"I know these steps won't sit well with the special interests and lobbyists who are invested in the old way of doing business, and I know they're gearing up for a fight," Obama said, using tough-guy language reminiscent of his predecessor, George W. Bush. "My message to them is this: So am I."
Some analysts say Obama's proposals are almost radical. But he said all of them were included in his campaign promises. "It is the change the American people voted for in November," he said.
From: "Obama Tells Powerful Lobbies: Bring It On" ( weekly address) AP, Feb. 28, 2009
" With the country on the verge of being swallowed up in its entirety by the spiraling economy, Republicans obsessed over Obama's citizenship, gay people, pregnant women with HIV, helicopters, primary challenges to their own Senators from porn stars and Christian fundamentalists, registration forms, hopeless recounts, and assorted variations on the 1981 theme of "Government Is The Problem." "
Paul Jenkins at Huffington Post Feb. 26
UPDATE: 2:22 PM & 2:42 Pm
Republicans: " The Party of No "
Unhinged : the Lunatic Fringe
Republicans Gone Wild
CPAC Fear Mongering , Lies and Racism The Party of NO
Tell Republicans that Americans Won't Take NO for an Answer- The party of "NO "
Republicans desperation in trying to to redefine themselves or just more of the same old angry fear-mongering while appealing to the lunatic fringe. Their policies and ideology have led to the Mess America is now in. So their problem is how to re-brand their party. The Republicans and the conservative movement in America can be described as Homophobic, anti-Feminist, anti-abortion,anti-science, anti-evolution ,racist , Pro-Wall Street, Pro-Big Business and actually anti-Main Street as they fight tooth and nail for the over-paid CEOs and the rich and the powerful. They still cling to their failed economic policies of lowering taxes of the Big Corporations and of the wealthiest Americans while telling the average Americans who have lost or may lose their jobs, their home their financial security to Just Stop Whining ! and leave the market place alone and let the chips fall where they may.
* (for analysis of Obama's by Maddow and her guest budget see below )
CPAC 2009: Wingnut Inmates Take over the Conservative Asylum
Worst Week Ever: Republicans Unhinged by Paul Jenkins at Huffington Post , Feb. 26, 2009
When Republicans suffered a disastrous beating in November's election, it would have been fair to assume that things could not get worse for them: the-most-liberal-Senator was to be president, Nancy-Pelosi-from-San-Francisco was going to lead a massive Democratic majority in the House, and assorted socialists were going to run things. That was bad, yes, but this week, just like the stock market (funny how that goes), Republicans hit yet a new low. In recent days, Republican leaders were called cheesy, off-putting, disastrous, untrustworthy, and inconsequential, not by Democrats, but by their party's own members, from high-profile commentators to Governors.
The highlight of the GOP week was, of course, Governor Bobby Jindal's response to Barack Obama's Congressional address. The best that can be said for Jindal's performance is that it channeled Kenneth the Page from 30 Rock, presumably not the objective, even for someone who willingly changed his name to "Bobby." But the past seven days have offered so many moments of breathtaking inanity by the GOP that our head spins at trying to organize them cohesively. With the country on the verge of being swallowed up in its entirety by the spiraling economy, Republicans obsessed over Obama's citizenship, gay people, pregnant women with HIV, helicopters, primary challenges to their own Senators from porn stars and Christian fundamentalists, registration forms, hopeless recounts, and assorted variations on the 1981 theme of "Government Is The Problem."
and concludes :
...In just seven days, Republicans have offered up more amusement and fodder for an election campaign than even the most hopeful among us could have expected. What is especially thrilling is that it comes at little expense: Obama is competently in charge, as are, by and large, Democrats elsewhere, and change is happening at a mind-blowing pace. In the long run, yes, there should be concern that having buffoons in opposition is not healthy, but for now let's enjoy the moment. Of course, you ask, what about Sarah Palin, one of the likely buffoons-in-chief in 2012? Well, her very serious documentarian took charge of her faltering public relations this week. He went on national television to tell us emphatically that she is not a "moron."
Keith Olberman's critique of 2009 Conservative Political Action Conference CPAC
Obama's Spending Spree - Dangerous Days ! | The O'Reilly Factor | Fox News Channel Feb. 26, 2009
With Obama's out-of-control budget, will the U.S. go bankrupt? | DICK MORRIS [02-26-09]
Political consultant Dick Morris compares Barack Obama approach to government with that of Bill Clinton. Morris predicts Obama's economic stimulus plan will fail, and that Republicans will regain control of Congress in 2010 !
The Wingnut Revolution by Bob Cesca at Huffington Post , Feb. 26, 2009
After nearly three decades of Reaganomics in which the wealthiest two percent have grown exponentially wealthier while middle class wages have remained stagnant, a growing faction of super rich Americans is seriously pissed off -- and their Wingnut Revolution is upon us.
Sure, the interests and influence of the wealthiest two percent make them more responsible than most for the free market policies that created this current economic crisis. But if there's one thing we've learned about those responsible for this recession, it's that the concept of accountability is about as foreign as their live-in au pairs. Instead, they're trying to pin this on Barney Frank and a legion of "losers" (read that: working class minorities) even though Ben Bernanke himself has debunked this myth.
...At the vanguard of this Wingnut Revolution is CNBC's Rick Santelli...
If Santelli and his fake lightsaber of economic awesomeness is the loudest voice of the revolution, then the foot soldiers in the coming revolt are being mustered by Michelle Malkin and Joe the Plumber. The Pajamas Media people have organized something called The American Tea Party. This is absolutely real:
America is on the brink of another revolution. In a new American Tea Party, citizens across the USA are beginning to protest giant government programs that reach deep into their pockets.
Did you notice their slogan? "Uncle Sam - Get out of my wallet!" Get out of our wallets and pockets, Uncle Sam, and crawl into our wombs, where you belong.
The Pajamas TV team including Michelle Malkin, Glenn Reynolds, and Joe Wurzelbacher (aka Joe the Plumber) - are mobilized to help cover this new and evolving revolution.
Rick Santelli Feels "Threatened" By Obama Administration Feb. 26, 2009 The Young Turks
Santelli purposely misleads the audience by claiming he was being threatened. The phrase was " I don't know where he lives" as in he doesn't understand the struggles and fears of average Americans during this economic meltdown.
Rick Santelli of CNBC Angry Obama is Helping "Losers" Feb. 20, 2009
Santelli and other members of the Wall St. Crowd and the wealthy are out of touch with the American people as his rant proves. These members of the wealthy class are out of touch with reality and haven't a clue about the suffering of millions of average Americans who acted in good faith and played by the rules the conservatives created and yet find out the economy and Wall Street investments were built on shifting sand and that many of their stocks were not worth the paper they were written on. And so they have the audacity to blame average Americans for the economic mess. So these hearless thugs tell average Americans that the government should not help them because they are all losers. So somehow it is the individual's fault if they lose jobs or their houses. And by the way these Wall Street thugs who helped to cause the economic meltdown refer to those who are losing their jobs and their homes as being "Losers" whom the government shouldn't help. But of course the Wall Street gang wont't refuse a few billion dollars from the government to help them out. And as they have already done they will spend that money anyway they see fit on big bonuses for CEOs and limos and private jets etc. for why should they give up on their life-style to appease President Obama or average American " forget about it ".
and for more on the Republican Party's implosion or disarray from David Green at Information Clearing House:
America’s Two-Party System By David Michael Green February 27, 2009 "Information Clearing House"
--- The Republican party in America faces two grave problems today.
One is Barack Obama, probably the most skilled and era-appropriate politician in a generation or more. And that, after he’s already through all of one whole month in office.
The other problem threatening the very life of the Republican Party today is the Republican Party.
...Key ideological mysteries remain, but what is starkly clear, and all the more so after Tuesday night, is the stature gap between these two parties. It’s not that the Democrats stand tall. They don’t – though Obama sometimes does, so far – and the likes of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi seem at least astute enough to get out of the way of their party’s champion as he rises precipitously in public esteem. No, it’s not that Democrats stand tall, but that, more than anything, how pathetically small now stands – or crawls – the Republican Party, the same one Karl Rove promised just a few years ago to turn into a permanent majority in America.
...But where you could really see it is in the side-by-side comparison of Barack Obama and the champion of the opposition party, Bobby Jindal, who gave the Republican response afterwards. For every bit that Obama soared in his speech – and he did, rhetorically and even, sometimes, substantively for progressives – Jindal was a moral, philosophical and political homunculus of microscopic proportions. His speech of only a few short minutes managed to pack more unctuousness, more faux bonhomie, more “be sure to do a half-chuckle here” inauthenticity, more rank and bogus populism, and more policy solutions that were last fresh in the paleolithic era, than perhaps any single thing I’ve have seen in the entirety of my lifetime. Even David Brooks – or should I say, especially David Brooks, who sees the remaining shards of his credibility swirling down the toilet as the party to which this one-time socialist hitched his wagon these last decades – even he was apoplectic at the sight of the Jindal self-immolation. When David Brooks is describing the Republican response speech and literally using words like “insane” and “nihilistic”, you know how horrid an affair it really was.
And, oh god, was it abysmal. Imagine you were standing on the deck of a ship floating in a sea of 300 million drowning shipmates and you refused to throw them a rope, insisting instead that they simply swim harder and faster. “It’s for your own good! We must avoid moral hazard! (Except where ship owners are concerned, of course.)” Now imagine ten minutes later they all climb back on board and decide to conduct a ‘referendum’ on your future. That was the Jindal approach to a nation in crisis.
" Katrina Survivors Outraged By Jindal's Lies: Color of Change" at AlterNet.org Feb. 28, 2009.
Jindal, it's time to apologize.
Survivors of Hurricane Katrina expressed outrage over news that Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal made up the story in his Tuesday speech in which he claimed to have overruled a local "bureaucrat" and aided in the rescue of stranded Louisianans during Hurricane Katrina.
The online organization ColorOfChange.org, whose membership is largely people of color, launched a campaign today calling on Jindal to apologize and calling him "morally bankrupt" for trying to score political points off the disaster.
A Jindal spokesperson acknowledged earlier today that the events Jindal recounted to the nation had never occurred and the governor in no way assisted with boat rescues during the hurricane.
also see: Republicans Embarrass Themselves With Desperate Attempts to Act 'Cool' by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly at AlterNet.org Feb. 27, 2009.
* For an analysis of Obama's Budget - Obama's Priorities: "The Rachel Maddow Show"
also see: Economy Shrinks at Fastest Pace in 26 Years Feb. 27, AP
The faster downhill slide in the final quarter of last year came as the financial crisis - the worst since the 1930s - intensified.
and so it goes,
GORD.
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