Free Republic

IT'S INCREASINGLY EVIDENT THAT OBAMA SHOULD RESIGN The State Journal-Register http://www.sj-r.com/opinions/x12460 932/Ted-Rall-It-s-increasingly-evident-that-Obama-should-resign May 29 2009 MIAMI -- We expected broken promises. But the gap between the soaring expectations that accompanied Barack Obama's inauguration and his wretched performance is the broadest such chasm in recent historical memory. This guy makes Bill Clinton look like a paragon of integrity and follow-through. >From health care to torture to the economy to war, Obama has reneged on pledges real and implied. So timid and so owned is he that he trembles in fear of offending, of all things, the government of Turkey. Obama has...

Let Them Eat Cake Don’t bother petitioning Barack Obama for a redress of grievances. Barack Obama, the imperious yet bowing vassal to the Saudi Arabian king, can’t be bothered to take notice of Americans with grievances. The maligned Marie Antoinette is falsely supposed to have replied to the hungry cries of French peasants for “bread!” with the uninformed and callous riposte “Let them eat cake.” Marie, was also blamed for the penurious French treasury and tarred with the epithet Madame Déficit. Barack Obama is our own real life Madame Déficit and yesterday he regaled Hollywood’s high and mighty powers...

Thursday was supposed to be the highlight of the year for more than 100 kindergarteners from Stafford County, Va. They got up early and took a chartered bus to the White House for a school field trip. But when they arrived, all the 5-year-olds got was a lesson in disappointment.

As President Obama defends his national security strategy, he faces a daunting challenge. He must convince the country that it is in safe hands despite warnings to the contrary from the right, and at the same time persuade the skeptical left that it is enough to amend his predecessor’s approach rather than abandon it.Arguably on the defensive over policy for the first time since taking office, Mr. Obama is gambling that his oratorical powers can reassure the public that bringing terrorism suspects to prisons on American soil will not put the public in danger. At the same time, he must...

Fending off criticism from human-rights and civil-rights groups at a private White House meeting Wednesday, a frustrated President Obama complained about the "mess" he'd been left by his predecessor. The exchange came during an hour-and-15-minute "off the record" session in the White House cabinet room that highlighted growing tensions between the president and his liberal base. While the White House session was billed as an effort by the president to listen to his critics on the left, some of them left disappointed. According to three sources who attended the meeting, Obama reiterated his intention to retain a version of the...

Barack Obama inherited a set of national-security policies that he rejected during the campaign but now embraces as president. This is a stunning and welcome about-face. For example, President Obama kept George W. Bush's military tribunals for terror detainees after calling them an "enormous failure" and a "legal black hole." His campaign claimed last summer that "court systems . . . are capable of convicting terrorists." Upon entering office, he found out they aren't. He insisted in an interview with NBC in 2007 that Congress mandate "consequences" for "a failure to meet various benchmarks and milestones" on aid to Iraq....

Is a new Mika Brzezinski emerging: a more fair-’n-balanced one? Signs point to yes. Yesterday on Morning Joe, as noted here, Joe Scarborough described the members of the White House press corps as being “in love” with Pres. Obama to the extent that at the big dinner this past Saturday night that PBO attended, they were like “a bunch of teenage girls waiting for a Bay City Rollers concert, waiting to scream at the top of their [lungs].” Not merely did Mika agree, she added another tasty morsel to the stew, revealing that behind the scenes, the TV production crew–big...

REBRANDING THE LONG WAR, Part 1The "lasting commitment" Washington war-time summit/photo-op between United States President Barack Obama and the AfPak twins, "Af" President Hamid Karzai and "Pak" President Asif Ali Zardari was far from being an urgent meeting to discuss ways to prevent the end of civilization as we know it. It has been all about the meticulous rebranding of the Pentagon's "Long War". In Obama's own words, the "lasting commitment" is above all to "defeat al-Qaeda". As an afterthought, the president added, "But also to support the democratically elected, sovereign governments of both Pakistan and Afghanistan." To have George...

Barack Obama is a brand. And the Obama brand is designed to make us feel good about our government while corporate overlords loot the Treasury, our elected officials continue to have their palms greased by armies of corporate lobbyists, our corporate media diverts us with gossip and trivia and our imperial wars expand in the Middle East. Brand Obama is about being happy consumers. We are entertained. We feel hopeful. We like our president. We believe he is like us. But like all branded products spun out from the manipulative world of corporate advertising, we are being duped into doing...

Obama the Sophist This is from the President's remarks at the National Academy of Science:At such a difficult moment, there are those who say we cannot afford to invest in science. That support for research is somehow a luxury at a moment defined by necessities. I fundamentally disagree. Science is more essential for our prosperity, our security, our health, our environment, and our quality of life than it has ever been. Who the hell is saying we cannot afford to invest in science? Isn't the real argument about whether we can spend so much more (fully 3% of GDP)...

President Obama's aides are preparing to a mount a media broadside to mark his first milestone in office As the White House prepares to reach the 100 days milestone since President Obama’s inauguration, it is being true to the form shown over the preceding 99: to exploit ruthlessly American politics while simultaneously asking that the President be judged by a different standard. The strategy is to swat aside any effort to reach an early verdict, on the ground that the Administration has faced unprecedented challenges, but to acknowledge nonetheless that Wednesday — on which the 100th day falls — may...

As he approaches 100 days in office, the President faces a grim reality check. Buddleia has taken over large parts of downtown Gary, Indiana. The city, once home to 300,000 people, is down to just a third of that. There are mile after mile of deserted, derelict and abandoned homes; sub-zero winds blow in off Lake Michigan. "Gary, Indiana is like an eagle poised to fly," mayor Rudy Clay tells me, "All we need is the air of the fiscal stimulus beneath our wings and we'll soar once again and make America proud." The mayor has applied for $400 million...

Everybody complains about taxes and government spending, but nobody does anything about them. Perhaps that's because whenever they do something, they're often labeled as racists, right-wing extremists or worse. That's what happened when various news organizations covered the April 15 "tea parties" across the country; the media clearly did not know what to make of such a robust turnout for the loosely organized events, and wound up dismissing or belittling them. The tea party movement may or may not go forward -- but anytime the media or politicians dismiss a grassroots effort, they do so at great peril. People attending...

I thought I'd share this, I don't normally post vanities but its something I think you all should hear, a growing number of African Americans are starting to not like the idea of Obama as our first black president. I've been hearing from African Americans in New Hampshire, Maine and Mass and found that they do not like him one bit. One guy at a bar told me that He used to support him but that he might change from Democrat to republican because of what he did in office. A friend of mine in Nebraska was at a church...

President Obama has been in power for just over 50 days, but already critics believe his plans to save America from disaster are doomed Even in the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, New York knows how to throw a party. For most of yesterday hundreds of thousands of people made a sea of green that paraded up Fifth Avenue to mark St Patrick’s Day. Tens of thousands lined the street to watch them. The all-day party, fuelled by imports of Guinness and whiskey, seemed the more intensely engaged upon as an escape from omnipresent financial gloom. Away from the...

The Taliban continues its menacing advance on the Pakistani capital. The Iranian president reiterates his hateful anti-Israeli rhetoric, while Israel's newly elected Right-wing prime minister makes veiled threats about launching military action to prevent a second Holocaust. Yet the only subject that appears to concern Barack Obama is whether or not senior officials from the previous administration should face prosecution for the harsh interrogation techniques used against terror suspects in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. (snip) In another age, putting off an inevitable confrontation to keep the peace was called appeasement: a charge that will soon be levelled...

What if an American President campaigned as a pragmatic centrist, promised tax cuts to 95% of the American people and pledged himself to a new era of government honesty, openness and bipartisanship, but never had any of those intentions? The result might be a cabinet full of tax cheats, political cronies and lobbyists, and a president peddling an overstuffed budget of liberal dream-schemes at a time when the American economy can least afford an extra nickel for folderol or fiddling. Meanwhile Rome is burning. President Obama rolls the dice and grabs a can of kerosene. This president's budget, plus the...

I've been waiting years for an open and honest presidential administration, and that's one thing President Barack Obama has promised to give us. In his first 100 days as president, has he given us real transparency? We have at least seen improved communication. Obama's communication changes began on day one. On Inauguration Day, whitehouse.gov was completely replaced. The Bush White House site was abandoned, and a new site, similar to Obama's change.gov transition site, was installed. Communication is an Issue in President Obama's First 100 Days Washington, DC United States of America This site includes information, press releases, a blog,...

Zogby along with the O' Leary report conducted a poll of America's business leaders, to find out what they thought of Barack Obama's first sixty days as POTUS. Not too surprising is the fact that they are not too pleased. They think the administration is disorganized, his efforts to clear up the credit market have been poor, the proposed budget spends to much and that the free choice act and proposed tax cuts are bad for buisness. In other words they feel the same way as the rest of us:

Up until now it had been a mutual love affair. As the campaign for the American presidency gathered pace last June, Bob Dylan lent his support to Barack Obama, telling The Times that his candidacy was “redefining the nature of politics”. In return Mr Obama described the singer as an icon, and boasted of having “probably 30 Dylan songs on my iPod”, including “the entire Blood on the Tracks album”. But in an interview to be published on Dylan’s website today, the hero of 1960s counterculture seems to have cooled on the prospects of the recently elected American leader. Asked...