So Obama voters....

[packinpatland]

Why can't she just agree to not take a salary, if this is an issue?

[MJZiggy]

If the requirement is to stop corrupt people from giving a position a raise and then taking said position to get the raise, then that seems like a suitable remedy and considering that it's already been used twice, I don't see the issue...

[Partial]

There go those Dems again.. violating the constitution and acting inappropriately yet again. Who elects these yahoos?

[sheepshead]

I have a bar of soap that says you should chose different words.

ok, I do throw that phrase around a lot--sorry.

[MJZiggy]

There go those Dems again.. violating the constitution and acting inappropriately yet again. Who elects these yahoos?

The majority of Americans. You do realize that the Obama transition has a 78% approval rating...You're kinda pissing in the wind here.

[GrnBay007]

You're kinda pissing in the wind here.

LOL ....ick!!

[MJZiggy]

That's the idea...

[bobblehead]

It was 18 million RG.
And......think this has any merit?

http://blog.thehill.com/2008/12/03/h...tary-of-state/

this has happened before, they simply change the rules to get around it. Not a party thing either, both sides do it. They will simply change the salary of her present situation or some shit like that...already heard this discussed on talk radio...yes right wing, but they openly admitted the republicans do it too.

[MadScientist]

It was 18 million RG.
And......think this has any merit?

http://blog.thehill.com/2008/12/03/h...tary-of-state/

this has happened before, they simply change the rules to get around it. Not a party thing either, both sides do it. They will simply change the salary of her present situation or some shit like that...already heard this discussed on talk radio...yes right wing, but they openly admitted the republicans do it too.

It's a reasonable solution to drop the salary back down, but I will not be the least bit surprised if there is a court challenge to this going with the idea that the Regan interpretation is the correct one. I wonder if there is a court case, will the defense argue that a cost of living raise isn't really an increase in compensation.

[MJZiggy]

That would be an interesting issue. I don't see too many people making too much of a fuss because there is a (please note, Partial) bipartisan precedent.

I don't think the cost of living argument should win as that becomes a slippery slope in defining cost of living--especially in a deflationary economy.

[retailguy]

It was 18 million RG.
And......think this has any merit?

http://blog.thehill.com/2008/12/03/h...tary-of-state/

Does it have merit? Sure. Will it matter? No. This situation really speaks to the lack of ethics on both sides of the aisle.

[LL2]

It appears many liberals already feel like they are getting the shaft and feel like he is reversing on his campaign promises. I think it's funny, but I do think Obama is being smart in some of his moves.

Liberals voice concerns about Obama
Carol E. Lee, Nia-Malika Henderson Carol E. Lee, Nia-malika Henderson
Mon Dec 8, 4:22 am ET

Liberals are growing increasingly nervous – and some just flat-out angry – that President-elect Barack Obama seems to be stiffing them on Cabinet jobs and policy choices.

Obama has reversed pledges to immediately repeal tax cuts for the wealthy and take on Big Oil. He’s hedged his call for a quick drawdown in Iraq. And he’s stocking his White House with anything but stalwarts of the left.

Now some are shedding a reluctance to puncture the liberal euphoria at being rid of President George W. Bush to say, in effect, that the new boss looks like the old boss.

“He has confirmed what our suspicions were by surrounding himself with a centrist to right cabinet. But we do hope that before it's all over we can get at least one authentic progressive appointment,” said Tim Carpenter, national director of the Progressive Democrats of America.

OpenLeft blogger Chris Bowers went so far as to issue this plaintive plea: “Isn't there ever a point when we can get an actual Democratic administration?”

Even supporters make clear they’re on the lookout for backsliding. “There’s a concern that he keep his basic promises and people are going to watch him,” said Roger Hickey, a co-founder of Campaign for America’s Future.

Obama insists he hasn’t abandoned the goals that made him feel to some like a liberal savior. But the left’s bill of particulars against Obama is long, and growing.

Obama drew rousing applause at campaign events when he vowed to tax the windfall profits of oil companies. As president-elect, Obama says he won’t enact the tax.

Obama’s pledge to repeal the Bush tax cuts and redistribute that money to the middle class made him a hero among Democrats who said the cuts favored the wealthy. But now he’s struck a more cautious stance on rolling back tax cuts for people making over $250,000 a year, signaling he’ll merely let them expire as scheduled at the end of 2010.

Obama’s post-election rhetoric on Iraq and choices for national security team have some liberal Democrats even more perplexed. As a candidate, Obama defined and separated himself from his challengers by highlighting his opposition to the war in Iraq from the start. He promised to begin to end the war on his first day in office.

Now Obama’s says that on his first day in office he will begin to “design a plan for a responsible drawdown,” as he told NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday. Obama has also filled his national security positions with supporters of the Iraq war: Sen. Hillary Clinton, who voted to authorize force in Iraq, as his secretary of state; and President George W. Bush’s defense secretary, Robert Gates, continuing in the same role.

The central premise of the left’s criticism is direct – don’t bite the hand that feeds, Mr. President-elect. The Internet that helped him so much during the election is lighting up with irritation and critiques.

“There don't seem to be any liberals in Obama's cabinet,” writes John Aravosis, the editor of Americablog.com. “What does all of this mean for Obama's policies, and just as important, Obama Supreme Court announcements?”

“Actually, it reminds me a bit of the campaign, at least the beginning and the middle, when the Obama campaign didn't seem particularly interested in reaching out to progressives,” Aravosis continues. “Once they realized that in order to win they needed to marshal everyone on their side, the reaching out began. I hope we're not seeing a similar ‘we can do it alone’ approach in the transition team.”

This isn’t the first liberal letdown over Obama, who promptly angered the left after winning the Democratic primary by announcing he backed a compromise that would allow warrantless wiretapping on U.S. soil to continue.



Now it’s Obama’s Cabinet moves that are drawing the most fire. It’s not just that he’s picked Clinton and Gates. It’s that liberal Democrats say they’re hard-pressed to find one of their own on Obama’s team so far – particularly on the economic side, where people like Tim Geithner and Lawrence Summers are hardly viewed as pro-labor.

“At his announcement of an economic team there was no secretary of labor. If you don’t think the labor secretary is on the same level as treasury secretary, that gives me pause,” said Jonathan Tasini, who runs the website workinglife.org. “The president-elect wouldn't be president-elect without labor."

During the campaign Obama gained labor support by saying he favored legislation that would make it easier for unions to form inside companies. The “card check” bill would get rid of a secret-ballot method of voting to form a union and replace it with a system that would require companies to recognize unions simply if a majority of workers signed cards saying they want one. Obama still supports that legislation, aides say – but union leaders are worried that he no longer talks it up much as president-elect.

“It's complicated,” said Tasini, who challenged Clinton for Senate in 2006. “On the one hand, the guy hasn't even taken office yet so it's a little hasty to be criticizing him. On the other hand, there is legitimate cause for concern. I think people are still waiting but there is some edginess about this.”

That’s a view that seems to have kept some progressive leaders holding their fire. There are signs of a struggle within the left wing of the Democratic Party about whether it’s just too soon to criticize Obama -- and if there’s really anything to complain about just yet.

Case in point: One of the Campaign for America’s Future blogs commented on Obama’s decision not to tax oil companies’ windfall profits saying, “Between this move and the move to wait to repeal the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, it seems like the Obama team is buying into the right-wing frame that raising any taxes - even those on the richest citizens and wealthiest corporations - is bad for the economy.”

Yet Campaign for America’s Future will be join about 150 progressive organizations, economists and labor groups to release a statement Tuesday in support of a large economic stimulus package like the one Obama has proposed, said Hickey, a co-founder of the group.

“I’ve heard the most grousing about the windfall profits tax, but on the other hand, Obama has committed himself to a stimulus package that makes a down payment on energy efficiency and green jobs,” Hickey said. “The old argument was, here’s how we afford to make these investments – we tax the oil companies’ windfall profits. … The new argument is, in a bad economy that could get worse, we don’t.”

Obama is asking for patience – saying he’s only shifting his stance on some issues because circumstances are shifting.

Aides say he backed off the windfall profits tax because oil prices have
dropped below $80 a barrel. Obama also defended hedging on the Bush tax cuts.

“My economic team right now is examining, do we repeal that through legislation? Do we let it lapse so that, when the Bush tax cuts expire, they're not renewed when it comes to wealthiest Americans?” Obama said on “Meet the Press.” “We don't yet know what the best approach is going to be.”

On Iraq, he says he’s just trying to make sure any U.S. pullout doesn’t ignite “any resurgence of terrorism in Iraq that could threaten our interests.”

Obama has told his supporters to look beyond his appointments, that the change he promised will come from him and that when his administration comes together they will be happy.

“I think that when you ultimately look at what this advisory board looks like, you'll say this is a cross-section of opinion that in some ways reinforces conventional wisdom, in some ways breaks with orthodoxy in all sorts of way,” Obama recently said in response to questions about his appointments during a news conference on the economy.

The leaders of some liberal groups are willing to wait and see.

“He hasn’t had a first day in office,” said John Isaacs, the executive director for Council for Livable World. “To me it’s not as important as who’s there, than what kind of policies they carry out.”

“These aren’t out-and-out liberals on the national security team, but they may be successful implementers of what the Obama national security policy is,” Isaacs added. “We want to see what policies are carried forward, as opposed to appointments.”

Juan Cole, who runs a prominent anti-war blog called Informed Comment, said he worries Obama will get bad advice from Clinton on the Middle East, calling her too pro-Israel and “belligerent” toward Iran. “But overall, my estimation is that he has chosen competence over ideology, and I'm willing to cut him some slack,” Cole said.

Other voices of the left don’t like what they’re seeing so far and aren’t waiting for more before they speak up.

New York Times columnist Frank Rich warned that Obama’s economic team of Summers and Geithner reminded him of John F. Kennedy’s “best and the brightest” team, who blundered in Vietnam despite their blue-chip pedigrees.

David Corn, Washington bureau chief of the liberal magazine Mother Jones, wrote in Sunday’s Washington Post that he is “not yet reaching for a pitchfork.”

But the headline of his op-ed sums up his point about Obama’s Cabinet appointments so far: “This Wasn’t Quite the Change We Envisioned.”

[texaspackerbacker]

We can only hope that Obama is enough of an old-line political hack that he continues to disavow his extreme leftist roots and cast his lot with slightly less extreme leftists like the Clinton machine. Or maybe, from a political standpoint, we should hope that he goes the leftist ideologue route. That would screw up the country more, but it would make his demise a lot more likely in four years.

Whatever else the guy may be, he ain't politically stupid (or at least, he has handlers who aren't). He/they know that when that 78% Ziggy is so proud of start to see the consequences of his leftist CRAP, they are gonna get some severe buyer's remorse. Politically, it's probably more advantageous for Obama to back-stab the extreme liberals who will obviously vote for him again anyway.

As always, though, the huge elephant-in-the-room factor here is security from terrorist hit in America. Obama can screw up just about everything else, foreign and domestic, and America will survive. If he is as bad on security issues as his words and votes say he will be, however, many many Americans will die, and our freedom, prosperity, and world dominance will be in serious jeopardy.

[packinpatland]

Tex, I'm asking an honest question. Give me an honest straight answer.
No left, right, Dem, Rep...........
How are you doing now vs 8 years ago, how's our country doing now vs 8 years ago?

[texaspackerbacker]

Tex, I'm asking an honest question. Give me an honest straight answer.
No left, right, Dem, Rep...........
How are you doing now vs 8 years ago, how's our country doing now vs 8 years ago?

Admittedly, I'm not a typical example. I'm much better off to the extent that I was tied down by that nasty four letter word--work--eight years ago. Now, I am sitting on my ass, having fun consistently, and enjoying life. Nobody I knew was killed in 9/11; My investment is mostly off shore or very secure at home.

I see your point, and yes, there's no getting around the fact that for most people, times have gotten worse during the Bush years--just like there's no getting around the fact that there's no getting around the fact during the Clinton years, things were good for most people.

BUT--there's a reason we conservatives like big buts--in both cases, there were COLOSSAL extenuating circumstances.

Clinton had the Gingrich Congress keeping his tax and spend tendencies in check, as well as the residual effects of the Reagan and Bush I tax cuts. He also had the wonderful technological windfall that led to the dotcom boom--which was overdone, and subsequently was a drag in the early Bush years.

Bush had 9/11--which arguably, was the fault of the Jamie Gorelick "wall" preventing the sharing of intelligence between our agencies--FBI, CIA, etc. If it hadn't been for Bush's tax cuts, the horrendous economic impact of 9/11 would have been infinitely more catastrophic. If Algore had been president, it's no exaggeration at all that we might have been dragged down to the 3rd world status Gore craved for his socialist/environmentalist wacko policies. The War on Terror--including Afghanistan and Iraq also was a costly factor--but justified to anybody who loves America and our freedom, prosperity, and world dominance. I hope that includes you, PIP.

To the extent that Bush himself was to blame, he knuckled under to liberal forces in Congress and seemed overly sensitive to trying to please the sick leftist Bush-hating media--which, of course, would never have acknowledged any good he did regardless. And now we have this economic "crisis" which is coincident, time-wise with the Dems taking over Congress in 2006, and which, I firmly believe, was trumped up by the media to help get Obama elected.

I'd be interested in hearing YOUR comments--as apolitical and unbiased as possible--about if and how and why we are so much worse off by anything that you can blame Bush for.