GoldbergBlog

Obama Didn’t Ask, But I’ll Tell Him He Failed on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

So Obama was already 0 for 1 in this lame duck session by capitulating on the tax cuts (and according to Paul Krugman, he’s most likely created his own political defeat in 2012 because he doesn’t know how calendars work), and now it looks like he’s failed on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

Obama hemmed and hawed about how he couldn’t let the courts make this decision.  It had to be done through Congress.  Well, this is what happens when you put it in the hands of your Congress–nothing.  Harry Reid’s leadership in the Senate has been about as effective as a wet fart and Obama has shown once again that he’s not willing to lead on tough issues.  What could have been a victory on a social issue and the closing of a sorry chapter from the Clinton administration has now become yet another of Obama’s many defeats.

So now that DADT repeal has failed to pass in Congress, what is Obama going to do about it?  I’m sure he’ll have plenty of lip service.  It’s a shame he doesn’t have a fraction of the dedication of the proud gay and lesbian Americans who want to openly go into military service.

Of course, I can’t lay all the blame at Obama’s feet.  Republicans are evil.  They just are.  It’s institutional bigotry and there’s no good reason why gays can’t openly serve.  We’ve done studies.  The leaders of the military say they can make it happen.  And yet we still can’t repeal an evil law that hurts our defensive capabilities.  Disgusting.

Once again, we see that it doesn’t matter if you vote Democrat because the Republicans always win.

So Much for Obama

Well, Obama caved on tax cuts.  The Republicans saw that taking hostages worked and they’ll be sure to do it again.  At first, I was willing to let Obama’s capitulation slide because he did get unemployment benefits and strongly-needed economic stimulus out of the deal.  But Republicans got a two-year extension of benefits for the wealthy while the poor only got 13 months of benefits.  When that clock runs out in January 2012, do you think they’ll re-up?  And when the tax breaks run out at the end of 2012, will anyone believe Obama when he says that this time, he’ll make sure the wealthy don’t send us further into debt?

Earlier this year, my dad told me that he agreed with Christopher Hitchens’ assessment that Obama was a weak man.  I thought that was a strong insult.  Disappointing?  Sure.  But weak?  There’s no beating that character flaw.  Irritating naivety I can stomach, but weakness from a leader is unacceptable.  But as the year has gone on, I’ve come to agree with that assessment.  Where does Obama stand on the issues?  Wherever Republicans tell him to.  For a guy who ran such a smart campaign, he’s run an awfully stupid White House.

The line from Obama that really irked me was this:

“So, sympathetic as I am with those who prefer a fight over compromise, as much as the political wisdom may dictate fighting over solving problems, it would be the wrong thing to do.”

Really?  What problem did you solve, you gigantic chump?  One problem resurfaces in 13 months, the other surfaces in two years.  You’ve made no explanation of how you plan to pay for either.  I don’t mind compromises.  I mind weak compromises like the one you just made.  This is a president who doesn’t understand that sometimes in order to solve a problem, you need to fight.

The other big issue I was looking at during this lame duck session is the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.  However, since the Republicans have made clear that they don’t want to repeal it, it won’t happen.  Maybe Obama can get one of his “compromises” and the result will be that bisexuals will get to serve openly in ten years.

Obama’s a failed President.  The midterms should have been a wake-up call, but he’s made it clear he’ll never wake up.  I thought I was getting a real Democratic President who could forge a new path after the disastrous Bush administration.  I was wrong.

Obama’s Crucible

As Congress enters its lame duck session, I’m finally at my last straw with Obama.  It’s not that news about him likely caving to Republican demands about extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans is unexpected.  It’s that it’s so stupid he should cave to it.  I thought I elected a savvy politician, but it looks like Obama’s not only weak, but really stupid.  This White House is terrible at negotiating and they’re too inept to realize when they hold leverage.

The Republicans are threatening to be Republicans and block all legislation if Obama doesn’t cave on the tax cut for the wealthiest Americans.  The “compromise” is punting for two years, letting the deficit pile up while rich people get a bonus that doesn’t help the country.  The smart political play is to let the tax cuts expire and then introduce the Obama Tax Cuts, which are the same except they don’t apply to rich people.  Then Republicans are on the defensive about why they’re holding up tax cuts for the American people.

The counter-argument is that Obama needs Republicans to not block all the other important legislation and that caving on the tax cuts will allow other pressing issues like New START, DADT, etc. to come the floor.  But that just lets Republicans know that taking Obama’s agenda hostage works.  And there’s no guarantee that once Obama gives Republicans what they want, they’ll honor their end of the agreement.

If one thing has become painfully clear over the past few years, it’s that the Senate is broken and if Obama really wanted to be a leader he would make reforming it his issue.  But Obama looks like he wants to be anything but a leader.  He wants to be the good, old-fashioned community organizer who gets everybody into the room so they can come to a sensible agreement.  That’s cute and I don’t mind that he tried doing it at the start of his Presidency.  But it’s been almost two years and he needs to wake the fuck up.  Politics is a blood sport and he’s almost been exsanguinated.

Things are only going to get more difficult with a Republican-controlled House, so it’s time to make a stand.  It’s time to rally the congresspeople who have nothing to lose and to use some actual political savvy to get somethings accomplished.  I’m basically looking for two things out of this lame duck session:

1) Repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

2) No tax cuts extended for the top wage earners.

If Obama fails on both of these counts, then the 2012 election will be a question of how repulsive does the Republican candidate have to be to make me give Obama a second term of uselessness.

George Bush Does Not Care About Black People and Is Still an Idiot

In his upcoming memoir, George W. Bush says that Kanye West saying “George Bush does not care about black people,” following Katrina was one of the worst moment of his presidency.  Not the devastation of New Orleans or the inept response by his administration, but that a rapper called him on it.  That “was one of the most disgusting moments in my Presidency,” says Bush.  You know what else is disgusting?  Watching your loved ones drown because the President is busy vacationing again.

I’m glad Bush’s memoirs are about to come out because after last night’s Republican victory, I could use a nice reminder that at least that dude is gone.

Hope Less

I owe the President an apology.  As someone who wanted serious, progressive change in this country, I was dissatisfied with the weak sauce policies of Obama and his administration.  Apparently, I should shut my mouth and be happy with what I get and if I don’t vote Democrat in 2010, then I obviously “wasn’t serious in the first place.”  That’s what Obama said in a recent interview in Rolling Stone.  Here’s the quote [via the AP]:

“People need to shake off this lethargy. People need to buck up,” Obama told Rolling Stone in an interview to be published Friday. The president told Democrats that making change happen is hard and “if people now want to take their ball and go home, that tells me folks weren’t serious in the first place.”

Yesterday, Biden also wanted to let me know that I should “stop whining“.  Of course, there’s also Gibbs letting me know that I’m obligated to vote Democrat.  Basically, the message is: We’re doing a good job so stop being an idiot and give us your vote.

In his interview with Rolling Stone, Obama says:

I keep in my pocket a checklist of the promises I made during the campaign, and here I am, halfway through my first term, and we’ve probably accomplished 70 percent of the things that we said we were going to do — and by the way, I’ve got two years left to finish the rest of the list, at minimum. So I think that it is very important for Democrats to take pride in what we’ve accomplished.

I wonder if his checklist includes:

- Never honestly fight for the public option

- Give away everything to the pharmaceutical companies and get nothing in return

- Lie to the American people and say that most of the BP oil spill was cleaned up

- Throw Shirley Sherrod under the bus as fast as humanly possible

- Lose to congress on slam-dunk victories like unemployment extensions, repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and health benefits to 9/11 first responders

- Expand the Bush-era, unconstitutional executive powers with regards to national security

- Pretend the Iraq War is over

- Waste more money on and send more people to die in Afghanistan

If so, then he is doing a bang-up and I apologize for not giving him more credit.

I was going to reluctantly vote Dem in the upcoming election, but now I think I’ll hold on to my vote.  I don’t need to give it to people who are not only ineffective, but who are openly hostile towards their base for the sin of wanting more.  Obama may not think that I’m serious, but it’s him, his administration, and the Democratic party who have been the joke for the past two years.

Banks Are Terrifying

I already knew this, but an article from Huffington Post detailing the financial reform bill makes my blood curl.  Here are some examples:

This time around, Congress bailed out Wall Street, protecting the largest firms from collapse, which enabled them to lobby hard against reform, spending over a million dollars a day.

They spent taxpayer money to make sure they would be able to get taxpayer money again in the future.  That’s like buying a victim buying a gun for a mugger.

The effort suffered from the administration’s hesitation to embrace an agenda that would genuinely remake Wall Street.

The Obama Administration took half-measures when they have the ability to go all the way?  I am shocked.  Shocked to my very core, I say.

The bill creates a consumer financial protection entity over the strenuous objections of the GOP and Wall Street…largely bars banks from trading taxpayer money for their own profit and bans many of the deceptive mortgage lending practices that fueled the housing bubble. [Emphasis mine]

So technically banks can still trade taxpayer money for their own profit and some deceptive mortage lending practices are still allowed.  Good to know that we almost fixed problems that had to be fixed.  Who can complain about that?  It’s not like they half-assed it.  It’s more like they 3/4-assed it.

Perhaps most significantly, the law will limit the total amount of derivatives speculation a single bank can engage in, aimed at preventing a run-up in food or energy prices. In 2008, Goldman Sachs and other swaps traders drove the price of wheat to levels that caused starvation around the globe.

I knew Goldman Sachs was evil, but holy shit.  They caused worldwide starvation and made a profit from it.  It’s one thing to create bubbles that crash an economy, but it’s a special kind of evil causes people to starve to death in order to make money.

Perhaps the biggest disappointment for reformers is that the bill leaves in place the major banks that caused the crisis. The largest banks have grown larger under Obama’s watch. Banks will still be able to speculate in the riskiest kinds of derivatives and invest in hedge funds and private equity funds. Depending on what regulators decide, they may not be required to hold much more capital to protect against losses than before the crisis, since neither a number nor a formula was specified in the bill. They may still continue to lever up their investments, imitating a practice of the fraud-inflated housing boom in which some investment firms used $1 to back up every $30 in investments and bets.

1 million Americans are expected to lose their homes this year.

The unemployment rate was at 9.5% in June.  It’s expected to rise as 700,000 census workers are laid off.  The unemployment rate does not include those who have given up looking for work.

The Senate refuses to extend unemployment benefits.  Republicans couch their argument in the falsehoods that the jobless are lazy and that we can’t risk increasing the deficit (unless it’s for tax cuts).  The purpose of ruining the lives of the unemployed is done so voters believe it’s the party in power that’s the culprit.  This tactic is done so Republicans can get back into power and continue ruining people’s lives.

But at least something called “financial reform” is getting passed.  It has a nice ring to it.

World Cup, My Balls

Everyone seems to be going nuts that the US just scored a last minute goal against Algeria in the World Cup and will advance to the next round.  For the few people in America who follow soccer when it’s not the World Cup, that’s a thrill.  They know the players, they know the game inside and out, and they appreciate the skill involved.  Everyone else saw a ball go in a net, knew we scored a point, and that we won.  USA!  USA!  USA!

Unless we win the World Cup, no one is going to care by the end of the summer.  Soccer will remain a second-tier sport.  Here’s a question for everyone who is going apeshit over the World Cup right now: how many Major League Soccer games have you attended?  Hell, here’s an easier one: how many soccer games, MLS or other, have you watched in the past four years?  If so, was it because nothing else was on television?

We don’t care about soccer.  That’s why we call it “soccer” and every other country refers to it as “futbol” or “football”.  Then they ridicule “American Football” and we don’t give a shit because we like it more than stupid soccer where nothing happens.  Soccer is a slow sport with hardly any drama.  The field is gigantic, you never know when the game is going to end, and it feels like a game takes an eternity as a result.  But other countries love it because it requires a ball and nothing else so they grow up playing the sport.  If you’re an impoverished nation, it’s really the only sport you can play.

So think about Algeria.  Soccer is arguably their most beloved sport.  They were eliminated today by a country that doesn’t really give a shit when it’s not the World Cup.  I hope the USA goes all the way because maybe we’ll care about the game after the tournament is over.  If we don’t win, we’ll behave like spoiled children and act like we didn’t really care anyway.  And the truth is, we don’t.  I hope a country who cares about soccer wins.  In the meantime, US fans who are really into the sport once every four years can blow their vuvuzela’s out their ass (it will still sound the same).

Special Comment: Keep McChrystal

I could not disagree with Olbermann more on this Special Comment.  His argument is that Obama should decline General McChrystal’s resignation because a) It would avoid more flack from the right; and b) it would force McChrystal’s loyalty.  These arguments are as stupid as McChrystal’s decision to do the interview with Rolling Stone in the first place.

First, if we’ve learned anything from the past 18 months of Obama’s presidency, it’s that there is no respite from the right.  They’d hate him if he chose Corn Pops over Honey Smacks.  He can’t win with that crowd and to keep McChrystal, not to even to please the right but to simply avoid their wrath on this issue, is an exercise in futility.

Furthermore, a soldier’s loyalty to his commanding officer shouldn’t be forced.  Olbermann suggests that Obama should keep McChrystal’s resignation in his desk, as if the President somehow needs that slip of paper to accept the general’s resignation or to remind the general of his impudence.  You don’t get to mouth off about your commanding officer. Otherwise, it sends a signal to every soldier that you can disrespect your commanding officer and he should turn the other cheek.

Olbermann compares McChrystal’s criticism of Obama to that of generals under Bush who disagreed with the former President’s strategies and rational for the Iraq War.  But Olbermann misses a key distinction: the generals under Bush weren’t criticizing the President himself, but his decisions.  McChrystal undermined the Commander-in-Chief as an individual.  This wasn’t to save lives or promote a particular battlefield strategy.  It was a snotty remark just like the ones he made about other members of Obama’s administration.

Olbermann makes another poor argument by comparing this situation to Truman’s firing of General MacArthur.  Except McChrystal isn’t MacArthur.  He’s not considered a national hero.  I imagine that most Americans had never heard his name before today, or if they had they forgot five seconds later.

The choice of a general shouldn’t be a political calculation.  It should be what’s best for the troops on the ground.  Olbermann admits that McChrystal isn’t irreplaceable, so replace him.  Get someone who respects the chain of command.  I don’t care that McChrystal feels that way about people in Obama’s administration.  I care that he was stupid enough to tell it to a reporter.  Do we want a guy this dim-witted running what has become the longest war in our nation’s history?

I think Obama should fire McChrystal and here’s why: because if he doesn’t, it’s yet another capitulation on our President’s part.  It’s the same thing he’s done with Republicans, Wall Street, BP, and everyone else who knows that this President doesn’t do retribution.  Obama’s behavior is almost libertarian in the belief that, as one of my college professors put it, “Everything would be nice if people were just nice.”  Well, yeah. No one gives a shit that Obama has a stern reprimand when there’s no action behind it. You’re a conservative Democrat who doesn’t want to extend jobless benefits because you’re a deficit hawk? Well, I guess our country has no choice but to yield to you, the Senator from fucking Nebraska. So let’s make a deal because why should the President of the United States have any real power?

I find Olbermann’s cynical, empty-headed argument to be a painful disappointment. Watch the Special Comment after the jump and judge for yourself.

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A Triumphant Call to Vague Places and Unknown Solutions

59 days after the explosion on BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig and the resulting spill into the gulf coast, Obama addressed the nation from the Oval Office on this crisis.  When The Huffington Post and MSNBC are saying Obama’s speech sucked, you know it sucked.  It was a bad speech that called for commissions and studies, cited statistics without sources, ignored the stalled energy bill in the Senate, and then just went straight for platitudes with not a single specific plan for the future.

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5 Important Things I Learned Tonight at the Conan Show

1.  If you’re planning to take a lot of pictures with your digital camera, make sure the fucking camera battery is charged.

2. If you’re going to shell out cash for a live show, do it up right, and don’t cheap out for a seat that’s so far to the side that you’re cheating yourself out of a better show.  Also, go for the inside aisle seat.

3. I can’t understand people who leave a few minutes before the show is over because they’re trying to beat the traffic.  They want to pay the premium ticket price for a live show because they love the person they’re going to see, but not as much as they love to beat the traffic.

4. I kind of already knew this, but the Fox Theatre has the worst fucking acoustics.  I don’t give a shit if it is an Atlanta landmark.  If you’re a place that gives live performances, and large percentage of what you hear sounds muffled, then you’re a shitty theatre.

5. Don’t go to a show by yourself.  If you can’t find someone when you’re about to buy a ticket, just buy two, and figure out the friend thing later.  Worse comes to worst, you can sell it on Craigslist.

I had a good time tonight, but I would have a had a better time had I known these lessons beforehand.