A #reality-community second-term plea for #Obamiacs (updated)

Updated, Dec. 10: Given that the Washington rumor mill, as reported here by Joan Walsh, says Obama's willing to raise the Medicare eligibility age as part of avoiding the fiscal cliff, how much will diehard Obamiacs continue to defend him? 

There are so many things wrong with raising the eligibility age that I still can’t believe it’s under consideration. That’s not doubting Klein; it’s just a failure on my part to imagine that data-driven leaders — Republican or Democrat — would propose it. It doesn’t save money; it’s a shell game that just pushes costs around. While it’s possible that lower-income 65 and 66 year olds would be eligible for Obamacare, that means we’d be subsidizing them anyway. Besides there’s no guarantee such subsidies will exist: Republican governors are refusing to expand Medicaid or create the insurance exchanges to make it possible. Even Obama’s new GOP BFF, Chris Christie, says he won’t do it in the blue state of New Jersey. Remember, too, that Obamacare works through the private insurance industry, which has at least five times the administrative costs of Medicare. 

That's the problem in a nutshell. Lower-income seniors at the mercy of insurers (while they/we can't be denied coverage for pre-existing conditions, age as a general factor is a different story). 

Frankly, I think Walsh is spot on ... on a hint she has near the end of the column — this could be the opening move to a discussion of privatizing Medicare entirely, even though she thinks this is just a trial balloon.

That said, Joan, what if the GOP says, "OK, we love it!" Then, will the public think it's now his fault, not the GOP's, if we go over an alleged fiscal cliff? There's other signs, such as his talk about how much Latinos will lose, and making such presentations to Latino groups, that Obama may be, if not quite blinking yet, getting kind of twitchy.

Also, "shock me" that Jon Chait thinks this is a good idea. He's got a track record as a neoliberal fellator of Obama. Further "shock me" that he describes it as "a bone to throw the right," rather than "throwing poorer senior citizens under the bus."

The reality? The Washington Post, of all "insiders," actually has a good answer to Lindsay Graham (and Chait, and Obama). While Medicare is in worse shape than Social Security, it's not going bankrupt now, or even 20 years from now. And, even then, only the hospital bills portion of Medicare faces any near-term problems.

Indeed, the Medicare Part A fund from its inception has been on the brink of going “bankrupt.” The Congressional Research Service, in a report titled “Medicare: History of Insolvency Projections,” shows that in 1970 it was due to go “bankrupt” in 1972.

So, these worries have been around for decades. Or, these "worries."

And now, with Obama looking to a second term, and with an ongoing Democratic majority in the Senate, but less than 60 votes, and a GOP majority remaining in the House, talk is turning to what Dear Leader plans for a second-term agenda, and how likely it is to succeed, beyond, but including, "fiscal cliff" negotations.

In light of his first-term agenda, and how much he did or did not get past Congress, of course, he struggled with GOP obstructionism.

However, while that’s the greater part of the tale, it’s not all of it.

He also struggled with himself, including an unrealistic, arguably even self-delusional, belief in himself and the magical, mystical, messianic (doorknob, I love alliteration) healing powers of himself, his persona, and his voice.

Well, not only was the GOP not going to listen, it made that clear early on.

But, again, that’s not all the tale, just the majority of it.

The fact is, that in general, and specifically on the magical, mystical, messianic healing powers of himself, his persona, and his voice, Barack Obama simply is not all that he or true-blue Obamiac disciples crack him(self) up to be. Period. End of story.

So, I’d like at least a few Obamiac Democrats to admit that at least part of his problems with the GOP in the last four years have been self-inflicted due to the combination of A: Lacking testicles and/or backbone and B: Believing too much in the power of his own allegedly magical voice. Bonus points for admitting nothing major is likely to change on his side as well as on the GOP side in the next four years. C'mon, you science-based/reality-community Obamiacs, time for you, too, to put your money or your Facebook postings where your beliefs are.

Dear Leader isn’t likely to change his second-term stripes. What about you?

Oh, and while you’re at it, would you please have a small bit of admission that he benefited, ironically considering who coined the phrase, from the “soft bigotry of low expectations” in following George W. Bush?

Jonathan Chait, effing moron, fellates Dear Leader

The likes of Jonathan Chait is why I stopped reading The New Republic more than a decade ago. Now, in defense of Dear Leader against critics from his left like Glenn Greenwald and me, he's taken his asshattery to the pages of the New York Times.

First, defending Obama's $800B stimulus by the claim that Nancy Pelosi offered a smaller $500B one earlier? If that's rigorous reasoning, it's no wonder he's still stuck at TNR as a neocon shill for Marty Peretz. First, Pelosi's not THAT liberal herself. Second, that was only her initial offer. Third, the linkage between her position and Obama's was small.

Second, Chait ignores that Rahm Emanuel, hired by Dear Leader, wanted the stimulus to come in under $1 trillion. As part of this Chait claims "everybody who matters" told Obama to scale this back; he has that quote in quote marks in his column without any attribution, meaning it's just a scare quote.

Third, Chait ignores that Obama sold out national healthcare to insurance companies et al.

Fourth, Chait ignores that Obama continues to sell himself out to banksters on mortgage fraud, Friday's lawsuit notwithstanding.

Fifth, he claims that Bush got much of what got done in his first term by using the budget reconciliation process, ignoring that Obama could have used that on some of his initiatives ... including the health care bill that he eventually passed.

Sixth, he ignores that Obama was both naive enough and dumb enough to not include a debt ceiling deal with Republicans last December as part of extending the Bush Obama tax cuts, or was even worse than naive and dumb.

Seventh, he ignores Obama's recent backtracking on environmental issues, compounded by the fact that many of us who aren't "Gang Green" enviros knew that Kenny Boy Salazar was weak tea as his choice for Interior Secretary from the day Obama nominated him.

But, that's all small potatoes compared to what Chait really overlooks.

And that is that, way back in 2003, we had clear evidence Obama wasn't a liberal, followed by additional evidence back in 2006. And that he's this way because much of the Democratic Party (Pelosi included) is this way.

Beyond being a shill for Marty Peretz, Chait is a D.C. Villager who illustrates the moral bankruptcy of more and more of our duopoly.

On the stuff linked immediately above, he knows most of it; certainly the second and third links because Ken Silverstein lived in the Village, though he certainly wasn't of it. So Chait doesn't even have the excuse of plausible deniability.

No, Obama, college won't help

From a long, insightful article in the Atlantic about the hollowing out of the middle class comes this observation that the normal BA or even BSBA won't help a person's bottom line so much any more, nor will it offer so much unemployment protection:

But even among the meritocratic elite, the economy’s evolution has produced a startling divergence. Since 1993, more than half of the nation’s income growth has been captured by the top 1 percent of earners, and the gains have grown larger over time: from 2002 to 2007, out of every three dollars of national income growth, the top 1 percent of earners captured two. ...

“It’s useful to make a distinction between college and post-college,” (MIT economist David Autor) told me. “Among people with professional and even doctoral [degrees], in general the job market has been very good for a very long time, including recently. The group of highly educated individuals who have not done so well recently would be people who have a four-year college degree but nothing beyond that. Opportunities have been less good, wage growth has been less good, the recession has been more damaging. They’ve been displaced from mid-managerial or organizational positions where they don’t have extremely specialized, hard-to-find skills.” ...

College graduates may be losing some of their luster for reasons beyond technology and trade. As more Americans have gone to college, Autor notes, the quality of college education has become arguably more inconsistent, and the signaling value of a degree from a nonselective school has perhaps diminished. Whatever the causes, “a college degree is not the kind of protection against job loss or wage loss that it used to be.”

Takeaways, to shorten Autor?
1. A Harvard degree is worth more than ever, rightly or wrongly, due to "branding."
2. Finding the LinkedIn/CareerBuilder "hot field" is important, but ... what he doesn't say, is a matter of luck as much as anything else.

Autor then and also notes, as I've blogged elsewhere, that more and more paralegal work, or first-year post-law-school grunt work, can be done by computer. Other work like that, which he doesn't directly note, can and will be outsourced to India with a growing English-speaking middle class wanting to do more than call center/customer service work.

And, some of the social decline that started happening to "just high school grad" families in decades past is now starting with "just college" families.

And, going beyond Peck, I'll even say that some grad degrees will get "hollowed out."

Take "service" degrees in psychology and social work. People who know anything about MIT and Weizenbaum's famous ELIZA program, and who are as sardonic, or worse, as I am about the future of America at times, has to wonder why a Fortune 500 EAP program doesn't seriously say, "Why are we sending people to human counselors instead of something like this?"

But, there's yet more to ponder, and to refute:

Obama's dumb oil move

Tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve?

First, the amount it contains? 727 million barrels, per Wikipedia, is enough that it can't be tapped too often, too hard.

Wiki also says the current consumption per day is 21 million barrels so Obama's 30 million barrels actually lasts less than a day and a half (just over 1 day, 10 hours to specific), per fried Leo Lincourt.

So, add up A and B, and contra Salon's Andrew Leonard, it's possible this will NOT stop oil speculation. (I'm also assuming Saudi Arabia's talk about raising production is a lot of talk and not much else, given its recent unmothballing of a field that that had been in drydock for years.) The market remains relatively tight. It might take the sharpest edges off speculation, but that's about it. And, due to the realities of what the strategic reserve contains, commodities speculators know that.

Beyond that, Obama's never showed any real inclination to reign in speculators. If he had, he would have tighten commodity, commodity futures, and commodity derivatives legislation.

But, since many of those folks are the ones who were major bankrollers of the mythical Citizen Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, and whom he hopes will be the same in 2012, he's not going to regulate them in the future.

This was just about trying to give the economy enough of a nudge, without having to make any actually liberal political decisions, to boost his election chances.

But, this is about more than Obama. The International Energy Agency signed off on this too.

This is also in part about post-Fukushima Japan, worried about summer energy needs with some of its nuclear plants offline. Or so I'm guessing. It's about the EU, hoping this will take the mind off of bailout trauma in Greece and bailout payment trauma in Germany. And, it's about China hoping it can continue to keep its housing and other bubbles from bursting.

Well, I don't know what the answer is for Japan. For Greece, austerity won't address a culture of tax evasion and corruption that makes the legal-on-paper antics of folks like the Koch Bros. look like kindergarten, and cheap oil won't camouflage austerity. For China, as Paul Krugman wrote the other day, only an upward re-evaluation of the renmimbi (yuan) has a serious chance of deflating those bubbles without too much pain or destruction.

On Europe, as I learn more ... it's supposed to replace the missing Libyan oil, most of which went to Europe. So, I wasn't totally wrong there.

China? At least one market analyst in that area, as well as some in the U.S., suspect "coordination" with Fed chief Ben Bernanke's speech about a slowing economy, and that this will be the gateway for more "quantitative easing," but by different name and means. In fact, Forbes calls it QE2.5

Meanwhile, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is investigating "suspicious" trades in oil just before the decision was announced. Getting back to lack of regulation - such insider trading isn't illegal in the commodities markets.

And, back to the "timing" issue, too. The story notes the Saudis had already announced a production increase.

So, many this was a bank shot against the non-Saudi members of OPEC, played in conjunction with Riyadh?

Branding Barack Obama — and his abused "lovers"

Naomi Klein, a while back, reflected on the 10th anniversary of her book "No Logo," The Guardian excerpts here her reflections.

In this, she gets much more into "branding" in politics, noting W. was decent at it, but that Barack Obama makes every predecessor of his look like a piker in terms of modern branding, both in techniques, and degree of use.

This, from the excerpt, sounds all too true and all too depressing. Although I didn't have a label for what I was "seeing through" by the end of 2007, it's clear in hindsight, and with a bit of help from Klein, that I was seeing through his branding, and finding the hollowed-out non-core of neoliberalism inside.

But, she also sounds like an abused woman returning to the man who just slapped, or even punched, her in the face:

Personally, none of this makes me feel betrayed by Barack Obama. Rather I have a familiar ambivalence, the way I used to feel when brands like Nike and Apple started using revolutionary imagery in their transcendental branding campaigns. All of their high-priced market research had found a longing in people for something more than shopping – for social change, for public space, for greater equality and diversity. Of course the brands tried to exploit that longing to sell lattes and laptops. Yet it seemed to me that we on the left owed the marketers a debt of gratitude for all this: our ideas weren't as passé as we had been told. And since the brands couldn't fulfill the deep desires they were awakening, social movements had a new impetus to try.

To me, without the actual violence, of course, that sounds exactly like the psychology of an abused lover, claiming they're not betrayed, that you have to look on the bright side, that it's not really that bad, etc.

It's amazing how someone like Klein can be so insightful and then ... so willfully self-blinded.

Obama, HCR, legacies, self-inflicted wounds

I am so tired of moderately-left-of-center columnists and commentators like Joan Walsh saying Democrats "Must" pass health care reform because Obama's legacy depends on it.

Dear Joan:

(And, I've always wanted to write a "Dear Joan" letter!)

I am "delighted" to see you are so concerned about President Obama's legacy. Quite possibly, you're more worried now than he was six months ago, when he was more concerned about "bipartisanship" than "legacies."

That said, talking about words that end in "-ship," there are political legacies and there are statesmanship legacies. Given the way healthcare reform has been handled to this date by The One himself and Rahm, Bam, Thank You Emanuel, the only legacy Obama will get out of a "win" here is political.

You yourself halfway seem to recognize this:

I've written extensively about my disappointment with Obama and the Democrats, particularly around the healthcare reform plan. He gave Republicans and conservative Democrats too much power for too long, and he sold out early to the insurance and pharmaceutical industry. I don't like the deals Obama made, but he did what he thought he had to do.

I thought Dennis Kucinich was smarter than that and did recognize that. I guess I was wrong. I'll still credit him with being principled enough to not have been bought off in a Ben Nelson sort of way, so I'm not sure why he did change his mind, other than support of the wrong "legacy."

It sounds like Kucinich is sincere in his belief that he's going to get a voice about what all gets put in the reconciliation bill. It also sounds like he believes Obama will try to come back with something more in the future.

Both are delusions. Obama's campaign-trail talk about a public option was never more than lip service and never will be. And, House leadership will smile and nod their heads when Kucinich presents his request list, then move on.

Anyway, back to you, Joan.

This bill will NOT restrain insurers' costs. It will do less, IMO, to bring down overall healthcare costs than a single-payer system, let alone a system with some elements of Ron Wyden's vouchers, like Germany has. Any sops to the GOP on malpractice reform will NOT get insurers to lower rates, especially since the antitrust exemption's junking will likely itself be junked, and we don't have Federal Bureau of Insurance Regulation anyway.

It likely won't even rein in costs on private insurance in the long term. And, while Big Pharma might jump in Dems' pockets' over this bill, especially if the Medicare Part D doughnut hole is closed, Dems will now be hostage to the drug makers. And, forbidding reimportation, etc? Additional strains on Medicare.

Since I'm not a registered Democrat, and didn't vote for The One, I don't give a fig about his political legacy.

But, if we want to talk about that "legacy," would that include deliberately negotiating away the public option in secret talks with Big Pharma? Would it include folks like Kos, aka Markos the Boy Wonder, aka Der Kossenfuehrer, after all his time berating Democratic sellouts, supporting the very idea of selling out?

Greenwald has a great wrap on all this and more. Although I think he, sadly, supports the current measure himself, at least he's not hypocritical or contortionist.

Meanwhile, doorknob bless Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Stephen Lynch. He gets it.

Sorry, Joan. And Dennis. Go legacy yourself.

-----

Meanwhile, per comments to my summary of my thoughts, and my link here, on Talking Points Memo, I will respond to criticism, namely, that Obama's political legacy tracks relatively closely with the country's needs and similar items.

"The country" can do better. And, if this is really about Obama's statesmanship legacy, he should have been ready to junk bipartisanship earlier, and not approached HCR from a neolib angle in the first place. We need a "New New Deal" approach instead.

This issue's being "about the country" is exactly why the current health reform bill may likely be the enemy of the better, IMO, let alone the enemy of the best.

It won't corral Medicare costs; it won't corral private insurers' costs; it won't corral Big Pharma costs. So, if it is about long-term cost containment, as well as health insurance coverage, I don't see it.

And one can be a social democrat as well as part of a "reality based community" on fiscal matters. And, I believe I am.

Damn, Dennis, on healthcare

Well, as exemplified by his flip-flop on national health care, maybe Dennis Kucinich is "just another politician," too. Wonder how much arm-twisting Obama/Emanuel/Axelrod did? And, since when did Kucinich think Obama's "legacy" was so important, let alone the legacy he's developed so far as a true neolib?

It sounds like Kucinich is sincere in his belief that he's going to get a voice about what all gets put in the reconciliation bill. It also sounds like he believes Obama will try to come back with something more in the future.

Both are delusions. Obama's campaign-trail talk about a public option was never more than lip service and never will be. And, House leadership will smile and nod their heads when Kucinich presents his request list, then move on.

The hubris of Obama — I can prevent 1994 vote meltdown repeat

Yes, Obama allegedly said that Congressional Democrats wouldn't face an electoral meltdown similar to the 1994 one because he was president.

One small part of me wishes I were in a "swing" congressional district and could vote GOP just to send The One an EFF YOU message.

When will Obama fire Geithner?

As more and more details leak about how he handled various bailouts in the financial meltdown in 2008, above all the AIG bailout, the popular drumbeat for Tim Geithner's head should become ever louder.

If Obama were a real faux populist, he'd heed it. If he were to become a real populist, he'd heed it and make a good choice to replace Timmeh G.

Obama hypocrisy alert on campaign finance

Let's see, the presidential candidate who opted out of public financing, and speaking of finances, took in more money from Big Finance/Wall Street than did John McCain, now has the gall to protest, bleat and whine about the Supreme Court's Citizens' United decision?

Of course, Obama's populism looks like it has lasted less than a week, anyway.

Basically, it's arguable that Obama can be charged with the sin of of arrogance for either believing activist progressive voters have forgotten about his deal with the devil Goldman Sachs 18 months ago, or else for believing that such voters feel they're "stuck" with him.

Well, we're NOT!

Vote Green, if nothing else!

Pseudolib Obama suck-up-itis alive and well

Booman Tribune claims to see a deep and well-thought strategy by President Barack Obama on national healthcare, carefully finding a way to eventually get a “public option” in the final, post-House/Senate conference on whatever bill(s) come out.

I claim to see an Obama opium pipe in Booman Tribune’s hand.

Which of us is right?

I’m betting on me, not him.
-END-

Obama snows Dan Balz

The Washington Post political analyist among his dubious claims about The One, says, “His ambitious domestic policies lean decidedly left.”

Really? Would that include his reluctance to change Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell? Would that include his middle-of-the-road Interior Secretary Ken Salazar? Would that include refusing to lead Congress on climate-change legislation? Would that include his refusal to speak out on gay marriage even as it becomes legal in more states?

And that’s just his domestic policy.

Wonder what book Dan is working on. He has to be.

Another Obamiac gets his hagiography and history wrong

Writing into Eric Alterman’s Slacker Friday column, Victor Archer claims Obama is the second-youngest president in history.

Victor, you’re not even close, and you don’t need to know ancient history to prove it.

Without having to do one bit of Googling, I knew the Slickster was younger to take office. And, since Jack Kennedy was the youngest man ever elected president and Teddy Roosevelt the youngest ever to become president, I knew Obama was — at best — only the fourth-youngest.

And, he’s not even that. Grant beats him by half a year. Also, Grover Cleveland is with half a year, Franklin Pierce within eight months and James A. Garfield and James K. Polk were less than two years older when taking office.

In all, you had nine presidents take office before turning 50. So, The One isn’t. (And, neither was Jack Kennedy, per TR being younger.)

If you don’t believe me, read for yourself.

That said, Wiki also has an error. It notes that, due to Britain’s change from Julian to Gregorian calendars, Washington’s, Adams’ and Jefferson’s birthdates are adjusted to New Style. However, James Madison, in 1751, was also born before the calendar change, in 1752, and Wiki blows it.

HuffPost hearts Obama stimulus PR vs. ‘old Europe’

No, unlike Don Rumsfeld, Max Bergmann doesn’t actually use that phrase. But, he sure seems to tilt that way.

This is one area where I disagree with Krugman as well. Much of continental Europe wasn’t hit in the same way in the current recession as was the U.S., or the U.K. And, given that the EU pushed BushCo for tighter SEC regulations nearly five years ago, it’s good to see that it won’t buy a pig in a poke from Obama.

Note to TPM – Obama has only himself to blame for ‘bitten off too much’

MSLB Talking Points Memo goes in the tank to refute this latest bit of scuttlebutt.

BUT… Obama’s own White House used the claim “he was too tired” to explain the clusterfuck of his first meeting with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Can’t have it both ways. Either the Messiah gave Gordo the back of his Messianic hand, or, like his disciples, he fell asleep because he bit off too much.

That said, William Galston at TNR says Obama needs to focus to avoid being Jimmy Carter.

Obama the stem cell ‘hero’

I’m not a big fan of linking to conservative blogs, but when one busts Team Obama naming a stem-cell research bill signing photo as “hero,” exposing the Messianic side some left-liberals and the press (briefly) worried about last summer, not just wingers, the guy’s going to get my link.

Here’s the actual original photo – linked from the White House website itself. Look at the link info and believe for yourself.



(The photo was No. 1 on a four-picture loop as of 3 p.m. CDT March 10.)

“Holding out for a stem cell hero,” anyone?

Non-combat troops in Iraq WILL SEE COMBAT

OK, now that the facts are in that the word “non-combatant” doesn’t mean Jack:

Some of the U.S. forces likely to remain in Iraq after President Barack Obama fulfills his pledge to withdraw combat troops would still have a combat role fighting suspected terrorists, the Pentagon said Wednesday.

Let me spell it out for you Kool-Aid drinking Obamiacs:

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said that a holdover, or "residual," force would number in the tens of thousands.

His spokesman said Wednesday that assuming there is such a force, it would have three primary functions: Training and helping Iraqi forces; protecting Americans and U.S. assets in Iraq and limited counterterrorism operations in which Iraqi forces would take the lead.

On the signature issue that got him the Democratic nomination (even with Hillary’s campaign management schwaffles, she still would have won, otherwise) …

“I think a limited number of those that remain will conduct combat operations against terrorists, assisting Iraqi security forces,” Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said. “By and large you’re talking about people who we would classify as enablers, support troops.”

He’s a fucking liar.

“We are now carefully reviewing our policies in both wars, and I will soon announce a way forward in Iraq that leaves Iraq to its people and responsibly ends this war,” Obama said in his address to Congress on Tuesday.

Clear?

Non-combatants will conduct combat operations.

Enablers? That’s any Obamiacs who are going to try to claim down is up now that the cat is fully and officially out of the bag.

More proof of economic fearmongering – by Obama himself

As the AP notes, in discussing President Obama’s Indiana whistle-stop, we haven’t even hit the worst unemployment level of 1992 yet, though we may well be doing that as we speak.

The AP then gets it VERY right on the severity of the current problem vs. the Carter-Reagan recession, the last serious recession we had. And the fearmongering, starting from the Big Cheese himself:

“We also inherited the most profound economic emergency since the Great Depression.”

BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT. And Internet-screaming all caps is the only way to respond.

Folks, we are more than 3 percentage points below the 10.8 percent unemployment rate of November and December 1982.

Stop your fearmongering. Especially you bloggers, primarily the so-called mainstream liberal bloggers.

Really, if you’re under 40, especially if you’re under the age of 35, get a historical clue, or else STFU. Because you weren’t old enough to really experience what it was like then.

As I said before, I think the full-blown gen Xer, on average, if not historically clueless, may be a bit narcissistic on the degree of the current problem.

That said, President Obama is older than I am. He should know better.

I do suspect a messianic side to him. And, claiming this is the worst situation since the Depression is a way to claim to be the Great Deliverer.

That said, I’ll call bullshit on that, too.

If he really believed his own rhetoric, he’d have pushed for a bigger, far bigger, far broader, economic program from the start, and he’d do something real with ARP 2.0, not Tim Geithner’s ass-kissing big banks.

So, we have more than economic fearmongering; rather, we have economic lying.

All that’s wrong with MSLBs on Obama

Is on full display in in this Washington Monthly post, in which Hilzoy engaged in great apologetics, with lips fully pressed to Obama’s backside, followed by the majority of commentors engaging in dittohead ass-kissing of their own for Hilzoy.

Here’s my take on Obama’s mea culpa of last night.

Obama gets 2/3 of a kudo for fessing up on Daschle and Killifer. He loses a full 1/3 of a kudo for not talking about Geithner.

Hilzoy gets a full kudo for getting plenty of Obamiac ass-kissing over this post, riffing back to Doubtful's comments. Obamaics lose a kudo, go direct to jail, do not pass go, and put down the Kool-Aid.

For Obamiacs who consider it a “smear” for me to continue to use that last phrase?

“Deal with it.”

I’m by no means alone in that observation, and not just by dyed-in-the-wool Republicans, either.

As I blogged yesterday, my wish is that Obama would apologize for some of his early flubs AND that you all would apologize for your hero worship. So far, we have 2/3 of the first half and zero of the second half.

Does Obama’s no-lobbyist rule include Daschle?

I know, I know. Tom Daschle, an Obama BFF and his Health and Human Services secretary nominee, is technically a rainmaker and not a lobbyist, so Obama’s anti-lobbying executive order doesn’t apply.

Then again, isn’t the rainmaker vs. lobbyist issue the type of hairsplitting that Slick Willie exemplified.

Should we cut B.O. some slack? Some folks say yes:

“Sometimes you can over-promise,” said former Sen. Warren Rudman.

And:

"”t was probably a mistake to come down so hard on lobbyists,” said Melanie Sloan, as executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “I think the Obama folks' intentions were great here. But sometimes you realize you can't actually govern on just what you campaigned on.”

I’m not so ready to cut slack.

And, at the same time, Peter Baker got a different quote out of Sloan:

“This is a big problem for Obama, especially because it was such a major, major promise,” said Sloan. “He harped on it, time after time, and he created a sense of expectation around the country. This is exactly why people are skeptical of politicians, because change we can believe in is not the same thing as business as usual.”

Bingo, bingo and bingo.

Baker says some unnamed Dems have similar concerns.

In other words, Obama is at risk of becoming the next Jimmy Carter – not the post-1980 sainted Jimmy Carter, but the Jimmy Carter almost loathed by Tip O’Neill.

So, no, contrary to Melanie Sloan in Quote No. 1, I am not ready to cut any slack

I would be, if we could get a little crow-eating from Obama himself, and even more crow-eating from rabid Obamiacs.

I’m not holding my breath on either.

On the first, as I’ve blogged before, I thought there was a fair amount of hubris in Obama’s short-lived pseudo-Great Seal campaign seal from last summer. Ditto for the Roman columns idea at Invesco Field in Denver.

As for the more rabid Obamiacs, well, y’all are just insufferable. Therefore, until you start suffering, I gots no problem continuing to hit you upside the head.

Don’t like it? Find some humility. Admit that he is Just.Another.Politician.™