Tag Archives: Obama

November 9, 2012

“Obama Wins the Future?” Stop Dreaming, Says Frank Rich

By Les AuCoin

[In an early version of this piece, I mistakenly called Frank Rich "Frank Church." My thanks to an alert reader. How do these things happen? Surely, this isn't the age thing. Is it?]

I find this fascinating: two respected liberal commentators, having studied Tuesday’s election, arrive at wholly different conclusions about the balloting’s long range effect on American politics. It’s worth reading both and seeing with whom you agree.

The utopian blue view comes from the American Prospect’s Bob Moser, who says a new liberal majority has been born (Obama Wins The Future, 11/7/12). In the other corner, New York magazine’s Frank Rich, a liberal with impeccable credentials, sees red and says, The Tea Party Will Win in the End.)

I’ll be fascinated to know what you think!

When you’ve studied the articles, leave a critiquing comment. It’ll be interested to see which scenario readers most agree with.

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12 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in 2012 elections, Big Government, Conservativism, Democrats, Far Right, Leadership, Liberalism, Obama, Obama Voters, Partisanship, Political extremism, political thought, Politics, Presidency, Republicans, US politics

August 31, 2012

Romney and My Gag Reflex

By Les AuCoin

I almost threw up when Mittens delivered his “more-in-sorrow-than-anger” prime time pirouette about Obama’s alleged lack of achievements.  For the record, I’m putting a list of Obama’s first term accomplishments here. As you can see, some of the ideas actually came from the GOP. 

But Obama had to do it without a modicum of help from the Cro-Magnons Republicans. From the beginning, they were bent on defeating the “Other,” the upstart black man, in spite of the national klaxon screaming for jobs, homes, purchasing power, affordable health care, a healthy environment, and other national solutions.

In my lifetime, until now I’d never seen a bloc of pols put their blood lust for power so nakedly above country. But they did–defying an Obama first term mandate in electoral and popular votes that eclipsed every president since LBJ. (Yes, a mandate even larger than their icon, Reagan.)

But of course “the will of the people” is something Romney, McConnell, Boehner, Lyin’ Ryan, and their pals, think of as a something they can manufacture much like a box of Kleenex or some other commodity to secure power and shield from the rest of us, those, like them, who are rich enough for gated neighborhoods, tax shelters, private schools, living trusts, top doctors, and full employment.

Tip O’Neill, a true patriot, once said, “We have only one president at a time.” I knew Tip O’Neill. Tip O’Neill was a friend of mine. Mittens, you and your kind are no Tip O’Neill.

12 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in 2012 elections, Democrats, Politics, Republicans, US politics

January 6, 2012

Book Review of ‘Confidence Men’–A Forensics Study of the Economic Crash

By Les AuCoin

Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President, by Pulitzer Prize winner Ron Suskind, is the work of the first author who had inside access to the Obama White House. Suskind doesn’t waste his opportunity; he names names of culprits in the greatest failure of the American financial system since the Great Depression and describes how they worked to enrich themselves while building a bubble economy that produced little underlying value.

The book spotlights Wall Street flimflam artists whose venal hawking of credit swap derivatives of sub-prime mortgage instruments led to the Great Recession of 2008 (a calamity which may yet prove to be only the first dropped shoe; the second “shoe” being an even more devastating financial collapse up the road).  It reveals how the same charlatans–whose Too Big To Fall banks rescued with public money–are engaging in the same flimflam today rather than making loans to American businesses to get the economy moving again.

But in some ways, the truer villains in Confidence Men are the bloodless, cold-eyed operators inside the Obama Administration who hijacked for their own ends the Obama presidency Continue reading

4 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , | posted in 2008 Financial Crisis, Book Review, Wall Street & the Education of a President

January 5, 2012

Newt Really, Truly Hates Slash & Burn Politics. (Now.)

By Les AuCoin

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Newt’s shrieks of protest against the cutting ads being used against him are making me go, “Ooooh, noooo!’ After all, through the years, these are some of the little candy kisses this dollop of human kindness  has tossed off at his opponents:

“The mother killing her two children in South Carolina vividly reminds every American how sick the society is getting and how much we have to have change. I think people want to change, and the only way you get change is to vote Republican.” (1994)

“Barney Frank should be thrown in jail for passing the financial reform bill. (2011)

[Paraphrase] Obama Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sodomayor is a racist. (2009)

[Paraphrase] Congressional Democrats are guilty of appeasement for distributing “communist propaganda.” I intend to press charges against them for writing a letter to Nicaraguan dictator Daniel Ortega. (1984)

“What if he [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]?” (2010)

“Democrats will bring to the United States, “The joys of Soviet-style brutality and the murder of women and children.” (1980)

“There is a gay and secular fascism in this country that wants to impose its will on the rest of us.” (2008)

“People like me are what stands between us an Auschwitz.” (1994)

“I have an enormous personal ambition. I want to shift the entire planet…I just had breakfast with [administration officials Richard] Darman and [David] Stockman because I’m unavoidable. I represent real power.”  (1985)

3 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in 2012 elections, Far Right, Gingrich, Liberalism

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