Panicked by losing Kennedy’s seat to the Repubicans, the Senate told Obama that if he wants to gut Social Security and Medicare, they won’t be joining in:
The Senate has rejected a plan backed by President Barack Obama to create a bipartisan task force to tackle the deficit this year.
The special deficit panel would have attempted to produce a plan combining tax cuts and spending curbs that would have been voted on after the midterm elections. But the plan garnered just 53 votes in the 100-member Senate, not enough because 60 votes were required. Anti-tax Republicans joined with Democrats wary of being railroaded into cutting Social Security and Medicare to reject the idea.
Sometimes elections do have good results. Obama has lost a ton of influence with both the House and Senate, and that’s a good thing, but objectively, his policies stink.
Of course, Barack Obama certainly intends to keep trying:
Advocates of more aggressive steps to address the national debt failed Tuesday in their effort to create a bipartisan commission to press for tax increases and spending cuts, but President Obama now plans to establish a similar panel by executive order in his State of the Union address on Wednesday.
Pathetic. The only President of my adult lifetime I’ve had more contempt for than Obama was Bush Jr.
S Brennan
C’mon Ian,
A little levity…please. For a long time the Obama crowd was able to hide their stupidity behind their college degrees and their self described “creative class” credentials.
But finally, it’s now clear, Obama fans are dumber schmucks than Bush’s bevy of butt heads…huh?
Obama is Bush’s 3rd term
lambert strether
The Oregon results are arguably more important than Coakley.
Ian Welsh
Yes, Lambert, I agree they’re important.
Frank A.
Somehow, I feel that implementing the final deviant details of your own movement’s long term goals (Bush Jr) is less contemptible than promising the citizens that you saw the nefarious nature of the previous regime and would change it. Yet, upon election, you not only defend and continue the most despicable programs of that regime, but you try to play the ultimate role in their game plan (i.e., destroy the safety net for which your party is the champion).
In my mind, that is much more contemptible, treasonous even, than anything the neocons could have accomplished. Obama will be lucky to actually finish his first term, let alone make a second term.
Mad Hemingway
He’s governing like a one-termer so he can get on with his $1.2M / year pension and the book & speaking deals for some real dough. Truth is Bozorama never had to face re-election outside of his own Chicago district, so the only thing that mattered was getting elected. He’s Sales & Marketing, not delivery.
I also found Bob Cesca’s piece funny. He’s got a man-crush on Barack. A kissy, smoochy face man crush.
John J Sears
I have more contempt for Obama than Bush, oddly. Bush was a bizarre sort of tragic figure, too stupid, too ignorant, possibly brain-damaged (from the many years of drug and alcohol abuse, most of which he admitted anyway). I could hate him, but intellectually, I was never sure how much to *blame* him. He was the oddest thing, a dry-drunk, Ivy League legacy/charity case who was handed everything he ever had, one bit a time, by a family that seemed to desperately hope one day he’d stop fucking it all up. The difference in his case was how much the Bush family had to give.
Obama, on the other hand? He’s an idiot, but not for lack of functional neurons. With him, I think it’s all ideology and petty psychological screwups. He has to know what it’s like to be poor, because he was. He has to know what it’s like to be an outsider, because he was one. He damn well should know how dangerous the Old Boys Big Money club is, because he is not, nor ever will be a member, no matter how much he sucks up to them. I’ve always thought Obama’s problem is that he has some really glaring abandonment/daddy issues, and so he’ll latch on to any convenient authority figure. He also can’t stand the adults around him fighting, because if they fight, someone will abandon him again, and so he seeks consensus everywhere, even with madmen and lunatics. I’m not sure he believes anything, really, except whatever plan is, in his estimation, most likely to stop the arguing.
And he really needs to believe in that, with all his heart and soul.
anonymous
Yep, three more years of this guy seems like a LOOONGG time. It seems like even the Obamabots’ amazement at actually accomplishing the election of a black man seems to have been relegated to the trash bin when all “consolation prizes” end up.
anonymous
Obama was poor? I thought he was raised by his Hawaiian (by way of Kansas) banker grandparents who sent him to Columbia, and before that he lived in Indonesia with his stepfather and went to a private school there too. Maybe my details are off, but still… I recognize he wasn’t rich by Bush standards, but by the standards of most Americans his upbringing was probably upper middle class. And by the standards of most African Americans it would probably seem very privileged.
S Brennan
“He has to know what it’s like to be poor, because he was.”
Amazing if you tell a big lie long and hard…it sticks.
Obama grew up wealthy, went to the most expensive private high school in Hawaii with the wealthiest kids for pals. On a whim he goes back to law school…uhm.
This one of Obama’s many lies…even Goebbels couldn’t keep up with this fella.
State of the Nation…Pathetic
S Brennan
John, both his parents rejected him. The mother rejecting him is something he has in common with most sociopaths.
John J Sears
Well, ok. I don’t remember details too much on how poor he was, exactly. Sorry. I still stand by the rest of it though.
Celsius 233
lambert strether;
The Oregon results are arguably more important than Coakley.
=================================
Yes, agreed; but don’t forget; Oregon had one of the best republican, or any other, governors ever; the late Great Tom McCall. That guy can ride shotgun on my stagecoach any day.
Celsius 233
Lest I be mis-understood; I don’t give a toss about party or affiliation; only agenda!
Agenda is everything; the rest is just bullshit!
jo6pac
bipartisan task force
Yep, this has worked so well in the past that I’m sure we’ll get some ideas on how to finish off the citizens of Amerika.
Cujo359
Obama’s motto seems to be “Do the wrong thing, with extreme prejudice.”
S Brennan
Compare & contrast:
1] Mr Obama announced $8bn in grants for high-speed rail developments, ignoring the advice of transportation experts and high-speed rail advocates who said the best way would be to concentrate on two or three grants large enough to get a single high-speed line up and running.
2] This year China will invest $50bn in its new high-speed passenger rail system this year. China will spend 560bn on the required infrastructure improvements.
3] Spain plans to spend $140bn at 14 billion a year.
4] Last year, the US committed over 1,000 Billion to financial entities, who in turn gave out a 140 billion bonuses to CEO’s.
invisible
I hate football but the worse part is that I now hate Charlie Brown and Lucy.
Such is the way of abuse.
jo6pac
1] Mr Obama announced $8bn in grants for high-speed rail developments, ignoring the advice of transportation experts and high-speed rail advocates who said the best way would be to concentrate on two or three grants large enough to get a single high-speed line up and running.
Thanks for pointing this out, Calif. will get 2 billion of this and all it will buy is another study done by a major contributor.
Harold Slatore
Here’s a little poem I wrote. I call it “SOTU” and it goes like this:
Pretty pretty words.
Battered wives love pretty words.
Pretty words.
Jeff W
In looking into that comment a little more, I found this [emphasis added, links in original]:
The piece I’m quoting from gives a bit of context:
And somehow that’s not in the equation in a stimulus package. Yeah, Ian, saying President Obama’s policies “stink” is almost too generous; to me, they constitute a form of political malfeasance.
Lex
But if we spent hundreds of billions to build a high-speed rail network, then there wouldn’t be enough money for the DoD to buy the stuff to blow up other people’s high-speed rail networks.
In other news, India is working towards manned space flight and the Obama administration has decided that we’ll no longer pursue manned flights to the moon again. (This guy has a strange list of priorities for which Bush administration policies get overturned.)
But hell, who needs high-speed rail anyhow; that shit’s for commies and socialists. We’ve got “crossover” vehicles to get us from point A to point B. They have the same seating capacity as a passenger car but are classed as a “truck” so that the won’t have to meet passenger car fuel efficiency standards.
Gotta love American priorities….
DWCG
Obama is the embodiment of the “all-hat no-cattle” politics that has put America on it’s current collision course.
The paltry $13B for HSR is just another way for Obama to be about the future without ever actually being about it.
I guess when you run a campaign on “HOPE” and “CHANGE” and absolutely no vision for the future except “ending partisanship” this is what you get.
The sad part is there is really no one on the bench ready to lead. Not in a primary in 2012 or 2016. We’re so fucked.
lambert strether
jo6pac:
That’s the feature. Where’s the bug?
lambert strether
DWCG:
I’m with whoever said agenda is everything and there’s somebody out there working it; “creative destruction” really is true. The destruction is tremendous and visible, but the creativity is also tremendous, just not yet visible. It’s clear to anybody who pays the slightest degree of attention — that is, not just people online who type, not me — that the system is rigged for a few and broken for most. That’s opportunity. The fact of “no bench” shows the scale of it. Somebody is going to seize that opportunity, and before 2o12. We have to hope they’re equal to it, and their agenda represents the better angels of our nature.
Lex
“Somebody is going to seize that opportunity, and before 2o12. We have to hope they’re equal to it, and their agenda represents the better angels of our nature.”
Unfortunately, the conditions which we’re now experience and which are likely to get worse are the ideal breeding ground for the worst aspects of human, political nature. That’s what the political leadership on both sides of the aisle is unable to see because of its narrow field of view and self-imposed blinders. It’s particularly true of the Right, which is fostering the kind of angry populism likely to come back and bite it hard.
It could be argued that some in the mainstream political Right will benefit from and be able to guide populism cum fascism and totalitarianism. But i’m not so sure. The historical record suggests that purges generally follow revolutions. The people most organized and ready to seize that opportunity are scary people…the type who want to actively bring about the Rapture. They’ve got masses already and will surely attract more with simplistic solutions promised in the divine future for people dislocated by economic turmoil.
Bb
Now may be the time to consider starting a 3rd party, specifically the “Progressive Party”. If the PP were to carry through with all the promises that were the campaigned on (transparency, helping the average joe, etc.). Add to this the understanding that reelection is not the priority, but that helping people is the priority, and maybe it’s own success will lead to reelection. The point being that it is the party for the advancement of the American people, first and foremost, and that it’s actions will be seen by all – no hidden agenda.
Food for thought.
tsisageya
China:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100130/ap_on_re_as/as_china_us_taiwan_arms_sales
Fascinating.