Work with those loser pigs? Hasn’t this guy learned anything?

Buyer’s regrets, anyone?

Good thread, David. You nailed the situation.

So; what’s the prognosis for this political constipation?

I tend to the Masaccio diagnosis of the problem:

“Hasn’t this guy learned anything?”

Now, Obama doesn’t have the numbers to force real economic reform down the GOP’s throats; he can only do it from the Pulpit, by directing the anger of americans at these shitbirds’ ongoing willingness to tear it down rather than let Obama’s so-far-tepid efforts really start to turn things around.

Would it work? Would Boehner and the House repubs get on board for even some modest FDR-style reforms?
I doubt it, but just seeing Obama get into a real confrontation with them, would, I feel sure, be such a pleasant and welcome shock for most americans, that it might force some of the House republicans to get off their high horse, particularly if it looked like they were going to lose the House at the mid-terms.

In fact, if I was part of his staff, I would be telling him that EVERYTHING he does should be geared toward re-taking the House…and I think the best way to do that is to go after the assholes and to do it instanter.

Clearly, nothing else will work. Push has come to shove; and that means that we’ll have four more years of what we’ve just had, and if that happens, the 2016 election will be a conservative wet dream.

in unison, LOL

Not really.

Boehner’s wish list is close to the President’s and his Bowles-Simpson buddies wish list. If Schumer, Gillibrand and Reid hold to their promises (will they?) you might see some resistance. But not from the pre-compromised President who largely agrees with Romney, Boehner, Bowles-Simpson, Clinton, The third Way Wall Street Wing, Orszag…….

After listening to the President’s victory speech, I get the distinct impression that he intends to do what he did 4 years ago. That is, he intends to give Republicans everything they want and more, while trading away every progressive or liberal idea; and, he’ll do it all in the name of bipartisanship. That will allow the conservatives to call him a socialist while inserting poison pills into the legislation that they have no intention of funding in the first place. In the end, Obama will look like a fool all over again and the Democrats will fall over themselves trying to spin it as a wonderful accomplishment. It will all be a nice piece of theater to distract the public from the further militarization of our corporate police/surveillance state and the increasing use of robot bombs.

Which guy? :-)

57 million people voted for the guy who proposed the “Romney Plan.”

60 million people, many of the calling themselves liberal or progressive, voted for the guy behind the Bowles-Simpson plan. As a starting point. Everything is negotiable.

What else was to be expected? Glenn Greenwald outlines the 6-step process.

Don’t forget blaming his predecessor for all his troubles, oops, that’s him.

Hey Boner:

Take your Grand Bargain and shove it up your ass.

Hey Anyone Else who might have similar, idiotic notions:

Take your Grand Bargain and shove it up your asses, too.

Glad I could help.

No. We knew what we were getting, this time around. Buyer’s regret is so 2008.

He said he believed that the American people sent a message that leaders in both parties need to put aside their partisan interests and work with common purpose to put the interests of the American people and the American economy first.

O Mr President the American people may have relected you to fix the economy but they sure as hell did not relected you to screw them out of SS and Medicare! More weasel words from Obama but did you expect anything else from him?

There’s one difference from the last time around. The Democrats have to run a new candidate in 2016 on this President’s record. It is going to be very hard to run on the dismantling of the social safety net. This may provide some breaking power against the Obama steamroller. I’m not very confident, but it is the best one can hope for.

Cave-in emptor.

“Buyer’s regrets, anyone?”

No, not by me. But are you asking relative to just this election? I think you aren’t, but if you mean for 2008, then, also, not. The early choice in the nomination fight boiled down to choosing Obama, who, E.G., had the courage to speak out against the savage idiocy of invading Iraq, at the same time that Hillary was supporting it. (Unlike 21 of her fellow Dem Senators whom, to their everlasting credit, voted against it.) or picking a candidate who supported Joe Lieberman against Ned Lamont and who believed (or said) that John McCain would make a better Commander-in-Chief than Barack Obama.

Hillary’s “savvy” plan to get to the White House by throwing her natural liberal constituency under the bus and smooching conservative butt, at a time when the whole conservative shtick was more discredited than at any other time in recent decades, was the political brainfart of our times. She was NO alternative, unless you wanted to give the republicans the only thin shot they had at winning.

Back to your question: I don’t have buyer’s remorse for eagerly and totally supporting Obama in 2008. He was,
by a mile, the best of the lot. He was also black and whatever else it has been, it certainly has brought a lot of black people solidly into the political process and that is a very good thing.

My remorse has to do with the failure of Obama and his people to understand that when they came in, they were inheriting an either-or situation; either they went to the mat with the assholes whom had nearly ruined the country and finished the job of consigning them to the political shithouse, or they would rise up on the residue of the problems they had created, and of Obama’s “bipartisan” willingness to do so very little about them, with so much clout, and re-impose their wretched world-view on the country again. And that is what’s happened.

I don’t know how he can change that now. I don’t know if he really has the fire in his belly to even seriously try, but any compromises he makes with the republicans are, I think, unlikely to be more than the old thing of re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

I hope I’m wrong.

You know what Barry always says; he’s willing to listen to anyone if they have a better idea. Especially if he’s pretty down with the idea himself.

Honeymoon over. Now back to the reality of Barry the blue dog Wall Street shill.

Unlike 2008, this time Wall Street spent more money than they gave him trying to unseat him. But it may be over-optimistic to think that this will make a difference.

Knut is right. If all the democrats have to show for the next four years is enhancing the prospects of the 1%, we’ll look like the Whigs in 1860.

On a specific note, I was thinking that the one problem Obama has is to get people BELIEVING That things are really improving. One way to do it would be to do things to force gas prices down. It might be cosmetic, and there’s the downside of more pollution, but we LOVE to get in our cars and trucks and move around.

Gas near me, in Myrtle Beach, at the Lowe’s Grocery Store Station, is $3.06. Why not just go ahead and release a bit of the federal reserves and drive that down below $2.00 a gallon? It would also mean a little more disposable income for poor and middle-class americans. Optimism these days is hard to come by. A little might go a long way, and it would make him look “presidential”…something that he dearly needs to happen.

Just sayin’…

Heh.

Adjusted for inflation, gas is the same price as it was in 1981.

Sorry. I meant, of course, below $3.00 a gallon.

Below $2.00 a gallon would be unbelievable.

But have wages also “inflated”? :o)

The Democrats have to muster the nerve to go over the cliff (slope). Or else tell Boehner, “You can beg better than that!”

My interpretation:

“Does the increased revenue come from government taking a larger share of what the American people (read: the super-rich folks who just squandered a billion in the recent election) earn through higher tax rates (read: increasing tax rates, by a few percentage points on our lords and masters, to whom we must go crawling back, almost immediately, and beg for more money)? Or does it come as a byproduct of growing our economy (lower tax rates at the top = prosperity and ponies for everyone), energized by a simpler (lower rates for the rich), cleaner (lower rates for the rich), fairer (lower rates for the rich) tax code, with fewer loopholes and lower rates for all (especially for the super-rich, who have become obscenely wealthy over the past 30 years)?”

Gee. I can’t wait for Obama to feign compromise to 90% of Boehner’s plan and then blame the sh*tty outcome on the Republicans. Just another reason the election was a sham. At least I know what to expect this time around with Obama. No mystery here.