I was suspicious of Obama when he was running ,but he was so much better than McCain. Now I am not so sure. The neocons envisioned endless wars and looked forward to it. Now Obama is ratcheting up Afghanistan and starting to bomb Yemen. He still has to deal with Pakistan someday. It is a war lovers banquet. He is bombing civilians in Yemen. For some reason we are supposed to think that will make them love us and not want to strike back.
McCain/Cantwell is pushing to have Glass Stiiegal put back in place. It was the bomb that blew up the protections that the Great Depression made us institute. The administration is fighting against it. Obama appears to have been bought off. He sure put Goldman execs in charge of the economy and the recovery. They are showing who they still work for.
McCain has come out against the court for dismissing the case against Blackwater for shooting Iraqi civilians. Apparently the legal department told the Blackwater shooters that if they confessed ,their confession would not be used against them in court. Then it was. It may be legal malfeasance but it will result in the shooters getting away with murder.
Obama has not stopped torture. He just exported it to countries that will do it for him. He said it would end.
He did not relax the rules enough in Cuba.
Meet the new boss… same as the old boss?
He is (like every politician) someone who promises more than they can deliver. It does not help that his candidacy was hyped as if it would be the solution to everything. He (like every president) does not have unlimited powers to wave his hands and make everything exactly the way he wants them. As it was, if McCain hadn’t picked such a worthless running mate (Really, there was no one on this planet better than SP? Really?) he might have won. If he had picked Joe Lieberman there would have been a bunch of Dem (several I know of anyway) that would have voted for that ticket in a heartbeat.
ETA to tone down the rhetoric - McCain “might” have won, not “would”.
The US have bombed Yemen? When?
He did campaign on making Afghanistan his priority and pull back from Iraq so the escalation in Afghanistan shouldn’t be much of a surprise.
I agree he has been disapointing in some regards but aren’t they all.
Never mind. I was in party mode on the run up to xmas and it’s aftermath. Missed a lot of news.
Well, Be sure.
Be very sure.
Obama may be an asshole, but he is much much better than anything the Republicans would choose to inflict on us.
I was never expecting a Messiah, but he’s definitely not the same as the old boss.
He said during the campaign that he would ramp up in Afghanistan, so I don’t know why anyone is surprised about that.
When did we bomb Yemen? I know there were some false reports a few weeks ago that the US had bombed a couple of villages trying to kill some al Qaeda mebers, but that turned out to have been done by the Yemeni government itself.
Yemen has also been cooperative since the attempted Christmas bombing.
What am I missing?
I agree with the disappointment in Obama.
I see it as a combination of two factors:
Systemic - A new President is sworn into office and the career Washington people start bending his ear. No matter how smart and tough and full of ideas the Pres is, the constant barrage of “top-secret briefing papers from experts who know and these are your only two viable options, etc.” begin to become the real mechanism for setting policy. While one is on the outside looking in it’s easy to criticize and say you are going to change things. Once you get inside you get schooled (if you let them) you begin defending the very things you used to criticize, because now it’s about you.
Experience - By any objective measure Obama is a novice in Washington (part of why he was successful, no doubt). With experience should come learned values and skills at manipulating the levers of power. He’s still learning. (Of course, the downside of experience is that you’ve likely “drunk the koolaid”)
Also, he does not appear to me to have the personality of “toughness” to deflect all of these folks trying to influence him.
[This blog post](Then any racial undertones in the ad are wasted on you. That does not mean it was not a factor to those who planned the ad. Perhaps I am just a cynic to believe that racial prejudice in Australia is not as enlightened as my own view…) suggests that some other story suggested that there are US special ops personnel and equipment on the ground in Yemen helping with the Yemeni campaign against Al Quaeda.
I think gonzo is grumpy that we are involved in bombing things, period, but frankly I’ve got no problem at all with us bombing things or helping to bomb things with the permission of the locals.
I’m mildly disappointed with the way the Administration’s policies are going, but not really with Obama. I put a lot of the blame on the obstructionists on the other side of the aisle, the fickleness of the electorate, and some of his Cabinet staff (which he admittedly has to get some of the blame for).
I have found this cite:
Saudi air strikes kill 54 civilians: Yemen rebels
In which A spokesman for Shiite rebels in Yemen on Sunday accused Saudi forces of killing 54 civilians in air strikes against a border town between the two Arab countries.
I wonder how you leapt from this to "Obama is bombing civilians in Yemen. Even the rebel spokesman does not go this far.
The article goes on:
The fact that you twisted this into “Obama bombed civilians” makes me pretty much think that your reasoning brain cells are fried, and I therefore ignore the rest of your post as the rantings of a delusional fool.
eta: Why not just pit Obama for fighting Al Quaeda with the support of local governments and see how far that flys?
We do not have permission of the locals. There is no real governance like we are used to. They are power enclaves of warlords and drug cartels. They will support whoever allows them to maintain their dirty business. The national governments always bend to the threats, power and bribes of America.
Irans government stood up to us. How is that working out for them?
I’ve been to Yemen. There’s a real government there - though not a very effective one.
People who don’t understand politics not understanding politics.
Like Iraq and Afghanistan. We know who they work for. It is not the people.
Your cites are a “Sunset District Libertarian Examiner” and an Azerbaijani website quoting an Iranian TV network? Man, that’s fucking weak even for the Pit.
And letting a flavor of the month rebel group with possible ties to Al Qaeda overthrow these governments will help this situation, how?
I voted for Obama but I was not part of the crowd that thought he was the Chosen One. I figured we’d get another administration like Clinton’s, except without the adultery. And another Clinton administration under Obama would be better than another Bush administration under McCain.
So I had reasonable expectations for Obama and I’m reasonably satisifed.
Like Afghanistan, we figure there are about 100 people who are Al Queda in Yemen. That hardly justifies killing a bunch of civilians and aiding recruiting. We suspect they are affiliated. That is grounds for killing them?
We didn’t kill them.
Don’t be silly. I could put them there all day. There are plenty of stories corroborating. I would expect the US to deny they directed it or participated in it. That does not make it so. I am used to my government lying to me. That makes me distrust anything they say. I was just hoping for more.
Obama is bright. He knows what he is doing. He is not floundering into trouble like Bush. He is not being directed by neocons and Cheney.