November 25, 2009, 10:28AM
The dinner in honor of the Indian Prime Minister Singh was the first state dinner to be hosted by President Obama for a foreign leader. Needless to say, enough can be said about its strategic implications abroad and social and political revelation at home. Strategically it underscores the importance of India as Amerias's strategic partner in Asia. The economic and geopolitical revival of this biggest democracy in the world and its alliance with the U.S.which undergoing its most challenging moment in years is significant for many reasons, not least as viewed in the context of a China that is emerging as a global power with disconcerting implications for the balance of power on both regional and international levels.
On a domestic level, this state dinner raises---in a very subtle way--- questions about the president's perceived mishandling of domestic issues. While the state dinner was by any measure an imperative of great significance geopollitically for the U.S., the image of elistist glamour it projected at the this bad time for many Americans cannot be exaggerated. The conspicuos absence of many big names. A no show of big Republican political names at the state dinner? Was is it a political calculation? Were they trying to avoid being seen with the president at such an event immersed in elitist grandeur? We will probably never know, but it is common knowledge that most Republicans believe that not only has Obama squandered his political capital, but he also has rendered himself overly exposed and has thus lost most of his earlier effectiveness. Therefore his low polling they view as testimony to that.
November 9, 2009, 3:07PM
Sen. John Lieberman's declarative intent to filibuster the healthcare bill makes it obvious that he is prepared to jump ship before Democrats actually punish him in the near futre for blocking the healthcare bill. He seems increasingly likely to run as a Republican because he is undoubtedly more in cahoots with them that with Democrats. Moreover, back in his home state Democrats have long ditched him. Independens alone will not be enough for him to keep his sit. He is counting on Independents and Republicans to keep him in office. Thus he has opportunistically concluded that Democrats are going to lose big, come 2010 elections. Now he is trying to save his own skin by rolling over for Republicans as he did with McCain. When John McCain lost, Lieberman returned to Democrats, and begged them to take him back. They did. Now he is navigating his way back to Republicans. What an opportunist?
October 7, 2009, 1:39PM
Hearing Republican clowns like Mak Levin, Sean Hanitty, Limbaugh as others accuse Democrats of killing medicare makes me want to vomit because these stinking hypocrites forget that it is the Republicans who opposed Medicare and Social Security calling them socialism.
September 10, 2009, 2:59PM
Across the nation, and throughut the month of August, Americans as well as the world at large witnessed townhalls being turned by the extreme Republican conservatives into spectacles of incivility and nastiness as Republicans transformed these townhalls into platforms for the trumpeting of their talking points so as to advance their political narattives. Most would agree, however, very little did we expect that the Republican boorishness and nastiness would in fact make its way into the halls of Congress in the form of Rep. Joe Wilson's insult of the U.S. president during a speech to Congress. With its daily invocation of family values, moral rectitude and self-righteousness this once-great-party turned into a fringe grouping is faced with the reality of its intellecual and moral bankrupcy. Thus Republicans must be reminded that their nastiness and intellectual poverty will not for ever remain a cover for their truly inhuman policy prescription.
August 8, 2009, 2:58PM
Early this year in the early phases of the develpoment of the so-called Tea Parties across the US I predicted that they would soon turn out to be nothing but a bunch of defeated and frustrated as well as delusional Republican malcontents drawn from the fringe which has become the mainstream in the Republican Party. The same crowd of the Sarah Palin rallies that spewed racial epithets and threatening to kill the then-candidate Barack Obama. Some are drawn from the Ron Paul fanatics---the self-styled Republican libertarian. The rowdiness and race-baiting that took place in those rallies is now being replicated by the same crowd in the form of chaos and rowdiness in the Town Halls across the nation inspired and orchestrated by the Republican/conservative Talk Radio hosts who preach hate and violence against the Democratic establishment day in and day out. Democrats will have to find a way of fighting back, but within the ambit of the law. They will have to kick these chaotic crowds out of the Town Halls as soon as they are identified. That means Democrats will have to enlist strong-armed men to drag these thugs out. What these Republican thugs are doing is far from being a function of Freedom of Speech. It is in fact an undemocratic act with far-reaching authoritanian implications.
July 23, 2009, 6:38PM
The slightest indication of gains in the stock market, while not much of a big deal necessarily, could however signal a troubling prospect for the Republican Party and its mouthpiece, the Talk Radio crack-heads like Rush Limbaugh and Hannity who have invested the revival of their unraveling party in the failure of an American president simply because he is black and he is a Democrats. Republican intolerance of non-white Americans is common knowledge. If down the road the economy begins to show unmistakable signs of recovery, they are going to talk it down even far worse than they are doing right now. They want their power back. That is why Obama and his economy have to fail. And anything that stands in the way will be taken out.
July 20, 2009, 2:26PM
Right at the outset when President Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats successfully passed the stimulus bill and streched out its implementation, thus delaying its effect despite the Republican's insistence that it be used entirely for immediate job creation, it became clear that an ideal opportunity for bipartisan co-peration between the Dems and the GOP for a serious job creation effort was missed by Obama and his fellow Democrats. It was like watching a passenger bus hanging precariously over the edge and there was nothing I could do to prevent its final plunge. To be sure, had the Obama Administration devoted the entire stimulus money to projects that were exclusively condusive to the immediate creation of employment opportunities he would have effectively started his administration on a strong economic footing, gaining momentum for his grand legislative agenda, he would have been unstoppable. Now he has to juggle the economic recession as he struggles to make what's left of his health care reform agenda a reality. A calamity he would never have had to deal with had he done things properly from the get go. Without doubt Obama was given bad advise by his economic advisors and his chief of staff who saw this crisis as an opportunity for a sweeping legislative agenda. Having said this, I hope my assessment is all wrong because I really want President Obama to succeed.
July 7, 2009, 6:28PM
The Republcans are already starting to blame President Obama and Congressional Democrats for ruining the economy and failing to create jobs with their stimulus package not one Republican voted for. In short, since losing the congress
and the presidency Republicans have staked their political fate on the economic failure of America. For them, as far as they have calculated, any sign that the economy might be inching up toward a marked improvement, then, a political disaster for them could ensue. They lost the presidency just 7 months ago, and the Congress two years, but they already want their power back. They are talking down the economy through their effective Talk Radio Crackheads. Democrats will have to fight back. Republican distortions are gaining traction, eventhough the economy has been in shambles since their reign.
July 7, 2009, 4:38PM
Vice President Biden says the Obama Administration misread the economy. If this statement were true it would be an innocent statement of factual existence. But it is not true, and therefore, it is a wrongheaded statement that flies in the face of what President Obama has always said, that the country is in deep recession, and that it could even take beyond his first term to turn around. Thus, this wrongheaded statement comes from a person who sometimes sounds as if he seldom thinks through things before opening his mouth. He does not even seem smart enough to sat anthing intelligent right off the cuff. How many times will he continue to give ammunition to the enemy. It is likely that before long Obama might be forced to ditch this guy.
June 16, 2009, 2:15PM
The Reports about a Tennessee Republican staffer who is said to have e-mailed racist Obama "spook" photos, as well as the former South Carolina Republican official Rusty de Pass's reference to a gorilla as Michelle Obama's ancestor are not anything new coming from Republicans. This once great party of Abraham Lincoln has evolved into something Lincoln would not recognize were he to come back from the dead. The party has deteriorated over the years into a social group where a bunch of bigots and racist like David Duke,as well as racially insenstive people like Rush Limbaugh find a spiritual home. So these recent incidents of racial smears by Republican office-holders are without a shadow of doubt sadly a tale of a party immersed in a cesspool of racism and hate. The unfortunate thing is that the so-called GOP is a mainstream party, not a fringe one.
May 4, 2009, 12:05PM
For Sen. Arlene Specter to deny on Meet the Press, Sunday, that he ever said he was going to be a loyal Democrat can only be inferred to imlpy that he is in fact not going to be loyal, which begs the question: Why should the Democratic Party be loyal to him then? There is no question that this guy's switch to the Dems is a shrewed move driven by cold political calculation. As a matter of fact he himself has admitted so. It thus leaves the Party at liberty to decide just whom they want to support as candidate. Dems must be very careful when they make that decision not to have to support in their ranks, and with their meagre resources, someone who will not be supporting them at critical moments and on crucial issues.
April 20, 2009, 12:36PM
What we have seen gathering in small and relatively huge crowds across the nation are defeated and angry Republican malcontents desperately recasting themselves as Tea Party for no other reason than to surreptiously revive their damaged and discredited "Republican" brand. These are the same nasty, vitriolic Palin/McCain followers who during the campaign threatened to kill the then presidential candidate Barack Obama, as they routinely and vituperatively spewed racial epithets at any black people within their sight. This took place in every Sarah Palin rally. Now this crowd is masquerading as the new people's movement pretentiously animated by their professed aversion to big government spending. Where were they for the last 8 years when President George Bush's tax cuts for the rich went through the roof while working families were left hanging out to dry, and leaving the biggest national debt and deficit ever known to mankind.The American people are watching this development with great interest as the Republican Party is now trying to resuscitate itself even as their rejected policies remain in place. For the two terms of Bush the government and its spending has expanded to proportions unseen since the inception of the Republic. The same Republican big government encroached upon individual rights and tore them apart piece by piece in the name of national security, even as they consistantly compromize the nation's security on an international level. Hardly has three months elapsed since their crushing defeat, but they want their power back. After 12 years in charge of Congress and 8 years in the White House. As much as they hate government, they need it to amass wealth for their constituencies in huge tax cut give-aways, and legislate morality as they autocratically intrude in bedrooms of their fellow Americans. The Tea Party is going nowhere because they are nothing but the Republican Party they are pretending not to be.
April 20, 2009, 12:21PM
What we have seen gathering in small and relatively huge crowds across the nation are defeated and angry Republican malcontents desperately recasting themselves as Tea Party for no other reason than to surreptiously revive their damaged and discredited "Republican" brand. These are the same nasty, vitriolic Palin/McCain followers who during the campaign threatened to kill the then presidential candidate Barack Obama, as they routinely and vituperatively spewed racial epithets at any black people within their sight. This took place in every Sarah Palin rally. Now this crowd is masquerading as the new people's movement pretentiously animated by their professed aversion to big government spending. Where were they for the last 8 years when President George Bush's tax cuts for the rich went through the roof while working families were left hanging out to dry, and leaving the biggest national debt and deficit ever known to mankind.
The American people are watching this development with great interest as the Republican Party is now trying to resuscitate itself even as their rejected policies remain in place. For the two terms of Bush the government and its spending has expanded to proportions unseen since the inception of the Republic. The same Republican big government encroached upon individual rights and tore them apart piece by piece in the name of national security, even as they consistantly compromize the nation's security on an international level. Hardly has three months elapsed since their crushing defeat, but they want their power back. After 12 years in charge of Congress and 8 years in the White House. As much as they hate government, they need it to amass wealth for their constituencies in huge tax cut give-aways, and legislate morality as they autocratically intrude in bedrooms of their fellow Americans. The Tea Party is going nowhere because they are nothing but the Republican Party they are pretending not to be.
