Obama's First 100 Days

[Ninja]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/03/12/2514425.htm

This is a new reality for plenty of Americans now. And yet, when the troubles were clearly brewing in 2007/08, the pre-occupation was about kicking arse overseas in military adventures the country could ill afford.

BO's got his job cut out for him, that's for sure.

[harmony]

A 100 years ago, they said that when a black man became president, pigs would fly.


And on the 100th day of Barack Obama's presidency,

Swine Flew
 

[Dr. Phil]

If this president fails to deal with the global economic meltdown, which has hardly begun, I will still find it very hard to criticise him after eight years of Bush and Cheney abuse.

The fact is the huge budget deficit was scripted by Bush/Cheney as the only remedy long before they left office and Obama, for whatever reasons, signed off on it. Perhaps its fair to say he packed it with necessary infrastructural investment in power, roads, rail, education etc and a universal medicare or some form of healthcare access for all which is highly commendable not to mention courageous.

The USA can turn its fortunes around very quickly if it buys American goods, however the more serious problems concern Republican venom which is quite relentless in its condemnation of what it calls "socialism".

The sub-text here is quite clearly a fear that ordinary folk will receive essential medical care without burdensome bills. Elsewhere in the developed world we see this as a basic right to which we all contribute. In USA it is sold as a free luxury to grasping freeloaders. And yet the overwhelming majority of Republicans are ordinary folk who can ill-afford healthcare and would benefit from a more caring community. This is indeed mind-bending and misguided patriotism, but there are so many rascals.

Of course USA must learn a lesson from UK and must realise it can not have open borders and manage a National Healthcare system because it will indeed be scuppered with freeloaders. But Republicans want open borders, cheap sweat shop labour, low taxes etc. Republicans want to maintain the USA as a "corporation" rather than a nation. Never mind misleading Republican words like "Homeland", Obama is trying to give America nationhood with a comminity base, something quite different from the lip-serving patriotic clap-trap preached by scoundrels like Bush/Cheney.

Nancy Pelosi must pursue Bush/Cheney abuses because the CIC and CIA lied to the people and so many thousands of Americans have died fighting a needless war conspired by oilmen (and a million Iraqis died too) and this is not something they should be allowed to walk away from. And those who were maimed live on, testimony to the dark and evil Bush/Cheney era.

Nancy Pelosi must pursue Bush/Cheney until Republicans are rocked and on the back foot, because if she does not, they will destroy Obama and continue to divide American opinion with their toxic blend of self-serving greed, religious fervour and mean spiritedness.

As Americans might say, "Go Nancy, Go". 
 

[Vulcanl]

Dr Phil,

President Obama will seize on this opportunity to roll up the social security and medicare commitments into the national debt (enough of pretending they do not exist)  The only way out of these massive deficits is to inflate our way out (read: keep printing USD nonstop):

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tentrillion/view/

We don't need to worry about illegal immigration as the Mexicans at least have no interest in crossing over anymore:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/us/15immig.html?_r=1&hp

The Republican party is in shambles.  Dick Cheney and Rush Limbaugh are its most visible leaders.  Obama WILL be a two-term or more (yes, we will amend the constitution with the 60+ filibuster-proof senate majority) President.

My prayers are with our President.  He has his work cut out for him, but at this early date am very happy with what he has done - namely restored some modicum of hope to the people after the nightmare that was the Bush Presidency

[Dr. Phil]

Dr Phil,

President Obama will seize on this opportunity to roll up the social security and medicare commitments into the national debt (enough of pretending they do not exist)  The only way out of these massive deficits is to inflate our way out (read: keep printing USD nonstop):

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tentrillion/view/

We don't need to worry about illegal immigration as the Mexicans at least have no interest in crossing over anymore:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/us/15immig.html?_r=1&hp

The Republican party is in shambles.  Dick Cheney and Rush Limbaugh are its most visible leaders.  Obama WILL be a two-term or more (yes, we will amend the constitution with the 60+ filibuster-proof senate majority) President.

My prayers are with our President.  He has his work cut out for him, but at this early date am very happy with what he has done - namely restored some modicum of hope to the people after the nightmare that was the Bush Presidency

You must always worry about uncontrolled immigration because Mexicans could not care less about the national debt. The more chaos the better. You have land, territory and once they move in and take it over they will have their own micro economy as all ghettos have today.
To be bankrupted as a nation is bad, but its not over; to lose your country is indeed game over.

[Vulcanl]

This is a brilliant move on the part of President Obama.  It forces the Republican party's hand to answer the question of whether they wish to continue being the party of rich white guys in suits or to be more inclusive and representative of the modern American electorate:

A Judge’s View of Judging Is on the Record

Published: May 14, 2009

WASHINGTON — In 2001, Sonia Sotomayor, an appeals court judge, gave a speech declaring that the ethnicity and sex of a judge “may and will make a difference in our judging.”

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,” said Judge Sotomayor, who is now considered to be near the top of President Obama’s list of potential Supreme Court nominees.

Her remarks, at the annual Judge Mario G. Olmos Law and Cultural Diversity Lecture at the University of California, Berkeley, were not the only instance in which she has publicly described her view of judging in terms that could provoke sharp questioning in a confirmation hearing.

This month, for example, a video surfaced of Judge Sotomayor asserting in 2005 that a “court of appeals is where policy is made.” She then immediately adds: “And I know — I know this is on tape, and I should never say that because we don’t make law. I know. O.K. I know. I’m not promoting it. I’m not advocating it. I’m — you know.”

The video was of a panel discussion for law students interested in becoming clerks, and she was explaining the different experiences gained when working at district courts and appeals courts. Her remarks caught the eye of conservative bloggers who accused her of being a “judicial activist,” although Jonathan H. Adler, a professor at Case Western Reserve University law school, argued that critics were reading far too much into those remarks.

Republicans have signaled that they intend to put the eventual nominee under a microscope, and they say they were put on guard by Mr. Obama’s statement that judges should have “empathy,” a word they suggest could be code for injecting liberal ideology into the law.

Judge Sotomayor has given several speeches about the importance of diversity. But her 2001 remarks at Berkeley, which were published by the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal, went further, asserting that judges’ identities will affect legal outcomes.

“Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences,” she said, for jurists who are women and nonwhite, “our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging.”

Her remarks came in the context of reflecting her own life experiences as a Hispanic female judge and on how the increasing diversity on the federal bench “will have an effect on the development of the law and on judging.”

In making her argument, Judge Sotomayor sounded many cautionary notes. She said there was no uniform perspective that all women or members of a minority group have, and emphasized that she was not talking about any individual case.

She also noted that the Supreme Court was uniformly white and male when it delivered historic rulings against racial and sexual discrimination. And she said she tried to question her own “opinions, sympathies and prejudices,” and aspired to impartiality.

Still, Judge Sotomayor questioned whether achieving impartiality “is possible in all, or even, in most, cases.” She added, “And I wonder whether by ignoring our differences as women or men of color we do a disservice both to the law and society.”

She also approvingly quoted several law professors who said that “to judge is an exercise of power” and that “there is no objective stance but only a series of perspectives.”

“Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see,” she said.

Charles J. Ogletree Jr., a Harvard law professor and an adviser to Mr. Obama, said Judge Sotomayor’s remarks were appropriate. Professor Ogletree said it was “obvious that people’s life experiences will inform their judgments in life as lawyers and judges” because law is more than “a technical exercise,” citing Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.’s famous aphorism: “The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience.”

In a forward to a 2007 book, “The International Judge” (U.P.N.E.), Judge Sotomayor seemed to put a greater emphasis on a need for judges to seek to transcend their identities, writing that “all judges have cases that touch our passions deeply, but we all struggle constantly with remaining impartial” and letting reason rule. Courts, she added, “are in large part the product of their membership and their judges’ ability to think through and across their own intellectual and professional backgrounds” to find common ground