NEON GODS

How things have changed from 2008!

I can't believe it has come to this.  Remember those huge crowds dancing in the streets and celebrating Barack Obama's election over John McCain just three short years ago?  Young people with tears in their eyes.  Finally an end to George W. Bush's 8-year nightmare, finally an end to the Republican dominance, finally a brilliant President running our country, finally an African American has been elected to high office.  When the race was finally called for Obama I cried tears of joy.  America was about to end it's embarrassing slide toward mediocrity.

How things have changed! Today his presidency is in real trouble.  There is a very real chance that he, and the Democrats are about to lose in 2012.  Much of this isn't his fault.  He was handed a catastrophe when he was inaugurated.  He entered office determined to treat the Republicans as fellow Americans who love their country as much as he, not as an enemy.  He wanted to unite the country so we could move forward.   There are times in our history that Obama's idealism would have been just what America needed, but not in 2009. 

Today's Republicans have drunk the Kool-ade and are convinced they are the only true Americans, that only they have the right answers to our problems, and that anyone who disagrees with them hates America and are thus true enemies of the state and must be crushed.  President Obama was thrust into a war that he failed to recognize.  To make matters worse, we all underestimated the shock and fear so many whites felt having a non-white (aka non-American) family move into the White House!

All of this evokes sympathy for the poor guy who was thrown into possibly the worst situation any new President has ever had to face.  Unfortunately since his inauguration, Obama, in my opinion has done almost everything wrong.  He picked establishment advisers, he listened to the wrong people and seemingly took their bad advice, he failed to understand the nihilism in the Republican party, and he almost immediately set out to distance himself from the people who got him elected.  Even to this day he has done very little to excite the activists among his base.  Yes, he is still popular among the sit-on-the-sideline liberals, but not among the passionate liberals, the ones who get out the vote, who man the storefront offices around the country, the ones who give far more money to candidates they support than they can afford.

Worst of all, President Obama, and, to a lesser extent, the Democrats in Washington don't give a damn about the middle class, the unemployed, the class war that is being waged by the very wealthy who are gobbling up more and more of America's total wealth.  Obama let the Republicans change the focus in America from jobs to cutting spending.  He has let the Republicans protect the wealthy while he lets them gut all our governments from the federal to the local.  The American people are growing angry at how the entire economic collapse has been fallen on the backs of the middle class while the rich continue to get richer.  Our President does not share this anger.

We saw flashes of irritation during the debt ceiling negotiations, but even so the final result included only spending cuts which will only make our economy worse.  The Post today has a nice article here about why liberals are upset at his tactics.  The bottom line is this administration has done too little to help the people that are out of work and to protect our governments from the "starve the beast" Republicans, or to make the wealthy share in the sacrifices.

So now we're seeing more and more articles like this in the WaPost:

Will Barack Obama’s fate be written in the numbers?

A 513-point plunge for the Dow, followed a day later by a drop in the nation’s credit rating.

Home values worth one-third less than they were five years ago.

The share of working-age Americans in the labor force — at just 58 percent — lower than it has been since 1983.

Growth under 2 percent, so sluggish that a second dip into recession looks distinctly possible.

That kind of economic data amounts to a formidable headwind for any incumbent president hoping for a second term. And Democrats are worried that time could be running out to change the direction of the gale.

At this point my attitude is: this administration has made it's bed an now it must lie in it.  It made a lot of bad choices, it has negotiated poorly with the party that wants to destroy the President and the Democrats, and Obama has ben far too willing to let the Republicans move the Overton Window away from the Democratic party's traditional core values.  If he loses in November 2012 he has only himself to blame.  Of course if he loses it means the crazy, nihilistic, Republicans will have won. 

Ugh.

--Trakker

We know how to fix the economy, but it will never happen.

Guess what?  Investors around the world are frightened.  They should be, after all, the world's largest economy (ours!) is hellbent on suicide.  At a time when we need to put people to work so they have money to buy the products that our companies want to sell, and pay taxes on their income to help reduce the deficit and fund schools, police and fire departments, and parks and infrastructure, we're are going to do just the opposite: cut government jobs and send many highly educated, well-paid workers onto food stamps and unemployment.  Yay us!

Why?  Because the Republican Party wants to defeat Obama and the Democrats in 2012, and the best way to do it is to crash our economy.  Yes, the party of "patriots," the party that insists that Democrats hate America and want to destroy it, are busy destroying America. 

One of the first blogs I read every day is Ezra Klein at the WaPost.  Though he's a liberal he's not afraid to point out times when we might be wrong or at least overly invested in an idea or issue.   Today he makes a great point: investors right now are buying U.S. government 10-year bonds that pay just 2.4% in interest.  What that means is that people are lending America money at just 2.4% interest!  Why not sell them even more bonds at this low interest and use this incredibly cheap money to fix our bridges, build new roads, build more public transportation, build high speed railway system, and PUT AMERICANS BACK TO WORK, so they can pay off their debts, buy consumer goods, and pay taxes and reduce the deficit?

As the markets shake and churn, investors are rushing to buy Treasury debt. They're lending to us money for three-months for nearly nothing, and for 10 years at 2.4 percent. That's the lowest rate since the 1950s. The problem for the market is that the American government is not giving them enough debt to buy. ...

It's absurd to think that rebuilding the nations roads and bridges and water systems, not to mention investing in broadband and mass transit, couldn't return more than 2.4 percent over time. In fact, the decision is more obvious even than that: if we put those investments off, we'll still have to make them later, when borrowing costs will be higher and bridges and roads that need to be repaired now are so dilapidated that they need to be fully rebuilt. ...

And it's absurd to think that stimulus now can't be paired with deficit reduction later. Again, the case is perhaps even stronger than that: It would arguably be unwise to make significant new investments now without putting in place a plan for deficit reduction later. ... And more growth now would make deficit reduction easier, as every extra percentage point in growth adds $2.5 trillion in fresh revenues to the nation's coffers and allows us to lower spending on social supports like Medicaid.

More and more pundits, bloggers, and columnists are coming around to this point of view, but even if the cowardly Democrats wanted to do this, the Republicans would block it because putting people back to work would sink their chances to beat Obama in 2012.  We're being held hostage by terrorists who love power more than they love America. 

--Trakker

The President is in trouble.

Yes, the President is in trouble.  I almost never agree with the WaPost's right wing blogger, Jennifer Rubin, but she nailed it here.

It is a truism, annoying as it may be for White House officials, that when the TV comics make the president an object of derision, the president is in trouble. Such ribbing is confirmation that whatever spin the White House is using to conceal a misstep hasn’t worked, and the entire country knows it, making it fodder for jokes.

The debt-ceiling deal is a case in point. Jon Stewart, the most intellectually astute of the left’s comic darlings, went after President Obama in hilarious fashion:

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Very funny — unless you work in the Obama White House and are scrambling to defuse the contempt, anger and disappointment oozing from every pore of his liberal supporters.

This clip is devastating!  In this short clip John Stewart has exhibited exactly what a failure this administration has become.  They continually give in to the Republicans and the Republicans are becoming more and more emboldened.  They are winning more and more concessions every time there is a conflict.  And every month Obama sounds more and more like a Republican.

It pisses me off to see the right dismantling our government and our safety nets for those in need.  What should we do?

--Trakker

Mr. President, where are the tax revenues you insisted had to be part of the agreement?

After spending a week with my daughter and grandkids, I had to drive back to Maryland for a doctor appointment and now I'm about to drive back to West Virginia.  I haven't had much time to study the debt ceiling increase battle and the compromise agreement now before the Senate but the pundits I've read so far agree the Republicans were the winners, and once again Obama was punked.  Activist liberals are pretty pissed because it's obvious NO ONE in Washington gives a damn about the poor, the unemployed, the middle class, our fragile economy, or our future.  The Republicans are intent on turning the U.S. into one big rural Oklahoma county, or maybe Somalia.

I'll have more to write later this week if I have time.  I'm hoping this fiasco will be the final straw that forces liberals and progressives to abandon the Democratic Party and start a new movement. 

--Trakker