Factual and correct.

Although you have mixed facts with opinions, it still is interesting and insightful.

Let's wait and watch whether Obama is the person we wanted to be, or the person the fat cats want to be.

What a disaster if Obama moves to the left. The country needs to be governed from the center - that's where the majority of us live actually.

That doesn't mean he can't get away with some left of center policy stuff, but i guarantee if he moves left he moves OUT after one term.

The lefties in Congress couldn't pour pizz out of a boot if the directions were written on the heel.

Actually, Obama is only half black, despite how the media and the rest of the country would love to have it be. Those pesky genes can really screw up a good PC story...So, the question should be: How many millionaires of mixed race do you know?

there is no left in American politics, there is not even a center. There is organized religion and wall street. These two entities control everything from taxes to civil rights to foreign policy.

Think something like this could ever happen in America:

Iceland has announced a new government that will be headed by the modern world's first openly gay leader.

Johanna Sigurdardottir was named new prime minister by the country's coalition political parties.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7863923.stm

ps spare me the obama is black argument, how many black millionaires do you know?

Everyone PANIC, Comrade!!!!!1

"Under executive orders issued by Obama recently, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States."

LA Times

How long until we learn of torture used on a renditioned individual?

Sorry 'paw", despite your condescending and insulting reply, you failed to answer the question. So I'll answer it for you: It's an assumption; most likely made to support the thesis of the article by the author. It's also one of those things that the reader was supposed to accept as a 'given' and not question. I apologize for having the temerity to actually ask a question. I'll make sure I get right back in line, and march in lockstep with the rest of the 'enlightened ones'.......

limiting factor wrote: he needs to be reminded of his campaign promises. (P.S. isn't Youtube great?)

Actually, there is a site called "Obamameter" that is tracking all 509 promises Obama made during the two years of the campaign trail. So far, they have tallied five he has kept and 17 in the pipeline. Assuming he tackles those, there'll be just 487 to go!

David,

Can you explain something? Why do the media continue to hammer home the need for more tax cuts, when their implementation has proven a colossal failure? In fact, every time a supply-sider president has taken the reins of power, the gap between rich and poor has grown, our deficits have exploded, our trade gap has widened, and the vast majority of Americans end up worse off.

Tax cuts don't work for the nation as a whole. They truly help the wealthy, and that's about it.

Wages in America have stagnated since 1973. Since that time, taxes have been slashed, both for the rich and for corporations. American workers have received no benefits from that, jobs continue to be outsourced and our infrastructure continues to be neglected. Along with the environment, health care, education and so on.

The GAO recently found that 2/3rds of American corporations paid zero taxes in the last decade or so. 94% paid 5% or less. The IRS just came out with data telling us that the top 400 richest Americans saw their wealth double under Bush, while their effective tax rates were cut by a third. They paid roughly 17.2%.

Why isn't this data being talked about by the Media?

Republican talking points on taxes are not just false, they are wildly, blatantly, obviously false. But the media seem determined to promote them, again and again and again.

It is frustrating beyond words to hear, see or watch discussions about tax cuts as if the last eight years (plus the Reagan years and the Bush Sr. years) never happened. We seem to be drowning in collective amnesia.

I hope the madness ends.

Since UC Berkeley in the 60s I saw Dems crushing questioning of them and smuthering MEANINGFUL DIALOGUE because they knew how dirty are their underwear. I remember the neocons when they were "liberals": they thought they knew best and debate to them was like pissing in the synagogue! Obama's young and will have to avoid surrounding himslef with old Clintonesque whores desperate to seem young and vivacious. So far he's got a Cabinet riddled with political VD. Sirota leaves out the self-centered hedonics of the Clintoneaque burlesque that characterizes them all. Soon, the Bushit goonies will break through the Joan Walsh cover-up of Clinton clique takeover and America will get very violent as those who payed the price of patriotism will parley their skills to stop the pain of lost hope in the Obama, the President buried deep in his Cabinet muck and surrounded by a Congress of political perverts.

Promise: Obama promised to cancel NAFTA provisions that hurt American workers and the environment - which is most of them. You can see him making the promise in a televised debate with Clinton here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ownOXa0JASA

Reality: Obama's economic team are all dedicated supporters of NAFTA, the WTO's Doha Round, Peruvian and Colombian trade deals, World Bank-IMF actions in Iraq, etc. Clinton's main campaign adviser was Mark Penn, who got caught advising Colombia on how to get the trade deal passed in the face of the their record of assassinating labor union members and shipping cocaine to the U.S. Mark Penn is at the global PR firm Burson-Marstellar, along with Bush operative Karen Hughs, and Clinton is now running State. Nothin' to see here folks - just move along. Obama has made no statement on Colombian free trade deals, has he? It appears that the assurances made to the Canadians about his "political posturing on NAFTA" were accurate - at least, so far.

Promise: Obama promised quick withdrawal of troops from Iraq. "Not in six months or in a year, but right now!" - you can see him making the promise here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chM1csv0jiQ

Reality: Obama said "combat troops" will be removed. This apparently does not apply to the thousands of U.S. "support troops" who will remain behind on five? permanent military bases in Iraq. The very successful recent elections in Iraq might change this - but the CPA-appointed "provisional government" still controls the oil contracts, and Iraqi oil unions are still repressed by likes of Sharistani, the Iraqi oil minister - not that the U.S. press will cover the story. Where is Obama's troop redeployment plan?

Promise: Obama promised to support the interests of homeowners and the working public over Wall Street banks...Specifically, he promised a freeze on foreclosures!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psDoi-DNMQs

Reality: Obama is promoting the establishment of a bad assets bank which will take debts off of Wall Street's ledger and place them on the public ledger. He is NOT promoting an FDR-style Homeowner's Bank which would simply take the home loans only, and let the securitized credit packages flop - which is the source of all the trouble. Wall Street bankers don't want to take the hit, and those guys are politically connected - in fact Goldman Sachs was Obama's biggest campaign donor, and that's true for all the leading candidates - their top donors were the financial sector, which also drops $330 million or so lobbying Congress every year. Otherwise, the first black president will be overseeing the biggest reduction in minority home ownership in decades - is that what "ironic" means?

This isn's some crackpot idea, I'm just repeating the plan proposed by economist Joseph Stiglitz (he got a Nobel Prize for demonstrating some basic flaws in free market fundamentalism, specifically on the amount of information that consumers had in the real world):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASqH155AcVU

Promise: Obama promised a massive investment program to switch to renewable energy and get off foreign oil. "The renewable energy sector is a job generator!" and so on, "solar panels and wind turbines!" and "American ingenuity!" - sounds great, doesn't it?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKVEUKUfdXk

Reality: This is what every incoming president since Nixon has said, and yet we import more oil every year and spend zilch on renewable energy. The truth can be found in the budget of the Department of Energy, which gives billions to nuclear weapons development and almost nothing (a few million) to solar photovoltaic and wind energy development. The 2009 DOE budget remains unchanged from the ones set up by Samuel Bodman, Bush's coal-CEO DOE head. There are several billion dollars in Obama's stimulus for coal expansion, and nothing for solar energy expansion. Obama's main backer prior to his presidential run was the large Midwestern electric utility, Exelon - funny thing, they have plans for coal and nuclear expansion, but no plans for renewable energy expansion (solar wind, etc.).

This may be the most clever move on the part of the corporatocracy ever - install a dedicated servant of Wall Street, a true believer in the World Bank-IMF system, a well-indoctrinated product of Harvard and Chicago economic thinking, and then pretend he's some kind of wacky leftist liberal...

Or, it could be that Obama understands all this, and that once he gets his bank set up, it really will act to protect poor homeowners from rapacious banks, not the other way around. That's despite a large amount of evidence that points in the opposite direction, however.

Hope springs eternal... but those who look to some hero on a white horsey to ride up and save them from decades of debt accumulation are going to find themselves jilted at the altar. Real change is probably going to have to come from the states, not the federal government, which is still firmly in Wall Street's pocket, by all appearances - just look at the vanished $300 billion from the $700 billion bailout - flush! Out of sight, out of mind...

That was obvious from day one - yet Obama was a vocal supporter of the bailout, which was a political necessity back in Sept. It's not a political necessity today, however! Here's a critique from Sept 2008:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/9/20/125727/337/395/604730

Obama needs to hear the criticism - he needs to be reminded of his campaign promises. (P.S. isn't Youtube great?)