Senate The 2nd Term of the Obama Administration: Facts, Opinions, and Discussions

Lindsey Graham is already on the warpath, threatening to hold up Hagel's Brennan's nomination.

Sorry, just double checked it (while trying to make sure I spelled Graham's name right - who names their kid Lindsey Olin Graham anyway?), and found out it was Brennan, not Hagel he's threatening to block. Could have sworn it was Hagel when I saw it on the news this morning.

Source

 

that is weird because leslie graham is such a ho-hum middle-of-the-road whichever-way-the-wind-blows type repub.

 

Seriously, why is Hagel even controversial? Oh no, he wants to negotiate *gasp!* with Iran before going to war, and said some mean things about Israel's pro-lebensraum ultranationalists.

 

All the Republican Vietnam draft-dodgers are terrified of an Infantryman Secretary of Defense, is what it is.

 

It always baffles me that Congress has any say in who is part of the cabinet at all. They're the President's advisors, not Congress'.

 

The Secretaries of State, Defense, and Treasury are very powerful people. They're not just Presidential advisers (that could even be considered their secondary roles), but people to whom the President has delegated his powers and heads of large departments in charge of little things like defense and diplomacy. The President can and does order them around, but he doesn't do everything himself so he needs other people to help. I'm quite fine with them being subject to Congressional approval as they always have been. Anyway, it's only recently that qualified appointees have routinely been threatened with being blocked. And the President's personal staff (such as, say, the Chief of Staff) are not subject to Congressional approval.

 

Yeah, I suppose-still strikes me as off. Congress shouldn't be acting this way out of spite (which they are) and it's even more ridiculous with how the election went.

 

Jack Lew has been nominated for Treasury Secretary, and there really doesn't seem to be any controversy around him. He's been Obama's Chief of Staff over the last year, and was the OMB director in the last 3 years of the Clinton administraton (when we had a surplus). Any thoughts about him?

The President also said today that we'll be shifting the role of US soldiers in Afghanistan to just training and counterterrorism missions this spring, earlier than planned. The Obama administration and Karzai government are trying to negotiate how many troops will stay in Afghanistan after the war ends in 2014, and the numbers right now seem to be as high as 10,000 and as low as 0. President Obama has said that if Karzai can't deliver on troop immunity, then absolutely no troop presence will continue after 2014. The biggest reason to keep a small presence in Afghanistan is to keep the current government in place in case the insurgents become strong enough to threaten Kabul, or to be in the neighborhood in case Pakistan collapses and terrorists move to seize its nuclear weapons.

 

Well evidently the Tea Party isn't happy unless they can defeat everything Obama sends them, because I've heard of one such Tea Party Senator threatening to block Lew's nomination.

Yeah, we're in for a fun two + more years with this congress.

 

What will Obama's inaugural speech be like?

A dud, a nice speech, or a call to action?


This is a really good article on past inaugural speeches (Reagan's in '85 was boring and wonkish, Clinton's in '97 was too vague and fluffy, Bush gave a decent speech but it was all about still trying to justify the Iraq War in '05 as a crusade for democracy).

And it talks about how Obama's speeches fall flat when it's about policy details (like hardly anyone remembering his speeches on healthcare reform), and are strongest when they're more transcendent (like the address to the Muslim world, or the response to the shooting in Tuscon, or his convention speech that was 9 years ago).

But adding that the really memorable speeches are when a person tries to call people to action.

It's a good read...

http://news.yahoo.com/obama-s-inaug...do-to-have-a-hit-and-not-a-dud-163401753.html







And here's the new presidential portrait for the 2nd term (a lot grayer than he was 4 years ago!)


The First Lady has a new look too:

 

it's gonna be a call to action, of course. i mean the guy is an accomplished demagogue - why would he set aside his talents for such an important address?

i like michelle's new hairdo.

 

You're only a demagogue if you advocate something that's irresponsible or wrong.

 

how about murdering children in foreign countries to secure oil supplies? im sure that's what AAHA was on about

 

I'm normally a fan of whatever the First Lady does to her hair, but this just looks like a really bad wig, sorry, but that's how it looks to me.

 

Maybe she's secretly bald.

 

Instead of watching the inauguration, I think I'll read some of Franklin Roosevelt's speeches and weep for what's happened to the Democratic Party post-Watergate.

 

can't wait for four years of wall-to-wall ginning up.

 

President Obama to begin the public push for Immigration Reform on Tuesday (the White House and Marco Rubio are already working on the legislation behind-the-scenes):
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/obama-discuss-immigration-reform-tuesday-204617593--politics.html

Does everyone agree that it needs to include a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants, and more magnets for foreign students who study here for a college education to stay?

 

Don't they only need 20 GOP defectors in the House to enact immigration reform (or anything else for that matter)?

 

Erm...haven't seen the five or so non-nutter Republicans left managing to not allow the whackos to further destroy the party in the last 4 years.