that escaped the deficit attention of balcones, migop. along with his lame excuse that obama didn’t make any campaign pledges, made no political promises -which is completely false on balcones part… but, like all good liberals, when balcones can’t employ the truth, he’s going to spin it as a defense. i remember many of those promises and when i went into the polling booth, that’s what we thought we were getting. still no meaningful wall st regulation. massive deficits that will choke the economy dead. failure with our allies. no plan to end the war in iraq. no plan to win the war in afghanistan. tax hikes coming like the plague. corruption in congress and the white house. enemies list and divisiveness that continues to kill compromise. power politics exercised for the vanity of an imperial president. greater racial discord, not less. and a health care reform proposal that makes central a policy he labeled “radical” during the campaign.

migop, balcones and his peers can’t respond with truth and facts; they’re all about the spin.

not to address all on your list of broken barack promises, but just take balcones’ defense on repealing the don’t ask policy in the armed services. balcones lamely argues the president can’t do it, it takes congress. well, there are lots of legal scholars in the gay community who say he can do it with leadership and effectively gut the policy without congressional action.

but then that requires leadership and, as corzine now knows, obama and leadership can’t be used in the same sentence.

i think you’re still wrong, balcones; as do many others here.

Shrinking the deficits in the midst of a major economic crises is idiocy.

Obama has stated that he still intends to withdraw all troops from Iraq by the end of 2011. Do you have something to back up your 10-12 year claim?

He never said we would stop bank bailouts.

He spoke about the need to pour a lot of money into environmentally sound energy technologies, both as part of his energy strategy and his stimulus plan. I have no idea where your “without massive costs” claim comes from.

“And we can do it, but we’re going to have to make an investment. … And that’s why we’ve got to make some investments and I’ve called for investments in solar, wind, geothermal.”

Oh – so he hasn’t fixed the economy yet. How long did it take Reagan to bring down unemployment again?

He pledged to take steps to stem the foreclosure implosion – there is no promise to stop it.

It would be good if Congress brough bills on finance to the President faster – but they’re moving. in the past two weeks, bills have been moving out of the committee, including a bill to reform credit-rating agencies, a bill to require most hedge funds and private-equity funds to register with the SEC, and a bill to create a new consumer financial-protection agency. There’s a bill moving through committee for creation of the Financial Services Oversight Council to monitor systemic risks. Our financial regulatory system wasn’t dismantled in a day … it will take a little time to rebuild it.

Obama began calling out to the Europeans to increase their committment to Afghanistan even before elected President. The problem there is that just as the French and Germans recognized a stinker of a war in Iraq, all of Europe now recognizes that Afghanistan is not worth fighting anymore.

Bipartisanship is a two way street. A lot of the delay in implementing Obama’s agenda can be laid at the feet of his attempts to practice bipartisanship, in the face of a Republican Party whose primary objective (as acknowledged by many here) is not to improve legislation being proposed, but to delay it for as long as possible to try to make Obama look ineffectual. There is no Ted Kennedy in the Republican Party who can cross over to work with Obama on a difficult issue – the rest of the party would not follow.

End racism? Really?

Obama cannot repeal DADT. When Congress finally does so, he will sign the bill.

Obama did pledge to not raise taxes on those making less than $250K. And?

On healthcare, he clearly stated: If you don’t have health insurance, you’re going to be able to buy the same kind of insurance that Sen. McCain and I enjoy as federal employees.

Maybe that’s why you don’t like Obama. You don’t actually listen to anything he says?

Bzzzzzzzzzt! Wrong.

Americans elected a president who promised to shrink the deficits, end the war in Iraq promptly –not plan to keep 50,000 troops there for 10-12 yrs, stop the bank bailouts, seek meaningful environmental initiatives without massive costs, fix the economy, stop the foreclosure implosion, regulate Wall St, bring back bipartisanship, end political bickering and divisiveness, work with the French & Germans and Brits to bring added military forces to Afghanistan, rebuild America’s cities, end racism, repeal DADT, not add to the tax burdens of anyone making less than $250k/yr and reform health care without resorting to a “radical takeover” of the industry.

At least that’s what Americans thought they were electing.

And you missed the point, again, sigh. It wasn’t the American public that is armchair quaterbacking… it’s liberals according to Independent. I agree.

Nice try at attempting to include yourself in that mix of the american public but over 40% of Americans consider themselves conservative, BlankHead, 36% moderate and the balance “liberal” like you. Or hadn’t you heard? Maybe an adjustment on the tinfoil hat would help you get better reception, BlankHead? May I hold your Kool Aid while you make the adjustment?

Democracy doesn’t put the public in the role of being armchair quarterbacks.

In a democracy – we are like the team owners.

And when a team owner realizes that the head coach constantly puts together really bad game plans, makes bad gametime decisions, and doesn’t properly prepare his team – he fires the coach.

If you didn’t notice, that’s what the American public did last November.

throughout the lead-up to war –or as you call it the unprovoked “invasion of a sovereign nation”– bush and his team were being blistered in the media and on the world stage for engaging in “cowboy diplomacy” on iraq. nevermind the treaty violations. never mind the attacks on us aircraft in the no-fly zone. never mind a mistaken effort to secure a dirty bomb for terrorist use. never mind saddam’s efforts to target our former president and other world leaders for execution or assassination.

in case you forgot, the un wasn’t the central feature you seem to want to portray it as now. france, germany, new zealand and canada were strongly opposed to the invasion of iraq. a gallup poll in feb 03 showed 63% of americans wanted bush to find a diplomatic resolution to the problems caused by iraq’s failure to come clean on wmds. remember the rally in rome? maybe 3m people demonstrating against a war in iraq. remember similar events in other capitals?

in 1998, the us adopted a formal policy that the goal in iraq was to remove saddam. it took guts and leadership to do what the un couldn’t do in a hundred years. those war hawk neo-con republicans didn’t rely on the un; that’s just spin after the fact. i recall bush badgering and demanding the un act or america and her allies in the free world would with or without un support.

i can’t believe that this long after the invasion we still have liberals trying hard to defend an armchair quaterback position of second-guessing hind sight. but you could be the classic textbook definition of that exact thing. it’s amazing.

what next? mr clinton didn’t have sex with “that intern”?

National Security Advisor Condi Rice on Fox News, February 2003:

Rice told Fox’s Snow that U.S. and British diplomats continue work on another draft U.N. resolution to authorize the use of force to disarm Iraq. Rice said the White House would accept such a resolution if in fact it affirms the obligations the Security Council undertook in U.N. Resolution 1441, which calls for full immediate, unconditional and active Iraqi disarmament and elimination of weapons of mass destruction. However, she said that the Security Council must make clear that its resolution will not be “serially abused” as Iraq has done over 12 years.

Rice the United States has allowed the inspections to go forward in the context of 1441, but she said that resolution also talks of a “final opportunity to comply.” She stated that sooner or later, and “we believe sooner,” the Security Council will have to say that Iraq has not taken that final opportunity, and this country and its coalition partners will have to act. Rice repeated what President Bush has been saying: that a “coalition of the willing” has been preparing and is ready to go.

suggesting that the us relied up the un for anything other than a forum to state our case and prevent the 3rd world opinion from undercutting our efforts is both naive and revisionistic at best. at worst, intellectually dishonest but apropos for the democracynow mindset.

“There’s no such thing as the United Nations. If the U.N. secretary building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.”

– John Bolton, Permanent US Representative to the UN Under George W. Bush

You mean, when Obama spoke up in favor of UN Security Council Resolution 446?

Once upon a time, Republicans were actively justifying the invasion of a sovereign nation on the basis of their non-compliance with UN resolutions.

Now those same people are criticizing Obama for simply stating that a nation has a responsibility to comply.

It’s a given that settlement expansion has to stop for any talks to be successful. Just as talks could never be successful if the Palestinians keep lobbing rockets into Israel. (That’s assuming the West Bank and Gaza negotiate together, which I don’t think they will.)

That being said, I don’t think any of it matters. I am a complete pessimist when it comes to Israeli-Palestinian talks. The Israelis won’t give up on any significant number of settlements, and the Palestinians won’t give up on “right of return”. A successful peace can’t be negotiated with either of these demands intact. And that doesn’t even bring Jerusalem into the mix, which is an intensely religious symbol for both peoples.

I still think that one day Israel will wall off the Palestinians behind the defensible borders of their own choosing. And to be blunt, I wouldn’t blame them a bit.