Sunday, July 17, 2011
President Obama talking to a group of bipartisan college students about politics.
A friend sent this to me the other day and I am very glad that they did.
If you listen carefully to what he is saying it essentially explains exactly how he sees his job and why he approaches difficult problems in the measured way in which he does.
I still feel, despite the fact that there are many things still undone (Or not being done fast enough for our liking), that this man may have a real chance to go down in history is one of the greatest Presidents we have ever known.
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...absodamnlutely..
ReplyDeleteFor better, for worse, this man understands/comprehends History.
Yes, Gryphen, you are correct in your assessment of Obama as being one of the greatest presidents ever.
ReplyDelete"I still feel, despite the fact that there are many things still undone (Or not being done fast enough for our liking), that this man may have a real chance to go down in history is one of the greatest Presidents we have ever known."
ReplyDeleteThanks, Gryphen!! I agree. In fact, I became a U.S. citizen last year (after moving from Newcastle, England, as a child)just so I could vote for our awesome President in 2012. And my extreme dislike of Sarah Palin began with her comment that President Obama was just a "community organizer" who was "palin' (Ha!) around with terrorists." THAT, plus the crosshairs on Gabrielle Giffords, are enough, but there's SO much more where Granny Palin is concerned. Greatest thanks for exposing her many lies! It helps us deal with the meanness and hubris.
He will...for sure, be found by History to be one of the best American Presidents ever!! Just hope he over comes all that the tea party throws at him trying to rip him apart.
ReplyDeleteWay too early to assess Obama as one of the greatest.
ReplyDeleteIf he was a one term POTUS, he'd largely be remembered as a POTUS who was saddled with a bad economy and was unable to bring his election platform to fruition.
If he's a two termer, that could change.
I like that he's finally becoming bold enough to the House and Senate GOP.
If the other side won't deal then use the power of the presidency to get the will of the people done.
He is the best we have right now but he sure isn't the guy I voted for. I am so disappointed in him. Hilary would have been so much better in hindsight. He told us one thing to get elected and has not kept many of his promises. Remember it was Eisenhower a Republican General that put in the highest tax rate for the rich in our history and we got stronger as a middle class.
ReplyDeleteBest president of my lifetime anyway, and probably overall. Amazing considering the uphill battle he has had to fight against his own countrymen, who are set to ruin him.
ReplyDeleteI'm so, so happy we have President Obama guiding us in all this mess AND I'm especially happy I voted for him and will do so again.
ReplyDeleteTo ensure this, we need to elect more progressives in 2012 at all levels.
ReplyDeleteThere will still be stupid Republican Governors reluctant to use federal funds to create jobs in their states just as they did since President Obama came into office - particularly the GOP-TP ones like Walker and Scott.
We have to keep the Senate in Democratic hands and get the Dems back into control in the House.
I truly miss Pelosi. She was effective in ensuring progressive bills got to the floor and passed.
Unless we get the zealots out of the House President Obama will never be able to ensure the average American still has hope of pursuing the American dream. He has to have our backing to make things better.
I truly and deeply admire this President and his family. Best we've had in my lifetime (and I am entering my sixties).
I voted for Carter, Clinton and Obama. Those are the 3 presidents I have gotten to vote into office in my lifetime. I will vote for Pres. Obama again in 2012. I always knew he would never solve everything. I pray every day that in our "Crosshair/eyes Sarah" culture, no one will hurt him. I pray for Gabby Giffords every day as well.
ReplyDeleteWonderful post, Gryphen. For all the things that are still undone, like Gitmo, more jobs, and ending the Bush tax breaks, he has accomplished much in a short time. He truly understands his role, and if we can get a Congress that will work WITH him, this country could become great again. If the GOP continues this road to ruin, I am not so sure.
ReplyDeleteI, too, became a US citizen in order to vote for President Obama in 2008 - and I look forward to casting the same vote again in 2012. He is doing a magnificent job - quietly, behind the scenes - that most people don't even recognize. How he stays calm and centered is beyond me. I admire him, and his family, greatly.
ReplyDeleteto Sally in MI said... you need to read this article from Politicususa: http://goo.gl/bHqcb - it will explain why Gitmo has not been closed. Our President definitely tried, but could not get support from his own party!
ReplyDeleteLOL
ReplyDeletehttp://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2011/07/snow-flower-and-the-secret-fan-sarah-palin.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+newsandbuzz+%28News+%26+Buzz%29
anon 2:49, I understand your disappointment, but he is president, not king. He has to work with Congress - the legislative branch makes the laws. Before the midterms there was a Dem majority, but the Republicans abused the filibuster to obstruct. Then the Republicans promised 'jobs, jobs, jobs' to get elected in the midterms - how many jobs bills have been passed in the new Congress? I believe that would be NONE. Instead we get anti abortion, anti-gay, defund Planned Parenthood, and the recent colossal waste of time of holding the debt ceiling hostage and refusing to NEGOTIATE deficit reduction efforts that include BOTH spending cuts AND revenue.
ReplyDeleteO/T - Sarah Palin defeated in Dallas:
ReplyDeletehttp://malialitman.wordpress.com/2011/07/17/defeat-in-dallas-for-the-undefeated/
I wanted to see a WOMAN have a chance so badly, that it took me awhile to warm up to Obama.
ReplyDeleteThen, hearing him speak, and watching how he acts like the only ADULT in Washington, I keep wondering why everyone else has not come around to see how adept he is in the position.
Sadly, there are still a lot of Americans alive and kicking who refuse to accept a BLACK guy as their President. The generations coming up now, will view that as totally sickening, once they take over and put the racists out to pasture.
Anonymous @ 2:49
ReplyDeleteYou have no idea if Hilary would have been more effective than Obama. I think the president assumed that he would be working with adults when he was elected and Hilary surely would have had to deal with the non cooperation of this kindergarten Congress with as much difficulty as he has. How do you expect him to get any kind of tax legislation passed by himself? Unless he decides to throw out the constitution, the President must work with Congress to get anything done. I am sure he had no idea when he was campaigning that the Republican's only goal is to prevent him from accomplishing anything. The fact that he has accomplished so much in spite of the party of "no", indicates what a great president he is. I can guarantee you that when he is finally out of office the main goal of conservatives will be to alter any historical records that portray his accomplishments.
I strongly suspect that this President will not truly be appreciated for all he will accomplish until years, or even decades, from now.
ReplyDeleteAlthough there are still some things that disappoint me about his term so far, I am realistic enough to understand that he was handed the worst economic situation since the Depression, two un-winnable wars, and a Congress that obstructs every piece of legislation coming out of the center or left, even if they supported it previously.
He is fighting a political party, funded by unprecedented corporate support, that is willing to sacrifice the economic stability of the entire country, and possibly the world, in order to regain the White House.
History, as always, will show the true measure of this President, and I believe it will find him one of our best.
Look at Obama's analogy and apply it to the economic crisis of today.
ReplyDeleteLincoln sold out the slaves in the North for the sake of making war. Those human beings were still "property" to be used abused and thrown away when they were used up.
So if not for the freedom of the slaves why was the war fought?
The Civil War was not about slavery, at least for the North it wasn’t, as Yankee historians keep telling us. It was about something else.
Easy wealth and stealing other's property are the most common causes of war, so that is where history should always look.
Lincoln didn't compromise his principles, he compromised the freedom of human beings on the grounds that he was freeing human beings. And enjoined in a bloody war that reunited the nation in name only.
What would have happened if he had let the southern states secede?
There would have been no war. And since the economies of the North and South were inextricably linked, likely by 1900 the US would have been one nation again. Certainly by the beginning of WWII, and probably much earlier than that.
And in the mean time the North and the South could continue to work toward a freeing of those considered to be property with no rights to a point where they were effectively and ultimately literally free.
The opening of the west where cotton and tobacco would not have been king would have pushed the economy further away from the need for slavery on the level it existed in the South as well as shifting economic and political balances and populations.
Lets face it there still remains in the North as much as the South, in the West and much as the East an attitude and often a treatment of Blacks that is historically directly related to the attitudes of 1840, and were exacerbated in the South (What the North, East and West’s excuse is I have no idea.) by the resentments of a war that destroyed the South’s economy and way of life, as well as the insult of Reconstruction.
As soon as Union troops left and Northern control loosened, resentments of the whites led them to lash out at the easiest targets, the Blacks. Nuch of that attitude remains, still, over a century and a half later.
So the war didn't really accomplish as much as the lack of war might have, and true equality might have been reached by now.
The schism that still exists and rancor that still exists between North and South would not exist. The economy of the South would not have been suppressed by "Reconstruction" that left the South deep in poverty where much of it still remains over a century and a half after the North “Reconstructed” it.
Poverty and suppression that was intended to punish the Confederate States, actually punished the poorest, least educated American citizens in the South, the very Blacks that the war supposedly was fought for.
I wonder if Obama really means that he believes in that kind of compromise, because it really does resemble the whole scale theft of SS and Medicare that he seems willing to accept, and the largely helpless victims that that would leave behind, just as the Civil War and Reconstruction left behind, in the bondage of poverty and illiteracy, the very people that it claimed it was fighting to free.
He is brilliant and good. Important things.
ReplyDeleteEverything Gryphen said, I wholeheartedly agree with. I'm disappointed with a few things, but on the whole, he's the first president that made me feel my vote mattered, We elected him President, not Jesus.
ReplyDeleteThe bullshit people on both sides are tossing his way, have done little to sway my opinion of him.
The Republican Party, from the onset, should have taken the freshmen crop of tea party candidates by the hand and explained to them how Washington Politics works. They've signed a check their butts can't cash, and have made a mockery of their party.
How soon we forget what President Obama was left to work on, and what happened since was no picnic either. Katrina, The BP disaster, floods, global terrorism, the wars, the economy, the birth certificate, japan's nuclear disaster, blatent racist attacks, hate speech, etc etc etc.
And yet, he remains steady and calm in the face of all of it. He's brilliant, wise, calm, and gets things done.
Compare his first term with both terms of GW Bush. Who delivered more?
As a liberal Democrat who first became interested in politics during LBJ's administration (when I was in high school) I could not disagree with you more about Obama - unfortunately.
ReplyDeleteI see Obama as really only caring about one thing - pleasing republicans. He has given the cold shoulder to liberals/progressives since being elected, though he sure took our money, time, and shoeleather with alacrity in 2008 when he was talking about "hope and change."
Well, hope and change were nothing but bait and switch as far as I'm concerned and it always puzzles me why people who can see the truth about people like Sarah Palin can't see it about Barack "eat your peas" Obama who cares no more about the vulnerable and disadvantaged than Sarah Palin does.
Just because I despise Sarah Palin doesn't mean I love - or even like - President Obama, who has done not one thing to help the middle or working classes since being elected...just the opposite. He will not stand up for unions, he has stocked his cabinet with corporate poison purveyors, he talks out of both sides of his mouth when it comes to gay rights, and when it comes to Social Security and Medicare, he is doing what Bush only dreamed of.
And Obama supporters like you, who blindly praise him and don't call him on his countless betrayals, are why he gets away with it.
To 5:23....
ReplyDeleteAmazing post, and I could not agree more!
Oooh, angry members of the "Professional Left" have joined this thread.
ReplyDeleteme too. I think he may be the greatest President this country has ever had.
ReplyDelete"That's part of the process of growing up."
ReplyDeleteI keep wondering if there are any adults in the Republican leadership. Whiney Eric Cantor acts like a 4 year old. Mitchy-Mitch McConnell digs in his heels and shouts "You can't make me!" while John Boehner keeps looking to some hidden parental funding source to tell him what he believes.
Yes, I've been disappointed sometimes, but I have to agree w/your assessment.
ReplyDeleteHistory (which he understands) will vindicate him against all the slings and arrows of his detractors, both left and right.
A steady course, intelligent analysis, a thorough knowledge of the Constitution--all the qualities we should appreciate in President Obama.
I have great confidence in President Obama. I think that Hilary Clinton would have met with the same refusal to cooperate from the Republican Party. The only difference would be that the smears would have had to do with her gender and not her race.
ReplyDeleteI get very frustrated with so-called liberals and progressives who do not seem to see the obstructionism by the Republicans. Their whining that not every item on their wish list has been fulfilled sounds an awful lot like the Republican tantrums we hear and see daily on the floor in the House of Representatives and the Senate. It's time for everyone to GROW UP and support our president. He's doing a fine job; just think how much better he would be doing if all of the liberal community supported him.