Home > Jay Bookman > Archives > 2008 > November > 26 > Entry
DEL.ICIO.USObama governing style takes form
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In his morning press conference today, Barack Obama had a telling and important response to criticism that his appointees may not reflect the agenda of change championed in his campaign.
I don’t have his direct quote yet, but in general, Obama pointed out that “the change begins with me.” He made it clear that he intends to be the one who sets policy, and he is appointing competent people who can carry it out. It’s an assertion of authority and quite a change from the more hands-off style practiced by the current president.
UPDATE: Here’s the direct quote:
“”What we are going to do is combine experience with fresh thinking. But understand where the vision for change comes from first and foremost. It comes from me. That’s my job.”
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Comments
By Wyld Byll Hyltnyr
November 26, 2008 11:26 AM | Link to this
True, except that just above and slightly behind the PEOTUS logo curtain sits one George Soros pulling the strings that animate the marionette.
By Soixante huitard
November 26, 2008 11:37 AM | Link to this
George Soros pulling the strings that animate the marionette.
Definition of delusion:
The tendency to disavow what one’s own eyes see and to attribute invisible mechanical processes and causality to what is plainly given in the visual field.
By Midori
November 26, 2008 11:42 AM | Link to this
Here you go, Wyld Byll. A REAL dummy, sans strings:
Bush’s Last Days: The Lamest Duck
We have “only one President at a time,” Barack Obama said in his debut press conference as President-elect. Normally, that would be a safe assumption — but we’re learning not to assume anything as the charcoal-dreary economic winter approaches. By mid-November, with the financial crisis growing worse by the day, it had become obvious that one President was no longer enough (at least not the President we had). So, in the days before Thanksgiving, Obama began to move — if not to take charge outright, then at least to preview what things will be like when he does take over in January. He became a more public presence, taking questions from the press three days in a row. He named his economic team. He promised an enormous stimulus package that would somehow create 2.5 million new jobs, and began to maneuver the new Congress toward having the bill ready for him to sign — in a dramatic ceremony, no doubt — as soon as he assumes office.
That we have slightly more than one President for the moment is mostly a consequence of the extraordinary economic times. Even if George Washington were the incumbent, the markets would want to know what John Adams was planning to do after his Inauguration. And yet this final humiliation seems particularly appropriate for George W. Bush. At the end of a presidency of stupefying ineptitude, he has become the lamest of all possible ducks.
By leni
November 26, 2008 11:50 AM | Link to this
The Big O is just following the democrat model. Create yourself a buffer zone with a few convenient scapegoats—like JFK’s “they tricked me into the Bay of Pigs fiasco” and Clinton’s “Colin Powell tricked me into the Somalia fiasco.”
By Mrs. Godzilla
November 26, 2008 11:51 AM | Link to this
George Soros…..too funny.
By DB, Gwinnettian
November 26, 2008 11:51 AM | Link to this
As long as he didn’t say “Ah hear the voices. But Ah’m the decider!”
That’d be troubling.
By Soixante huitard
November 26, 2008 11:53 AM | Link to this
A misguided observer observes: “pulling the strings that animate the marionette.
And one is tempted to disabuse the misguided observer by asking him whether in the last 7-8 years one has ever had occasion to suspect pulling of marionette stings.
Studen: What is George W. Bush.
Teacher: The greatest cudgel ever delivered into the hands of progressives. A perfect killer. With brass notches. One that will bring aspiring reactionaries low and leave them writhing in a ball of pain and screaming.
It’s going to make Mad Max look tame.
Y’up for the exercise, reactionaries?
By Soixante huitard
November 26, 2008 11:55 AM | Link to this
A misguided observer observes: “pulling the strings that animate the marionette.
And one is tempted to disabuse the misguided observer by asking him whether in the last 7-8 years one has ever had occasion to suspect pulling of marionette stings.
Student: Tell me, teacher, who was George W. Bush?
Teacher: The greatest cudgel ever delivered into the hands of progressives. A perfect killer. With brass notches. One that will bring aspiring reactionaries low and leave them writhing in a ball of pain and screaming.
It’s going to make Mad Max look tame.
Y’up for the exercise, reactionaries?
By Mrs. Godzilla
November 26, 2008 12:00 PM | Link to this
The more I think of myld byll’s George Soros statement the funnier a straight line it is….
Did he take over the puppet strings from Richard Mellon Scaife and his Bush puppet?
It ain’t Soros…..could it be….SATAN?
But Soros is a liberal and we have been informed by the rightie fringe that the most liberal Senator EVER ran as a conservative in order to get elected so maybe Scaife is still pulling the strings?
leni
you follow the GOP model and they lost. good luck with that.
By leni
November 26, 2008 12:10 PM | Link to this
omnia republica delenda est and the special needs kids in Mr. Bookman’s class are licking the dust.
By Eric1
November 26, 2008 12:11 PM | Link to this
Almost any change would be welcome. Eight years of moronics is eight years too many. I have every confidence in our newly ELECTED president.
By SOUTHERN ATL
November 26, 2008 12:17 PM | Link to this
Quite thought provoking!!!
A compelling editorial written by white man …
On Mon, Nov 17, 2008 at 10:54 AM, Manis, Andrew Here is a commentary responding to these phenomena which I have sent to Charles Richardson at the Telegraph. I hope he will see it into print:
When Are WE Going to Get Over It?
For much of the last forty years, ever since America “fixed” its race problem in the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, we white people have been impatient with African Americans who continued to blame race for their difficulties. Often we have heard whites ask, “When are African Americans finally going to get over it? Now I want to ask “When are we White Americans going to get over our ridiculous obsession with skin color?
Recent reports that “Election Spurs ‘Hundreds’ of Race Threats, Crimes” should frighten and infuriate every one of us. Having grown up in “Bombingham,” Alabama in the 1960s, I remember overhearing an avalanche of comments about what many white classmates and their parents wanted to do to John and Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Eventually, as you may recall, in all three cases, someone decided to do more than “talk the talk.” Since our recent presidential election, to our eternal shame we are once again hearing the same reprehensible talk I remember from my boyhood.
We white people have controlled political life in the disunited colonies and United States for some 400 years on this continent. Conservative whites have been in power 28 of the last 40 years. Even during the eight Clinton years, conservatives in Congress blocked most of his agenda and pulled him to the right. Yet never in that period did I read any headlines suggesting that anyone was calling for the assassinations of presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, or either of the Bushes. Criticize them, yes. Call for their impeachment, perhaps. But there were no bounties on their heads. And even when someone did try to kill Ronald Reagan, the perpetrator was non-political mental case who wanted merely to impress Jody Foster.
But elect a liberal who happens to be black and we’re back in the sixties again. At this point in our history, we should be proud that we’ve proven what conservatives are always saying-that in America anything is possible, EVEN electing a black man as president. But instead we now hear that schoolchildren from Maine to California are talking about wanting to “assassinate Obama.”
Fighting the urge to throw up, I can only ask, “How long?” How long before we white people realize we can’t make our nation, much less the whole world, look like us? How long until we white people can-once and for all-get over this hell-conceived preoccupation with skin color? How long until we white people get over the demonic conviction that white skin makes us superior? How long before we white people get over our bitter resentments about being demoted to the status of equality with non-whites? How long before we get over our expectations that we should be at the head of the line merely because of our white skin? How long until we white people end our silence and call out our peers when they share the latest racist jokes in the privacy of our white-only conversations? I believe in free speech, but how long until we white people start making racist loudmouths as socially uncomfortable as we do flag burners? How long until we white people will stop insisting that blacks exercise personal responsibility, build strong families, educate themselves enough to edit the Harvard Law Review, and work hard enough to become President of the United States , only to threaten to assassinate them when they do? How long before we starting “living out the true meaning” of our creeds, both civil and religious, that all men and women are created equal and that “red and yellow, black and white” all are precious in God’s sight?
Until this past November 4, I didn’t believe this country would ever elect an African American to the presidency. I still don’t believe I’ll live long enough to see us white people get over our racism problem. But here’s my three-point plan: First, everyday that Barack Obama lives in the White House that Black Slaves Built I’m going to pray that God (and the Secret Service) will protect him and his family from us white people. Second, I’m going to report to the FBI any white person I overhear saying, in seriousness or in jest, anything of a threatening nature about President Obama. Third, I’m going to pray to live long enough to see America surprise the world once again, when white people can “in spirit and in truth” sing of our damnable color prejudice, “We HAVE overcome.”
Andrew Manis is author of Macon Black and White and serves on the steering committee of Macon ‘s Center for Racial Understanding.
By leni
November 26, 2008 12:18 PM | Link to this
omnia republica delenda est and the special needs kids in Mr Bookman’s class are licking the dust.
By Soixante huitard
November 26, 2008 12:35 PM | Link to this
SOUTHERN ATL, I think I have to take exception to your argument — though I basically sympathize with your concerns.
I think if you’ll take another look at the situation you’ll see that much of the solution to the woes you cite are right under our nose because the very antidote to them was the election of Barack Obama.
But you’re right, there has been a rash of racist talk since the election, much of it being said by children (truth tending to speak more often and with less shame from the mouths of babes).
But in my opinion it’s a mistake to see these as being in any way equivalent to the racism of the Jim Crow South. The racist language of that time was quite literally a lynching by other means - merely one edge of the machete being used to terrorize, the other part being actual violent acts. Today, it’s entirely different.
Don’t forget: history always repeats itself - as farce, then as comedy. While certainly not funny, the few incidents we recently heard about were not like their counterparts in the 50s and 60s where they were part and parcel of actual violent acts, but instead they’re more like the last twitches of an organism that is effectively dead.
Whatever residual and latent racism remained of this old-style bigotry has been dealt a death blow by the election of Barack Obama, so it’s not surprising that a few kids are going to rehearse a few old lines that they’ve picked more or less unconsciously from their elders passed down through their parents. But even those kids know that it’s a new day. In the future, any remaining bigots who use this language will be even more marginalized than they already are today, which is almost thorough. That’s a far cry from 1950s Alabama where that language formed a continous front all the way up to the end of the state troopers rifle and the mouth of their attacking dogs. There is no such apparatus of terror in the US today.
By Soixante huitard
November 26, 2008 12:41 PM | Link to this
Sorry, I mis-spoke: I should have said history always repeats — as tragedy, then as farce.
By getalife
November 26, 2008 12:50 PM | Link to this
Well, the netkooks are already attacking Obama like the wingnuts.
w’s mama had ulcer surgery so I guess his failures did have an effect on his family.
New thinking is change, governing for the middle class is change but trickle up socialism for the greedy wealthy is not.
By AJC/DNC Management
November 26, 2008 12:55 PM | Link to this
Even though their messiah has descended from, uh, the (insert birthplace here as soon as it is confirmed,) tis thee season of discontent in thee Pinko Nation-
What we are going to do is combine experience with fresh thinking.
“I am the deciderer.”
Pardon me, but I get confused, is it change we are hoping for or hope we are changing for?
I’m real sure that when a new idea enters into thee mind of the Wonder Boy, or would that be the first idea to enter his mind, that he will be sure to share it with the former, er, um, new Klinton Administration that he has surrounded himself with.
Yeah, and I’ll bet they just take it right under consideration.
By RB from Gwinnett
November 26, 2008 1:00 PM | Link to this
“w’s mama had ulcer surgery so I guess his failures did have an effect on his family.”
There’s some more of that “come together” talk you libs can all be proud of. Who wouldn’t want to join hands with people who make comments like that? More of the same BDS from the last 8 years.
Comments like that can only come from some of the lowest life forms on this planet. Just plain pathetic.
By AJC/DNC Management
November 26, 2008 1:09 PM | Link to this
Security lines moved along briskly at under 10 minutes at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, the world’s busiest airport. At Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, travelers found parking spots in the front row of the lot and no wait for check-in and security. The Delta terminal was nearly empty.
You can kiss your economic recovery good bye.
America is hunkered down.
They aren’t even willing to risk a couple grand on a trip home.
This is going to get far, far worse than we ever imagined.
I’m just happy that the Repugs won’t be around to take the blame for it, bwahahaha.
Enjoy your looming disaster.
By RB from Gwinnett
November 26, 2008 1:12 PM | Link to this
“trickle up socialism for the greedy wealthy is not”
You are aware it’s Pelosi and Co. pushing this bailout crap aren’t you? You seem to want to keep assigning all this stuff to W, but he’s NOT behind this new brand of socialism. YOUR 11% CONGRESS IS.
PS: How’s the solar project coming along? You put your money where your mouth is yet?
By Mort Merkel
November 26, 2008 1:12 PM | Link to this
As a conservative, who voted for McCain with enthusiasm (as opposed to those who held their noses), I am impressed with Obama as a president elect. He is showing leadership and helping return confidence to the masses. It is a refreshing “change,” from what we have seen, and continue to see unfortunately from President Bush.
By getalife
November 26, 2008 1:17 PM | Link to this
Send Bill Clinton to the Senate
Yes.
By Mrs. Godzilla
November 26, 2008 1:18 PM | Link to this
Pelosi and bail out pushing…..
Guess mean old Nancy is holding her curling iron to Paulson’s head threatening him with silky curls if he does not spend that other 350 billion…..
“Oh Please Mistress Nancy….I’ll spend the 350 billion….don’t make me have bouncing and behaving hair!”, said Paulson with tears of fear in his eyes.
By Midori
November 26, 2008 1:29 PM | Link to this
Getalife,
what she was really worried about: Quaker Oats is looking for a new spokesperson
By getalife
November 26, 2008 1:33 PM | Link to this
Yes RB,
Both parties voted for it.
Just like the memo on obl, w did nothing. He owns it.
Obama will get credit for the recovery of another bush disaster.
By Mr Snarky
November 26, 2008 1:36 PM | Link to this
Per Mgmt: I’m just happy that the Repugs won’t be around to take the blame for it, bwahahaha.
The blame is theirs already. Bush is the new Hoover…and he sucks in more areas.
Enjoy your looming disaster.
You seem to be the only one enjoying around here as far as I can tell. Must’ve had your money in bullion.
By AJC/DNC Management
November 26, 2008 2:00 PM | Link to this
By Mr Snarky November 26, 2008 1:36 PM The blame is theirs already. Bush is the new Hoover…and he sucks in more areas.
According to Wonder Boy hope and change is magnificently upon us and he is the Chief deciderer and KKKlinton herder, blessed be his name.
From what I heard, he is Abraham Lincoln, John F Kennedy, Golda Meir and Louis Farrakhan all rolled into one, and when January 20th is finally, mercifully brought forth, thee skies will part and thee seas shall recede.
And if for some odd reason they don’t………….
bwa
By Joey
November 26, 2008 2:05 PM | Link to this
Jay, I heard the question and the answer.
Your abridged version disguises P-E Obama’s reaction and response.
By mike hussein smith
November 26, 2008 2:06 PM | Link to this
By RB from Gwinnett — I figured your 1 p.m. post chiding someone’s exercise of his/her right to free speech was just a joke, and dang, if you didn’t prove me right at 1:12 with your Cyclopian look at recent events. Bush & Paulding were bailing out left and right until someone made a stupid call on Lehman and the Repugs knew their derrieres would certainly get coooked if they couldn’t make this a bipartisan affair. So they went to Congress and asked the Democrats to help them get this GOP plan implemented. But when the votes were counted, the Republicans had chickened out and McCain “suspended” his campaign out of a sense of what? inability to act? So what is the “new brand of socialism” that W isn’t behind? Unless you’re talking merely about the auto industry, on which I agree folks in Congress are taking the initiative, you don’t have much fact to stand on.
By TW
November 26, 2008 2:17 PM | Link to this
It will take the American people a while to get used to having a President who’s in charge of the people around him.
Ex-first lady Bush has ulcer surgery
I’d imagine so.
By RB from Gwinnett
November 26, 2008 2:19 PM | Link to this
“Obama will get credit for the recovery of another bush disaster.”
I’ve asked you before what specifically Bush did to create this disaster and have yet to get an answer. Got anything yet or do you just blame Bush for everything in life that doesn’t go the way you think it should? Please be specific and leave the moveon slogans out of it.
Here’s a reality check for you. You aren’t any better or worse off now than you were when Clinton took office and what Obama does won’t have an impact on you either. It’s YOU who makes that difference, not the POTUS.
By getalife
November 26, 2008 2:37 PM | Link to this
Stop humping my leg RB.
The reason there is no accountability in this country are fools like you.
The buck stops at the President.Period.
By RB from Gwinnett
November 26, 2008 2:39 PM | Link to this
By mike hussein smith 2:06 PM
Bush
Derangement
Syndrom
!!!!!!
Yawn…
By Midori
November 26, 2008 2:50 PM | Link to this
Yawn
coincidence?
that’s what I do each and every time I see your username.
By GMAN
November 26, 2008 2:55 PM | Link to this
Crazy Zell is back and he can’[t remember where he is, where he’s been, or where he’s going. When they called his name to introduce him this week at a rally, someone was overheard whispering, “That’s you!”
By RB from Gwinnett
November 26, 2008 3:01 PM | Link to this
So, getaclue, based on your 2:37 Obama is responsible for any of our troops killed after 1/20/09?
Somehow, I suspect you’ll assign that responsiblity to Bush forever and ever won’t you. Your “buck stops” wherever it’s convenient for you.
Midori, you’re welocome to help your friends answer my question if you’d like. If you don’t have anything to add, don’t.
By leni
November 26, 2008 3:06 PM | Link to this
I don’t know whether it was the figure skater or the fiddler who insulted me by putting me on the same level as The Big O . But my Eurasian heritage makes me think that neither would be that stupid, so I assume the poster must just be pretending to be Japanese.
By Mike
November 26, 2008 3:10 PM | Link to this
LOL. Bookman is as mindless in his devotion to Obama as he is mindless in his hatred for Bush.
In Bookman’s eyes, Bush has done and can do no good. At the same time, Obama has done and can do no wrong. Hannity is the same way in reverse, because he is also a partisan hack, just like Bookman,
The answer is somewhere in the middle, but don’t ever ask a mindless partisan to take that approach.
By Midori
November 26, 2008 3:14 PM | Link to this
RB:
yawn
By Ray
November 26, 2008 3:21 PM | Link to this
Just in…
Pakistani terrorists have attacked luxury hotels in Mumbai killing mostly westerners….. death toll up to 80+ with some held as hostages. Hope Buckwheat is up to the task.
By AJC/DNC Management
November 26, 2008 3:42 PM | Link to this
Just what we need to get things turned around, mindless hot air-
When the auto makers are getting paid far more than their counterparts at Toyota, or at Honda, and yet, they’re losing money a lot faster than Japanese auto makers are, that tells me that they’re not seeing what’s going on out there, and one of the things I hope my presidency helps to usher in is a, a return to an ethic of responsibility. -Oblahmisan
Uh, yeah, o.k.-
For that matter, any of the brainpans on the Hill might have asked why Ford and GM managed to build viable and profitable auto businesses all over the world but not in North America.
You don’t need the Hubble telescope to tell the answer: The UAW is present only in the U.S., not all over the world.-WallStreetJournal
By Wyld Byll Hyltnyr
November 26, 2008 3:45 PM | Link to this
It is hard to lay this economic downturn at Bush’s feet if one uses any objective measures. The mortgage crisis - Part A - driven by PEOTUS’ economic advisor Rueben, who, when a Clintonista, led the hard push to make homeownership the equivilent of a birthright rather than an earned priviledge - further evidence Barney F*’s quote that President Bush’s insistence on a strong GSE regulator was, “inane.” The mortgage crisis - Part B - regulated banks and nonbank subs of regulated holding companies originated the toxic mortgages and bought MBS chocked full of toxic mortgages with no diligence beyond the NSRO rating with the full knowledge of the the regulators (FDIC, Fed, OTS, and OCC) whom looked the other way and did nothing. I repeat, the regulators had the facts in front of them and did nothing. The markets, most unfortunately based on the current duplicity of the administration formation compared to campaign misrepresentations, took Obama at his word that he would raise taxes on the most productive rainmakers among us and that he would revoke NAFTA and adopt a protectionist stance that would limit the markets for US goods abroad (which see the noble and friendly nation of Colombia.)Finally, the liberals long ago decided to put personal interest above country, and so viciously and continuosly threw mud at our beloved President Bush (which see the old addage, if you say it enough, it must be true) that the average sheeple of the country (with neither knowledge of the facts largely due to the MSM’s failure to report on positive events in Iraq) no longer supported Bush so that when the nation needed his moral suasion to keep the economic ball rolling, he had no gas in the tank when we needed it most.
By AJC/DNC Management
November 26, 2008 3:54 PM | Link to this
I find it rather ironic that Iraq now has fairer elections than we do-
Margot Swanson, a voter in Redmond who forgot to sign her ballot, told me she was contacted by phone and asked whom she voted for. When she said Republican Dino Rossi, the caller quickly hung up. “I puzzled out there might be a problem with my ballot, and I found out there was,” she said. “But I would never have known from the tricky call I got.”-WSJ
An illegitimate government?
Or should I say a third world government?
By Mrs.Godzilla
November 26, 2008 8:12 PM | Link to this
Ray
I think your “buckwheat” comment is out of line.
Are you a Pollack? A Bohunk? A Mick? A S**? A DP? An oakie? A k**? A frog? A norskie? A wop? A cracker? A kraut? A jap? A gook? A hillbilly? A limey?
Pick oneThere are ones I never heard of before. One of these is you.
Several of them are me.
I apologize to the AJC blog comment checker staff for having to do so much work on just one post, but I’m just a cranky old lizard.
By Mrs.Godzilla
November 26, 2008 8:17 PM | Link to this
Funny which slurs get *, ain’t it.
By dittohead
November 27, 2008 10:49 AM | Link to this
OBAMA will sit behind his desk in the O.O.& dream Big Dreams............& remain a figurehead.....His office staff will run the gov't...By Mrs.Godzilla
November 27, 2008 7:27 PM | Link to this
dittohead
You mean he’ll pick a qualified and talented staff to keep the government working the way GOOD government should while he goes about the business of being President - setting policy and engaging in inrenational diplomacy?
Wow! What a concept!
And you claim to be a dittohead, instead it seems you may be poster of untapped potential.