more incarceration, more immigrant bashing, cuts in social spending, back-room negotiations with insurance companies, appointments of Goldman Sachs executives to regulatory positions, etc. etc. “decent” and “well-intentioned” policies?
Robert, I am sure that you are a “decent and well-intentioned columnist,” but please stop inserting those phony and stupid words.

I suggest that senators & congressmen pay for their own health insurance during the “freeze.” It will surprise you how soon the troops will be home & citizens will have jobs.

Inherit_The_Wind
“but Geithner got the job because nobody else would take it”

Given that a limited number of scumbags were offered the job this complete bullshit excuse for a horrible Corporatist sellout pick does not bear repeating!

Scheers comment that “someday our president, whom I still regard as a decent and well-intentioned politician” has drawn a lot of fire.  And I agree that Obama does not deserve this level of immunity from his actions.  Can’t we all agree that Obama is an intelligent man and knows what he is doing?  Are we doomed to be set up to believe he has seen the light by 2012, and then re-elect him to be betrayed a again?  Nonsense, it is simple, judge him and all politicians by their actions and ignore the rhetoric.

From Dillion:
“Freezing the budget but letting the military and all the other pork rich grabs continue just confirms his complete contempt for the American people and ownership by the elite”

I too am absolutely disgusted with the untouchable status granted to the MIC while the ripped off American public is forced to tighten their belts.  It is a travesty and is the exact same MO used by the IMF to extract payment for loan distress out of innocent populaces.  Obama should be ashamed of what he is doing to us in order to serve his corporatist sponsors.  Yes, currently some rhetoric has changed (big whoop!), but the actual sellout continues unabated.

Unlike the usual cynics, I actually think Obama is really trying, but he inherited the whirlwind a year ago.  I can’t think of ANY situation that could more easily doom a new president to failure than the MESS Bush/Cheney and the Rethuglicans left him.

Saying that, Obama has bumbled and fumbled many issues as a new-comer.  I may be crazy, but I’m a lot more forgiving of his actions to the banks than most—and many of them (not AIG) have paid the Government back.  Of course Obama was stuck with Bush’s mess on this.

Of course, Geithner and Summers are the worst possible picks, but Geithner got the job because nobody else would take it.  Summers? I just don’t get it—not when Obama had and has again Paul Volcker.  Summers, a proven failure. Volcker: a proven success.

Afghanistan and Iraq reveals more Obama’s naivete than evil.  He’s stupidly relying on the generals, but forgets that Bush culled out all that didn’t kow-tow to his and Rumsfeld’s pre-conceived notions. Curiously, he has Erik Shinseki close by as head of the V.A. but clearly doesn’t see his cabinet as a round-robin of ideas, but rather each is compartmentalize.  This is a very bad model for leadership. You must have a cabinet or inner cabinet that can bat around and discuss issues OUTSIDE their nominal areas.

And, of course, there’s Obama’s mis-handling of the Congress and not cracking heads and taking names there. In a very large part, it’s also HIS fault that 40 GOP senators have successfully waged a terrorist war on our government.

Now the REALLY big question is: Can he do a Bill Clinton and LEARN from his mistakes and start doing things better?

We all better hope so.

I need to add this Mr. Scheer, on decency.

Is it decent to be responsible for the killing of
so many innocent people?

Is it decent to represent a resource war as
a war on terror or a war about religion?

I sure don’t believe that decent !!!!!!!!!!!

Just what kind of BEER do you drink?

Although Newspeak sources tell everyone otherwise, it might be worth considering that politics and statecraft are not dissimilar to other weird areas of human endeavor: vital to the participants, but meaningless to the rest of us who have no stake in it, accept to experience its repercussions. Is that not the ultimate conclusion reached by the Supreme Court last week?
If you take a closer look at the monstrous evil committed daily in the name of national policies, where the insatiable greed of a culture of death takes precedent over everything else; then it is worth considering that such hideous actions are still not worth the price of true human despair, because the inherent banality of such brutality reveals that the Corporate State demands that it be taken seriously, no matter how many lies and conceits are required.
In other words, the ultimate resistance to all of this, is to not buy into the artificial construct in the first place. Cecil Taylor once said: “to feel is perhaps the most terrifying thing in this society” and I would add that to think of your fellow human being as simply that, is a total anathema to those who run this planet, who use every device of propaganda to prevent us from realizing our sentient reality.

I will agree that Oh!?Bama is probably decent,
but well intentioned?  You will have to show me.
His intentions were out there well B4 elections.

On FDR being a great president, that is opinion
also.  Giving him credit for the New Deal because
he signed some bills into law to me is the same
lame credit Democrats like to give LBJ for civil
rights legislation.  In both cases, the streets were
burning.

I don’t even know how to comment on what is happening.  Obama is either an idiot or the most blatant hypocrite we have ever seen.  Freezing the budget but letting the military and all the other pork rich grabs continue just confirms his complete contempt for the American people and ownership by the elite.  I have given up on him and the entire political process in my country.  There is no longer any reasonable way to regain control of this monster ... it must be shot in the head and soon.  Unfortunately, the only force with firepower to accomplish this is the whacked out right wing fringe which, if they succeeded, would only create an even worse replacement.  I fear deeply for my country’s future.  We are essentially finished and the vultures are circling the carcass.  What a sad end to an truly bold experiment.  Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln must be turning in their graves at what has happened to their grand vision.  RIP America.