Obama’s Unexpectedly Good Week

[babylonsister]

http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/obamas-good-week?utm_source=tny&utm_campaign=generalsocial&utm_medium=facebook&mbid=social_facebook

Obama’s Unexpectedly Good Week
By John Cassidy


Credit PHOTOGRAPH BY GREG BAKER/AFP/GETTY

snip//

Before election week was out, he had nominated a replacement for the outgoing Attorney General, Eric Holder. In Loretta Lynch, the mob-busting, terrorist-trying U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York (Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and Long Island), the White House found a prosecutor who seems likely to pursue much of Holder’s agenda, but also to avoid some of the partisan bickering that characterized his tenure. Lynch has already been confirmed by the Senate twice, and even Fox News personalities find it hard to fault her. ”Lynch is both highly qualified and abundantly experienced to become the nation’s top law enforcement officer,” Fox’s Gregg Jarrett, a former defense attorney, wrote at foxnews.com. Jarrett went on, “Unlike her predecessor, she has no close ties to Obama. …There is no history or evidence to suggest she will use her high office to act like a carnival barker in abetting the political manifesto of President Obama. If confirmed, Lynch has the potential to breathe new life and a principled stewardship into a vital department that has lost sight of its own name.”

Before departing on a trip to Asia and Australia, Obama followed up his nomination of Lynch by issuing a forceful statement in favor of net neutrality. In an earlier post, I said that the President could have accompanied this clarion call to preserve the open, non-discriminatory spirit of the Web with a commitment to protecting the interests of ordinary Internet users, many of whom are being ripped off by quasi-monopolistic Internet-service providers. On its own terms, though, Obama’s declaration was a powerful and welcome one. In addition to reaffirming a policy stance he campaigned on in 2008, the President showed that he is willing to stand up, where necessary, to the new Republican majority on Capitol Hill. In calling on the Federal Communications Commission to regulate I.S.P.s as public utilities, he surely knew that he would spark outrage among conservatives, as well as Congressional hearings, and, quite likely, a lengthy legal battle that will end up before the Supreme Court. But he went ahead anyway.

And then, after he arrived in Beijing for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, the President unveiled a much bigger surprise: an agreement with the Chinese government on confronting climate change, which garnered the praise of environmental organizations the world over. The Sierra Club called it “historic,” and Greenpeace, the National Resources Defense Council, and the Environmental Defense Fund also hailed the promise by the world’s two biggest CO2-emission scofflaws to reduce emissions and invest in sustainable energy. (It was left to Friends of the Earth to issue a cautionary note, warning that the measures agreed upon, even if they are fully enacted, would be insufficient to prevent global warming.)

snip//

During his first week of living in reduced circumstances after the midterms, Obama showed that he is capable of exceeding expectations, and he isn’t done yet. Sometime in the next month, he is expected to invoke his executive authority to prevent the deportation of countless undocumented immigrants. The Republicans won’t like that policy any more than they like net neutrality or tackling climate change, but it looks set to become the law of the land.

It’s too early for Democrats to cast off their mourning garb, crack open the bubbly, and toast their embattled President. But he’s already earned a few more pieces of gum.

[Iliyah]

1. K & R

When ever he has fairly good news here comes some DUers with total negativity.

[ErikJ]

2. And unlike Bush we now know he can walk and chew gum at the same time.

I would assume he's chewing nicotine gum trying to quit smoking.

[99th_Monkey]

3. I noticed Obama's very good week too

Here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025809867

[BumRushDaShow]

4. K&R

I expect there may be more on his plate as well....

[alcibiades_mystery]

5. It's driving the haters crazy...they've been going absolutely batshit the last few days

[Kath1]

6. And right wing hater heads are exploding everywhere.

Which is cool with me.

Great week! Thanks, babylonsister!

[maced666]

7. Oh yeah?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5812416

[Cha]

8. Oh yeah..

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5813509

[babylonsister]

10. And what's your point?

You don't like what you read, please feel free not to comment.

[JEB]

9. Next week could be even better if he issues executive orders on immigration.

Heard Rachael Maddow discussing it tonight and there is an interesting post up at:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025814308

[woo me with science]

11. I think the MSM/Third Way propaganda machine had a *very* good week,

However, it is worth noting that - as is almost *always* the case these days in corporate neoAmerica - all the PR celebration is about accomplishments that haven't even remotely taken place.

In fact, not only have they yet to take place....clear observation of the administration's behavior shows that in most cases the promises are based on empty words, while concrete ACTIONS by the administration are actually leading in the opposite direction.

Take climate change. We are offered pretty, but empty, promises during a lame duck session, based on absolutely nothing and with absolutely nothing binding or even suggesting that the promises will even be remembered once the lame duck period is over. Meanwhile and strikingly, however, the administration is pursuing ACTUAL free trade agreements that WILL apply the force of law to accomplish exactly the opposite: handing multinational corporations the power to supersede decisions made by nations about environmental protections.

Or take net neutrality. We are to believe that Obama passionately backs net neutrality, when his HANDPICKED corporate viper of an FCC chairman is still signaling that he will destroy it, and the corporate media is conveniently expressing shock at this "going rogue" that was certainly planned from the beginning. The president appointed this viper and placed him in his current position, and now we are to believe that he is horrified by its actions. We are treated like blithering fools.

And we are also to believe that the new, ostentatiously threatened veto of Keystone reflects our corporate president's finally finding his inner liberal. What utter nonsense again based on nothing and belied by the entire history of this administration. Far more likely, given this administration's past *and* current behavior, is that either (1) the administration is now assured it has the votes to override the veto, or (2) kpete's OP here reveals the true reason for the veto, that the corporate vipers have determined that the pipeline won't be PROFITABLE: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025813424

Meanwhile, we are greeted with new revelations of even MORE criminal spying on Americans through deliberate, warrantless invasion of our cell phones. And this corporate administration continues working overtime to push through the corporate-empowering, democracy-dismantling TPP and TISA, to double troops in Iraq, and to oversee a TRILLION dollar increase in nuclear weapons.

This while cutting food stamps AGAIN and signing farm bills based on "pension smoothing."

Corruption to the core in this bipartisan oligarchy pretending to be a democracy, fronted by a shameless, Orwellian propaganda machine bleating endlessly that the chocolate ration has been increased.

We need to save the party. We need to save the nation. We need to save the democracy. Enough of humoring the endless propaganda we are fed. We need to realize that this is not gridlocked democracy, but united oligarchy that is systematically dismantling the very foundations of our democracy.

Caring about and genuinely working toward the survival of our environment is incompatible with pushing the TPP and the TISA. Preserving democracy and freedom of the press and expression and dissent is incompatible with installing corporate toadies into the FCC. War is Peace.

It's a well-oiled propaganda state that gets citizens to cheer while their democracy is being actively dismantled and all promised chocolate remains conveniently in the future.

Ignore the Third Way shills with extreme prejudice
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5767160