Obama’s strategy, criticizing Congress for not acting on his agenda, prompts one to wonder why he didn’t ask upon it when he had the chance.
Cold in Chicago
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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Let’s pound the Democrat President for failure to lead, regardless of the make-up of Congress.
It was never his objective to lead, nor to propose a meaningful agenda. it’s only his objective to win while doing as little as possible in the process.
Here’s a goal. Let’s all go on strike and let the lunatic right have everything they want, including repeal of Roe Vs. wade and the elimination of any access to healthcare that infringes in any way upon anyone’s religious beliefs….including those of Christian Scientists, who don’t want any of us using modern medicine…..let’s all just do….absolutely….nothing.
Whimsical will be along any moment to tell us all how Obama did everything he said he would do, and that we’re all delusional. Whimsical will present us with amazing factoids that prove that Obama did every last thing he said he would do! Of course, the sun orbits the flat earth! Just ask Whimsical! He link to the proof!
I’m going to get T-shirts made: “Wouldn’t it be great if we could all just Whimsical our way through life?” Should sell millions. The same people that re-elect Obama will buy them in droves.
Here’s an idea for a cartoon: It’s late at night and a van sits outside the White House, a man with binoculars peering out from one of its windows and the words “NYPD” haphazardly covered over by a large sticker that reads “ACME Carpet Cleaning Service”. Obviously, this is a riff on the recent NYPD spying scandal. The most laughable thing about that story — and I don’t mean laughable as in funny but as in shake-your-head-in-disbelief — was how the police categorized some mosques as engaging in “aggressive counter-surveillance”. In other words, if you observe the people spying on you then this is considered an “aggressive” act. (This is reminiscent of how Gitmo suicides were deemed “asymmetric warfare”.)
I bring this up because the White House seems to be engaging in blatant support for Al-Qaeda in Syria (or tacit support if you prefer, as in “we’ll ignore for the moment that we’ve pegged you guys as the worst threat to civilization since that asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs as long as your aims meet up with ours”). This is because our government has the short-term memory of an eggplant and never learns from past mistakes. Our government’s most recent blunder (if we ignore Libya) is the invasion of Iraq, which ended up inflaming a civil war and essentially handed that country over to Iran.
As Paul Craig Roberts puts it: “Now Washington intends to repeat its folly in Syria. According to the american secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, Washington is even prepared to ally with al-Qaeda in order to overthrow Assad’s government. Now that Washington itself has al-Qaeda connections, will the government in Washington be arrested under the anti-terrorism laws?”
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2012/03/02/why-cant-americans-have-democracy/
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705279534/Obama-closing-Guantanamo-as-he-reshapes-US-policy.html He DID sign an Executive Order to close Gitmo, and it WAS THWARTED on all sides. Obama is playing “rope a dope” like Muhammed Ali ( I hope! ) Once re-elected, and without having to worry about a second-term anymore, he could come out of the corner swinging – after all, the GOP and maniac Right are obviously looking like the sour-ass whiners and decepticons they are, and continue to lose more ground every time they take one shoe out of their mouths and insert the other…..
You can read the unfolding story here.
Key line: “But his effort has been slowed by the difficulty in finding a place to house the approximately 240 prisoners held there and resistance from Congress.”
Which is just a lame excuse.
Obama never considered the obvious solution: release all the prisoners into the United States. I think he could have personally covered the airfare for 240 guys…at $300 each, no big deal. Maybe he could get a group rate from JetBlue.
To rikster:
Why, exactly, are we to assume that a president, with “majorities” in both houses of congress, whose executive order is “thwarted” has the intent, nerve and skill to do ANYTHING useful.
Group rate from Jet Blue? Why does everyone have to beg like you? After listening to you for a long time, I reralize that you are just a big liar. Get back to the cartoons and stop thinking you are a pundit – you are an idiot – as you have expressed so well.
Sorry – I gotta leave – you guys cana rague as much as you want to..
Its so funny to watch how quickly liberals turned on Ted when he stopped be the mouthpiece for democrat talking points. Say something bad about democrats and you are out of the club. Those liberals so open minded, so willing to listen to other ideas, especially from their own side. LOL.
@Patron: I don’t think I’ve ever been a Democratic tool.
@rikster,
Before you go…
“Once re-elected, and without having to worry about a second-term anymore, he could come out of the corner swinging”
Please explain the reasoning on that. You see, I come to it from the point of view of that no president can expect a second term. The first term, sure, because he has been declared the winner and knows he’ll be going into office, but no second term, so what would motivate anyone to take a “wait until my next term” policy? In short: why fritter away four years for a CHANCE to do something in the second term, when you have the first four years for sure?
Ex,
As Whim explained it to me the other day, the superiority of the Internet is that it allows him (her? I still don’t know Whim’s gender, so my apologies to Whim if I got that wrong) to simply mute anything objectionable. So take a page from his (her?) book. Just ignore his (her?) idiotic rants. That’s what makes the Internet superior. You just ignore inconvenient points and congratulate yourself on how all right-thinking people agree with you.
As to the Thwarting of Obama:
Only a fool would buy that ridiculous notion. Follow the reasoning.
1. You are president.
2. You have a politically undesirable, but morally and legally sound, decision to make about freeing some prisoners who have not even come close to getting a fair trial.
3. You make a token effort at obtaining the morally and legally sound decision knowing that enough people will stand up in red-white-and-blue-faced apoplexy that the effort will be crushed.
4. You then ignore the issue, knowing that you will be able to point to your attempt and argue, “Hey, I tried my gosh-darned best.”
5. Take your daughters horseback riding.
Obama’s attempt was purely political theater. If he actually wanted to free those prisoners from a Phantom Zone of incarceration without a real trial, he could have found a way easily:
1. Simply threaten to pardon them all. “I will pardon every prisoner at Gitmo who has not been brought to trial within open court in the United States by the end of the month.”
2. By being presidential. If that stumbling, illiterate half-wit George W. Bush (I wish to apologize to all the half-wits) could get all the things he did — seriously, start ticking ’em off on your fingers. You’ll need about two dozen hands — then Barack Obama should have been able to make enough noise to get the prisoners tried or freed.
3. No president (except Dick Cheney) gets a free pass for everything. Part of the requisite for being a skillful president is that one must possess the ability to manipulate. If you can’t get something by Method X, then you use Method Y.
Overall, the Obama presidency has been a profound disappointment. Yes, he faced a lot of problems, but I recall what one of the Bush team said in the first week of September 2001. Something like, “Yes, Pres. Bush realizes that he can’t keep asking people ‘Have you gotten your $400 check?’ He’s going to have to start giving them answers to questions.” And then 9/11 happened.
Pres. Obama has to realize he can’t keep saying, “I’m still cleaning up the Bush mess.” And he can’t keep his fingers crossed that another terrorist incident will come along to distract everyone.
Let’s pound the Democrat President for failure to lead, regardless of the make-up of Congress. Let’s pound anyone for anything, regardless of content. Let’s beg everyone for anything, regardless of self-respect. Oh, by the way, 11X17 is preferable. Send me your money.
True leadership is independent of the make-up of congress.
Obama’s mandate, sought from his own campaign promises, was to change the course of the country away from the absolute disaster of the previous 8 years.
Insisting on bi-partisanship with the party of Cheney/Bush, as did Obama, in NOT leadership but political pathology … especially when GOP leadership and its supporting punditocracy repeatedly and proudly proclaimed their mission to be to destroy Obama.
Even those only mildly acquainted with US politics know that a new president’s best chance to pass significant legislation is in his/her first term.
Obama swept in with a 10 million vote victory, a massive majority in the house (enough to cancel out the Dems’ own pox of “blue dogs”), two-periods of 60-seat majority in the senate (requiring only appropriate bribing of Joementum), all constituting a mandate to deliver us from the taint of Bush/Cheney.
So what does he do? He turns the initiative for his health insurance bill over to Chuck Grassley! This instead of fucking pushing for Medicare for all (HR 676), any legal challenges to which would not ever have been allowed into court. (As opposed to the situation, now, in which SCOTUS, Inc. is in the position to obliterate the law AND thereby give sufficient momentum to the GOP to save it, YET AGAIN, from the suicide it seems unable to otherwise avoid.)
It was downhill from there. Continued deference to, and coddling of, the fascist GOP CAUSED the 2010 midterm disaster as millions of former supporters detected the obvious fraud and stayed away from the polls. This gave the 10-year redistricting advantage to the very same fascists.
See how lack of leadership causes a downward spiral? Perhaps that is better stated: see how a Democrat acting as a Republican leads to a downward spiral? NO, the 2010 midterm disaster was NOT caused by latent racism because that very same racism was present in 2008 and was swamped by hopeful, energized voters. That disaster was caused by the chronic, Democrat failure … assuming they must act like the GOP to win elections with the never-fail, corresponding result of massive voter alienation.
Of course, “lack of leadership” did not lead to 1) extension of Bush tax cuts 2) war on whistleblowers worse than Bush 3) escalation of drone attacks to 6 Muslim countries, that we know of, 4) veto-threat -reversal on the codification of indefinite detention for US citizens and, last, and we can only hope, least, 5) declaration of presidential power to assassinate US citizens with NO judicial process.
These moves have even stirred the zombie Cheney to reverse his early, vicious criticism of Obama and get Cheney cooing with such envious delight as to have him actually appear human, for the first time in about 35 years.
We constantly are told that our situation would be MUCH worse with the alternative to Obama. Indeed, but that is because of the policies inaugurated and powers seized by Obama that are now available to all succeeding presidents. Why are we supposed to reward him for this?
He was elected to steer us away from impending disaster but has, instead, only accelerated us toward it.
«Obama’s strategy, criticizing Congress for not acting on his agenda, prompts one to wonder why he didn’t ask upon it when he had the chance.» Ted, you, too, seem to suffer from that disturbing habit, for which I remember being castigated at school, of asking embarrassing questions….
Please continue !…
Henri
Hello Henri, and I have the same question as you. Why didn’t he? Heck – i don’t know. I can only guess. This president is CAREFUL. He has to be. He is the 1st Black President. He has to walk on thin ice and be careful to be able to win a second term. Luckily, the GOP and its candidates are simple retards. If I was him, I would take the next election and lambaste the assholes who have fucked us for so long, it ain’t true! This guy knew from the beginning that trying to go against the tide would get him nowhere, and he has been real kind and condescending to the power brokers so far. Some people fault him for it, and some condemn him for it. I think he is smart. I think he will go out fighting for us. No matter how trollish anyone can be, they have to respect a smart fighter.
@Rikster: “He has to walk on thin ice and be careful to be able to win a second term.”
Pretzel logic. He doesn’t need a second term. He could have gotten a lot done during his first term.
In fact, that’s when the biggest activist presidents kick ass. George W. Bush, Reagan and FDR all accomplished more in the first terms than their second.
Obama isn’t that bright, but he’s not so stupid as not to know this. He made a deliberate, conscious decision not to act. That’s criminal.
Fair enough Ted, but it is not about what you think it is about how they view you, when they viewed you as a mouthpiece they loved you, now that you pulled away from the hive mind by attacking Obama they don’t like you anymore. Just amuses me Republicans and Democrats alike believe in freedom to have your own thoughts as long as those thoughts are sanctioned by them.