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During LBJ's administration he delt with Republicans that had economic policies that would be far left of Obama's administration. Hell Nixon froze wages and prices during his administrationm this during a time when the "Red Scare" was still on the minds of most Americans. I know the Obama administration stalled long enough on the issue of Universal Health Care or Single Payer until they could get the media in line to drive the idea out Americans minds. Obama was scared because he made promises to the health care industry to get just the individual mandate and no meaningful health care reform. He had all the votes and political will of the people and balked because he's a at best a moderate republican with some liberal leaning concerns.
Isn't it time we take off our rose colored glasses and quit making excuses for Obama?
The US Dictatorship and its White House Servant ‘President’http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25853
Thom the president United States cannot trust John Boehner, but a reasonable man has only one avenue, that is an expectation of honesty.
If one gets all mixed up in the negotiations and the back-and-forth between parties, we have missed the point. The Republican Congress is still the John Galt Congress. Their main objective is to stall the economy to stall the agenda of the progressives ,to stop Pres. Obama from being reelected. For every day they drag us into the mud over debt ceiling and entitlements, we are not speaking about jobs and the Republican deadbeat dine and dash legacy.(Joe Walsh!)
I hope that you have not lost the willingness to fight. Fight we must.
I'm coming down with red, white and blue flu every Friday through August and telling my congress people why I'm home and why I will spend as little as possible that day.
Try it you'll like it.
If people are upset with Pres. Obama, they need to understand that Obama believes in compromise. What we need to do is undo the mistake of 2010 and give him more Democrats in Congress. Give him 60 senators and 240 representatives and he can get progressive things done. But while the Republicans can stymie the process, Obama feels it is his duty to compromise, because he respects what he perceives as the will of the voters. When liberals stayed home on election day last year, they told the President that they wanted Republicans to get some of what they wanted.
We need revenue and we need more economic stimulus. What will happen to unemployment insurance extensions or some other and hopefully better program to support all the people this economy and the handling of the financial diaster has left out No one likes starving. And why did the President stick to his borimng talking point of "a balanced approach" when it was clearlu not a bit balanced? He needed to reframe the discussion, educate us on how Social Security is not broke, only needs some tinkering, for us to stop raiding it. a raised income ceiling. Obama can't talk honestly to the people anymore because he's part of all the fake solutions that have only gotten us deeper into debt - the health care plan without a single payer, the wars without end, stimulus programs that weren't big enough. But for all his alligning himself with the corporatists, he's the only game in town if we want to stop the crazy Republicans and he knows it, even if we forget. We need to lobby him strongly and pointedly as a united group of Progressives or find another candidate.
I wonder if this is some sort of weird reverse psychology maneuver. If Dems start to go along with and support Republicon agenda, will the Right automatically reject their own agenda simply because the Dems embraced it?
Will they really go clean their room just because we say we like it messy?
Thom Hartmann
I think maybe you should read Bill Moyers’ accounts of President Johnson’s many compromises. This man that you represent as “taking names and kicking ass” actually had to compromise plenty to get ANYthing done during his term. Check out Moyers on America especially the last chapter, Looking Back ...
“Critics attacked his notion of consensus, but the president kept insisting to some of us that in politics you cast your stakes wide and haul up a big tent with room for everybody who wants in. The only time I can remember any kind of discussion with him about his political philosophy, he said he was “a little bit left, a ltitle bit right, and a lot of center.” Peter Drucker wrote at the time that President Johnson’s Great Society “represents a first response to some of the new issues, both at home and abroad. But it approaches those largely within the old alignments. It appeals primarily to the old values and it employs mostly the traditional rhetoric. The voice is Jacob’s but the hands are the hands of Esau.”
Regarding the Highway Beautification Act, let’s look at what Bill Moyers wrote ... “Actually, both the president and Mrs. Johnson initially lobbied hard for the Highway Beautification Act, but in the end we compromised almost to the point of capitulation. The legislation passed, but it since has been so weakened by loopholes and lax enforcement that recently the Wall Street Journal said, “It protects the billboards more than it causes their removal.”
Moyers goes on to discuss Johnson’s compromises with Richard Daley when he wanted a community action director for Chicago. Ultimately, he “capitulated”, he compromised with Mayor Daley, who placed one of his own “status-quo” people into the position of the director.
Earlier in the chapter, Moyers noted that, although Johnson had been considered a ‘country liberal” supporting “rural electrification, social security, soil conservation, farm price supports, and federal aid to build power ... Ambition turned him to the right … to win the support of powerful business interests, he supported the Taft-Hartly Act to curb labor.” There are many more examples of Johnson’s playing both sides.
Moyers’ bottom line on Johnson and the “Great Society” is this ... “If Lyndon Johnson were around today, he would badger, poke, parry, and above all listen!”
My bottom line to you Thom is this brainteaser: There is no use in telling more than you know, no, not even if you do not know it.
With love and nuance,
Christeene Hildenbrand
On October 29,2008 World Net Daily posted an article entitled:
"Yes, Barack Obama really is a Manchurian candidate"
Little did the public know just how right they were... Obama has proven to be a Manchurian Candidate FOR the Republicans...
No Republican President has been able to begin to dismantle Social Security or Medicare/Medicaid, yet this is exactly what President Obama has done...
Where will it end? Will he really nominate at least a centrist to the supreme court, or will he bow to the Republicans again and nominate a consuvative to replace a conservative?
Democrats vs Republicans, Good Cop vs Bad Cop
Either way, Wall Street Wins!
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/obama-rakes-in-bucks-from-wall-street-20110722?print=true
Barack Obama is raising more money from Wall Street for his re-election campaign than he did in 2008, according to a new study by the Center for Responsive politics.
Extortion : The crime of obtaining money or some other thing of value by abuse of ones office or authority.
It's a possible "8 year sentence in prison". Big difference. Plus the other case is in Mexico, so there's no real comparison possible.
Obama is a Wall Street Democrat.
A republican in Democrat's clothing. He is serving his base (Wall Street).
Obama knows that he can count on the liberal vote, regardless of what he does; because the liberals believe that they have no where else to go.
I'm afraid that this is true. I, for one, have lost any "hope" that the Obama administration will be willing to fight for anything. This was a really big one and he cried Uncle when he should have dug his heels in and yelled enough.
When your opponents cease taking you seriously, you've taken away any firepower from your supporters. I think it is time to find a candidate to run against our president in a primary. The only problem is that I don't see any democrats that have the strength and will power to do anything differently.
Today is August 1, 2011. I am sending you this message from my hideaway bunker deep inside enemy lines. I have found out that my comments on Thom’s blog offend people. I believe that my words do upset people. A friend and I were having lunch as far back as my mid-twenties. The friend said to me that I upset people because I seek to have people think. People do not want to think because thinking shakes people away from their comfort zone. People are into comfort zones and not thinking.
Since I offend people, the way to not offend people is to not comment on Thom’s blog. With no comments there can be no offending!
It is very important for you to know that I am not the sharpest tool in the toolbox. I am a very dull person. This is a fact because I do not know the difference between a political issue and not a political issue! I will share with you some words that will highlight my dullness. Are comments on wars, torture, suppressing of voters’ rights, the wide discrepancy in wealth between the corrupt American politicians, the greedy American rich, and the selfish American transnational corporations, the daily treasonous behavior of the corrupt, greedy, and selfish persons, the death of the “Golden Rule” in America, moral issues, Matthew 25:31-46, Matthew 5:1-12, health issues, religious issues, economic issues, social issues, Medicare, social security, human rights, offshore tax shelters for the wealthy, elimination of American jobs at home, the suppression of cost of living increases, and many other issues POLITICS or NOT POLITICS.
I do hope to vote on Yes and No questions and possibly comment and I do want to view Thom and his guest on You Tube and possibly comment.
I leave by saying you are the persons who will need to find ways for a better America and a better world for all of God’s children.
If for some reason I do weaken and I post a comment on Thom’s blog, please remind me of my message to you on August 1, 2011. Be calm! Be cool! Be collected! Good luck and good bye!!!
And America's long-suffering taxpayers, who pay the salaries of the politicians who brought us to the brink of default? How do they come out?
That remains to be seen. The big concern among many was that this crisis would result in significant tax increases. All the big discussions -- the Simpson-Bowles Commission, the Gang of Six in the Senate, the potential Grand Bargain between President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner -- included revenue enhancements, the elimination of loopholes, the termination of tax credits. In other words, tax increases on some people. And at time when income tax rates and overall tax receipts as a percentage of GDP are as low as they've been in recent history, the prospect of making a huge dent in the deficit through spending cuts alone seemed politically unviable. And yet, thanks to a combination of Republican intransigence, moderate wishy-washiness, and Democratic lameness, the deal included no revenue enhancements. People worried about higher taxes have dodged a bullet, for now.
So taxes will never go up? Remember, I just said "for now." As always, the devil is in the details. As the White House noted in its fact sheet, tax cuts are always just over the horizon. President Obama couldn't get Republican agreement to raise taxes on the wealthy, but he may not have to. Current law calls for the Bush-era tax cuts on income and investments to expire at the end of 2012. All that has to happen for taxes to rise is for President Obama and Congress *not* to agree on how and whether to extend them. And as this whole artificial crisis has shown, Washington as it is currently configured has a great capacity for not agreeing.
The taxes will NEVER go up for the wealthy!!!!! OBAMA WILL NOT BE RE-ELECTED IN 2012!!!!! All of Washington will be under the control of the Triad (Republicans, Libertarians, and the Teabaggers) of Evil Party!!!!!
Sad, very sad!
http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-War-on-You-by-Michael-Collins-110731-552.html
More selling out and heartache!!!!!
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Rep-Conyers-Obama-Demand-by-Jeanine-Molloff-110729-352.html
We have just been screwed royally!!!!!
Sad, very sad!!!!!
http://www.salon.com/technology/how_the_world_works/index.html?story=/tech/htww/2011/07/31/president_obama_surrender&source=newsletter&utm_source=contactology&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Salon_Daily%2520Newsletter%2520%2528Not%2520Premium%2529_7_30_110
Where are the true Democrats?
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/07/31/democrats?source=newsletter&utm_source=contactology&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Salon_Daily%2520Newsletter%2520%2528Not%2520Premium%2529_7_30_110
CHESS GAME?..... YEAH RIGHT!
It's good to know who's people behind some issues and who's not with the help of this great debator. Online dissertation help and dissertation proposal may help this kind of service.
William Bennett, moral crusader, and big time loser lost $8 million dollars gambling in casinos?
http://irregulartimes.com/bennettgambles.html
Michele Bachmann's husband Marcus is gay?
She sure did avoid the gay topic like a plague when asked recently. And those Bachmann clinics try to straighten out gays? What about the Bachmann's business taking advantage of "socialist government" programs while railing out against them? What hypocrites?!!!
http://www.nowpublic.com/world/michelle-bachmann-husband-gay-rumors-spre...
These topics were also discussed on The Young Turks show....man Cenk really gets worked up...no wonder MSNBC wanted to put Jessie Jackson in his place. They needed someone who is more accepting of the pablum and blah conformist positions that main stream networks want to put out.
I was just watching a podcast of the July 27th and 28th The Young Turks show. On the 27th show they talk about this 15 year old boy who was working as a hit man for the Mexican Drug Gangs. He had kidnapped and slit the throats of 4 of the men he kidnapped. He admitted that he had been a hit man since the age of 11. He will be out of prison in 2013 to be returned to his mother in San Diego.
On the show on the 28th, they talked about a Senior high school student played a prank by putting a blow up doll in a restroom stall in the school. He has been given an 8 year sentence in prison.
Is this a great country or what?
No, it's an energy crisis, underlying all the others. Thom used to know that, but he seems to have forgotten.
Solomon wanted to understand his heart. Leo Buscaglia believed that seeing with our heart is important. I believe that thinking with our heart is also important.
@Palindromedary, we are witnessing Soylent Green coming to life in our country. I wonder what American transnational corporation will grind up American bodies for processing and this ground meat will be placed in cans for sale??? Will American transnational corporations label these cans SPAM TWO???
Thom Hartmann should have an interesting radio show on August 1, 2011. I wonder if he has enough time to process the debt deal and share his thoughts with us. I will be trying to determine if Obama has caved into the demands for any deal and of course, my prediction will have come to life.