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Bush’s Third Term  PRES. BARACK OBAMA ...Man of Compromise? |
Has Obama catered to GOP
way too many times?
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This is an e-mail sent by Prof. Gordon Greb to a friend on Dec. 18, 2010. He was expressing disappointment in Pres. Barack Obama, who as a candidate promised so much change, and then fell so far short of his promise. It was written as Democrats, in their last days with a majority in the House of Representatives, voted to extend Bush’s tax cuts at Obama's urging and once again favored the Radical Rich Republicans. If Senator Ted Kennedy were still alive, Greb believes, he would challenge Obama to keep the dream alive, and if unpersuasive, urge Hilary Clinton to challenge Obama for the 2012 nomination for president. |
of TheColumnists.com
Who cares about the election of 2012? Now the GOP has the whole thing locked up! Those of us who expected a forward moving agenda starting with the Obama administration in 2009-- including universal health care (with the public option at a minimum)--saw these hopes dashed from the start.
The reason is that Obama, always wanting to be regarded as a “good guy,” began compromising unnecessarily with the “Party of No,” believing half a loaf was better than none. The Democrats began retreating when they should have aggressively been moving forward. Now it’s too late!
The current crisis could have been avoided and the Tea Party thwarted if the president had fought for New Deal programs right from the start. From the moment the GOP began throwing up roadblocks to new liberal legislation, Obama should have forced the GOP into showdown debates.
He should have restored the Fairness Doctrine and "equal time" requirements on all broadcasters to give the listening and viewing audiences a level playing field in the mass media. Failing to do that, it means the conservatives not only dominate the means of communication but they have used it to effectively weaken all opposition to their agenda no matter what kind of nonsense they put into our heads.
Right from he start we heard Rush Limbaugh saying, “I hope Obama fails” after the 2009 inauguration. The handwriting was on the wall. The GOP was determined to fight Obama and the president never threw a punch that mattered in the weeks and months that followed.
When Roosevelt faced a Great Depression, he put people to work in the CCC, WPA, and TVA. What did Obama do? He bailed out the banks and gave us a “stimulus” hoping nickels and dimes would trickle down to the unemployed. In 2010 we are still waiting.
With the Supreme Court stacked with conservatives,
they’ve used that branch of government effectively. Now
Democrats have no chance of stopping the Citizen United Money
Machine from swamping the airwaves with propaganda in the future,
making outlandish charges and lies which will go unanswered because
we will be unable to support anything liberal and be heard above
a whisper during the coming campaigns.
What did we get with a Democratic Congress and a Democratic President the past two years? We acted like a bunch of losers when we had been given the power by the people to make much needed changes and failing to do that we now find ourselves a bunch of losers bowing to our economic betters.
Goodbye Democratic Party and welcome to Third World America!
The rich are going to love it!
©2011 by Gordon Greb. The caricature of the author is by the author. This column first posted Aug. 8, 2011.
| Gordon Greb, former CBS newsman and retired professor of communications at San Jose State University, is the author of "Google Brain: Making Your Memoir A Time Machine on the Internet." |
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