Posts Tagged President Obama
Priming the pump: Downgrade Pain didn’t have to happen if only Obama was more like Roosevelt than Reagan
As I was monitoring the fall of the markets, President Obama made a brief cameo to remind everyone that S&P doesn’t know squat.
You want to bet the house on a ratings company that couldn’t rate the financial companies right in 2008?
S&P has a credibility gap.
But they’re right on one score. We still have a less than Triple-A political process.
It was bit strange to see Obama come out fighting today.
Where was that fight,the spirited sense of pump priming last week when we needed to see it?
“Pump priming” is what succesful stimulus packages are all about. Government spends on infrastructure and more people go back to work. And it does work. It’s the way Clinton got us out of debt.
On Monday, Obama talked like he had a plan. He was still a big lukewarm. But at least he acknowledged all the things government can do, including some things the GOP has already agreed to and can do today.
Obama mentioned political will as if the lack of it was due to those spoil sport Tea Party folks.
But all along, Obama could have shown a bit more muscle too.
He just hasn’t been pumping up priming the pump hard enough.
Don’t forget the power of the pump, Mr. President.
Check out my amok column at the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund website blog:
http://aaldef.org/blog/downgrade-pain-courtesy-of-our-political-class.html
May Day, May Day! Stand by for news: The night Obama pre-empted Osama
Posted by Amok in blog, journalism, news, politics on May 2nd, 2011
When most Americans were trying to figure out if it would be Donald Trump or “Desperate Housewives,” (Sunday is a TV night, right?) the president chose to make the most dramatic news release of his life.
Only it started as a tease, a stand by notice that lingered and made the imagination race. What could it be?
I knew it could only be about a death. Or that someone is dying. The current president? Not after the birther victory
Is Biden dead? Would we want to know that soon? The TV folks were restrained, as they should. Then someone mentioned national security, and I knew. It had to be something bigger than Biden. How about Osama bin Laden?
Where were you when you heard?
I regret I was flipping around watching the TVnewsers vamp. And while some preferred restraint (like Wolf Blitzer who wouldn’t go on without multiple independent sources), I had flipped to Geraldo on Fox as he confirmed the news and started high-fiving a guest in his studio.
I wasn’t sure that was appropriate.
I would have liked to have heard from the president first.
But in this digital age, speed is speed. Everyone knows a little something. Before the president spoke I was already constructing a birther joke: I tweeted it. It went something like…. The president is going to announce that Obama bin Laden is dead and the U.S. has the body. Donald Trump wants to know if its the long-form or the short-form.
Before the night is over, there are hundreds of similar variations on Twitter. Even Nick Kristoff of the NYT had a variation of “longform,shortform.”
And by the time the president was able say, “I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, leader of al Qaeda, and a terrorist who’s responsible for the murder of thousands of nnocent men, women, and children,” he had been scooped.
But he’s still the big winner, even if the announcement on the West Coast at least, pre-empted all of “America’s Next Great Restaurant” and “Desperate Housewives,” but not Trump’s “Apprentice.”
No worries. The president still got the big show. He pre-empted the terrorist with his own real life “24.”
Our government’s covert mission in Libya: Is the U.S. creating a new Hmong? What we can learn from the Hmong experience
At his Tuesday speech on Libya, the president used the phrase “To be blunt…” The implication was that he was about to deliver a kind of crushing truth.
But instead of being blunt on Libya, he was really being blunt about the path the Bush administration took in starting a war in Iraq, putting troops on the ground, taking eight years and thousands of lives, and nearly a trillion dollars. “That is not something we can afford to repeat in Libya,” the president said.
So what can we afford?
A covert action!
NBC is reporting the U.S. is involved in a “covert” action in Libya, which could lead to arming the rebels who appear to be in grave need of at “military advisors.”
Hmmm. Sound like Vietnam yet?
The covert part should at least bring back the image of the Hmong who were involved in the so-called “Secret War” in 1961. Armed by the U.S., tens of thousands of Hmong were trained by the CIA to help beat back Communist troops threatening Laos.
In the long war, over 100,000 Hmong lost their lives, as Laos ultimately fell. The U.S. began resettling them to America in 1975. Today the Hmong population approaches 300,000 in the U.S., their new homeland.
Is that the fate of the Libyan rebels? Many of them have travelled from places like the U.S. and Canada to join the fight for their land. One said to NBC’s Richard Engel, that they don’t care about the rockets, and that he wants to die. “It’s freedom,” he said.
Makes the rebels sound like they are on a suicide mission. Unlike the Hmong, the Libyan rebels have no jungles to hide in to wage a rebel fight. They’re in the open desert, staying near the public roads where they are sitting ducks.
But does that make our greater humanitarian effort aiding in the war? Or is the real humanitarianism in the bringing back survivors to the U.S. when the fighting ends?
Obama can learn a thing or two from the Hmong experience.
Read my other comments on Libya at www.aaldef.org/blog
Obama’s “War”: As NATO takes over in Libya, rebels find they can’t move without U.S. enablers
Reports out today that the Libyan rebels are finding that the ease of movement last week is no longer. Last week, the U.S.’ rebel partners had airstrikes and were traversing more friendly territory. Now NBC News is reporting the rag-tag rebels are having a tough time advancing on and confronting the Gadhafi loyalists. The rebs want more sophisticated weapons. Rocks won’t cut it. Now does NATO and the U.S. arm them?
We’re getting sucked into a real war here, folks. No matter what the president says, the U.S. is the war enabler.
Now, how humanitarian is that?
Check out my blog at www.aaldef.org/blog to read my reaction to the president’s Libya speech.
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