Barack Obama's holiday address

A shout out to the swamp rats......Happy Festivus to all!!!!

Now is the time for every, good, young and old, man and woman, to come to the aid of our country. We are all in this ship of state, together and if you want it to sink, even further, than continue to carp and mislead, concerning President-elect Obama's character. I know some of you may have a hard time grasping that concept, but give it a try. America, as well as President-elect Obama, needs you to, at least, make a sincere attempt, after all, he is, or he soon will be, our Commander-in-Chief. !! One for all and all for one.
SUPPORT OUR TROOPS, BRING THEM HOME, ALIVE AND WHOLE. NOW.

"With a weak economy, Obama says there is a need for collective sacrifice."

Did he broadcast his plea for sacrifice from the $9 million luxury resort home in Hawaii he's currently vacationing in?

I don't begrudge Obama his jet-set millionaire resort vacation. But if he's gonna speak of "collective sacrifice," can't we expect Obama to practice what he preaches?

It makes me kind of nauseous to think we could have been looking at a McCain/Palin administration right now. Obama might not be perfect but his door is open to us and instead of throwing our hands up and declaring that things are to messed up from BushCo to be fixed, we need to be gearing ourselves to walk through that door, equipped with strong arguments and solutions. Imagine what we would be looking at right now with McCain/Palin/RNC/Rush. They'd be thinking about calling together a committee of far-right Republican insiders to appoint a taskforce to study the economy and come up with something in a year, or two, or three. And it would end up being the same "Let the free deregulated market work." garbage that caused all of our problems in the first place. Meanwhile, unemployment would have skyrocketed into the double digits, and the number of unisured would have soared past 50 million.

I am surprised at this festive time in America that so little is said or written about the millions of poor and homeless in America. ..........

http://thefiresidepost.com/2008/12/24/dead-body-found-in-woods/

All Obama wants for Christmas is for Blago to quietly resign and get going on a nice and quick plea bargain with the Feds - no witness stand needed for PEBO or Rahmbo.

http://www.political-buzz.com/

It's kind of hard to take seriously the idea we should ALL sacrifice, knowing the person making this declaration is vacationing in a $9 million home and living in the lap of luxury. We've seen his family's charitable donations. My family gives a much higher percentage of income (not to mention the TIME we donate to various non-profits) than his. Practice what you preach, Obama...

There is so many words being written, and being said, about the low key Mr. Obama, when he has nothing yet to react to. Please let time do its job in the proving of a person. If there is a projection, let it be that the presidency of Mr. GW Bush, has been tried and true, and the entire world knows this, so why don’t we. As Mr. Bush’s presidency draws to a close, I realize now how much I respect him and the job he has done, he is the best. Merry Christmas Mr Bush, and have many many happy new years. You love your country, your family, and Texas, you have been proven and found not lacking. Vaya con Dios….

Prez-elect Obama has the right idea, he understands that it's going to take a lot of hard work to fix what the GOP has done to our country the last eight years and we're going to have to deal with their obstructionism all along the way.

The Republican brand is in the crapper. It went from big spreads in both the House and Senate and a dream of a "permanent republican majority" to a close to 20 seat deficit in the Senate (with more likely to come in 2010) and around 80 in the House. It lost the White House. Badly.

Its' core philosophies (and I am not buying this "the Bush year policies weren’t really republican or conservative" because when you have control of the entire government, you enact what you want) have destroyed our economy on a scale not seen in close to 100 years. Its aggressive and arrogantly ignorant foreign policy has ruined our credibility around the world (and nearly bankrupted us). The levels of cronyism have led to billions of dollars being "misplaced" or sent to friends on no-bid contracts for crappy work. The culture of corruption has led to indictment after indictment after indictment of republican Congressional officials, the politicizing of the Justice Department and the burrowing of wholly unqualified people into major policy, leadership and civil service roles.

It has presided over a crisis that has lost more jobs in decades, has fattened corporate wallets at the expense of We the People, has seen a decline in our educational standards (and scores), has enriched the pharmaceutical and insurance companies at the expense of affordable access to healthcare. It has let a major American city drown in what was nothing short of criminal negligence.

It allowed for the murder of thousands on 9/11 with the careless disregard for warning after warning. It allowed the deaths of many rescue workers, the death of close to 1,000,000 Iraqis for a "mistake" and the death of hundreds (if not more) in the Gulf Coast. It has failed to do anything meaningful about the root cause of terrorism and has made us less safe.

When finally in the minority in Congress, the republicans merely set a record for most filibusters of all time. And they did it in just one year.

It has alienated entire races of people, it has alienated immigrants, it has alienated same sex couples, it has alienated the lower class, the middle class and much of the upper class. Its members have lied, blown off subpoenas, have been convicted of sex crimes (many times over), covered up for sexual predators who were in charge of underage Congressional Pages, were convicted of election fraud and have tampered with elections on the Congressional and Presidential level in 2000, 2002, 2004 and 2006. And during the past six years, culminating with the recent Presidential campaign, it has thrived off of fear and loathing. Fear of anything that isn’t precisely like them, and loathing of anything that isn’t, well, precisely like them.

It is a party that felt its best way to win is to use violent rhetoric (at the worst possible time, of course) to rile up its base – based on lies and the most tenuous of "guilt by association". Most of all, it has shown that it has no vision, no ideas other than hate, and has demonstrated exactly what it would do if it could control all of government.

This was the third straight cycle (2004 and 2006 as well) that young voters came out for Democrats. And generally speaking, if someone votes for the same party in three straight cycles (especially their first three cycles), they pretty much stick with that party for life. The timing couldn’t be better for a long stretch of Democratic party dominance.

Posted by: Change We Do Believe In | December 26, 2008 3:29 PM
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Your addled, semi coherent harangue is mostly too dumb to comment on. I'm not going to waste my time picking out the untruths and half truths and irrelevancies.
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However one thing sticks out that I can't resist, and that is your mention of cronyism. John E, that is and always was a bipartisan thing. But besides that, do you get the rich, hilarious irony of that complaint given that the soon-to-be administration cut its political teeth in Chicago?!

besides that, do you get the rich, hilarious irony of that complaint given that the soon-to-be administration cut its political teeth in Chicago?!

Posted by: MJ | December 26, 2008 5:08 PM

Republicans like you continue to push the idea that this is a center-right country and that Americans have swooned for GOP anti-government posturing all these years, but the real electoral bait for you has been anger, recrimination and scapegoating. That's why John McCain kept describing Barack Obama as some sort of alien and why Palin, taking a page right out of the McCarthy playbook, kept pushing Obama's relationship with onetime radical William Ayers.

And that is also why the Republican Party, despite the recent failure of McCarthyism, is likely to keep moving rightward, appeasing its more extreme elements and stoking their grievances for some time to come. There may be assorted intellectuals and ideologues in the party, maybe even a few centrists, but there is no longer an intellectual or even ideological wing. The party belongs to McCarthy and his heirs -- Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and Palin. It's in the genes.

I think you're starting to lose it, the recent elections have delivered a clear repudiation to just about everything you stand for, particularly that monumental waste of time and energy known as the Culture War and Small Gov Conservatism. Unfortunately you seem to have built your entire life out of stoking the flames of that dimming fire.

This nonsense about President-elect Obama and his family staying at the expensive vacation residence, is absurd. Next, the ridiculous Republicans will be telling him and his family, not to stay at the White House, that multimillion dollar, a year, institution. It doesn't look right !! It's not where you live, but how you treat your neighbors. I think President-elect Obama will be treating his neighbors, America, just the way he would like to be treated, with respect and honesty. Unlike the out going administrations, who seemed to work at disregarding and disrespecting their neighbors, America !!
SUPPORT OUR TROOPS, BRING THEM HOME, ALIVE AND WHOLE. NOW.

However one thing sticks out that I can't resist, and that is your mention of cronyism. John E, that is and always was a bipartisan thing. But besides that, do you get the rich, hilarious irony of that complaint given that the soon-to-be administration cut its political teeth in Chicago?!

Posted by: MJ | December 26, 2008 5:08 PM

You seem to have a big problem with Chicago guilt by association accusations. I'm from Chicago, does that make me corrupt? Prez-elect Obama isn't even in office yet and you're already comparing what Bush and Cheney (aided by the GOP) have done the last eight years to what Obama might do because he's from Chicago? Please, spare us the nonsense. I didn't vote for Obama but even I am willing to give him more of a chance than you are.

"'You seem to have a big problem with Chicago guilt by association accusations. I'm from Chicago, does that make me corrupt?"
Posted by: CS Nowik | December 26, 2008 7:46 PM
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CS, did you participate in the dirty politics of the Chicago Machine, like Obama and Emanuel did? Did Tony Rezko contribute a quarter of a million dollars to you, like he did to Obama? Did you funnel millions of the tax payers' dollars to Tony Rezko, like Obama and Jarret did?
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If ,, like them, you did things like that in Chicago, then the answer to your question is "yes".

The New Deal created a new forgotten man, the man who subsidizes the funding of other constituencies -- and who haunts politics today. Follow the money to see who those constituencies are.

Now, if we could just change the corporate press corps in 2009.

Sorry, but after eight years of sycophancy and incompetence I'd like to see the corporate media correspondents join the Bushies on the way out the door.

According to MJ, both Obama and Emmanuel participated in the dirty politics of the Chicago Machine.

Are you ever going to tire of this empty rhetoric?

CS, did you participate in the dirty politics of the Chicago Machine, like Obama and Emanuel did
Posted by: MJ | December 26, 2008 8:20 PM

MJ,
You've already tried calling Prez-elect Obama - the chosen one, the anti-Christ, the terrorist paller-arounder, the Muslim, the mega-celebrity, the too-black, not-black-enough, Madrasah-schooled foreign, exotic, elitist, occasional-cigarette-bumming, untested, un-American, half Kenyan, half British, half Kansan, three-pointer-dunking, crazy-preacher-huggin' socialist Marxist commie hunk 'o beefcake...and you failed.

Here's an idea MJ, why don't you and your Republican friends try coming up with some actual good policies and good candidates? Because until you do so you'll be stuck screaming from the outside looking in, like you are now.

'You've already tried calling Prez-elect Obama...the anti-Christ, the terrorist paller-arounder, the Muslim, the mega-celebrity, the too-black, not-black-enough, Madrasah-schooled foreign, exotic, elitist, occasional-cigarette-bumming, untested, un-American, half Kenyan, half British, half Kansan, three-pointer-dunking, crazy-preacher-huggin' socialist Marxist commie hunk 'o beefcake..."
Posted by: C S Nowik | December 27, 2008 4:30 PM
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Mmmm... no, CS, I'm sure I never said any one of those things. Can you cite one post of mine where I did? (NOTE TO John E: fake ones you write yourself don't count.)
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I have referred to him as the Chosen One and The Obamessiah, though.
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"According to MJ, both Obama and Emmanuel participated in the dirty politics of the Chicago Machine.
Are you ever going to tire of this empty rhetoric?"
Posted by: Haywood Jablome | December 27, 2008 2:30 PM
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It's not just according to me, John E, it's the public record. It's certainly not "empty rhetoric" as like to call it, nor a "myth" as you've said. Oh, and you forgot to mention Valerie Jarrett.
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Here's just one link for you (i posted this earlier, maybe you missed it):
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/06/27/grim_proving_ground_for_obamas_housing_policy/
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Should I give you more?

Should I give you more?

Posted by: MJ | December 27, 2008 7:57 PM

It's going to be a long twelve years for big mouth deadenders like you in the Republican minority party, son.