Omama just made a "barn burner" speech - hurrah!

More BS from the pulpit.

That you don't like Obama's speech indicates that he made a great case for his policies.

BBB

Obama Calls Out John Boehner In His Home State During Ohio Economic Speech
09/ 8/10 02:38 PM | AP

CLEVELAND — President Barack Obama has leveled an unusually direct attack against House Minority Leader John Boehner in the Republican's home state of Ohio.

Mindful of midterm election polls showing the GOP could win the House and elevate Boehner to speaker, Obama repeatedly addressed Boehner by name Wednesday while accusing him of partisan politics and siding with special interests.

Speaking in the same city where Boehner recently unveiled Republican economic proposals, Obama accused Boehner of holding middle-class tax cuts hostage in favor of also extending tax cuts for the rich. Obama said Boehner was opposing new infrastructure spending the president has proposed that could put people back to work.

Said Obama: "That's bad for America."

About time Obama did something for the middle class rather than the big banks and stockbrokers.

I watched that speech on cspan last night, bbb, your right it was the Obama we used to know. It was like he forgot to be politic and just told the truth. The audience seemed to receptive as well although sometimes it is hard to tell for sure. Now I wish he would put a bur under some the democrats’ saddles and get them off their bums.

September 8, 2010
Obama: Economy is better off with Democrats in charge
By Margaret Talev | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Trying to persuade voters that he has ideas to strengthen the weak economy — and therefore that they should vote for Democrats in November — President Barack Obama Wednesday proposed major tax incentives for business and accused Republicans of stonewalling in a bid to "ride this fear and anger all the way to Election Day."

The president's 46-minute speech was more about the politics of the economy than fixing it.

Speaking at a community college in Parma, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland, Obama barely touched on the specifics of the $300 billion in tax incentives that he proposed: allowing businesses to write off 100 percent of their investments in 2011, and expanding and making permanent a research-and-development tax credit. Congress is unlikely to act on his latest tax proposals before the elections.

However, Obama combined a populist tax stand against the rich with a pitch for business-friendly tax breaks to put Republicans in Congress on the spot. That's exactly what many Democratic lawmakers have been pressing him to do — to take the gloves off and frame the election as a choice between Democrats with a vision and Republicans who simply oppose everything Obama tries to do and who would roll back the clock to policies from the George W. Bush era.

He hung today's economic troubles squarely on "the flawed policies and economic weaknesses of the previous decade." He said he'd hoped that the resulting crisis would lead Republicans to work with Democrats on solutions, but "some Republican leaders figured it was smart politics to sit on the sidelines and let Democrats solve the mess . . . "

He said that Democrats' policies have restored a growing economy, but that doing necessary things such as "temporarily supporting the banks and the auto industry fed the perception that Washington is still ignoring the middle class in favor of special interests. And so people are frustrated and angry and anxious about the future. I understand that. I also understand that in a political campaign, the easiest thing for the other side to do is ride this fear and anger all the way to Election Day."

In setting his remarks near Cleveland, an economically troubled city in a big swing state, Obama also took on House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio. Boehner is poised to become speaker of the House of Representatives if Democrats lose control of it in November. Last month, Boehner delivered his own economic manifesto in Cleveland, where he urged Obama to dump his top economic aides.

Obama said Boehner had proposed "no new ideas. There was just the same philosophy we already tried in the last decade — the same philosophy that led to this mess in the first place."

Boehner, anticipating the criticism, on Wednesday unveiled a new two-step plan for paring government deficits: Cutting all non-security related government spending back to fiscal 2008 levels and imposing a two-year freeze on all current tax rates.

As long as Democrats are in charge of Congress, it isn't likely to pass. However, if Republicans win control, Boehner made it clear that those items will be GOP priorities.

Obama said that Republicans were holding up votes on proposals such as a jobs bill for small business, solely to put him in a bad spot: "If I fail, they win."

He said that Republicans were tying up a middle-class tax cut extension even though they support it, because they want to force Democrats to also extend tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent, which would cost the Treasury almost $700 billion over 10 years. Obama said that's ironic given "all the Republicans' talk about wanting to shrink the deficit."

Obama said he has "a different vision for the future." He favors long-term investments in education and clean energy, research and development, and infrastructure. Democrats believe, he said, "in a vibrant free market — but one that works for everybody."

Nostalgically, Obama spoke of a rally he'd held in Cleveland shortly before his 2008 election as "a hopeful time." Today, he acknowledged, "Folks are worried about the future" and "I know there's still a lot of hurt out here."

However, he insisted, "It's still fear versus hope; the past versus the future. It's still a choice between sliding backward and moving forward. That's what this election is about. That's the choice you'll face in November."

(David Lightman contributed to this article.)


Read more: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/09/08/100278/obama-lets-gop-boehner-have-it.html#ixzz0z2uVdZIu

Precisely. Which is why I don't think he burned any barns.

Your right. His own party has been as great a hinderance to him as the republicans.

I am interested in some opinions here on comparing the 2010 and 2002 (and 2006 for that matter) election cycles. Specifically, the relationship of the parties and the president.

Obama still seems like a positive brand for other Dems to try to use.

A
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obamas the anti christ

Miller, If it's bull ****, how come Obama accomplished most of his campaign promises? Rather than tagging it bull ****, how about providing some evidence or facts to back up your bull ****.

Refute the information on this link with your facts?
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/

I watched the speech. I suppose it was rousing for all the committed true believers like BBB. However for others it had some rather strange aspects; ranging from an odd Presidential preoccupation with himself, the repeated use of the "me" & "I" words and the weird bit about being treated "like a dog"; to a, by now shopworn (and untypical of past Presidents) reliance on blaming his predecessor for current problems; and the touting of a mixed bag of desperate last minute economic proposals whose rationales contradict both his past statements and main policies. Beneath it all was the consistent tone of attacking the opposition as opposed to offering anything constructive to explain or deal with his consistent failure to deliver on the promised effects of his political initiatives over the past 20 months.

It is also interesting to observe the distance that Congressional leaders involved in contested election campaigns appear to be putting between themselves and the president. Their absence speaks volumes about their own political calculations.

The country appears to be more polarized now than at any time in the last few decades. Hard (for me at least) to guess how things may turn out in the election. The paid political forecasters of both parties are rather consistently far apart in their prognostications. Anything may happen ... including the loss of one or both houses of Congress in the coming election.

I have been amazed at, throughout recent months, how obstructionist the GOP sides of the aisles have been and still theyve not presented ANY alternatives of their own in just about any legislation. If thats the way they propose to govern, why should anyone vote for their candidates?
Obama is taking crap for doing the hard stuff that needed done, and hes merely garnering carefully orchestrated GOP bullshit that cries that "He hasnt done anything fast enough". Hell GW took eight years of consistent incompetent governance to get us into this mess (yet he spent most of his time blaming 9/11 and how Clintons "recession" impinged on his own terms).

The GOP lost control of the legislature because of Bushs incompetence and then sopent the last 3 years of his last term stating that "The fundamentals of our economy are spund", Hell even the GOPs own candidate kept using that until it became glaringly obvious that we were heading into one of the worst recessions since the Great Depression.

I think, from a standpoint of pure marketing, that the GOP plot to retake the District, is pure brilliance, and recalls some of the great despotic regimes of the past wherein they would repeat the admonition to" Only tell the big lie because people wont buy little ones" I too watched the speech and wondered why it took so damn long to take off his gloves while all around him the GOP pundits and big mouths like Boehner were spreading almost treasonaous lies in their attempts to kill this presidency.

I agree that we are split more than I can recall any time in my life. I shall carry that beleif into my conversations with the"True Believers" of the right, those that follow the Limbaughs , Becks and other GOP shills who recieve the largess of the Kochs to spread their Plutocratic beliefs.

The choice this Novemeber is gonna be
1Fix the broken nation that Obama inherited (the Democrats) or

2Engage in a government that is ruled by keeping only the benefits for the rich and a liberal use of the word "NO" (GOP plans for your nation)
My choice is simple, I dont want to revert to the Bush ideals where the Insurance compnies have bl;ocked all attempts at meaningful health insurance reforms, and energy companies were responsible for our national energy policy, and where unprovoked, economy bustings wars somehow became some kind of twisted international policy.

Farmerman, once again, you have demonstrated your intelligence and your humanity.

BBB

The labels "obstructionism" and "fanaticism" are merely value judgements and labels used to denigrate the motives of groups with fundamentally different views of what is right and needed policy.

If you believe that the health care and financial service reforms the Democrats forced on the nation will prove to be positively harmful and will not bring about the improvements claimed by their adherants, then obstruction is the only available and rational course for a political minority.

If you are aware that in this democratic country both opposing political groups still manage to influence political affairs and the actions of government, then you'll recognize that the errors and good actions of previous administrations were influenced by both parties, just as the errors and good actions of the current administration are influenced by both.

The balance of elected political power in this country shifted very far towards the Democrats in the last elections. They won the presidency and strong majorities in both houses of Congress and came within one or two seats of a 2/3rds majority in the Senate - a stronger position than that enjoyed by any administration in several decades. With this power they have forced through rather massive changes in the governance of the country, vastly increasing the role of government in our economy and its intrusiveness into our lives and adding enormously to an already overlarge national debt in the process. With all this I find it odd that they rely so much on vacuous complaints about the opposition of the political minority.

Our President has revealed himself to be a good deal less than the messiah like figure his claques portrayed him to be, and his administration has proven to be far less competent than his campaign. The huge gap between the overinflated political promises and the rather muddled and commonplace reality, replete as it is with blatant political payoffs, contradictions among policy goals, and so far bad results, has brought about a major shift in public perceptions. All this suggests some very large setbacks in the coming elections.

A wise person, group, or institution learns from its mistakes and missteps. Doubling down on already manifestly bad bets is folly, not political courage.

I believe the public has a strong sense of all this and that a change in political direction is very likely in November.

That's a big "if" georgeob. Most economists say that the stimulus plan minimized the Great Recession. What's your take?

"Most economists" ??? Are you sure of that?

What do you mean by "minimized"? If I take you literally, you mean that any other course of action would have yielded worse results. I don't think any serious observer believes that. If, instead, you mean "reduced the bad effects", then it is worth noting that merely waiting and doing nothing would also have yielded some improvements.

I think it is very obvious now that very few of the confident projections of the administration regarding the effects of its actions have actually come to pass. Things are most certainly not working out as they planned or promised, and some (not all) of the concerns their political opponents have voiced are already proving to have been valid.

In particular the law of unintended consequences appears to have revealed itself in the decided lack of entrepreneurial activity by Americans and their businesses as they contemplate the unknowns of higher taxes, increased and unpredictable government regulation and an administration that is increasingly given to themes of class warfare and forced redistribution in its rhetoric.

Perhaps you have another description for what is going on now.

georgeob, This is only one source, but I can look for more if you wish.

From Pat Garofalo: