Category: Barack Obama

An Interesting Analysis of Obama and Geithner

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Mark Ames, of the ExileD, has a piece on Alternet which provides some very interesting theories about the President and the Treasury Secretary.

Generally, I consider this analysis to be of little use, though it can be interesting, and I think that this applies to this analysis.

His thesis is that Obama and Geithner will avoid conflict, even when avoiding conflict is an immoral thing to do.

In the case of Geithner, Ames uses his actions in the case of the racist Dartmouth review:

The Review lambasted what it called Dartmouth’s liberal bias and its minority admission policies, riling many students. During gatherings in which some students said D’Souza should be attacked, Geithner calmed them down, proposing that they start an alternative publication, says Rudelson, the former roommate. Geithner kept his distance from the new publication, called the Harbinger, occasionally taking photos for it.

In the case of Obama, it’s a conflict over affirmative action at the law review:

Presiding over an assembly of 60 mostly white editors in a law school classroom, Obama listened to impassioned pleas and pressed conservatives to explain their reasoning and liberals to sharpen their thinking. But he never spoke about his own point of view or mentioned that he believed he had benefited from affirmative action. “If anybody had walked by, they would have assumed he was a professor,” said Thomas J. Perrelli, a classmate and former counsel to Attorney General Janet Reno. “He was leading the discussion but he wasn’t trying to impose his own perspective on it. He was much more mediating.”

Obama was so evenhanded and solicitous in his interactions that fellow students would do impressions of his Socratic chin-stroking approach to everything, even seeking a consensus on popcorn preferences at the movies. “Do you want salt on your popcorn?” one classmate, Nancy L. McCullough, recalled, mimicking his sensitive bass voice. “Do you even want popcorn?”

So Ames thesis is that these are people who are fundamentally unwilling to participate in a confrontation, and instead will go through back-flips to avoid it.

It may be true.

It may be that Obama and Geithner actually believe in the rather right wing ideas that they have put forward in terms of financial reform and healthcare.

I don’t know, you don’t know, Mark Ames doesn’t know.

And at the end of the day, it does not matter unless you could use this information to make them do the right thing.

The question, “Why are they governing like this?” is the wrong question.

The right question is, “What levers and tolls can be used to get them to do the right thing?”

Still, it’s a good read. Ames both provocative and eminently readable.

Who’d Have Thunk It?

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That the patron saint of dotcom excesses, Henry Blodget is calling for

Latest AIG Revelations: One More Reason Why Geithner’s Got to Go
Posted Jan 08, 2010 11:20am EST by Henry Blodget in Investing, Newsmakers, Recession, Banking

The latest revelations about the New York Fed’s actions in the AIG bailout make one thing clear: Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner must go.

Geithner must go not just because of the emails showing that his New York Fed ordered AIG to keep details of the bailout secret, but because of many other decisions and policies he has championed in the past two years.

…………………

This is a time for Obama to fish or cut bait.

He is either a captive of the FIRE (Finance Insurance Real Estate) sector, or he represents the American people, and Geithner, and to an even larger extant Lawrence Summers are an artifact of the former.

H/t The Big Picture.

Barack Obama Lobbies for Tax on Elderly and Labor Unions

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Yes, Barack Obama is finally taking a stand in the healthcare bill, and he is lobbying for a tax on high cost healthcare plans, as opposed to a tax on the wealthy. This means that older people, who have to pay more for health insurance, and labor unions, who literally shed blood for their health care, are getting completely screwed.

It’s also horrifically bad policy:

  • It will target a much larger swath of the population than is promised.
  • It will do little to reign in healthcare costs, just look at the Health Savings Account debacle, and the “Rand study from the 1970s found that higher co-pays and deductibles led patients to limit medically necessary care as much as wasteful care, possibly leading to more costly health-care needs later.”
  • Much of the tax revenue from this is from the completely delusional assumption that the money taken out of insurance will be returned to employees as wages by their employers.

Seriously, I knew that we had elected a center-right Democrat as president, but I am surprised that we apparently elected a Republican.

Unsurprisingly, Obama is getting some pushback from the liberals in the House, most notably Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), who is saying that this clusterf%$# is his baby now, and he needs to work to make the bill better, and that this tax proposal violates Obama’s campaign promise not to raise taxes on the middle class.

Of course, whenever a politician promises not to raise taxes on the middle class, he’s lying.

The Senate Passes Obama’s Healthcare Bill

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The vote was 60-39.

Say what you will, but it’s been clear from the start that what Barack Obama and Rahm Emanuel have been interested in is Barack Obama signing a bill called “Healthcare Reform,” whether it helped ordinary people or not, and the Senate version fits the description to a “T”.

Obama has already made it clear that he wants the Senate bill to be the one out of committee, as shown by his full throated support of the tax on “Cadillac” insurance plan tax.

It means that, in addition to everything else, the bill is anti-union too, because protecting health care for their workers has been the Unions rear guard action for the past 28 years, ever since Reagan made union-busting cool with PATCO.

So, we will now allow insurance companies to levy a tax on ordinary Americans, and Rahmbama just loves that.

I had rather hoped that a few of the Senate Democrats, and those who caucus with them (I’m talking to you Bernie Sanders) would have had the guts to vote for cloture but against the bill, but no such luck.

At the rate things are going, we will get someone even more batsh%$ insane than George W. Bush in 2012, because there is no Republican on the national scene who is saner than he is right now.

Talk About the Odd Couple

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I’m talking about Jane Hamsher Grover Norquis. who have jointly penned a letter calling for the Attorney General to investigate Rahm Emanuel’s activities at Freddie Mac, as well as his role while in congress in obstructing investigations there, with the likely goal of pushing any revelations about his activities beyond the 10 year statute of activities.

Her bill of particulars:

  • That while on the board at Freddie Mac, Emanuel signed off regarding gross financial irregularities.
  • Participating in actions by Freddie Mac to make illegal in-kind contributions to politicians in the form of hosting fundraisers, including one Rahm Emanuel.
  • Writing a law allowing the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) to fire its inspector general by dissolving the organization and replacing it, as well as the the Federal Housing Finance Board (FHFB), with the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA).
    • It should be noted that the Obama administration has refused to appoint a new IG to its successor organization, and the Obama administration has refused a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on Freddie claiming that, the report from the fired IG was “commercial information”.

Now, I understand that Grover Norquist is an bad guy, but you get coverage by getting a diverse coverage for such things, as Hamshire makes clear when she looks at some similar efforts, such as the CAF letter to delay confirmation of Bernanke until there was an audit of the Fed, which was signed by a diverse group of people including, Chris Bowers, Dean Baker, Mark Calabria, James Kenneth Galbraith, Matt Kibbe, Grover Norquist, Phyllis Schlafly (WTF?!?!?), Robert Weissman, and John Whitehead. (Neanderthals in italics)

I’ve always known that Rahm is intellectually corrupt, his actions. During the Obama and Clinton administrations, as well as his time head of the DCCC show a real hostility to anything but the most corporate of corporatist Democrats, and he has always exhibited a tremendous hostility to liberals.

Now appears that he may be legally corrupt too, but I don’t think that Obama would get rid of him short of an indictment, because the President thinks that he needs Rahm to keep the DFHs* in line.

*Dirty F%$#ing Hippies
Full letter after break:

December 23, 2009

Attorney General of the United States of America
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001

Dear Attorney General Holder:

We write to demand an immediate investigation into the activities of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. We believe there is an abundant public record which establishes that the actions of the White House have blocked any investigation into his activities while on the board of Freddie Mac from 2000-2001, and facilitated the cover up of potential malfeasance until the 10-year statute of limitations has run out.

The purpose of this letter is to connect the dots to establish both the conduct of Mr. Emanuel and those working with him to thwart inquiry, and to support your acting speedily so that the statute of limitations does not run out before the Justice Department is able to empanel a grand jury.

The New York Times reports that the administration is negotiating to double the commitments to Fannie and Freddie for a total of $800 billion by December 31, in order to avoid the congressional approval that would be needed after that date. But there currently is no Inspector General exercising independent oversight of these entities. Acting Inspector General Ed Kelly was stripped of his authority earlier this year by the Justice Department, relying on a loophole in a bill Mr. Emanuel cosponsored and pushed through Congress shortly before he left for the White House. This effectively ended Mr. Kelly’s investigation into what happened at Fannie and Freddie.

Since that time, despite multiple warnings by Congress that having no independent Inspector General for a federal agency that oversees $6 trillion in mortgages is a serious oversight, the White House has not appointed one.

We recognize that these are extremely serious accusations, but the stonewalling by Mr. Emanuel and the White House has left us with no other redress. A 2003 report by Freddie Mac’s regulator indicated that Freddie Mac executives had informed the board of their intention to misstate the earnings to insure their own bonuses during the time Mr. Emanuel was a director. But the White House refused to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request from the Chicago Tribune for those board minutes on the grounds that Freddie Mac was a “commercial” entity, even though it was wholly owned by the government at the time the request was made.

If the Treasury approves the $800 billion commitment to Fannie and Freddie by the end of the year, it will mean that under the influence of Rahm Emanuel, the White House is moving a trillion-dollar slush fund into corruption-riddled companies with no oversight in place. This will allow Fannie and Freddie to continue to purchase more toxic assets from banks, acting as a back-door increase of the TARP without congressional approval.

Before the White House commits any more money to Fannie and Freddie, we call on the Public Integrity Section in the Justice Department to begin an investigation into the cause of Fannie and Freddie’s conservatorship, into Rahm Emanuel’s activities on the board of Freddie Mac (including any violations of his fiduciary duties to shareholders), into the decision-making behind the continued vacancy of Fannie and Freddie’s Inspector General post, and into potential public corruption by Rahm Emanuel in connection with his time in Congress, in the White House, and on the board of Freddie Mac.

We also call for the immediate appointment of an Inspector General with a complete remit to go after this information.

We both come from differing political ideologies. One of us is the conservative head of a transparency foundation, and the other is the publisher of a liberal political blog. But we make common cause today out of grave concern for the future of our country in the wake of corruption-riddled bailouts. These bailouts continue to rob Main Street to benefit Wall Street, and, because of that, we together demand the resignation of Mr. Emanuel, a man who has steadfastly worked to obstruct both oversight and inquiry into the matter. Rahm Emanuel’s conflicts of interest render him far too compromised to serve as gatekeeper to the President of the United States.

We will lay out the details further below, and are available at your earliest convenience to meet with you directly.

Sincerely,

Positively Nixonian

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It’s Called Lying Like a Rug

In support the idea that he will put his name to anything marked healthcare reform, barack Obama gave an interview to the Washington Post, and he told a complete and utter lie:

Those elements are in the House and Senate versions of the legislation; their competing proposals will have to be reconciled in conference committee next year. The House bill includes a government-run insurance plan favored by progressive Democrats; the Senate version does not. “I didn’t campaign on the public option,” Obama said in the interview.

(emphasis mine)

It takes about 15 minutes on Google and Youtube to see that it’s a lie, see the video on the right.

It certainly wasn’t something that he pushed hard during the campaign, unlike, for example, his support for repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and family benefits for gay couples, where his administration is now aggressively fighting to prevent real progress.

With this level of hypocrisy, it’s no wonder that Drew Westen, a psychologist, neuroscientist, and political scientist whose book The Political Brain was widely considered to be the bible of the Obama campaign just wrote a scathing article condemning Obama’s unwillingness to lead:

As the president’s job performance numbers and ratings on his handling of virtually every domestic issue have fallen below 50 percent, the Democratic base has become demoralized, and Independents have gone from his source of strength to his Achilles Heel, it’s time to reflect on why. The conventional wisdom from the White House is those “pesky leftists” — those bloggers and Vermont Governors and Senators who keep wanting real health reform, real financial reform, immigration reform not preceded by a year or two of raids that leave children without parents, and all the other changes we were supposed to believe in.

Somehow the president has managed to turn a base of new and progressive voters he himself energized like no one else could in 2008 into the likely stay-at-home voters of 2010, souring an entire generation of young people to the political process. It isn’t hard for them to see that the winners seem to be the same no matter who the voters select (Wall Street, big oil, big Pharma, the insurance industry). In fact, the president’s leadership style, combined with the Democratic Congress’s penchant for making its sausage in public and producing new and usually more tasteless recipes every day, has had a very high toll far from the left: smack in the center of the political spectrum.

What’s costing the president and courting danger for Democrats in 2010 isn’t a question of left or right, because the president has accomplished the remarkable feat of both demoralizing the base and completely turning off voters in the center. If this were an ideological issue, that would not be the case. He would be holding either the middle or the left, not losing both.

What’s costing the president are three things: a laissez faire style of leadership that appears weak and removed to everyday Americans, a failure to articulate and defend any coherent ideological position on virtually anything, and a widespread perception that he cares more about special interests like bank, credit card, oil and coal, and health and pharmaceutical companies than he does about the people they are shafting.

………

Leadership means heading into the eye of the storm and bringing the vessel of state home safely, not going as far inland as you can because it’s uncomfortable on the high seas. This president has a particular aversion to battling back gusting winds from his starboard side (the right, for the nautically challenged) and tends to give in to them. He just can’t tolerate conflict, and the result is that he refuses to lead.

………

What’s they’re seeing is weakness, waffling, and wandering through the wilderness without an ideological compass. That’s a recipe for going nowhere fast — but getting there by November.

(emphasis mine)

As I’ve said before, the problem is that he believes that he is likable enough that he can bring people together even when there is no common ground, and the idea of people actually having honest differences of opinion, or of having legitimate political reasons for opposing his policies, appears to be completely beyond him.

What John Said

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John Aravosis, that is:

President Obama doesn’t seem to lack the will to fight on matters of principle, rather, he seems to lack the will to fight on anything.……

…

…We know that when you fight for something in politics, you can very often win. But if you don’t fight, you’ll never win. We are upset at the President and the Congress because no one fought for the public option, for the President’s own campaign promise. (As David Gregory rightly noted to David Axelrod during the same broadcast.)

(emphasis mine)

We are not angry because he refused to fight for our own values, we are angry because he has refused to fight, period, full stop.

It’s not the morals, or lack thereof. It’s the cowardice.

Obama Gets Revolt from the Faithful on Healthcare

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Which is not particularly surprising, as his behavior has been pretty revolting on healthcare.

It turns out that OFA, originally “Obama for America,” and now “Organizing for America,” just called for a phone bank to support the Nelson/Lieberman healthcare reform sellout bill, and the base decided that they had to wash their hair:

On Wednesday morning, Organizing for America, as Obama’s reconstituted campaign organization is now known, e-mailed its list of 13 million Obama supporters asking them to “call your senators now and help us ‘ring in reform.’”

The campaign yielded 150,000 calls — less than half the number of a similar effort in October — and it prompted a backlash among online and local activists who had logged countless volunteer supporting Obama’s campaign and legislative agenda, but who felt betrayed by recent Democratic concessions in the health-care reform fight.

………

………while some OFA subscribers replied directly to the call-to-action e-mail with angry messages and others asked to be removed from the list entirely.

(emphasis mine)

I had myself removed from the OFA mailing list some months ago, and I do not regret this at all.

Additionally, the latest This Research 2000/Progressive Change Campaign Committee/Democracy for AmericaPoll shows that the public overwhelming opposes the personal mandates in the bill if there is no public option.

Respondents said that they supported a public option 59% to 31%, opposed a madate without a public option 33% to 56%, and that Obama didn’t fight Lieberman hard enough: 63% to 29%.

What a surprise. Hoocoodanode that the American public would object to a tax on breathing with the proceeds going to insurance company executive bonuses?

The real problem here is not that the bill sucks, the problem is that it’s increasingly obvious, as Senator Russ Feingold notes, that Barack Obama and Rahm Emanuel thought that forcing people to buy overpriced insurance and overpriced pharmaceuticals was a good way to keep those industries from donating to Republicans, the average citizen be damned:

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), among the most vocal supporters of the public option, said it would be unfair to blame Lieberman for its apparent demise. Feingold said that responsibility ultimately rests with President Barack Obama and he could have insisted on a higher standard for the legislation.

“This bill appears to be legislation that the president wanted in the first place, so I don’t think focusing it on Lieberman really hits the truth,” said Feingold. “I think they could have been higher. I certainly think a stronger bill would have been better in every respect.”

It seems that Obama’s fetish with signing a bill with “healthcare reform” on it, to the exclusion of any principles, or the need to actually make things better, so he could have a trophy on the wall has bitten him on the butt.

DeForest Kelly put it best when he said, “It’s not enough! You didn’t care as long as you could hang your trophy on the wall. Well, it’s not on it, Captain Mr President, it’s in it.”

Barack Obama: Hating te Gay Since 2007*

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Yes, the group most likely to be thrown under a bus by Barack Obama, the LGBT community, just got thrown under the bus again going through back-flips to defy a Federal Judge’s order on this:

Because she is a federal employee, Golinski’s benefits are overseen by the Office of Personnel Management, which effectively serves as the human resources department for about 1.9 million federal workers nationwide. Golinski’s insurer, Blue Cross and Blue Shield, declined to provide health benefits for her legal spouse, Amy Cunninghis, but ninth circuit chief judge Alex Kozinski said that violated the court’s guarantee of equal employment opportunity and that same-sex spouses were entitled to benefits under the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan.

OPM attorneys consulted with the Department of Justice on this case, and the key to the case, according to the OPM official, was that Kozinski was presiding over an administrative proceeding that’s an internal employee grievance procedure — he was not serving in his official capacity as a ninth circuit judge.

I suppose that he’s better for Gays than the Christo-Fascist right, which was actively working for a death penalty for gays in Uganda until Rachael Maddow outed their murderous efforts, and that he figures that the LGBT community knows that it has no where else to go, but such a calculus is repugnant, immoral, and evil.

Let me quote Joseph Nye Welch:

Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?

I support Howard Dean for President in 2012…………………Hell I support anyone who opposes Barack Obama in the primaries† in 2012.

*The Donnie McClurkin episode.
†This offer does not apply to Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson, or Paris Glendenning. Note that side effects of an endorsement from Matthew Saroff can include:

  • Losing elections
  • Voting irregularities
  • An extremely hostile press corps
  • Embarrassing Youtube clips

Do not operate a political campaign under the influence of a Matthew Saroff endorsement, and avoid heavy consumption of alcohol.

Obama Poll Numbers Tank

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The Taxpayer Always Finishes Last

So, we have a poll out from Wall Street Journal/NBC News, and it shows that Barack Obama’s approval numbers are below 50%:, which makes it the “the steepest first year decline in modern history.

And Henry Blodget, of all people, along with Aaron Task, notes the problem, it’s that the bankers insurance companies, pharma, and the rest of the special interests have a seat at the table, while the taxpayer does not.

Basically, it comes down to cowardice. People expect a president to fight for things, even if he loses, and not to point the finger at Congress, particularly when his own party controls the legislature.

So, we now have a huge give away to the insurance companies and pharma, and the American public realizes that they will be taxed, and that this money will be given to insurance companies, and they wonder who he is really working for.

I wonder too.

Corruption Update: Another Bailout for Bob Rubin’s Old Firm

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Seriously. The fact that the IRS, or let’s be clear about, Timothy Geithner’s Department of the Treasury is allowing Citi to get an additional $32 billion in tax breaks so that it can repay the TARP more quickly:

The Internal Revenue Service on Friday issued an exception to long-standing tax rules for the benefit of Citigroup and a few other companies partially owned by the government. As a result, Citigroup will be allowed to retain billions of dollars worth of tax breaks that otherwise would decline in value when the government sells its stake to private investors.

By way of comparison, the government invested $45 billion in Citi, which has, through various means, converted into common stock at above market valuations.

So, it now appears that we are paying Citi to pay us back the TARP money, $32 billion in tax deductions, so that they can pay back the $20 billion that is still owed as debt, overpay their next CEO.

With the top corporate tax rate at 35%, this translates to about us paying them $11.2 billion to get back our $20 billion, which was earning us 8%, or $1.6 billion a year……Lovely deal, huh?

I’m calling corruption on this.

I’m not sure if anyone in the White House is personally getting rich on this, but, much like the recently deceased Yegor Gaidar in Russia, they are creating and maintaining a corrupt system.

I’m sure, like Gaidar, they see themselves as heroic, but they are looting the United States.

Another Jewel from Taibbi

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I posted the video of him going over the basics of this article last week, and this week, Matt Taibbi’s full article in Rolling Stone, Obama’s Big Sellout, goes into more detail.

Taibbi is more charitable than I am, because he wonders, “Is he just a rookie in the political big leagues, hoodwinked by Beltway old-timers? Or is the vacillating, ineffectual servant of banking interests we’ve been seeing on TV this fall who Obama really is?”

Cynic that I am, I don’t think that he’s a wet behind the ears politico hoodwinked by Wall Street: Every action that he has taken has been about what makes things easier for Barack Obama, whether it be the banks, or torture, or gay rights, or the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

It’s no surprise then that he goes for the bankers over the ordinary people: The bankers could bankroll someone like Sarah Palin, and the ordinary people have no where else to go.

Taibbi’s article is a blistering indictment of what Barack Obama, and to a lesser extent Barney Frank have been doing, or more accurately not doing, about wall street.

To get a sense of the article, you need only read this paragraph:

The point is that an economic team made up exclusively of callous millionaire-assholes has absolutely zero interest in reforming the gamed system that made them rich in the first place. “You can’t expect these people to do anything other than protect Wall Street,” says Rep. Cliff Stearns, a Republican from Florida. That thinking was clear from Obama’s first address to Congress, when he stressed the importance of getting Americans to borrow like crazy again. “Credit is the lifeblood of the economy,” he declared, pledging “the full force of the federal government to ensure that the major banks that Americans depend on have enough confidence and enough money.” A president elected on a platform of change was announcing, in so many words, that he planned to change nothing fundamental when it came to the economy. Rather than doing what FDR had done during the Great Depression and institute stringent new rules to curb financial abuses, Obama planned to institutionalize the policy, firmly established during the Bush years, of keeping a few megafirms rich at the expense of everyone else.

Though I would say that I enjoyed this slam of “Eddie Haskell” too:

That probably won’t happen anytime soon. But at a minimum, Obama should start on the road back to sanity by making a long-overdue move: firing Geithner. Not only are the mop-headed weenie of a Treasury secretary’s fingerprints on virtually all the gross giveaways in the new reform legislation, he’s a living symbol of the Rubinite gangrene crawling up the leg of this administration. Putting Geithner against the wall and replacing him with an actual human being not recently employed by a Wall Street megabank would do a lot to prove that Obama was listening this past Election Day. And while there are some who think Geithner is about to go — “he almost has to,” says one Democratic strategist — at the moment, the president is still letting Wall Street do his talking.

If you think that eleventy dimensional chess is going on here, you have the political acumen of Little Orphan Annie®.

Now go read the article.

Why is He Acting Like Bush?

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So the Grauniad* is covering Obama’s picking up his Nobel Peace Prize, and their title says it all, Nobel peace prize: Norwegians incensed over Barack Obama’s snubs:

Barack Obama’s trip to Oslo to pick up his Nobel peace award is in danger of being overshadowed by a row over the cancellation of a series of events normally attended by the prizewinner.

Norwegians are incensed over what they view as his shabby response to the prize by cutting short his visit.

The White House has cancelled many of the events peace prize laureates traditionally submit to, including a dinner with the Norwegian Nobel committee, a press conference, a television interview, appearances at a children’s event promoting peace and a music concert, as well as a visit to an exhibition in his honour at the Nobel peace centre.

He has also turned down a lunch invitation from the King of Norway.

(emphasis mine)

Let’s be clear: He’s president of the United States of the America, and he’s a busy guy, so some of the stuff should fall by the wayside, but ditching a lunch with the King of Norway?

I’m not sure what’s behind this, but it seems to be nothing more than an outbreak or gratuitousl rudeness because they can.

Sounds like Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld, and how they treated “old Europe”.

*According to the Wiki, The Guardian, formerly the Manchester Guardian in the UK. It’s nicknamed the Grauniad because of its penchant for typographical errors, “The nickname The Grauniad for the paper originated with the satirical magazine Private Eye. It came about because of its reputation for frequent and sometimes unintentionally amusing typographical errors, hence the popular myth that the paper once misspelled its own name on the page one masthead as The Gaurdian, though many recall the more inventive The Grauniad.”

What a Whiny Bitch

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So it appears that Barack “Panders to Wingnuts” Obama, took it upon himself to call call Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers to ask him to stop “demeaning” him publicly disagreeing with him on issues like healthcare and Afghanistan:

President Barack Obama recently called Rep. John Conyers Jr. to express his frustrations with the Judiciary Committee chairman’s criticism.

In an interview with The Hill, Conyers said his opinions of Obama’s policies on healthcare reform and the war in Afghanistan have not sat well with the president.

According to the lawmaker, the president picked up the phone several weeks ago to find out why Conyers was “demeaning” him.

Obama’s decision to challenge Conyers highlights a sensitivity to criticism the president has taken on the left. Conyers’s critical remarks, many of which have been reported on the liberal-leaning Huffington Post, appear to have irritated the president, known for his calm demeanor.

Conyers, the second-longest-serving member of the House, said, “[Obama] called me and told me that he heard that I was demeaning him and I had to explain to him that it wasn’t anything personal, it was an honest difference on the issues. And he said, ‘Well, let’s talk about it.’”

Note that Conyers was the first member of the Congressional Black Caucus to endorse Obama, and spent much of 2007 and 2008 campaigning for him, but he is now saying things like, “Calling in generals and admirals to discuss troop strength is like me taking my youngest to McDonald’s to ask if he likes french fries,” which is pretty funny, when you think of it.

The Never Ending Battle of Obama and His Evil Minions&trade Against LGBT Civil Rights Continues….

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I Can’t, It Might Offend Bigots

Remember when I wrote that a political appointee at the Office of Personnel Management was instructing insurance companies not to write a policy for a woman’s wife in California, despite an instruction from the courts to do so?

Well, now Director of the Office of Personnel Management,and Obama political appointee John Berry is saying that he won’t follow the court order because he has no authority to do so.

Dude, when a court gives you an order, you cannot claim that you don’t have any authority.

You can appeal and ask for a stay, but that’s it. A court order is the authority to do so.

Sellout

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So, Obama gave a speech to Senators in the Democratic Caucus in order to whip up support for birth control.

I think that what is more interesting is not what he said, but what he did not say:

“Well, he didn’t mention either abortion or the public option,” said Harkin, a strong backer of the public option and a chairman of the health committee. “He just laid out in very stark terms for us what the future would be if we didn’t pass [health care reform]. I think he’s right. I think it would be devastating. Not just for us as a party, I think for the hope that people have that we’re going to actually make these changes. To fail at this would just again be another one of those things where people say, ‘See, Washington doesn’t work. Washington can’t get anything done. We gave the Democrats all that power and nothing happens.’ And it would be depressing to people. We want to be more hopeful, we want to give people hope. So I thought his message on that was right on target.“

I think that the idea of relying on Barack Obama for meaningful healthcare, or for that matter support of abortion strong abortion rights, is a losing proposition.

He is more interested in signing something (keep him away from toilet paper) with the mane “healthcare reform” on it.

On the matter of abortion, as I noted 2 years ago, he is not willing to lend anything more than lip service to defending abortion rights.

He will do the right thing only if the pressure from his own party leaves him no other alternative.

What a Surprise

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Barack Obama has spent the past 9 months doubling back on promises and dissing the base voters, sucking up to banks and the pro-torture wing of the CIA, and doing nothing for those young voters who came out for him and now need jobs, and now we have a poll showing that his most stalwart supporters may stay home in 2010:

QUESTION: In the 2010 Congressional elections will you definitely vote, probably vote, not likely vote, or definitely will not vote?

The results were, to put it mildly, shocking:

Voter Intensity: Definitely + Probably Voting/Not Likely + Not Voting

Republican Voters: 81/14
Independent Voters: 65/23
DEMOCRATIC VOTERS: 56/40

Actually, these results are not shocking at all. Barack Obama and His Evil Minions™ have been scapegoating and ignoring his base ever since his election, so it’s no wonder that they are demoralized, so 2 out of 5 activists need to wash their hair today

Steve Singiser’s conclusion, “This enormous enthusiasm gap, as well as some polling analysis done by PPP (and analyzed well here by Nate Silver), seems to make passing legitimate health care reform an absolute political necessity for Democrats,” is actually rather weak tea.

While it’s clear that if voters are forced to pay insurance companies, and get nothing in return, they staying home or be voting for the crazy muthaf%$#as in the corner, it is also true that between the continuation of military tribunals, soft pedaling DADT and DOMA repeal, escalation in Afghanistan, etc. there is a lot going on to demoralize the base.

Pelosi Comes Out in Favor of Tobin Tax

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Hopefully, this will give Timothy “Eddie Haskell” Geithner the vapors:

A proposed tax on financial transactions “has a great deal of merit” and would help Congress raise needed revenue, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday.

“I believe that the transaction tax still has a great deal of merit,” Pelosi said at a news conference.

The tax would have a “really minimal impact on the transaction, but a tremendous impact on helping us meet our needs,” Pelosi said.

Timmeh….Suck….on…This…

Honestly, I expect Obama to oppose this fiercely in private, though I am not sure what he will do in public.

Matt Taibbi on Obama

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He essentially says that it’s Robert Rubin’s friends and disciples who are running the White House bailout effort, largely for the benefit of ……wait for it……wait for it……wait for it……wait for it…… Robert Rubin’s friends and disciples!

He connects the dots and concludes, accurately IMNSHO, that the goal of the Obama and His Evil Minions™ is to implement a “permanent bailout mechanism” for the biggest 20 or so financial institutions in the United States, which will mean that they will have more access to cheaper capital than any competitors, which will allow them to accumulate more money and power, allowing to exert further influence over government……Rinse……Lather……Repeat.

H/t zero hedge.