Tag: Presidency

It’s Over, But What Now?

It’s over, finally it is O-V-E-R!  Twenty long months of campaigning, of lies, pandering, tap dancing and warm fuzzy feelings.  It is finally over.  And the winner is–(drum roll, please)…Barak Obama.  Now that the votes have been counted and the crying and laughter and toasts are over, the question is what now?

Which of the campaign promises will be granted and which will be broken?  Hopefully, you people do not think that all those lofty promises will be kept.  Please tell me you are not that f*cking naive.  Will Obama try an FDR move and rush legislation through in the first 100 days?  You can bet your butt that the economic stuff will get first priority.

Tax cuts?  He will let Bush cuts expire and not approach this right now.  Obama and his team will have a huge job ahead of them, he is facing the worse crisis around the world, no other president has had so much on his shoulders from the very beginning.  The choices for his team and cabinet will tell a lot on how the government will be run in the near future.

What Now For Obama?

The US media will doubtless say that the Democratic victory is not a mandate for a radical change of course. Already, even before the votes were counted and Obama’s victory was officially acknowledged, leading Democrats were putting forward precisely this position. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, who threw his support to Obama during the Democratic primary contest, cautioned Tuesday night that the Democrats should “be modest” and “seek alliances.” Georgia Congressman John Lewis echoed these remarks, saying the Democrats had to “go slowly” and pursue a “bipartisan” course.

In fact, Tuesday’s election was a clear popular mandate for a reversal of right-wing policies that have largely been of a bipartisan character.

Whatever satisfaction the Democratic Party draws from its victory is tempered by the realization within President-elect Obama’s inner circle, the party leadership and the political establishment that the mass expectations and hopes aroused by the election will not be easily contained. The outcome of the election sets the stage for a new and protracted period of intense class conflict in the United States.

Will Obama govern from the center or will he go more to the “right center”?

Congrats! President-elect Obama

Alaska has not been counted but who cares?  Obama–338  McCain–156

Barack Obama swept to victory as the nation’s first black president Tuesday night in an electoral college landslide that overcame racial barriers as old as America itself. “Change has come,” he declared to a huge throng of cheering supporters.

The son of a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas, the Democratic senator from Illinois sealed his historic triumph by defeating Republican Sen. John McCain in a string of wins in hard-fought battleground states — Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Iowa and more.

He and his running mate, Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, will take their oaths of office as president and vice president on Jan. 20, 2009.

Obama will move into the Oval Office as leader of a country that is almost certainly in recession, and fighting two long wars, one in Iraq, the other in Afghanistan.

The popular vote was close — 51.3 percent to 47.5 percent with 73 percent of all U.S. precincts counted — but not the count in the Electoral College, where it mattered most.

There, Obama’s audacious decision to contest McCain in states that hadn’t gone Democratic in years paid rich dividends.

Obama has said his first order of presidential business will be to tackle the economy. He has also pledged to withdraw most U.S. combat troops from Iraq within 16 months.

Never in my lifetime did I ever think that a black man ever become president of the United States of America.  I have been a critic of the government for years and will remain so, but the voter has shown me that they are listening asnd learning, maybe not all, but we are getting there.

It will be interesting to see what will be done first and in the first 100 days of the Obama administration.  I will be watching.

The GOP Future Of Medicare

If the GOP wins the election in a week, here is what we could be looking at, assuming that the Congress is as spineless as it has been in the last year.
Under a McCain presidency, even with a Democratic Congress, there would be increased privatization of Medicare. They don’t call it that, of course. They give it a Madison Avenue label: “Medicare modernization”, i.e., turning larger and larger sections of Medicare over to the insurance carriers, with the taxpayer footing the subsidy bill.

This is done in the worn out name of better service and saving money, even though, rather than saving money, it will cost more, and service will deteriorate even more. This is always the case with privatization schemes. When the IMF and World Bank (yes, the healthcare crisis is an international one) force countries to whom they lend money to privatize their public services, they throw those countries into crisis. Privatization is their ugly quid pro quo. The bankers know very well that this costs taxpayers more and that services suffer, but their ideology (neoliberalism) must be served and the coffers of the corporations and banks must be filled. Therefore, both the current international financial crisis and the ongoing Republican attacks on Medicare and Social Security can be laid, in part, at the door of the IMF and the World Bank and their neoliberal ideologues.

Are They Qualified To Be President–Info Ink Commentary

This is something that the media keeps throwing into their different analysis of the election. Clinton was qualified because of her experience in Washington as a Senator and the First lady, McCain is because of his military service and his interment and his Senate experience, Obama is because he is fresh and wants to change the status quo in Washington (a laughable premise). So all have the nads to be president and are qualified, right?

Actually all this is just pure crap fed to you by the media! There are only three (3) qualifications to be president. 1) Be a natural born citizen, 2) must have lived in the US for at least 14 years and 3) must be at least 35 years old. It is that flippin’ simple.

So all the crap about this candidate is qualified to be president is just what I said bovine fecal matter. There is nothing to prepare a person to be president, but being the president. It is a job with no equivalent in reality. It is an OJT gig.

I write this so that people realize the hype being fed to the voter has NOTHING to do with the capability of a person to handle the job of president.

Will Women Support Obama?

This is a great question.  In the past primary contests these voters have broken for Hillary, at least older white women, who are very loyal Democratic voters in the past.  But will they vote for Obama?  Is the question that some of us are asking.  Some pundits are saying that if Clinton is not the nominee then this bloc of voters will not vote for Obama or they will just not vote.

IMO, they will support the Democratic nominee, but to solidify that support the DNC needs to begin NOW to start the process of securing their support.  The best way to do that is to use McCain’s most recent speech on judges against him.  He basically said that if he was president he would appoint judges that were opposed to Roe v Wade.

The DNC, if they pause slightly, will lose probably about 50% of the women vote.  I realize that they are trying to straighten out the crap flying around the Party, but they need to find the time to concentrate of women and their issues, if they want their votes.  And if they want the presidency, they need to remove head from butt and begin the process now!