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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ChinuSFO who wrote (168361)	8/8/2011 4:26:50 PM
From: Suma	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 543997

This is for you and for the eyes of L % S...... Let it never be said that regardless of party affiliation that when someone is wrong who is hurting the party that criticism is not out of the question . I am losing more faith in Obama every day. However what will the Republicans bring up to challenge him ? It may be the better of two sour balls. OR a third party candidate who only ever splits the vote. By Julianne Escobedo Shepherd, AlterNet Posted on August 8, 2011, Printed on August 8, 2011 alternet.org The ruse, it seems, is up for the New York Times, who on Sunday ran one of the most scathing liberal indictments of Barack Obama's presidency since 2008—written by Drew Westen, a progressive professor of psychology at Emory University. Titled " What Happened to Obama?," Westen shows how Obama's failure to address the working class in his inaugural speech fanned out into policy, including a series of decisions made under the guise of "compromise" that have gotten us where we are now. It's incredibly well written, and incredibly damning. To wit: When faced with the greatest economic crisis, the greatest levels of economic inequality, and the greatest levels of corporate influence on politics since the Depression, Barack Obama stared into the eyes of history and chose to avert his gaze. Instead of indicting the people whose recklessness wrecked the economy, he put them in charge of it. He never explained that decision to the public — a failure in storytelling as extraordinary as the failure in judgment behind it. Had the president chosen to bend the arc of history, he would have told the public the story of the destruction wrought by the dismantling of the New Deal regulations that had protected them for more than half a century. He would have offered them a counternarrative of how to fix the problem other than the politics of appeasement, one that emphasized creating economic demand and consumer confidence by putting consumers back to work. He would have had to stare down those who had wrecked the economy, and he would have had to tolerate their hatred if not welcome it. But the arc of his temperament just didn’t bend that far. Westen argues that Obama's oft-cited brilliance at speechwriting isn't all that brilliant after all: that his failure to capture the American imagination, to get us on board with his more progressive policies are what helped lead him into the predicament where the Tea Party is pushing the narrative ever further right. But he doesn't let the Democrats in Congress off the hook, either: To the average American, who was still staring into the abyss, the half-stimulus did nothing but prove that Ronald Reagan was right, that government is the problem. In fact, the average American had no idea what Democrats were trying to accomplish by deficit spending because no one bothered to explain it to them with the repetition and evocative imagery that our brains require to make an idea, particularly a paradoxical one, “stick.” Nor did anyone explain what health care reform was supposed to accomplish (other than the unbelievable and even more uninspiring claim that it would “bend the cost curve”), or why “credit card reform” had led to an increase in the interest rates they were already struggling to pay. Nor did anyone explain why saving the banks was such a priority, when saving the homes the banks were foreclosing didn’t seem to be. All Americans knew, and all they know today, is that they’re still unemployed, they’re still worried about how they’re going to pay their bills at the end of the month and their kids still can’t get a job. And now the Republicans are chipping away at unemployment insurance, and the president is making his usual impotent verbal exhortations after bargaining it away. And: Like most Americans, at this point, I have no idea what Barack Obama — and by extension the party he leads — believes on virtually any issue. So, is it a messaging problem? Westen seems to think so, but he also accuses the Administration of basing decisions on imprecise ideas of "centrism," and plunging average working Americans into the depths of the recession while working to amp its own re-election value. Read it all right here. © 2011 All rights reserved. View this story online at: alternet.org

To: ChinuSFO who wrote (168361)	8/8/2011 6:56:19 PM
From: Cogito	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 543997

>>Obama may not have the power to call Congress back into session.<< He absolutely does have that power. It's explicit in the Constitution. Here. This is Article II, Section 3, of the US Constitution, from the part of the Constitution that describes the President's powers and responsibilities. Emphasis mine, of course: He shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in case of disagreement between them, with respect to the time of adjournment, he may adjourn them to such time as he shall think proper; he shall receive ambassadors and other public ministers; he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed, and shall commission all the officers of the United States. ______ Truman did it in 1948. I believe there have been other instances as well.