The President’s ‘Tiger’ Moment: Obama Apologizes For His Indiscretions

Good evening, and thank you for joining me.  Many of you in this room are my friends.  Some of you are members of “Organizing For America,” formerly called “Obama For America,” and before that “Operation PUSH.”

Many of you know me.  You have cheered for me.  I miss those days.  I just want to say to each of you, simply and directly, that I am deeply sorry for my irresponsible and selfish behavior.

I was unfaithful.  I consorted with Republicans.  I engaged in bipartisanship.  What I did is not acceptable, and I am the only person to blame.

As you know, I am trying to get a health care reform bill through Congress.  In so doing, I made a reach-around across the aisle.  I avoided talk of a single-payer system.  I watered down and then removed the public option.  I took out the death panels, benefits to undocumented immigrants, and federal funding for abortion that our critics so callously and falsely observed were in the bill.

I know I have bitterly disappointed all of you.  I have made you question who I am and how I could have done the things I did.  I am embarrassed that I have put you in this position.

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Tags: Daily Kos, David Gergen, firedoglake, Moveon.org, netroots
Posted Feb 28th 2010 at 3:15 pm in Obama, Political Humor, Politics | 78386103 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/jherricane/2010/02/28/the-presidents-tiger-moment-obama-apologizes-for-his-indiscretions/The+President%27s+%27Tiger%27+Moment%3A+Obama+Apologizes+For+His+Indiscretions2010-02-28+23%3A15%3A24John+K.+Herr

Obama’s First Year

Wednesday will mark the first anniversary of the presidential inauguration of Barack Obama — who began his Presidency, as nearly all new first-term Presidents do, high in the polls. At that time, Obama’s approval ratings were, in fact, in the stratosphere. In the last twelve months, however, they have fallen further and faster than those of any President since polling began; and, and, as developments in Massachusetts suggest, his party is now in danger of suffering in November an historic defeat — which is likely to rival its fate in 1938, 1966, and 1994 if the Democrats do not, as I believe they may, do even worse. In a poll released on Thursday, the National Journal reports that half of the adults sampled responded that, if new Presidential elections were held right now, they would vote against Barack Obama, and less than a quarter of those questioned indicated that they would vote to re-elect the President. It is an appropriate time in which to pose this question: Why have Obama and his supporters fallen so far and so fast?

We must, I think, begin before the beginning. The Obama campaign was predicated on a fraud. With a skill that was breathtaking, Barack Obama managed during that campaign to signal to the left within the Democratic Party with a wink and a nod that he was their man and that he meant business — that he really intended to “transform” America. To those in the middle and on the right who are ashamed of the nation’s historic sins in matters of race, he offered absolution, and he promised that the penance that they would have to perform after leaving the confessional would not be harsh. He was not, he said, a tax-and-spend liberal.

I was not taken in. Late in 2008, after reviewing the page proofs of Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift, I persuaded my editor to allow me to add the following to the book:

Once again, as in the 1920s, rational administration has failed us. As on that other occasion, the Federal Reserve Board and the Department of the Treasury pursued over an extended period under more than one administration an easy-money policy bound in the end to give rise to “irrational exuberance” in the markets and to a bubble followed by a catastrophic decline in prices and a collapse of the credit markets. And, to make matters worse, we responded to this set of circumstances precisely as we did on that earlier occasion — by electing a president and choosing a Congress intent on dramatically increasing the scale and scope of the administrative state.

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Tags: ACORN, auto bailout, Barack Obama, cap-and-trade, Charles Grassley
Posted Jan 16th 2010 at 6:08 am in ACORN, Big Labor, Congress, Earmarks, Economics, Featured Story, Healthcare, History, News, Obama, Politics, State Politics, Tax Reform, Tea Party, federal spending | 59998130 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/prahe/2010/01/16/obamas-first-year/Obama%27s+First+Year2010-01-16+14%3A08%3A30Paul+A.++Rahe

ACORN – 50 More Days Without Federal Funds

On Thursday, the United States House of Representatives passed a continuing resolution funding the Federal Government through December 18^th.  The continuing resolution was passed as part of the behemoth Interior-Environment Appropriations conference report.

A continuing resolution is a stop-gap provision which allows the government to continue its operations until Congress can determine the next year’s appropriations.  The actions taken today merely extended the expiration date of the resolution which went into effect on October 1^st.

By extending the existing continuing resolution Congress has continued to deprive ACORN and its affiliates of federal funds until December 18^th.

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Tags: ACORN, ACORN federal funding, continuing resolution, Darrell Issa, Defund ACORN
Posted Oct 30th 2009 at 6:17 am in ACORN, Congress, Politics | 2271427 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/cberg/2009/10/30/acorn-50-more-days-without-federal-funds/ACORN+-+50+More+Days+Without+Federal+Funds2009-10-30+13%3A17%3A45Chris+++Berg