Go to 7:15 to see what a true patriot and humanitarian has to say about the current debt ceiling "negotiations".
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Dr. Sachs is not a wide eyed optimist.
There's going to be a deal. But it's going to be a bad deal. And it's going to be like last December with the President selling out. And that's already been done. We basically have an agreement that the American people do not want just as the Depew survey said yesterday.
So the deal has already been made. Obama is only trying to figure out a way to cram it down our necks.
So I ask you, is Dr. Sachs right? Will we allow Obama to pose as the bullied schoolboy like he did with the Bush tax cuts extension when he announces that he had to slash Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid in order to save the country? Are these Republicans just too tough for him? Has he learned anything in the last three years or is Obama really a Reagan conservative?
Is Obama a Reagan Conservative? This would imply that a rather grand conspiracy was in place to get him elected on promises of ending wars, establishing health care without mandated insurance and closing GITMO. Then Obama cleverly reverses on all three of these campaign promises and many others. What a clever guy. So wily and strong.
However, it has been my experience that when confronted with a choice between conspiracy and incompetence as a cause for something gone awry, if you choose incompetence, you will be correct 99% of the time. To accept Obama as a conservative would also mean that he has a lot of guile and is extremely ruthless. I just don't see it.
Now Laurence Lewis brings out some very good arguments to the contrary. Lewis gives us a laundry list of crazy things that Obama has done that are "unforced errors".
Nobody forced President Obama to escalate the war in Afghanistan. Nobody forced him to expand oil drilling in the Arctic rather than make the case that we need an emergency effort to end our addiction to all fossil fuels. Nobody forced him to have his Department of Justice ignore the Bush administration's criminality. Nobody forced him to continue secret renditions or a policy of denying suspected terrorists the human right of due process. Nobody forced him to order his DOJ to appeal court rulings that would have ended Don't Ask Don't Tell. Nobody forced him to open a discussion about the deficit which even puts Social Security and Medicare on the table when the economy desperately needed and needs more Keynesian stimulus. Nobody forced him to keep on Bush's Defense Secretary. Nobody forced him to hire a neoliberal economic team and ignore the traditional liberal economists who had been almost alone in predicting the economic collapse. None of these moves was forced on him by the Republicans or the Conservadems or the Blue Dogs.
Jeffrey Sachs agrees with Lawrence Lewis. He also thinks that Obama is a complete sell out:
President Obama's words are incredible. The tax deal last December was perhaps the greatest domestic policy shame of our time. In that particular capitulation to greed, he agreed to extend the tax breaks for the richest Americans, slash their estate taxes, give other corporate tax breaks, and raise the deficit by nearly $1 trillion over 2011 and 2012. Now, he has agreed with the far right to slash entitlements spending for the poor in another "historic" act of cooperation. One more such historic act of cooperation and we'll be completely ruined.
But does it really matter? Whether Obama is incompetent or a wolf in sheep's clothing is somewhat irrelevant. The important thing is we are not getting the results we want. In 1968 after passing a set of the most progressive laws in the history of our country, LBJ was humiliated in the New Hampshire primary by the liberal Gene McCarthy. Obama's achievements are not even close to Johnson's and many of Johnson's achievements will be ruined by Obama.
Who will stand up to this guy?