Dissent of any form now being "racist" of course.
Obama with a known terrorist.
all i know is for most of bush's presidency if anyone dared to criticise him for the slightest thing, we got attacked for being unamerican. yet if the right does the same to obama...what? i don't hear the left saying that, and i guess now that there is a democrat in power it's suddenly not unamerican to criticise the president? so much for that united front many loved to go on about during that rah-rah wrap yourself in the american flag period.
it didn't seem like anyone from the right wanted to admit maybe bush wasn't amazing and perfect until aboooout, umm...2008? right about when he entered lame duck territory and the economy turned to shit. though even now the latter's still being placed solely on obama's shoulders when it sure as hell wasn't his fault the economy stunk when he became president. (and before anyone attacks me for that comment, no i'm not talking about how the economy is now, i'm talking in january 2009 only.)
If I hear one more person accuse the Obama campaign of practicing “Chicago-style politics,” I'm gonna kick all his nephews off the park-district payroll. I’m gonna send some precinct captains over to straighten him out. Mitt Romney and his surrogates don’t understand what Chicago-style politics means. No one seems to have told them that it’s been gone for 25 years. And they don’t get that Barack Obama, in his Chicago days, never had anything to do with it.
Chicago-style politics, in common parlance, refers to the 1950s-1970s era of the Richard J. Daley machine. If you want to read a great, short book about that world, I recommend "Boss" by Mike Royko. The strength and durability of the Daley machine was its ethnically based patronage network, a complex system of obligations, benefits, and loyalties that didn’t depend on televised communication with a broader public. It was a noncompetitive system that in its heyday had a lock on urban power and the spoils that went with it. One of the most memorable phrases from that era comes from a story often told by former White House Counsel Abner J. Mikva, who described attempting to volunteer on a local campaign in the late 1940s: “Who sent you?” asked the cigar-chomping 8th Ward precinct captain. “Nobody sent me,” replied Mikva. “We don’t want nobody nobody sent.” The machine was dominated by the Irish and centered in Bridgeport, the rough-and-tumble neighborhood that was the ancestral home of the Daleys. Bridgeport’s antithesis has always been the liberal, multicultural enclave of Hyde Park, the University of Chicago neighborhood where the Obamas—and Bill Ayers—live. (The other thing the precinct captain told Mikva was, “We don’t want nobody from the University of Chicago in this organization.”) Hyde Park’s 5th Ward was the only one out of 50 to elect an independent alderman until the late 1960s, when political reformers like my parents and their friends on the North Side began to challenge the Daley machine.
By the mid-1980s, the independents had mostly finished off the Daley machine—thanks mainly to the Shakman decree, still very much in force, which prevents any political consideration in hiring, firing, and promotion, with the exception of a thin layer of policy positions. This meant that when Harold Washington, a black machine politician turned reformer, was elected in 1983, he controlled only a few hundred city and county jobs, instead of the 35,000 Daley had at his disposal. By the time the younger Richard M. Daley was elected mayor in 1989, the Chicago machine was, like the Italian Mafia, more legend than force. Chicago-style pizza still exists. Chicago-style politics, equally deplorable in my view, no longer does.
In 2008, John McCain ran ads describing Obama as “born of the corrupt Chicago political machine.” But Obama, who moved to Chicago in 1985 to be a community organizer in a politically disenfranchised neighborhood on the South Side, had no link to the Chicago machine at all. In "Dreams From My Father," he describes trying unsuccessfully to get the attention of city officials—in the Harold Washington era—to deal with asbestos in public housing projects. That’s how far outside of Chicago-style politics Obama was. Obama never ran for a Chicago office. Hyde Park elected him to represent it in the Illinois State Senate in 1996. He tried for Congress in 2000 and lost. Then he got elected to the US Senate in 2004. He somehow passed through Chicago politics without ever developing any real connection to it.
As for Obama’s Chicago-based hit men, well, they don’t come out of Chicago-style politics either. David Axelrod was a quintessential Hyde Park independent, a University of Chicago student and disciple of the reform guru Don Rose. Axelrod cut his teeth denouncing what was left of Chicago-style politics as a Chicago Tribune political reporter in the early 1980s before quitting journalism to help elect the notoriously honorable downstate politician Paul Simon to the Senate in 1984. That was the first campaign Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel worked on as well. Rahm was too young to have much to do with the Daley machine. As for the others, David Plouffe is from Delaware. Jim Messina is from Montana. They are in Chicago, but not of it.
Some Republicans seem to think Chicago politics is about brutal, slashing attacks on opponents—Al Capone with an ad budget. That’s what John Boehner was complaining about when he used the phrase in 2009 to describe the way the Obama administration was demonizing opponents of his health care bill, like the US Chamber of Commerce. But political aggression is hardly a distinctive Chicago trait. While American politics has never wanted for harsh negativity, the Chicago machine era predates media campaigns driven by sound bites and attack ads. The best modern exemplar of hardball politics is probably the late South Carolina political consultant Lee Atwater, who ran George H.W. Bush’s ugly 1988 presidential campaign.
If they aren’t referring to machine politics, maybe Mitt’s boys are trying to say something else? In a recent call with reporters, Romney adviser Ed Gillespie described Chicago politics as simple cronyism, with contracts and rewards going to Obama’s largest fundraisers. But Chicago-style politics was never much about big donors either. The machine was funded through involuntary contributions. City workers had to kick back a portion of their salaries to fund the political operation. For an example of a politician notorious for rewarding major campaign contributors, look to Richard Nixon, the first president to put a price on ambassadorships ($250,000), and his relationship with the likes of Walter Annenberg.
Of course, Romney isn’t interested in this kind of nuance. “Chicago-style politics” is mainly just a way for him to call Obama corrupt without coming out and saying so. Speaking for the campaign, former White House Chief of Staff John Sununu told Fox News, “This is a president who wallowed in Chicago—in the murky soup of politics slash felons.” Sununu, of course, swims in the clear broth of integrity slash ethics. But here too, the Romney line seems a little out of date. While Chicago aldermen have kept up their love affair with petty crime, Illinois state politics has become much sleazier, with half of the last eight governors moving from the state house to the big house. For a politician like Rod Blagojevich, it’s Springfield—away from the scrutiny of the Chicago media—that affords the real opportunity for corruption. Somehow, “Illinois-style politics” doesn’t have quite the same ring.
Proud of yourself Michelle?
yahoo.com
Huma Abedin's week got a bit scarier on Sunday when federal officials ordered extra security to her house after a New Jersey man threatened her.
The New York Post is reporting a Muslim man from New Jersey threatened Abedin after Michelle Bachman accused her of having ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. The man was questioned by the NYPD but charges haven't been filed.
His only accomplishment is gay marriage and health care which nobody wants.
lots of people want these things. just because you don't want them doesn't mean no one does.gay marriage and health care which nobody wants
I'm an independent and just can't find a reason to vote for Obama. In all honesty I don't think he accomplished anything significant. He blames the economy on Bush yet he had control of the house for the first two yrs of his presidency. He has nothing to run on like his hope & change campaign. He has been campaigning for the last three years instead of fixing the economy. He still hasn't fixed freddie and fannie. His only accomplishment is gay marriage and health care which nobody wants. He's a disappointment. I'm not a fan of Romney but anybody would be better than Obama. He's a wreck. Everything he says is a lie. He is ruining this country.
Bush did screw up the economy quite significantly, and there was no way one person could repair it during a two year period. Yes, it sucks that millions are still out of work and the economy is still slow, but it doesn't go away like magic. Also, the whole world is suffering to some degree. Just be thankful you aren't living in Spain.
Do you think it is inappropriate to criticize the President on the economy because of Bush? Since when does a President get a free pass on an important issue for four years thanks to the previous President?
Do you think it is inappropriate to criticize the President on the economy because of Bush? Since when does a President get a free pass on an important issue for four years thanks to the previous President?
His only accomplishment is gay marriage and health care which nobody wants.
Everything he says is a lie.
Moonlit, actually i am for gay marriage. And obviously health care needs to be reformed but i feel the way he did it will make it worse. He barely pushed it through even though the majority of Americans did not want it.
It seems that the hope and change that he promised for Americans never came.
He complains about taxing the rich but extended the Bush tax cuts.
Actually, if you poll Americans on the provisions within "Obamacare" - the majority are for it. It's only when it's labeled "Obamacare" that half the country finds their Pavlovian trigger and hates it.
Exactly.
This cartoon was hanging in the waiting room of the largest physicians group here in conservative Texas:
I saw an article over a year ago where people who associated themselves with the Tea Party even polled high support when they were polled on the provisions separately. Very telling...
Has anyone said this?
This has to be the one of the weaker attacks from the right. No one is giving or asking for a free pass, they are just asking for context. Context applies in every other logical discussion in life, so it should apply in a campaign as well. Argue the legitimacy of the context, not the fact that context was brought up.
Angel617 said:There is a perception out there that the economic conditions that exist today are the fault of one person, Bush, and that Obama is in no way responsible for economic conditions in 2012, nearly four years after he became President. The degree to which Bush was responsible for the economic crash in late 2008 is debatable, and the degree to which Bush is responsible for economic conditions in July 2012 is less debatable. Obama and his economic policies have been in place for nearly four years now, and its a mistake to simply be excusing Obama from economic concerns today and harping about someone who has not been in the White House making policy for almost four years now.
Bush is not running in this election and should not really be part of the debate about who to vote for in November. Its Obama vs. Romney and that is what people should be focused on.
Obama and his supporters need to be honest about the record of the last four years and do their best to explain and defend their policies over that time. Shifting blame to a former President is simply dishonest and a failure to accept responsibility.
Obama and his supporters need to be honest about the record of the last four years and do their best to explain and defend their policies over that time.
So according to Romney, Obama has created about 3.2 million private sector jobs (and about 2.8 million overall, as he has decreased the government jobs). Not too shabby...we ought to give [...] at least six months or a year to get those policies in place.
The blame for the crash really isn't debatable its dishonest to turn your eyes away from the fact that certain policies over years lead to this demise. It's also dishonest to talk as if crashes such as these recover quickly. It's economics 101. Do you remember during the Bush years how Republicans talked about Clinton's foreign policies and how it lead to the then current issues? CONTEXT. Economies, wars, health epidemics, etc these all take a culmination of years to develop and then take years to fix. Nothing this big changes overnight, and for the Republicans to pretend otherwise is just playing dumb for politics sake.
Moonlit, actually i am for gay marriage.