President replaces CEO and private ownership of corporation with labor union. Can you spell “syndicalism”?
Archive for April, 2009
Sunday: State of the American Press
In Uncategorized on April 22, 2009 at 3:19 pmClick Here To Listen Live Online!
Also …
Did you miss our interview with The Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel?
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Weekly Filibuster On Twitter
In Uncategorized on April 18, 2009 at 10:36 amFOLLOW THE SHOW ON TWITTER HERE!
As you may know, each of the panelists have been on Twitter for quite some time.
Today we’re proud to present The Weekly Filibuster’s own Twitter account.
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Join us at 10PM ET tonight for the FASTEST HOUR IN POLITICAL TALK! We’ll talk about those Somali Swashbucklers who caused mischief on the high seas, and talk about the Vermont state legislature, active as ever!
Ben Goodman
Matt Cavedon
Pete Christopher
Robert Burack
Tom Dec
Bob Bowen
Here is your "hope" and "change"
In Commentary on April 4, 2009 at 10:41 pmWhat Democrat in the past few months has not been heckled for buying into the “hope” and “change” messages sold by the Obama campaign in the fall? Republicans and other non-believers point to the slogan to mock the legitimacy of his presidency. Other attempts have been made to critique him solely because he campaigned on this and has not followed through in the less than three months he’s been in office. Well I can say that I would agree with them up until the beginning of this week. I will argue that voters didn’t vote for Obama for his domestic policy that he has been bogged down with up till now. People voted for Obama somewhat symbolically. We voted for him to show the world we weren’t doing business like we had during the past eight years. We wanted to do business dramatically different. This past week at the G-20 is the first example of the “Change you can believe in” that Obama won over so many people with in the fall.
Obama’s domestic and economic policy was and is the same as every other generic Democrat. The American people could have voted in any shmuck with the letter D in front of their name and you would have gotten the same stimulus packages, types of press conferences, talking points, etc. So, what makes him different than everyone else? It was the thought of seeing a guy that had nothing to do with ruining our reputation, at the same table with the world leaders. This same guy has a real, legitimate mandate from the American people to reverse the policies that got us in so much trouble. This is what Americans wanted to say when they voted for change this November and that voting model as of his first summit… worked. This Democracy thing was a pretty good idea (as long as my guys are in charge).
By all accounts he made quite the impression on foreign leaders. I can’t see John McCain having a town hall meeting in France, or any other candidate for president for that matter. He sat down and made plans to stop future economic breakdowns and got the whole world on the same page. He made huge strides with Russia compared to where we were when Bush ran the show. After the whole invasion of Georgia, Bush just kind of packed up his bags on that front and let it be. He did not try to peer into the soul of Medvedev, the Russian leader, but he respected their differences, sought common interests, and they negotiated. Thats diplomacy ladies and gentlemen. No one else would have gone in to this summit with the light touch that Obama did and gotten away with it. Obama has higher favorability ratings in Europe than most of the politicians that the people elected. Any aggressive moves against him would come with some political backfire. No other American politician carries this kind of clout and no other politician could have thrown around the soft power the way that Obama did.
Although it recently ended a lot has been written already. I have not seen one negative response to what was done in Paris this past week. This week a poll was taken and 38% of the people think the country is on the right track. These are the highest numbers in three years. If your like me, and don’t like statistics take a look at the mangled minority party. The Republican Party, has been in the midst of a political knife fight, this past week while Obama shined overseas. Speaker Gingrich is threatening a new party before 2012; Eric Cantor called the response to Obama’s budget “embarrassing.” Someone on the other side finally fired a shot at GOP party leader Rush Limbaugh. When I used to run track, my coach would always tell me to watch the other kid’s head bounce to see if it was safe to pass him. Sometimes it is valuable to watch how your enemy reacts to your actions to figure out how you’re doing. If this were a track meet the Republican’s head would be all over the place. Obama and the Dems gained a few strides on them with this summit.
We saw this past week what he was talking about for the two years prior to his inauguration. So mock the “change” and “hope” messages if you will, but on April 3rd of this year hope and change won. I think we can all say with pretty good confidence that we are happy that we have Barack Obama as our chief diplomat rather than George Bush. James Carville said that April 2nd was Obama’s best day in office so far. A few more April 2nds and we are going to be in for another good Democratic cycle.