what are barack obama's flaws?

"Republican revolt" averted, whew

he's Cheney

ohh

http://images.wikia.com/wikiality/images/6/6e/Evilcheney.jpg

well, you know

http://politics.salon.com/2011/09/30/awlaki_6/singleton/

i don't know how gradually it happened, or whether it was always this way, but the subject lines of e-mails sent from the democrats/barackobama.com have become indistinguishable from maudlin, spurned post-break-up e-mails

Wish the top of this thread read "What are Barack Obama's Flaws?", followed by "See all 1923 of them."

i don't know how gradually it happened, or whether it was always this way, but the subject lines of e-mails sent from the democrats/barackobama.com have become indistinguishable from maudlin, spurned post-break-up e-mails

plz post examples! are they like "I Know We Can Try"?

I Don't Know What to Do with My Bombs

dying

Jim Messina, BarackObama.com It doesn't need to be this way

Jim Messina, BarackObama.com How this dinner thing works

Jim Messina, BarackObama.com Here's the story

"how this dinner thing works" actually made me lol

open the email & it's just http://images.mirror.co.uk/upl/m4/jan2009/6/0/CA6C33D3-E6A4-B0C1-C7DEDDF9319709BE.jpg

http://www.google.co.uk/search?gcx=w&q=barack+obama+eating&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&biw=1366&bih=677

barack obama eating a v rewarding image search fwiw

Shield of Bankers:

http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/003568.html

there's enough nonsense in the book to not really take anything in it seriously

rly? have been planning to read it.

He's gone too far.

A succinct summary.

How would you have reacted in 2008 if any Republican ran promising to do the following?

(1) Codify indefinite detention into law; (2) draw up a secret kill list of people, including American citizens, to assassinate without due process; (3) proceed with warrantless spying on American citizens; (4) prosecute Bush-era whistleblowers for violating state secrets; (5) reinterpret the War Powers Resolution such that entering a war of choice without a Congressional declaration is permissible; (6) enter and prosecute such a war; (7) institutionalize naked scanners and intrusive full body pat-downs in major American airports; (8) oversee a planned expansion of TSA so that its agents are already beginning to patrol American highways, train stations, and bus depots; (9) wage an undeclared drone war on numerous Muslim countries that delegates to the CIA the final call about some strikes that put civilians in jeopardy; (10) invoke the state-secrets privilege to dismiss lawsuits brought by civil-liberties organizations on dubious technicalities rather than litigating them on the merits; (11) preside over federal raids on medical marijuana dispensaries; (12) attempt to negotiate an extension of American troops in Iraq beyond 2011 (an effort that thankfully failed); (14) reauthorize the Patriot Act; (13) and select an economic team mostly made up of former and future financial executives from Wall Street firms that played major roles in the financial crisis.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/01/dear-andrew-sullivan-why-focus-on-obamas-dumbest-critics/251528/

Visiting Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom on the same day my parents do.

all is forgiven, he sang one Al Green line at the Apollo

fuck this country with a chainsaw

^kind of poetic

Hey guys, there's a lovely year-old vid on YouTube of Newt Gingrich explaining why we need an "all of the above" energy policy.

The More You Know.jpg

lHigh marks for SOTU.

we know the entertainment skills are high, so rong thread

Thirty-six hours later, I'm still getting my head around this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZooVI_ksU6I

anyone read Ryan Lizza's article on Obama's first few months?

At George Will’s house, Obama impressed his companions. He got a big laugh when he teased David Brooks, a Times columnist who is a less orthodox conservative than the others, by asking him, “What are you doing here?” Kudlow said that the tone of the dinner was essentially “We’re going to disagree, but we wish you well.” As the President-elect departed, Rich Lowry grabbed Obama’s hand and said softly, “Sir, I’ll be praying for you.”

I see the spilled-milk video I posted yesterday has been removed. A thousand of the country's top comics banded together, bought YouTube, and took it down.

Looking forward to the Lizza article. I remember the dinner. Another time, another planet.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1969/12/obama-explained/8874/?single_page=true

so who's read it?

it seemed to have an awful lot of... probity.

What have we learned about Barack Obama’s particular versions of the weaknesses every president brings to office? The diagnoses I heard, and have myself observed, fall into four main categories:

Inexperience: that Obama’s own lack of executive experience left him reliant on the instincts and institutional memory of others—and since so many of his appointees came from the Clinton administration, he was also vulnerable to ’90s-vintage groupthink among them. This was particularly true, as we’ll see, during his response to the economic crisis in his first year in office, and then during his showdowns with Congress after Tea Party–inspired Republicans regained control of the House.

Coldness: that what looks serene in public can seem distant and aloof in his private dealings and negotiations.

Complacency about talent: that the disciplined excellence he demands of himself—in physical fitness and appearance, in literary polish of his speeches, in unvarying control of his mood and public presentation—has not extended to demands for a comparably excellent supporting staff.

Symbolic mismatch: that Obama’s personal achievement in rising to the presidency betokened, for much of the electorate, far more sweeping ambitions for political change than Obama the incrementalist operator ever had in mind.

You could write a treatise on each of these, as scholars undoubtedly will. Here is the sort of material you would use in the discussion.

About inexperience: “The key to everything is that he was a first-term senator, and one who began running for the presidency in the second year of his first term,” Gary Hart told me. “Governors have better odds of becoming president, but the Senate can be an ideal place to meet … the new thinkers, hear about things and ideas that are over the horizon, and develop your own network of people you trust and will draw from. Because he began running so quickly, that is something he had little chance to do.”

Haven't read it yet, plan to, but I think the short version is: if he wins in November, his first term will retroactively be deemed a success, if he loses, it'll be downgraded even more.

"betokened"

But here is a representative story, which I heard several times: Just before the midterm elections, which undid then-Representative Rahm Emanuel’s achievement of leading a Democratic takeover of the House in 2006, Emanuel announced that he was leaving as White House chief of staff to run for mayor of Chicago. Shortly after William Daley, himself the son and brother of Chicago mayors, succeeded Emanuel in the White House, he came to Obama with his initial report. You are reeling, he said—stating the obvious after the Republican surge. Part of the problem is that the team around you is not good enough. To raise your game, you have to surround yourself with the best people available. There have to be changes.

Obama thought about it, and reportedly called Daley back in a few days later. “I like my team,” he said. “I am comfortable with who I have around me. Just so there’s no miscommunication, I’m saying that I like this team.” (The White House declined to comment on the episode.)

“The people he is most ‘comfortable’ with have the same limits of experience he does,” a veteran political figure told me. “An emotional reliance on people who are good people, and smart, but simply not A-plus players—it’s a limit.” These discussions often revolve around the central role of Valerie Jarrett in the Obamas’ professional and social lives. Her supporters say that she is the one friend they can truly trust; her detractors say that her omnipresence illustrates the narrowness of the president’s contacts.

Martin Sheen has some things to say to progressives.

Today, however, Sheen finds himself frustrated with fellow progressives over their disappointment that Barack Obama’s real presidency hasn’t matched the heights of his imaginary one.

“It’s unrealistic,” Sheen told The Huffington Post Canada in a backroom at Montreal’s Theatre St-Denis after speaking at Free the Children’s latest We Day youth rally. “I wonder how many of those progressives are black? How many of those progressives understand historically what happened?

“There’s one face in that crowd that night in Lincoln Park that was the expression of absolute miraculous reality when Barack Obama took the stage with his family as president-elect. Did you see that night when they showed Jesse Jackson?” he asked, mentioning the civil rights icon who spoke earlier at the same event. “I wonder how disappointed Jesse is with Barack Obama?”

Sheen dismissed the complaint from the left that Obama has failed to match the intense umbrage of his Republican opponents. “People say he ought to start getting mad and start yelling at these people,” Sheen said. “He didn’t get here by showing an angry man; this is a very important job. The whole world is watching every move, listening to nuance that he breathes in public.”

Via Sullivan via someone else, the future radical begins organizing:

http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a15/NLinStPaul/Obama_strike.jpg

“It’s unrealistic,” Sheen told The Huffington Post Canada in a backroom at Montreal’s Theatre St-Denis after speaking at Free the Children’s latest We Day youth rally. “I wonder how many of those progressives are black? How many of those progressives understand historically what happened?

“There’s one face in that crowd that night in Lincoln Park that was the expression of absolute miraculous reality when Barack Obama took the stage with his family as president-elect. Did you see that night when they showed Jesse Jackson?” he asked, mentioning the civil rights icon who spoke earlier at the same event. “I wonder how disappointed Jesse is with Barack Obama?”

kind of hate this attitude, tbh. as though the mere fact of barack obama's race should silence all criticism of his presidency. something creepily quasi-racist in the implications.

“There’s one face in that crowd that night in Lincoln Park that was the expression of absolute miraculous reality when Barack Obama took the stage with his family as president-elect.

I don't know what Jesse Jackson was doing in Lincoln Park but Obama was in Grant Park that night.

“I wonder how many of those progressives are black? How many of those progressives understand historically what happened?"

Cornel West, Tavis Smiley and Adolph Reed (who called bullshit on Obama back in the mid-1990s) have progressive credentials at least as impressive as martin sheen's and none of them are enamored of President Change-We-Can-Believe-In. (whatever one makes of their critiques of Obama -- or themselves, for that matter -- the point is still that they're black, progressive and critical of Obama.)

jesse jackson's actually been moderately critical of obama.

We blacks were the first people embracing Obama, long before the people at expensive fundraisers were supporting him.

I don't think that's quite right--pretty sure Hillary still had the clear majority of black support before Iowa. Which I think I understand; it took Iowa to make it clear that Obama could win.

In some way...Bill Clinton had certain freedoms to address blacks and their issues because he was a white president. Obama, to the contrary, has to endure insults like no other previous president. Look at the coded language the Right is using against President Barack Obama. Openly calling him a liar in Congress, saying he is 'not a Christian, he was not born here, he is not one of us.' That makes addressing such issues trickier for the first African-American in the White House.

I don't bother saying so anymore, and I'm sure I'll regret saying so now, but I think that's exactly right. That's not at all to say that Obama is beyond criticism, or to disagree with contenderizer's post just above. I just wonder if his harshest critics on here bother factoring that in. It's like it's passe to even talk about it.

i agree, clemenza, and i do try to factor that in. IRL, i do try to combat the vile racially-tinged stuff that i hear (some of which isn't even all that well "coded"). that said, i don't see how that should stop anyone who objects to his Administration's abysmal civil liberties record or too-close ties to Wall Street from raising such objections.

That's fair.

Jonathan Chait of all people synopsizes last week's WaPo story about debt negotiations.

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/05/barack-obamas-old-girlfriends-get-dishy.html

I haven’t read “The Waste Land” for a year, and I never did bother to check all the footnotes. But I will hazard these statements — Eliot contains the same ecstatic vision which runs from Münzer to Yeats. However, he retains a grounding in the social reality/order of his time. Facing what he perceives as a choice between ecstatic chaos and lifeless mechanistic order, he accedes to maintaining a separation of asexual purity and brutal sexual reality. And he wears a stoical face before this. Read his essay on Tradition and the Individual Talent, as well as Four Quartets, when he’s less concerned with depicting moribund Europe, to catch a sense of what I speak. Remember how I said there’s a certain kind of conservatism which I respect more than bourgeois liberalism — Eliot is of this type. Of course, the dichotomy he maintains is reactionary, but it’s due to a deep fatalism, not ignorance. (Counter him with Yeats or Pound, who, arising from the same milieu, opted to support Hitler and Mussolini.) And this fatalism is born out of the relation between fertility and death, which I touched on in my last letter — life feeds on itself. A fatalism I share with the western tradition at times. You seem surprised at Eliot’s irreconcilable ambivalence; don’t you share this ambivalence yourself, Alex?

The full story.

I got a hard-on reading that passage, I admit.

man

was that written by buddy glass?