How Obama botched healthcare

To pass something as far reaching as healthcare reform and as far reaching as a public option, requires having the courage of your convictions.

The problem with Obama is that he has had no courage and no convictions, and as anyone familiar with his entire political career knows, he never did. For anyone who thinks he did, you can count yourself among the multitudes of the bamboozled.

When Obama was in the Illinois state senate he voted "present" over 100 times so he didn't have to vote for or against anything. That's not courage or conviction. It's political expediency so he didn't have a record on anything people could vote against when he ran for re-election.
And that is the overriding reason why healthcare reform languished, ( something I pointed out as far back as July when I said Obama was botching it) .

Obama never drew any lines in the sand because he didn't have any. He didn't give the congress any direction or any ideas because he didn't have any. And honestly, he didn't care. Yes he wanted something to pass but only so that he could say he passed it and then go on to the next thing. When it looked like it was going to be the senate version without a public option that would become law, he actually said he had never campaigned for a public option anyway. The audacity of lying.

Obama took a proposition -- the public option -- that was supported by 72% of the public according to a CBS poll, and managed to run it into the ground. The public option was a very easy sell. Somewhow he managed to blow it.

He supported the public option but then as soon as the town hall crazies showed up with their Hitler signs, Obama's knees buckled and the next thing we knew he was sending out proxies saying the public option was only a "sliver" of the health care bill and not that important and he could live without it.

The next day, Nancy Pelosi, Howard Dean as well as other members of congress went public saying it was the "centerpiece" of healthcare reform and had to drag Obama back to supporting it. Which he did. Until the anti public option commercials and town hall crazies made his knees buckle again and he dropped it.

This is what went on for 9 months and in the end, Obama's idea of presidential leadership was trying to pressure 59 Democratic senators who were ready to vote for a public option, to give it up to satisfy one senator, Joe Lieberman, who opposed it. Obama didn't know how to handle him. And in the end, Obama didn't care. The public option was not something he was going to fight for because he has never fought for or against anything in his life.

Obama didn't get tough with Lieberman, didn't twist his arm, didn't have any powers of persuasion and offered no carrots and no sticks when he had ample supplies of both ( but didn't know how to use them) and instead told the senate to just throw in the towel and give in to Lieberman.

They ended up with a piece of legislation coming out of the senate that its supporters said was "better than nothing". Not exactly change people believed in.

Democrats have been getting beaten in recent elections because "better than nothing" is not what people want. Those who believed in Obama in the first place were bamboozled. They need to admit it, get over it and stop waiting for Obama to turn into something is isn't and never was.

Obama caused this mess in the first place by trying to play politics, making a bipartisan bill a goal for no good reason. The Democrats had 60 votes in the senate and at least 58 ready to vote for a public option and what does Obama do? Instead of taking advantage of that majority in any way he could he wasted everyone's time with a senseless attempt at trying to molify those who were against reform in the first place.

Bipartisanship never makes anything better. It's only important if youre worried something will fail and then you want to be able to spread the blame. In 1993 every Republican in the House and senate voted against Bill Clinton's 1993 budget because they said the 5c a gallon gasoline tax earmarked to reduce the deficit would drive up unemployment, explode the deficit and send the country into a deeper recession. The Republcians batted 1.000. They were wrong about everything.

The budget passed with only 51 votes, with Al Gore casting the tie breaking vote, and the results were the greatest economic expansion in US history, the elimination of the deficit, lowest unemployment in 40 years, a balanced budget and a $5 1/2 trillion budget surplus by the time Clinton left office. So much for the value of bipartisanship.

Bi partisanship is never a worthy goal. But it does take courage to stand up for what you believe in the face of unified opposition. Obama should have fought for the public option and made his case to the American people, a case they had already for the most part, bought.

Instead Obama caused the congress to waste months trying to negotiate with Republicans who made it clear they were going to oppose healthcare reform to the end, if for no other reason then to make Obama look like an idiot. And Obama took it lying down.

Obama could have used Jim DeMint's comments about opposing healthcare in order to destroy Obama as a rallying cry, to say to the country "the Republicans are ready to deny 300 million people the healthcare reform they need just to get back at me for crass partisan purposes". He could have made the Republicans pay dearly and get the reform passed.

He didn't. He didnt know how.

Obama doesn't know how to fight because he never has. He used the word "fight" 14 times in his town hall speech in Ohio on the economy.But he never fought for the public option, never stood up to the Republicans or the insurance companies, and let 30% of the country who opposed it, set the agenda for the 70% who wanted it, because the 30% made the most noise. Obama is now talking fight, but has always been about words without backing them up. Like his promise to use public financing if he was the Democratic nominee.Or any number of other pledges or promses he's broken.

The truth is, it never should have come to this on healthcare. The bill should have been passed a long time ago and wasn't because of Obama's lack of leadership. He let the Republicans define the debate and sat back and did virtually nothing.He took a proposition like the public option which 65- 72% of the people supported back in June, and somehow blew it.

They are now talking about trying to pass aspects of the health bill piece meal. That wont work.. Not after all this. The congress needs to do something radical, to take matters into their own hands and figure out how to use reconciliation to get sweeping healthcare reform through. Reconciliation is a process they should have used immediately and they would have avoided all the rancor and bluster of town hall meetings and talking heads and $200 million in anti reform commercials.. But Obama didnt.

In the end, Scott Brown's victory shouldnt matter. The House was never going to buy the senate version of the bill anyway, which in fact they havent. And the senate was never going to have 60 votes to pass a bill with a public option because Obama didnt know how to use common sense, persuasion and a threat of losing the Homeland Security chairmanship on Joe Lieberman.

As recently as last month, two polls., the respected Kaiser Family Foundation poll and the not so respected Washington Post poll, showed that 58% and 57% respectively supported and wanted a public option. If you cant win with that kind of public support, when can you win?

So now it's finding a way to use budget reconciliation even if some Democratic senators don't like it and ram it through. If they don't ,Obama and the Democratic congress lose all credibility. And probably the next election.

Limbaugh's sewer brain overflows over Haiti

Rush Limbaugh's sewer brain overflowed the 20 million brain drains that listen to him, his latest rant complaining about Obama's immediate response to the Haitian earthquake compared to his waiting 3 days to comment about the Christmas day bomb attempt.

Little Rushy took his thumb and his cigar out of his mouth long enough to complain that Obama took 3 whole days to reassure little Rushy and his listeners that their cribs were safe in the bomb attempt on flight 253 but only hours to make a public statement about the earthquake in Haiti. One can only imagine how many packages of Depends Rushy went through until Obama reassured him about the Nigerian bomber.

It seems that the "titular head" of the Republican party, the party of personal responsibility needs and wants a daddy not a president and that an event isn't an event until president daddy says it is.

Limbaugh also accused Obama of acting quickly to solidify his support politically among African Americans. It's understandable since Republicans do nothing or say nothing and believe in nothing unless its for political reasons and to solidify their support politically.

The underlying point of Rushy's temper tantrum is that Haiti is 95% black, Obama had a black father, and therefore according to Limbaugh it's nothing more than blatant racism motivating Obama in his response to Haiti.

Limbaugh followed up his asinine comments with more: He referred to the food coming in to Haiti as "meals on wheels" and then discouraged his listeners from donating by saying, "you've already donated to Haiti -- it's called income taxes".

But before anyone thinks Limbaugh's contempt for Haiti is anything new, in May of 2009 he descended as far into the sewer of his own being as possible when he commented on Bill Clinton's involvement with Haiti saying, " Clinton has no place in Haiti. You cant pick up a prostitute there without a real concern about getting AIDS".

This is the voice of conservatism in America. And the voice of Republicans.

The question is, when are people who know how to organize going to organize a national boycott of Limbaugh's advertisers until he is gone? And when are the Democrats, as politically incompetent as ever, going to hold the Republicans and conservatives' feet to the fire over Limbaugh and the fact that he has been embraced as their "titular head"?

Republican lies and denial over terrorism

Amazingly there seems to be some debate, prodded mostly by conservatives, over Obama's approach to terrorism versus that of George W. Bush. Rudy Guiliani, taking partisanship to new lows, said on the Today Show that " we were never attacked under Bush's watch but we were under Obama's."

Was it that the former Mayor of New York City couldnt remember 911 when he mentioned it every other sentence when he was running in the Republican presidential primaries or was he so used to partisan dishonesty it just tumbled out of his mouth?

He also seemed to forget Richard Reid, the shoe bomber whose attempts at blowing up a plane were almost identical to the Nigerian on flight 253.
But Guiliani couldn't remember that either. In fact even on the Sunday talk shows, on both Fox and CNN there were Republican critics trying to make the point of how wrong it is to try the Nigerian in a federal court when that is exactly what Bush did with Richard Reid.

To listen to Republicans, the 3000 people killed under Bush, the loss of the World Trade Center and Richard Reid all just slipped ther minds, and in Guilliani's case claiming we were never attacked under Bush but were under Obama, revealed the worst aspects of Republican politics -- people so used to lying and distorting the truth that a failed attack on Flight 253 became an attack and 911 wasnt part of the argument.

After making such an obviously stupid and partisan statement, Guiliani's spokesman issued a "clarification" about what Guiliani "really meant".

But what Guiliani really meant was to bash Obama, take heat off of Bush for this catastrophic failures and make it as partisan as he could for cheap political purposes.

What conservatives continue to lie about is the fact that terrorism wouldnt be the issue it is now were it not for the gross negligence and criminal incompetence of George W. Bush, Condoleeza Rice and Dick Cheney prior to the 911 attacks.

It was Bush's negligence in refusing to take terrorism seriously and downplaying it which led to his demoting Richard Clarke, abolishing the Principles Meeting, ignoring othe warnings of the CIA and Richard Clarke that we were about to be hit with a major terrorist attack, refusing to have one single meeting on terrorism in the 8 months leading to the attack and much more.

Instead conservatives go on television, deny and cover up Bush's culpability in the 911 attack, and try to sell the idea that we are less safe now than under Bush because Obama doesn't take terrorism seriously. They refuse to acknowledge out of sheer partisanship that it was Bush who didn't take it seriously unti we were hit.

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Had it not been for a press afraid to hold Bush accountable, Bush would have been impeached for 911. Instead, despite the gross negligence of the Bush Administration we heard this on Fox News from Bill O'Reilly.

"From the very beginning, President Obama has relentlessly tried to downplay and deny the nature of the terrorist threat we continue to face."

This is not to defend Obama since no one really knows what is going on behind the scenes. Terrorism is being fought by career professionals not politicians and its simply a matter of implementing the resources available and making sure they work.

Conservatives, who for years have used national security as a political football seem to forget that it was a conservative president more concerned with China, star wars, and the ABM treaty who discounted and downplayed terrorism as a threat who ignored the information that would have prevented 911 and has brought us to where we are now.

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Obama's serial lying catching up with him

If there was anything that anyone following the Democratic primaries could see if they were willing to see what was in front of them, was that Barrack Obama lied on a regular basis about many things.

He lied for 5 consecutive days about his relationship with Jeremiah Wright until new information kept coming out that made each lie unsustainable until he couldn't lie about Wright any further. That led to Obama, knowing his back was to the wall, to give his speech on race, something his supporters called his "Lincoln Moment" but I called his Eddie Haskell moment after the smarmy ingratiating character on Leave It To Beaver.

But Obama had told outright lies before. The previous year he had gone on the record as supporting the Washington DC gun ban. When, a year later, the Supreme Court ruled the ban unconstitutional, Obama came out and supported the Supreme Court decision. When it was pointed out that he was reversing his position from the year before, he denied he had ever supported the ban even though it was easily proved that he did because his support of the DC gun ban was on the record. (exactly the same ruse he used over the public option two years after).

He was caught lying to the people of Ohio about his position on NAFTA saying that if he was elected he'd get rid of it. Ohio manufacturing had been hard hit by NAFTA and Obama was telling the people of Ohio just what they wanted to hear. But a memo was leaked showing that Obama had sent an emissary to the Canadian Embassy in Chicago telling the Canadians to ignore what he was saying about NAFTA that it was just politics and only for public consumption and he had no intention of getting rid of NAFTA.

That lie, preying on the fears and misfortunes of the unemployed in Ohio should have been enough to sink a presidential candidacy but not Obama's because the mainstream media decided to turn a blind eye to it and act like it was nothing.

Obama continued to lie about it for another 5 days, first claiming that the emissary was not from his campaign, then after proof surfaced that he was, tried to claim he was there on his own and not sent by the campaign, then after proof surfaced that was a lie, tried to claim he was part of the campaign and was there but was never told to say that. Then after that was proved to be a lie Obama changed the subject, lost to Clinton in Ohio by a landslide and the media just moved on.

The very people complaining the loudest now about Obama selling them out, people like Frank Rich of the Times, the Daily Kos, and Ed Schulz on MSNBC ignored all of Obama's lying during the campaign.

That emissary by the way, the one Obama tried to claim was not part of his campaign, was Austan Goolsbee, a current member of Obama's economic team.

Other Obama lies were his promise to filibuster the FISA bill if it contained retrocative immunity to the telecoms and a promise to vote against any such bill. He didnt' filibuster it and voted for it.

He promised verbally and in writing, to use public financing if he was the Democratic nominee as part of his pledge to change the way things were done in Washington and then reneged as soon as he became the nominee, outraising John McCain $500 million to $88 million because McCain also pledged to use public financing but stuck to it.

Now, in the face of Democratic anger for abandoning the public option, Obama has come out with perhaps his most bald faced lie only this time it seems his supporters aren't drinking the Kool- Aid.

Obama told the Washington Post in a recent interview that those supporters who feel that Obama had betrayed them for selling out the public option, are confused and their anger misplaced, that he had never campaigned for a public option. The problem is everyone knows he did and there is ample proof that he did.

Proving the lie was so easy in the age of YouTube that you have to consider there is more going on than just the lyng so many politicians do. In Obama's case it's not only blatant but so obvious that his lies seem almost sociopathic, like he can't help himself, maybe because he';s been doing it for so long.

Considering the President of the United States is the most scrutizined person in the world, and the healthcare debate the most contentious political issue in 40 years, one really has to ask how Obama thought he could lie about that and get away with it.

This is what he said on 7/17/08:

Essentially . . we're going to set up a public plan that all persons and all women can access if they don't have health insurance. It will be a plan that will provide all essential services, including reproductive services." (7/17/07)

This is what Obama's own campaign literature said in 2008:

(1) OBAMA’S PLAN TO COVER UNINSURED. Obama will make available a new national health plan that will allow individuals without access to affordable insurance coverage

Through the Exchange, any American will be able to enroll in the new public plan or purchase an approved private plan

The Exchange will require that all the plans offered are at least as generous as the new public plan and the same standards for quality and efficiency.

And some of his most ardent cheerleaders are not amused. The Daily Kos said this:.

"This revisionist history has to stop. President Obama DID campaign on the public plan, now known as the public option, and playing semantics with that is silly."

And now Obama is compounding his lie by saying the bill that was passed by the senate is 95% of what he wanted. Obama said in the interview with PBS that the idea that he compromised "is incorrect," that the bill might not have everything other people wanted but contains 95% of everything HE wanted.

For those complaining now, from Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone to Frank Rich in the New York Times, to Ed Schultz of MSNBC, the NY Times, The Nation and many others, they need to remember that the evidence of Obama's blatant lying and reneging on promises was evident long before he ever won the nomination and they chose to turn a blind eye. At the time, towards he end of the primaries I had written that Obama was the most deceitful and underhanded candidate for President since Richard Nixon. But the mass media didnt care. Their agenda was to elect a president with African features ( he isnt the first black president, he is half black, another fact the media likes to ignore) and they were willing to let themselves be conned. Which might make them think about the old adage that people get the government they deserve.

Nancy Pelosi whacked Obama a few days ago with an off hand remark when she was asked why the Democrats wouldnt open the conference comittee on health care to cameras. A reporter pointed out that Obama had campaigned on it. Pelosi said in a somewhat sarcastic way, " there were a lot of things he said he was for on the campaign trail".

Now it's starting to look as though Obama is going to be having a real Lincoln Moment. But this one has to do with Lincoln's line, "...you cant fool all of the people all of the time".

Will Obama sprain his elbow patting himself on the back?

President Obama, who gave himself a B+ for his first year in office, a grade which, had it been given out to students at a university with similar accomplishments would have sparked a cheating scandal, patted himself on the back once again by saying his decision on sending troops to Afghanistan proves he knows how to make the hard, but politically unpopular decisions.
What it really proves is that Obama, as always, tries to twist the facts and distort them to suit his own political standing.

Every poll has shown that his decision to send more troops to Afghanistan has been politically popular with over 65% supporting it even though people are not, on the whole, happy that we are there fighting. And why should they be?

What he doesn't say is that he did everything he could to make as politically popular a decision as possible, announcing a troop increase and a troop withdrawal at the same time setting a new world record for duplicity in less than 60 seconds.

That is pure Obama, only this time it went over like a lead drone, with people from both parties criticizing his announced withdrawal date which made him look foolish.

His attempt at trying to explain it fell flat too, saying he wanted to give the Afghans a date so they knew the commitment was not open ended. But Obama could have given Karzai that date privately. His announcing it was for purely domestic political purposes and once again, he hoped people would be dumb enough to accept it, and some were, especially in the press.

But Obama doesn't talk about are the tough decisions he didn't make. He " didn't want to meddle" when the Iranian people revolted against a rigged election and took to the streets. It was the best opportunity the US has had in more than 30 years to affect a regime change by supporting and encouraging the protestors, letting them know the US and the rest of the world supported them and at the same time he could have roundly condemned the Iranian government for their deadly crackdown on the demonstrators.

It was a golden opportunity for Obama and the US to at least make an attempt to destabilize that regime which was teetering. Instead, Obama was the only leader in the West who backed away, saying he " didn't want to meddle".

An opportunity that was lost because of Obama's unwillingness to stand up for what was right, and make a hard decision.

It should be said that now, with more riots on the streets of Iran, he is saying the kinds of things he should have said six months ago, and might have had a bigger impact with hundreds of thousands of protestors on the streets instead of the thousands there are now. Maybe better late than never.

But that might not be true with healthcare reform where, like trying to appease Ahmandinejad six months ago and nothing to show for it, Obama backed off and sold out the public option in order to appease Joe Lieberman at the expense of the wishes of 58 others.

The truth about Obama and making tough political decisions is this: during his entire tenure in the Illinois state senate, Obama voted "present" over 100 times. That means he decided to neither vote for or against a bill, obviously to avoid making any kind of unpopular vote and not having a record someone could run against.

The fact is no one thinks more of Obama than Obama, and like his self graded B+, it is mostly unjustified in terms of real accomplishment. And with failures or tepid successes in areas where real progress and change could have been affected by someone with the courage and moral conviction to achieve them, Obama has fallen well short. And those failures and his self praise seems now to be wearing thin, even among his most ardent supporters.

Are Hillary Clinton supporters murmuring I told you so?

With a new NBC/Wall Street journal poll showing Obama hitting his lowest approval rating in that poll, and the same poll showing that people are getting increasingly fed up with Obama, the Democrats and how both have handled health care,(how they handled it, not rejecting things that are in it, like the public option) those who supported Hillary Clinton for president in the Democratic primaries are starting to say "I told you so".

Obama's had the biggest approval ratings drop of any first year president in history. He has disappointed most of his supporters on the left. And he has accomplished little to nothing in his first year that has showed any concrete results in spite of him giving himself a B+ for his performance in his first year.

What he has done is make more speeches and had more prime time press conferences in his first year than any president has given in their entire first term.

On healthcare reform, most of his supportes are complaining that he sold out and was two faced in his capitulation. Which he was. But these are traits he exhibited not only during his entire 12 years of elected office, but were on glaring display during the Democratic primaries.

Now everyone is angry with him for showing a lack of principle, commitment, experience and expertise and his willingness to sacrifice any principle on a dime, but that's who Obama has always been and he showed it repeatedly during the primaries, whether he was willing to sell out the voters of Florida and Michigan to help himself get elected, or reversing himself on a pledge to use public financing.

Now as Obama's approval ratings continue to hit record lows for a first term president, and he is bringing the Democratic party down with him, as people are getting fed up with his handling of a propositon -- the public option and health care reform -- that 72% supported back in June, many Hillary Clinton supporters are starting to say "we told you so".

More and more of Obama's staunchest supporters, the same people who turned a blind eye to Obama's deep character flaws, lack of experience, and brazen political dishonesty and deceit, are now complaining that he's not what they thought he was, that this isnt change they can believe in. But it never was in the first place. It was clear to anyone who was paying attention, that "change you can believe in" was nothing but a slogan. Because he never did say what kind of change he had in mind.And if you asked a supporter they couldnt tell you either.

Ed Schultz, Arianna Huffington, the people at The Nation, Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone, and Michael Moore are just a few of Obama flag wavers now wavering in their support and scratching their heads saying "what happened"?

The answer is nothing happened. Obama is being the same Obama he always was, the same Obama that was apparent during the Democratic primaries, the same Obama that 18 months ago after listening to a couple of speeches, caused me to write that he was a snake oil salesman and the most underhanded, deceitful politician since Richard Nixon. But the press. who was in Obama's pocket, refused to see it.Or report it.

For those who saw through the phoniness, Obama has been exactly what the majority of Democratic primary voters thought he was. Remember that Hillary Clinton actually received more votes than Obama, and went into the Democratic convention having won the popular vote.

During the primaries Clinton supporters mocked Obama supporters and their beliefs as people who were "drinking the Kool-Aid". Obama supporters accused Clinton supporters, and anyone who opposed Obama's candidacy of being racist. This was the state of the Democratic party courtesy of the candidate who ran on the proposition that he had a unqiue ability to unite people and bring them together. He ran on the fiction that he had some great ability to unite Democrats and Republicans and put an end to partisanship. Which is why every Republican is voting against the health care bill and he hasnt been able to unite any disparate group on anything.

In a recent article in Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi writes, "Obama pulled a bait-and-switch on us. If it were any other politician, we wouldn't be surprised. Maybe it's our fault, for thinking he was different."

Yes it was your fault for not seeing what was right in front of everyone's eyes. The fact that he pulled a bait and switch shouldnt leave anyone surprised. That was the snake oil Obama was selling during the primaries and a lot of people bought it and are now seemingly first finding out it was all just sugar and water.

The reason people are feeling so stung by Obama is that he held himself up to be a different kind of politician, someone above the petty politics and back room deals of Washington. All the while engaging in petty politics and backroom deals. What also makes it particularly insidious is when a snake oil salesman goes into a community that is hurting and tells everyone he has the cure and its right in this here bottle when all along he knows its nothing but a bottle of empty promises. That's called a con. And now a lot of people who should have known better are realizing it.

It was clear during the primaries when Obama constantly reneged on promises and pledges and resorted to serial lying both when it came to Jeremiah Wright, and the incident in Ohio when a document was leaked that caught Obama red handed lying to the people of Ohio about his position on NAFTA. He told the people in Ohio who were hurting economically precisely because of things in NAFTA that if they elected him he'd get rid of NAFTA. At the same time he was caught telling the Candians to ignore what he said in Ohio, that he had no intention of getting rid of NAFTA, that it was all just for politics. if that had happened to any other candiate for president it might have been the end. But the press had an agenda for Obama and they just ignored it.

But If a politician is willing to prey on the misfortunes of people to get votes, raising their hopes, and making promises he knows he has no intention of fullfilling, nothing he does should surprise anyone.

But at the time it was exposed, the same people who are now complaining about Obama betraying them and selling them out, turned a blind eye to what happened in Ohio. If Clinton had been caught doing the same thing the press would have demanded she drop out of the race and would have said she couldnt be trusted.

The fact that Obama was clearly the least qualified candidate for the Democratic nomination, didnt seem to matter to his supporters either. And while he claimed he was the person who knew how to bring people together the Democratic presidential primaries were the most divisive in the history of the party. In his campaign speeches he said "voices must be heard" but he did everything in is power to keep the voices of the voters in Florida and Michigan from being heard because he was landslided in both primaries by Clinton. Instead of fighting for the right to have their votes count on principle, he was quite content to have them silenced in favor of his own ambitions. So why are people surprised now that he sold them out on healthcare reform?

The other big issue that seemed to matter to Obama's supporters was that he was black. So they took everything Martin Luther King stood for and threw it out the window, which was that a person should be judged on the content of their character and not the color of their skin. Many of his supporters, including John Kerry who made no bones about it, decided the color of his skin mattered more.

But while this may come as a shock to them, Obama is not the first black president. He is the first mixed race president, half black and half white. He is no more the country's first black president than Derek Jeter was the Yankees first black shortstop. In all of Jeter's hall of fame career no one ever referred to him that way. But his genetic make up is the same as Obama's. The difference is the random shuffling of genetic material resulted in Jeter having more Caucasian features and a caramel complexion while Obama's features and complexion were more black. So maybe now that they feel betrayed by that too, Either that or maybe ,those who supported him because they wanted a black president will admit Martin Luther King was right the first time.

During the primaries,Obama's selling out promises were rampant. He promised to use public financing if he was the nominee then reneged as soon as became the nominee. He promised to filibuster and vote against the FISA bill if it gave telecoms retroactive immunity then reneged, didnt filibuster and voted for it. And lied, until he couldn't lie any longer about his relationship with Jeremiah Wright and on sending on his economic advisors to the Canadian embassy to tell them to ignore everything he was saying publicly about NAFTA.

This is the person that liberals and Democrats who supported him are now surprised has sold them out when it was apparent that Obama was probably the most underhanded politician since Richard Nixon. The difference between the two is that Nixon used deceit to get even. Obama used it to get ahead. It all goes to character and how that influences decisions. As well as having a vision and sticking up for a principle, something Obama has thrown overboard on healthcare.

So perhaps Hillary Clinton supporters can be excused if they are now saying " We told you so". Because they did.

OBAMA CHEATS ON HIS OWN REPORT CARD

In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, Obama gave himself a B+ as a grade for his first year in office. No one was surprised that he'd give himself a B+. After all no one thinks more of Obama than Obama himself. But it did leave a lot of people laughing and other's shaking their heads.

What makes it more amusing is that It comes on the heels of Obama admitting in his Nobel speech, that he "probably didnt deserve the peace prize". And there are few who would disagree.
So it mght be understandable that when you receive a Nobel Peace Prize for accomplishing absolutely nothing in the area of peace, not providing even a glimmer of hope or direction, not even an idea, that he somehow he thinks he deserves a B+. for his lack of accomplishments in the first year of his presidency.

After his first 100 days, in CNN's First 100 Days poll, Obama was somewhere around a C- nationally. What was interesting about that poll is that he was a C- consistantly from coast to coast in almost every state. It wasn;t regional, and it didnt break down by party. Everyone thought he deserved a C-. And it has gone downhill from there. So where Obama thinks he deserves a B+ and for what is simply Obama being Obama.

Of course asking Obama to grade himself is like the Queen in Cinderella asking the mirror who is the fairest of them all. In this case Obama is not only doing the asking, he is also the mirror giving the answer.

An objective grading of Obama for his first year is very different. On healthcare Obama gets an F. He's been a disaster in every facet of the health care debate, being completely ineffective in every area you can think of. He spent as much time running and ducking from the criticism of Republicans and town hall crazies as he did supporting health care reform.

He has constantly dumped the public option when the political heat got too hot, then reaffirmed his support for it when congressional Democrats grabbed him by the scruff of the collar and said the public option is a must. Then after, affirming it one day, and dumping it the next, and watching the cycle repeat itself endlessly, Obama, after saying he would never back off the public option, finally said he supported it but could live without it. Now behind the scenes he is urging Harry Reid to capitulate to Joe Lieberman and cut a deal. Why? So that Obama can claim they have a deal by Christmas.

On the entire health care issue, he gave no direction to congress, contributed no ideas, drew no lines in the sand, stood up for nothing, had no convictions, and was equivocal in everything he said and did. And a supposed salesman , he took the public option, something supported by 72% of the people in June, and 58% now, and ran it into the ground, refusing to stand up for it.

He's been useless in trying to get four senate Democrats who opposed the public option to compromise. Instead he is now trying to get the 56 senators who support it to compromise with the 4 who dont.

When Harry Reid created the "opt out" version of the public option, which initially passed the senate, moving it to the floor for debate, Obama tried to take credit for it by trying to claim it was all part of a grand White House "hands off" strategy. Kind of like a rope -a- dope. Only it was more dope than rope. Only the New York Times was gullible enough to swallow that one.

On the economy and jobs, David Obey, Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, called the Administration's inflated numbers on jobs creation, "outrageous" , and forced the White House to revise its numbers on jobs created or saved on RecoveryAct.gov. Obama admitted they made a mistake. And unemployment is over 10%.

People are angry over the way Wall Street seemed to get bailed out with no benefit to average people and then paid themselves huge bonuses as a pat on the back for using tax payer money to get out of the red. Even the Congressional Black Caucus sent Obama a scathing letter calling him on the carpet for his enemic record on jobs and the economy.

On the Israeli-Palestinian front, he has been a non-entity, uniting both the Israelis and Palestinians only in their anger towards him, rejecting almost everything he's said. He angered Israelis with his empty demand that they freeze settlements then angered the Palestinians by backing off when Netanyahu ignored him. And in his Cairo speech he empowered Hamas, a terrorist organization calling for the destruction of Israel, making Abbas' job in uniting the Palestinians that much harder. In fact an argument could be made that Obama has actually caused a set back to the entire peace process.

While Bush remains and always will remain, the most inept, incompetent ,irresponsible, reckless and disaterous president in US history, and nothing Obama will ever do will come close to the damage Bush and the Republicans did to the country for 8 years, for Obama to give his dismal job performance a B+ is not a good sign. It shows that his standards are very low and so is his idea of success. And the way things are now, the county cant take too much more of what Obama thinks is success.

If Obama, when he was a so called professor at Harvard ( I say so called because no one can find a class that he actually taught) gave out grades to students like he gave to himself, he would have been dismissed. He might meet a similar fate in 2012 if he doesnt show vast improvement.