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

Brown has the infrastructure in place to run in the special election, but I think he was badly damaged towards the end of his race with Warren, and exposed as a real lightweight. He dances around the issues to pose as a "centrist," but that was a tactic many get burned by in the end, because your opponent always frames you as a candidate who believes in nothing (see one Mitt Romney). I think the fact that Brown is already hitting Ed Markey shows how afraid he is that the DNC will be able to mobilize the Warren voters and hold that seat with a safe Democrat until Deval Patrick can slide into it in a few years.

I'll be interested to see how the President involves himself, though- he waited too late to try to save Martha Coakley in 2009- I doubt he'll make that mistake this time, especially with the position of strength his party currently holds in just about every area, even in the chamber of Congress they don't technically control. This is their chance to plant the foot on the throat of the GOP going into the midterms.

I've been a fan of Chuck Hagel's for quite some time. I think the fact that many of the Reagan and HW Bush Republicans are publicly supporting him will further shed light on how astray the modern GOP has gone, as if anyone needs help seeing that.

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.

Jeff Sessions has now sworn that Jack Lew "must never" be Treasury Secretary. Second/Third/Fourth Verse, same as the first..

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.

Which tells me that DarthBoba is right. Members of Congress are behaving like small children who didn't get their way. No more, no less.

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.

I thought the inaugural address deserves the praise it is getting. Heavy on policy, and lays out the pillars of this next term- climate change, gay rights, stabilizing wealth patterns. This in addition to gun laws, finishing the war, and possibly expanding Obamacare to go after a public option is a lot to chew on. However, he has a successful track record, knows how to campaign to gin up public support, and the opposition is in dire straits for the midterm, already. He's got a great opportunity to wrap up one of the most successful presidencies, policy-wise, of the last hundred years, if he avoids the 2nd term pitfalls that have brought down many others.

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?

I think immigration is an enormous opportunity for the GOP, even though Obama will benefit most from successful legislation. If they get on board with a moderate proposal, similar to the one that GWB supported, and don't allow the whackos to sabotage the effort, it can be a first step back into relevancy.

Anyone on the right who wants to have any possible chance at the Presidency better watch themselves on this one though, including Rubio- he's already been called out once pretty embarrassingly for being phony on the Cuban story, his skin tone does not make him tefflon on this issue. If this blows up, the only potential candidate who will be spared political damage is Hillary Clinton, who will be out of the picture and detached from any kind of criticism. After that awesome display she put on a few days ago, I sure hope she is looking into a run.

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