804brown,
With all due respect, I do see that his first sentence reads the way you say. Thanks for pointing it out. But the rest of his quote is aimed at Bush and now can be used against him. I do realize that there is nobody better than this current administration to take dog poo and make you think it is essence of "Chanel Nº5"! But he does have a record and reasonable people will say that you cannot keep up with blaming the previous administration for the last 3 + years.
What ever you do - don't go into the suppression argument! The right can shoot a cannon through that argument! Eg. Black Panthers on tape - Forcing people to buy healthcare - forcing companies, and religious affiliations to provide services that are against their beliefs. You want to talk about suppression. A reasonable person will never buy the argument that any type of ID is suppression of any kind. I won't take the time to show how many rules & regulations (suppression) have been enacted on business in the past 3 years. We have more federal departments and czars telling us what to do from every direction then any other time in history!
The gas crisis is the latest failure. As President, I would have summoned every oil CEO into the White House. BO HAS THE BULLY PULPIT! I would have told Congress to have hearings to justify the price increases. I would have threatened legislative action to make the speculators take delivery of the oil immediately. If no response... create the legislation. I would make permits for oil drilling as well as pipeline delivery (Keystone) a priority ... this is a long term solution but this shows the world we will not be dependent on other countries and prices will be affected downward based on future outcomes.
Bottom Line
It is the responsibility of the President to lead. You have a certain POV, I have a certain POV (more importantly) the parties and the party leadership Dem & Rep have certain POVs, and BO has the obligation to bring both of the parties together to move us forward. He has failed miserably in that obligation. If you can't use your bully pulpit to get people to work together than move out of the way and let someone else have a go at it. You can't keep pointing fingers at one party (both sides do it!). Congress approval is partly because the President has allowed it to get that way.
First, you can still blame the former administration when his huge treasury depleting tax cuts are still in place, when his 2 treasury depleting wars are still going on, and when his deregulation induced policies crashed the economy is still recovering. Over the last 3 yrs obama has focussed on fixing those problems: passed a modest stimulus which did help us recover, passed a romney like health care reform plan which will be in full force by 2014, he passed financial reforms to attempt to re regulate wall st.
As for suppression, again it is about contraception not religious freedom. Reasonable people have seen through the right's bogus attempt to attack obama as anti religion. As for forcing people to get health care, romney forced all his citizens to get health care too. Im "forced" to have medicare and social security taxes taken out . How totalitarian !! How tyrannical!! I think it is all about how this supreme ct interprets the commerce clause.
As for czars, well that car czar helped save our auto industry. But i guess to you ideolgues, getting the job done doesnt count. Because it is all about the ideology with the wing nuts. Ideological purity over fixing the problem.
On the gas "crisis" (you do know we are now a net oil EXPORTER for the time in 50 yrs!!),if obama threatened action against the wall st speculators, i will bet you the right would have called that TYRANNICAL!! As for keystone, that oil can still be trucked into this country. Those construction jobs would have been temporary and not as many as the industry claimed either.
As for pointing fingers, obama has bent over backwards to try to be bi partisan but was stopped at every point by a very ideological opposition who thought (and still thinks) he is illegitimate and will stop at nothing to make him fail or be perceived as a failure. That is why he is supported by 50% of the population and the repub led congress is supported by about 11%. The right can NEVER be satiated: when obama leads he is taken to be a tyrant; when he cooperates, they move the goal posts on him. It helps the repub base but it alienates independents and that is what decides elections.
