Since I didn't mention you in the article, I presume that your nastiness reflects a notion that you feel attacked when Obama is criticized or, perhaps, that any criticism of Obama is so outrageous, you must invoke attack mode to defend him. I'm writing about politics and also making a comment on the larger picture. Don't have a cow.

Here's Obama's problem.

When you're running for reelection and your numbers drop below 50%, you're in huge trouble. Since this presidency, any presidency, is a a nonstop campaign, these numbers are troubling, particularly the very high negatives. Also the right/wrong direction numbers are not at all helpful for a "hope" based presidency.

Also, this is has to be troubling to the WH.

6/9-14/10 (Very deepest/somewhat deepest feelings
"Felt angry that the leak is being fixed so slowly" 54%/20% = 74%

"Wondered whether the government could really help you if you became a victim of a disaster" 30%/16% = 46%
PollingReport

People want action. If Obama produces it, that's good for him. If BP has to take a pounding, that's fine too from the president's perspective. It's a matter of political survival.

if my tone was cranky, Michael. Sorry.

:)

But in reelections is personal approval ratings, as in favorability rating, that are the guide, not necessarily job approval. His personal approvals remain strong and have barely changed since last August, almost a year ago. He still sits at 53.5%.

And ES is right, this event has not had a particularly negative effect on Obama's favorability at all, its still very high.

I totaled "very" and "somewhat" positive and negative in the NBC poll over time. That's what the graph represents. It's interesting. Obama's positive favorability and job approval numbers are about the same. His negative favorability is 5 to 7 points less than his job disapproval rating. That's where he can come back. There's also an average 13% neutral favorability for this period, another area of opportunity. If he comes through on the environment, as per his speech last night, achieves real justice in the financial scandals, and does something for the vast majority, he's got a shot. If not, so long Mr. President.

It took Obama 60 days to come out say things that would have sounded about right if they'd been said 45 days earlier. But at this point one would have to have been living in a cave to be soothed by that terrible speech. One would have to have missed all the information that's come to light about BP (with the blessing of the USG) cutting every damned corner it could find. One would have had to be ignoring the fact that as much time and energy have been spent by BP and the USG to limit knowledge of the true extent as have been spent trying to actually do something about it.

And since members of the well-informed electorate know that Obama was briefed about the true extent of the problem within a day or so of the blowout, we're going to have a hard time believing the tripe stitched together for this speech.

Of course he's a corporate shill. You don't get elected POTUS without being a corporate shill. And if i'm reading Michael's piece right, the end result of all of this will be the regular people taking it on the chin...which is a valid conclusion to reach given that events have not turned out otherwise for decades.

As for his poll numbers, isn't that one of the biggest problems with American politics? Governing for poll numbers is not leadership. Further it probably reflects the fact that so much time and energy has been spent masking the true extent of the disaster as it does how well the Obama administration has handled the actual disaster.

My presumption is that you think "Obama is doing the best he can under the circumstances" and that for certain specific actions "Obama never promised (not) to do that." Is this the case? That is, is this your working hypothesis to explain Obama's behaviour in office so far? If this is correct, then may I ask how you would disprove this hypothesis? On this surface, this looks unfalsifiable to me. What you seem to have is not an explanation, but an ex post facto set of excuses to defend any sort of behaviour.

Let me clarify: other people (I'll single out Stirling Newberry) have predicted that this Administration would be essentially Bush-lite. And they can point to a number of specific instances where this prediction has matched up with reality on everything from civil liberties violations to the favorable treatment of corporations and business groups. For example, if the Administration tries to prosecute a whistle blower for leaking information during the Bush era - despite Obama's "look forward, not backward" policy - this would count as a confirmed prediction.

Now that I've made myself clear, what would have to happen to make you discard your hypothesis that "Obama is just doing the best that he can"? Anything? Bear in mind that this has to be something that members of the public such as you or I have the possibility of seeing.

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“He deserves death.”
“Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.
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In brief, if Obama doesn't punish BP, he's a corporate shill. If Obama punishes BP, he's a corporate shill, he's just pretending not to be to since this disaster is tanking his poll numbers.

There seems to be a small problem with that analysis (besides the obvious). His poll numbers dropped during the health care debate, but in fact they seem to have stabilized since this crisis began.

By the way, I'm having some trouble spotting just exactly what the problem is with this analysis. Could you elaborate? I've looked at this three or four times now and still can't see the flaw. Thanks.

====================================================================
“He deserves death.”
“Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.
====================================================================

the "heads I win, tails you lose* nature of the proposition. It supports a predetermined conclusion by supplying an identical motivation for diametrically opposed behaviours.

Color me dense, but how is this a "heads I win tails you lose" proposition?

The "too big to fail" daisy chain. BP is big and they have a dreadful history. Time for them to go screw themselves. They're directly responsible for the mess in Iran (along with Ike) with the coup. Iran was developing into a democracy. Crony corporatists can't stand that. The riff raff (us) can't be allowed at the table.

We do live in interesting times. Twenty or ten or five years ago it might have been the case the BP would emerge from this relatively unscathed, just as Exxon did with the Valdez spill. But I suspect that certain Very Serious People are very seriously taking to heart the notion that the Age of Cheap Oil is almost over. Since looking out for #1 is what it's all about, they have no doubt considered the dreaded option "N", by which I mean "Nationalization". In this century of curtailed expectations, the big question will be who controls a number of dwindling yet vital resources, and while some might opine that corporations and governments are effectively merged into one entity, or will be soon, that position is debatable. In any event, the question of who has control, government or corporations is certainly significant. A future in which governments nationalized corporations to control vital materiel would certainly look different - at least in form - from one where corporations controlled these resources outright. What we're seeing with BP could be the first shot across the bow in this struggle.

That's my approach to most of these "show downs" with the corporate giants. It's like Mr. McMahon writes the script for the fat cats. But with Obama's presidency on the line, he may appeal to his survival instincts and throw them under the bus. Not a bad idea.

It love to know what Exxon and Shell think of this. When BP screwed up in Texas City, James Baker and Co. laid them out. May be time for BP to surrender some territory. It's a zero sum game with "peak oil" and all;)

Yeah, at 36 i'm terribly threatened by a president who's traveled less than me and speaks fewer foreign languages than me. Worse, he's black and even though i grew up in classrooms that were 50% African American i'm threatened by his race.

Your rationalizations are getting worse and worse, man.

Here's a fucking news flash. The US already is a police state, with a young, black, cosmopolitan president who deems it to be his god-given right to assassinate American citizens whensoever he chooses.

I cannot and will not speak for others, but i have no desire to see due process upended and all the other bullshit you're trying to foist on me. I want my Bill of Rights back and if Obama and his cracker-ass "progressive" supporters don't want to give it back to me then fuck 'em. Dig?

I want some god-damned realism injected into the debate and i could give a shit less about the political fortunes of the Democratic Party or the President's polling numbers. I want to know why we're spending trillions to fight pointless wars for the sake of domestic politics against an enemy that nobody can define. I want to know where the Democratic Party gets off shitting on the working class over and over and over and over again while pretending to be its protector. But i'm not looking for a dictatorship of the proletariat by any stretch of the imagination.

But you go ahead and keep foisting the bullshit on everyone who isn't towing the line to your satisfaction.

To sink Exxon after the Valdez incident?
Shall for the Nigeria delta?
Chevron for the Mess in Peru?

There's much anger, because everyone wants to blames "someone else"

"The fault dear Brutus, lies not in out stars, but in ourselves."

Looked in your garage lately? Can you see the problem?

... it just cracked my Laptop screen.

Presidents then?

And I absolutely agree. We are a culture of waste, waste of every natural resource. The problems are all in our garages. Absolutely true. We have to move from a culture of waste to a culture of sustainability, renewable and clean.

It is the ONLY answer, and the change we need today. The personal is the political. Something folks in the 60s did understand, and we have lost that somewhere along the way.

It is not in the least stale, it is the cornerstone.

... it won't work today either. The only way to get the masses to move off oil it to price them out of it and make more sustainable alternatives affordable. The latter can take many guises. Not the least of it higher density development and public transportation infrastructure.

Doesn't mean I don't applaud anybody who follows their idealism. More power to you.

What happened to your original comment about the pseudo-liberals and pseudo-conservatives? That's the one that i replied to at length.

and probably the most...BP seems to go down, get smacked around etc. I agree that this is the drill in these situations. I see Obama pushed hard by a restive public, even if there are no demonstrations. He's at 49-50% negatives. That's not acceptable politically, which I think is where the motivation comes from.

Not with the midterms coming up. This would explain why Obama is also traveling the country and giving speeches to groups who are unhappy with his signature health care legislation. IIRC, I heard a story on NPR yesterday that some Democrats are considering attacking HCR as a way to bolster their credibility with an increasingly skeptical public. Who was the idiot that gave this Administration advice to the effect that they could please two masters?

are comfortably at 46.5% right now per pollster.com

but I suppose they would want the respirators that BP doesn't want to provide for fear of bad PR and probably don't want every ones ever present picture taking cell phones around.

Gimme a couple of minutes......

eom.

_{The origin of the universe has not as yet been shown to be a conspiracy theory}