Tonight President Obama spoke in front of House Democrats in Williamsburg, VA. Thanks to a heads-up from a diarist at DKos I was able to watch it live on CSPAN. If you missed it, you need to watch it.
This was Obama at his campaign best. He smacked the GOP around, all the while keeping a smile on his face.
Seriously, this is how he wants it to go down? I respect the fact that Andrew Card has served this country. Public service is an honorable and difficult thing and the chief of staff suffers some of the worst hours in the country. But seriously, this is simply absurd!
The Oval Office symbolizes…the Constitution, the hopes and dreams, and I’m going to say democracy. And when you have a dress code in the Supreme Court and a dress code on the floor of the Senate, floor of the House, I think it’s appropriate to have an expectation that there will be a dress code that respects the office of the President.
Last night, national air time that was meant to provide Pres. Obama with a platform to address GOP opposition to his stimulus plan was instead largely diverted to several of his nominees’ failures to pay their taxes. E.J. Dionne reports that this air time was sought due to a growing awareness that the defeated GOP is winning the media battle over his economic initiative (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/article s/2009/02/obama_losing_stimulus_fight_to .html). Obama published an Op-Ed in this same issue of the Washington Post to confront GOP obstructionists. But the stimulus bill has also found plenty opponents on the left.
Instead of arranging for air time and newspaper space, Obama needs to put his economic team into action to support these efforts. Many of us find Obama’s academic background a cause for optimism, and his comfortableness with academics a potential boon to his administration. His economic team is stacked with world-class academic economists. He needs to take them out of their research mode and put their lecture and seminar experience in the field to engage critics on both sides.
I suggest Obama arrange for some conference rooms in the Capital building all day on Mon. He should invite legislators from both houses and include members of the press to sign up for presentations given by professors such as Roehmer and Summers, as well as senior advisors with august credentials such as Paul Volcker. They need to prepare materials for distribution presenting the data that supports both the general architecture of this plan and its particulars and leave plenty of time for questions. If they cannot answer a particular point convincingly, it needs to be addressed further before submission of the final bill.
An academic president who has surrounded himself with top academics in his effort to lead this country and serve the American people needs to use all of the assets associated with the academic approach to our challenges. He needs to use them to research and to teach, to field questions and to persuade. If opponents do not engage, he wins the PR battle. If they do engage and the encounter produces amendments, he makes good on his promise to listen to us. If the academics who make up his economic team prove incapable of explaining their plans, absorbing criticism, and making adjustments, then what’s the point of paying for their credentials?
Now that Daschle is out of the picture, everyone is wondering who Obama will put up for Secretary of Health and Human Services. If it were my choice, I’d go straight to Howard Dean.
Dean is, first of all, a Physician and knows the health field from the inside. Has head of the Democratic Party his 50 State Stratey was a masterpiece of organization and one of the reasons Obama carried so many states that were previously in the Republican Column.
Dean is intelligent, articulate and a real presence when he appears on television or at rallies.
Now, as I understand it, there’s friction between Dean and Rahm Emmanuel that ha to be overcome, but Rahm’s personal crap should not be standing in the way of a real position in the Administration for Dean, who, after all his work, has been really, and insultingly, overlooked.
Under The LobsterScope
You will hear every former President proclaim that the hardest thing to do is to send our fine men and women off to a foreign land to engage in combat. You hear how the POTUS and members of our “fine” congress take every imaginable step before signing off of an act of war.
The President, Senators and House members assure us that our brave men and women of the armed forces have the best equipment in the world and every precaution will be taken to save the lives of United States soldiers…our soldiers.
Our brothers, our sisters, our mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, friends and our countrymen and women.
These citizens, the bravest of the brave, are the heartbeat of our existence, our security and our future. They are willing to give the ultimate sacrifice in the name of righteousness and freedom…their lives.
We as a nation should ensure, in every way possible, that the lives we lose in combat are kept to an absolute minimum no matter the cost. Washington keeps telling us that our troops are given “state-of-art” equipment, with Body Armor topping the list.
If Obama can do it, so can I.
It was pretty damn thoughtless of me to disappear so completely during my personal and professional meltdown. I have a rationalization for it, but I’ll spare you the BS.
You “guys,” (used in the gender neutral sense, Sricki), are my friends, and I’m sorry for letting you down.
Bill O' got ticked off because she called him an a-hole…
Alba wrote in her blog
Before I get to the video, I want to clear some things up that have been bothering me lately. I find it depressing that in the midst of perhaps the most salient time in our country's history, individuals are taking it upon themselves to encourage negativity and stupidity. Last week, Mr. Bill O'Reilly and some really classy sites (i.e.TMZ) insinuated I was dumb by claiming Sweden was a neutral country. I appreciate the fact that he is a news anchor and that gossip sites are inundated with intelligent reporting, but seriously people…it's so sad to me that you think the only neutral country during WWII was Switzerland. Check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden_during_World_War_II if you want to see what I was referring to. I appreciate the name calling and the accurate reporting. Keep it up!!
So what are you doing this cold night? Feel like donating more to the Executives???
Dick Cheney spoke to Politico’s Mike Allen this morning.
From the interview, Dick said:
Obviously I am one who believes it is a tougher world out there, and the United States needs to be not so much loved, as it needs to be respected, and we need to from time to time use military force or all of the resources at our command, in order to defend the nation and defend our friends. Sometimes that requires us to take actions that that, umm generate controversy.
I am not at all sure that’s what the Obama Administration believes. I think there probably are some who actually believe if we just go talk nice to these folks everything is going to be ok. I (audio blip? I assume=don’t) believe the world works that way.
Today President Obama signed into law the new State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) bill. This bill extends healthcare coverage to 4 million uninsured children beyond the original 7 million covered by the program.
As a “downpayment on (his) promise to cover every American” it isn’t a bad start. Those 4 million kids are about 9% of the 45 million uninsured Americans. The bill passed the House overwhelmingly today as it has twice during George Bush’s presidency – the only difference being that it was not vetoed this time.
If we can get that much done in the first fifteen days of this new administration, perhaps we can get more done in the next 1,400.
Out of politeness perhaps, or in search of a cure for insomnia, I’ve been asked several times to write a diary about current UK politics. That would be great if you’re fascinated by the sight of paint drying, grass growing, or traffic lights changing…
But fortunately yesterday, for her first foreign meeting with a European equivalent, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton chose to meet David Miliband, the fresh-faced UK Foreign Secretary and said.
“It is often said the United States and Britain have enjoyed a special relationship. It is certainly special in my mind and one that has proven very productive,”