Obama echoes Roosevelt as he brands Republicans the party of the rich

[dreamdancer 0]

is he getting it...

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Robert Reich, the economist who served in the Clinton administration, hailed it as the most important economic speech given by Obama since becoming president.

"Here, finally, is the Barack Obama many of us thought we had elected in 2008. Since then we've had a president who has only reluctantly stood up to the moneyed interests Teddy Roosevelt and his cousin Franklin stood up to," Reich wrote on the Huffington Post website. "Hopefully Obama will carry this message through 2012, and gain a mandate to use his second term to take on the growing inequities and game-rigging practices that have been undermining the American economy and American democracy for years."

But Republicans slammed the speech. Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, referring to the Bull Moose party, told Fox News: "One of those words applies here when the president is talking about what he'd do to this economy."

Another challenger for the Republican presidential nomination, Newt Gingrich, said Obama's economic policies would result in more people on welfare than in jobs and would make him "the finest food stamp president in American history".

Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, accused Obama of "cheap political theatre".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/07/obama-roosevelt-republicans-rich

stay away from moving propellers - they bite
blue skies from thai sky adventures
good solid response-provoking keyboarding

[lawrocket 3]

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"Here, finally, is the Barack Obama many of us thought we had elected in 2008. Since then we've had a president who has only reluctantly stood up to the moneyed interests Teddy Roosevelt and his cousin Franklin stood up to," Reich wrote on the Huffington Post website. "Hopefully Obama will carry this message through 2012, and gain a mandate to use his second term

History demonstrates the impossibility of this. The President has had three years to do just that and he did not. Hell, he had a House and a filibuster-proof Senate for two of those years and didn’t do it.

So I think it would be a fairly simple thing to say that the Obama we see right now is the Obama we saw in 2008 – a guy who said all kinds of things to get elected. Now he is back on the campaign trail and looking to give further dispensations for those who will support his reelection efforts.

It’s a speech. That’s all it is. The President has made plenty of speeches. Sorry, but, “If re-elected I’ll do it” doesn’t work in my book.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[charlie5 0]

Most divisive president I've ever seen

The feather butts bounce off ya like raindrops hitting a battle-star when they come in too fast...kinda funny to watch. - airtwardo

[rushmc 18]

Not really a surprise seeing how FDR is the one that helped start the mess we are in today

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[matthewcline 0]

In answer to your question, I do not think he is.

Matt

An Instructors first concern is student safety.
So, start being safe, first!!!

[kelpdiver 2]

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History demonstrates the impossibility of this. The President has had three years to do just that and he did not. Hell, he had a House and a filibuster-proof Senate for two of those years and didn’t do it.

That's quite a distortion of the facts, a bit unusual from you, no?

The period of time that the Democrats had 60 votes, included the highly unreliable vote of Joe Lieberman, started on July 7th 2009 when Al Franken finally took office and ended on Feb 4th, 2010 when Scott Brown won the special election in MA. And even part of that time between the Ted Kennedy died and Kirk was appointed to take his place (about a month), the Democrat block only had 59 votes.

7 months isn't quite the same as two years. He spent all of that power on the health care legislation, though it's obviously true that the block of 60 wasn't very cohesive (Lieberman again).

[lawrocket 3]

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In Reply To
History demonstrates the impossibility of this. The President has had three years to do just that and he did not. Hell, he had a House and a filibuster-proof Senate for two of those years and didn’t do it.

That's quite a distortion of the facts, a bit unusual from you, no?

I should have been more clear. Recent history demonstrates the impossibility of this. I’ll be more clear: the current President’s history demonstrates it won’t happen. Our President has been the President for 34.5 months. If it was a problem, he knew about it while he was on the campaign trail. He knew about it as President. He’s known about it for a while.

History demonstrated that he said things in campaign speeches and then shelved it after election. He’s not going to act until AFTER the election. What will he do then? Why hasn’t he taken steps to fix it before? Why isn’t he doing anything now other than rabble rousing?

We’ve got history that shows what he’ll do. Sorry, but he has lost credibility as a man of his word. Now he’s just villainizing.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[kelpdiver 2]

and I think you have to be more clear - the filibuster was a real issue for most of his term in an era where the two parties have been further apart than I've ever seen. Still, he was able to accomplish something (maybe, courts pending) that the Clintons failed miserably at 18 years ago.

[lawrocket 3]

Well, yes. Look at what got accomplished that he wanted done. The GOP was powerless to stop it, much like the GOP would have been powerless to stop anything else.

That’s my concern – all these things that he says need to be fixed. Meanwhile, they’ve been broken all along. Reich himself described the “growing inequities and game-rigging practices.” Yep. Growing. Under his watch, too. What’s next? Blago going to give a speech about the growing corruption in government and blame the interests who grease the palms of the policymakers?

Note: The parties were just as far apart with Clinton. I’d think even more so until the 94 elections. That’s when Clinton showed his brilliance by reassessing his stances. But how close could the parties have been when there were government shutdowns going on? We have a tendency to forget these things.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[grimmie 177]

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Most divisive president I've ever seen

Due to the media, or his actions?

[mnealtx 0]

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and I think you have to be more clear - the filibuster was a real issue for most of his term in an era where the two parties have been further apart than I've ever seen. Still, he was able to accomplish something (maybe, courts pending) that the Clintons failed miserably at 18 years ago.

The presence of a cloture vote does NOT imply the presence of a filibuster.

Mike
I love you, Shannon and Jim.
POPS 9708 , SCR 14706

[dreamdancer 0]

this time round he's got the 'occupiers' putting his feet to the flames...

stay away from moving propellers - they bite
blue skies from thai sky adventures
good solid response-provoking keyboarding

[DaVinci 0]

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Not really a surprise seeing how FDR is the one that helped start the mess we are in today

The location of the speech was one from Teddy, not FDR.

[lawrocket 3]

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Not really a surprise seeing how FDR is the one that helped start the mess we are in today

No. Teddy Started it. FDR perfected it.


Back in the day, opium was viewed as a pressing problem. The populists, those involved in Temperance, etc., saw opium and heroin as a scourge. Rightfully so, I might add. The populists really wanted to control opiates. It was a problem. Opium, of course, was a commonly prescribed medical treatment. And plenty of people got hooked because of it. (Think of those we all know about – those who are hooked on painkillers. The same exact situation).

There was another problem, though: Police Powers had been reserved to the Individual States. The populists wanted the federal government to be involved. For 120 years the answer had been, “No can do. That pesky Constitution leaves it to the States.” A clever individual had mentioned the Commerce Clause. After all, opium comes from China and goes in interstate commerce. So, an argument can be made that the federal government can regulate it.

Something needed to be done to cause sufficient public uproar – the good people of the US were individualistic. Especially in the South, mistrust of the federal government still existed. So how are we going to get them to go along with it? Propoganda.

Genteel white men and women perceived a problem that uppity Negroes were doing opium and cocaine and assaulting white women, stories of which were graphically reported in the rags at the time, as well as in the Journal of the American Medical Association (all the way back in 1900!). There became a progressive uproar that something had to be done to stop the crazed Negroes and the victims of the ruthless Chinamen.

So in 1914, the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act was passed, which regulated opium and cocaine. As a matter of law, addiction was not a disease. Therefore, doctors could no longer prescribe opium to maintain addicts. Of course, doctors could get a license to dispense opium if they had opium to dispense. But possession of opium without the license was a crime. Catch-22.

After loads of doctors went to prison for violating the law, nope, no more opium for addicts. So Teddy was the originator. Spring forward 28 years and Wickard v. Fillburn held that FDR’s policy that a person cannot grow a personal crop of wheat was upheld as being subject to regulation. Go to 2005 in Gozales v. Raich and the commerce clause has gone from regulating international and interstate commerce of drugs to allowing the federal government to imprison a person for growing non-commercial marijuana for her own use.

Isn’t society’s progress grand?

My wife is hotter than your wife.