[em2vn]

I think the change mantra is already wearing thin.

[Red6]

“Hope and Change, Change and Hope” = late 60s - 70s rehashing of hippie and socialist ideas. Talk to Iran, decriminalize pot, cut on defense and build a “great society,” abortion on demand, gay rights. Mr. Obama simply was the right guy at the right time and place. A well dressed black guy who met the minimal qualifications, older than 35 and naturally born. Unlike some of his predecessors (Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton) Obama is “articulate and clean.”

Cool leaders that are hip but lack experience, training, and character, lead one down the road New Orleans was during Katrina. Incompetent leadership carries with it a high price, but at least we all know Obama can dance, we saw it on the Ellen DeGeneres show: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsWpvkLCvu4

[pallis]

This guy is still duped by the lunatics. What we are going to see is a consolidation of the executive branch and the legislative branch that will ride roughshod over the Constitution, until it is meaningless. Neither branch will honor the Constitution, and the Supremes will let it slide, just like they’ve rolled over on the matter of the Kenyan’s birth certificate. Welcome to the USSA.

Another thing, probably over this clown’s head, is that the US is a complicated nation that should avoid any change that isn’t incremental and able to be tested before it does its damage. That is one of the beauties of states rights that will soon be changed. Change for the sake of change is lunacy, especially when that change is going to come at the hands of an inexperienced, superficially educated Marxist, a narcissistic punk who has spent his useless adult life hating America. The “Change” mantra will indeed wear thin, and scare the hell out of thinking people while it does. Nothing good is going to come out of Obama and this Congress. Brace yourselves.

[Redbob]

Any goofball who was EVER any kind of Obama supporter is not and has never been any kind of Conservative!

[Popman]

In fact, I am pretty close to a non-entity in conservative Republican circles because of my early public support for Obama last January

Stopped reading right there.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

He missed out that early on in Bush’s presidency, with a Republican congress, Bush tried an extraordinary thing, a return to an intermittent presidential policy of the late 19th Century.

That is, that the President should be the executive, but that congress should “run the country”. It was a disaster. (It wasn’t too great back then, either. But congress still had more experience then.)

Congress was not up to the job of running the country. The Republicans lacked purpose, direction, and most of all, party discipline. So congress degenerated into an orgy of foolish spending, while disregarding any national purpose.

Bush even gave them what he thought was a softball, the long festering illegal immigration issue, that turned into a nightmare.

Bush than made the situation worse by using an extra-constitutional process, the Presidential Signing Statement, to further muck up the bills that congress passed.

So now we have an imbalanced situation of a too strong executive, a pathetic congress, an isolated judiciary, and a bureaucracy that imagines itself in charge of things. Add to that the mediocre Afghanistan war, which has little chance of anything like a decisive conclusion, and a horrific economic downturn.

Yes, a muddle.

Hopefully, the Republicans will spend their time out of power getting their act together, establishing and maintaining party discipline, getting some new blood in their leadership, and be able to jump right on in with new ideas when the Democrats collapse.

[HawaiianGecko]

"However, in this case, I have to agree with the Vice President (almost) in his opinion that the Congress is equally culpable in both the breach of civil liberties but also the Constitutional idea of checks and balances.... "

The problem with this statement is that the Vice President didn't argue this point.  He does not claim that civil liberties were breach at all.  This is simply one of those 'camel's nose under the tent' type of statements attempting to confirm that the Bush administration did something wrong, and with a devious attempt to make it palatable by claiming congress went along for the ride. 

The VP says it was not illegal because congressional leaders were fully informed, agreed with and authorized the positions of the administration. The fact that congress wasn't fully informed was simply a matter of need to know classification.

[AmericanVictory]

One of our sons writes for the same website as “The Independent Conservative,” and I believe he may go through some similar second thoughts as matters progress. We argue about it a bit.

Of course, as one who spent four years in Ci-cago I was very suspicious of the One from the beginning.

[gusopol3]

well- chronicled is how underlings in the executive branch turned affirmative action into something that went way beyond anything Congress ever passed. So if this guy thinks he’s seeing anything new or unique, or if he thinks he has some blazing insight, it’s only because of that second helping of beans he had for supper.

[SlapHappyPappy]

I want to believe this guy, but he claimed there were meaningful football games yesterday. That really hurts his credibility.