Time Is Energy

Strike Two

Seeing President Obama capitulate to Republicans and extend the Bush tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires is profoundly upsetting/depressing. He campaigned against EXACTLY THIS! The first strike was escalating the war in Afghanistan. And extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy is strike two. One more strike and I will not volunteer to help with Obama's re-election.

I predict that the compromise(d) package will pass and nothing else of importance to progressives will happen for the next two years. While some good things have happened under President Obama including more support for renewables and withdrawing many troops from Iraq--which turned out to be a non-event (given all the BS about not setting a timetable...), on balance the presidency has been only just better than neutral.

I am saddened to admit it, but President Obama is not the leader I thought he would be. He is a terrible negotiator, staking out positions in the political middle and grasping for any opportunity to compromise with the Republicans who want him to fail. He has the political agility of a boulder...seeming to roll into every trap the Republicans set for him and then lashing out at the progressives that warned him to watch his step.

For one thing Obama seems incapable of fighting political bullshit with political bullshit. If I had been President Obama, in the summer of 09, I would have issued a threat to veto any health bill that contained "death panels" and said that each and every day that Republican leaders breathed the phrase. Obviously, since there were no death panels it would have been an easy veto threat to keep.

posted by Daniel @ 12:33 PM