I agree the administration should have done their homework here. But I respect Obama in this case for being accommodating and holding it off for one day, instead of turning it into yet another partisan dick-waving contest.
CNN invites Sarah Palin and Rudy Nineeleven to participate in the debates. Doesn’t matter how weird I get, I can’t possibly keep up.
Ratings, baby, ratings. Not sure RG would help much, but SP? You-betcha! 
ETA: Hey, if they could get Tina Fey to IMPERSONATE her at the debates, they would get me as a viewer, too!
What precisely have the Republicans done other than almost crashing the economy by failing to raise the debt ceiling? Has there been any helpful legislation that Obama has vetoed? To my mind he has tried to do a number of things such as extend the payroll tax holiday and provide additional stimulus but he hasn’t got a prayer to get anything through the just say no congress, who’s only goal seems to be to prove how useless government is by crashing it into a tree.
That is pretty much what the Republicans are counting on. The police haven’t cracked down enough on organized crime, so lets put a mob boss in charge as chief of police just to show them, brilliant.
As to the OP, I agree. It was petty and small minded for Obama to schedule his speech at the same time as the debates. It’s not as if he is discussing some immediate emergency crisis. If it can be scheduled a week and a half in advance it can wait an extra day or two.
My mom always said: Never get in a dick waving contest with a Black man or a Boehner.
What it appears like to me is that Barack Obama and John Boehner are both trying to prove that they’re in charge of things. The reality is that if either man was truly in charge, he wouldn’t feel the need to fight over trivial issues like this.
If only there were ten scheduled debates instead of one single debate. Oh waiit, there are ten debates.
Boehner is a tool.
Only one of them felt the need to fight about it.
If only there were 364 other days in the year for Obama to give this speech.
If only he could just fucking implement his damn program and spare us the speechifying. The speech isn’t what is important. What’s important is getting the damn thing through Congress, which is going to be a monumental task.
Well, at least Obama did the smart thing and moved it to a time that won’t piss anyone off. No one will mind if NBC preempts the kickoff of the NFL season (even if it is the final hour of pregame coverage), right?
It’s not the President’s job or problem to tailor his schedule around Republicans’ curricular activities. If he needs to speak to them, he needs to speak to them. Their playtime plans are of no consequence. It isn’t their job to have debates. It’s their job to address unemployment.
That’s the day Congress gets back from vacation. The Obama symbolism is “Let’s get right to work on this!” The Boner symbolism is “Fuck you!”, with a dash of “You’re not the boss of me!”
Besides, Obama says he told him, Boner has yet to deny it. So, he did. Because if Boner could deny it and get away with, bet your sweet ass he would!
Congratulations, you’re going to throw your weight behind electing someone that you disagree with who will probably be able to appoint at least one Supreme Court Justice, possibly two, to influence policy decisions FAR behind their term of office, all because you don’t think Obama’s been enough of your bitch.
Look, I’m pretty disappointed in a lot of Obama’s performance. I think he could be doing a lot more about a lot of things than he is. But I’m certainly not going to take the chance that Bachmann or Perry, both of whom are Teabagger religious NUTBAGS, have a chance to light a flamethrower to things that are important to me in the long run.
Apparently they are, since Boehner just made Obama his bitch on this point.
Obama made a dumb play, he took the “grownup in the room” approach. He fucked up, he trusted us.
Dude. C’mon, I know you aren’t as ignorant as that makes you out to be.
How do you want him to implement his program? It needs to get through congress.
Boehner runs the house. He won’t allow a vote on anything that Obama wants even a little.
So in order to implement *anything *he needs to sway public opinion so that the Republicans dare not obstruct. To do that he needs to speechify. And joint sessions are the most powerful speechifying tool he has.
Much ado about nothing. Few are going to watch the speech, even fewer will watch the debate. The speech is going to be boilerplate “blah blah… bipartisanship…blah blah infrastructure… blah blah tax breaks… blah blah green jobs… blah blah deficit… blah blah bipartisanship.” The Republicans will knock themselves over in a rush to get to a podium to be the first to channel the little old lady from Blazing Saddles and say “up yours, nigger.” Then the NFL season starts and by the next Monday this will all be forgotten. The Obama plan will be dead on arrival in Boner Boy’s House and the right will spin it all as another Obama failure.
That’s on Obama, not Boner, and it’s also beside my point that this was not a conflict between items of equal importance. Obama wanted Boner to do his job. Boner wanted to go watch a bum fight instead.
We got shit we need to fix. We will have to fix the shit, today, or tomorrow. Today, we can borrow the money cheap. And the concrete, steel, etc. is as affordable as its going to get. Thats half the point, isn’t it, to start a recovery so concrete and steel gets more expensive.
Borrowing the money and buying the materials today will save us money in the long run. Plus, it will put people back to work.
Its deficit spending, so its a gamble. But if the odds of winning are fifty-fifty, and the payoff is ten to one in your favor…you make the bet.
All this speach is going to be is more excuses for why the current economic situation is all the fault of the House and Senate, of both parties, and not a lack of vision on Obama’s part. He is quite above the little details and will continue to deflect blame to Congress, or the Republicans, or the Democrats who are starting to question him. But he will certainly not have a real plan or solution that he will accept accountability for.
He will try to rattle their cages and put them back to work solving the problems that face this country, something that he is far to disconnected to do.
Then he will propose large infrastructure projects like light rail, high-speed rail and highway improvements, and of course more ‘green’ jobs. A stimulus to ‘get the country moving again’ that will mostly throw money at public works projects that do not create long term jobs or increase government tax revenue.
None of these things will help with the job situation or with deficit reduction. Deficit reduction comes when tax revenue increases, tax revenue increases when business’ make and sell more products and services. This was the secret to the success of the Clinton presidency. Whether Bill created the boom or just rode the wave is a debate I don’t know the answer to.
But throwing money at the public sector does not accomplish the expected results. He is not an idiot, but that is the only solution this president knows and his on-the-job training isn’t teaching him anything else.