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Presidents Day
Author: Raine    Date: 02/16/2009 13:25:58

Happy day! I hope you are enjoying it so far. Let's Talk about our current President, who will most likely be signing the economic recovery bill tomorrow. He's doing pretty well, some say.
Feb. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Barack Obama has transformed American politics. His honeymoon is over. Bipartisanship has been revived, or killed. The White House is dominating the Republicans; the president doesn’t engender any fear. His financial-rescue plan is doomed, a “shock and ugh.”

This all after 25 days, according to conclusions reached by the Washington cognoscenti.

The reality: Obama is off to a good start, even as he has suffered personnel embarrassments and made mistakes. If the presidential campaign is a model, the Obamaites will quickly learn from the miscues. More importantly, he faces even more daunting challenges than was supposed last year -- the financial crisis at home and Afghanistan abroad.

The best perspective on the early stages may be from thousands of miles away and from those who understand the inside-the-Beltway political culture. None are better than Republican James A. Baker, a former secretary of State and Treasury and White House chief of staff, and now a Houston lawyer; and Peter Hart, the preeminent Democratic pollster of the last generation, now teaching at the University of California at Berkeley.

Baker says Obama is off to a pretty good start; Hart says a very good start. Split the difference.
I am hesitant to compare Obama to the past, but I would have to say that under the circumstances, he is light years ahead of anything I expected. As a Dem, there was never going to be a honeymoon, and the idea of the first 100 days in office is a game for the media. We have a Man in charge that is doing exactly what he said he would do while on the campaign trail. We are getting what we hoped for. That is a good thing for this country. We are learning to maybe not so much Trust -- but to know that we have leadership in charge that listens to the people, I like that. Every day has been Presidents Day for me.

That said, it has been less than a month and we are truly a different country. Well not entirely, some people really want this to be a less divided union, politically. What we are seeing is a political party that needs division in order to remain relevant in their mind. I wonder what they will do with Lindsey Graham.
This idea of nationalizing banks is not comfortable," said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). "But I think we've got so many toxic assets spread throughout the banking and financial community, throughout the world, that we're going to have to do something that no one ever envisioned a year ago, no one likes. To me, banking and housing are the root cause of this problem. I'm very much afraid any program to salvage the banks is going to require the government... I would not take off the idea of nationalizing the banks."

The remark prompted a bewildered smile of sorts from fellow panelist Maxine Waters (D-CA) who said, to no one in particular, "We have come a long way."
Have we or has he? It wasn't a long time ago that people like John McCain were on the campaign trail, calling things like this socialism. I suspect Mr. Graham will find himself saying he was "mis-quoted" within a week.

Sorry, I just don't have the usual Monday Morning Outrage, and I kind of like that!! Bonus Click!

:peace: and :heart:
Raine
 

126 comments (Latest Comment: 02/17/2009 02:19:21 by livingonli)
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