Obama to take responsibility for voter frustration

[The Straight Story]

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama will assume some responsibility for voters' frustrations that boiled up in elections that cost Democrats dearly.

A person familiar with the president's thinking says Obama at a White House news conference Wednesday won't be defiant, and will address the message sent by voters. The White House sees that message as a call for lawmakers to put partisanship aside and solve the problems facing the country.

The person spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to speak ahead of the president.

Republicans scored sweeping victories in Tuesday's midterm elections to take a commanding majority in the House and make significant gains in the Senate.




http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39975987

[Telalim]

1. I feel like I've entered the twilight zone.

[quinnox]

2. As I predicted...

in my earlier thread. If you can't beat the republicans join them! I guess is the new motto.

[emulatorloo]

17. Honestly do you think a sane person is going to come on like Christine O'Donnell and Paladino?

Of course Obama is going to make some conciliatory noises today. We lost the house. However that does not mean he is going to do every crazy shit thing Boner comes up with. He's got his veto. And they can't overcome it.

[TwilightGardener]

26. Today is not the day to come out swinging. The media is demanding humility--

probably voters expect that the election results be acknowledged. And we all know that anything other than a somewhat conciliatory let's-get-along tone will be read as tone deafness, uppityness and arrogance.

[kirby]

3. Here is Obama's major mistake...

He failed to realize that the American people wanted one thing more than jobs... They wanted accountability.

He could have bailed out Wall Street and not have suffered in the public eye if some CEO's actually went to jail for the fraud.
If CEO's pay was actually limited and if the TARP was used to not only to keep business going, but to put some serious 'strings attached' on the money so it benefited the taxpayer.

He could have investigated the past administration for many of its scandals.

He could have held GM responsible for its leadership failure and demanded that the bailout money to them had to go to transforming that particular company to Green Motors.

He could have held the mining industry responsible for the deaths in WV and cracked down on the abuses.

He let the oil drillers off the hook by lifting the moratorium without requiring them to demonstrate they can contain another spill/blowout.

When there is no accountability, the voters exercise the only instrument they have for revenge, even if it is cutting off their nose to spite their face.

[TwilightGardener]

6. Bush bailed out Wall Street. Do people think TARP happened under Obama?

(that said, he supported TARP, as did pretty much everyone)

[kirby]

12. Obama continued TARP...

The majority of the implementation of the program was under Obama and Geithner.

After being elected, he had the opportunity to address the lack of accountability with the original TARP and the way his administration had to oversee the TARP. He chose not to.

[emulatorloo]

22. And the taxpayers are making money off of tarp

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-20/bailout-of-wall-street-returns-8-2-profit-to-taxpayers-beating-treasuries.html

Wall Street Bailout Returns 8.2% Profit Beating Treasury Bonds
By Yalman Onaran and Alexis Leondis - Oct 20, 2010 9:55 AM CT

The U.S. government’s bailout of financial firms through the Troubled Asset Relief Program provided taxpayers with higher returns than yields paid on 30- year Treasury bonds -- enough money to fund the Securities and Exchange Commission for the next two decades.

The government has earned $25.2 billion on its investment of $309 billion in banks and insurance companies, an 8.2 percent return over two years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That beat U.S. Treasuries, high-yield savings accounts, money- market funds and certificates of deposit. Investing in the stock market or gold would have paid off better.

[kirby]

27. The most massive fraud in US history yields the gov't 8.2%?

Big deal. The fraud allowed the housing market to reach bubble levels and there to be massive fraud in unregulated derivatives markets. It can probably account for 2-3% of the unemployment number, too big to fail has gotten much bigger, and you are touting that we earned $25 billion dollars? States alone have borrowed over $30 billion to fund their unemployment insurance funds.

[emulatorloo]

32. TARP did not cause the Housing Bubble

[kirby]

33. TARP was the rescue needed due to the policies

that created the housing bubble. The banks were begging the government for money to rescue them from collapse. We gave them the money with no strings attached.

When was the last time you were forced to get money from a lender of last resort and only had to pay 8.2% interest with no strings attached?

[TornadoTN]

7. +1 Perfectly Said n/t

[LibraLiz1973]

11. agreed

[MrTriumph]

13. Well said!

x

[WillyT]

20. + 1,000,000,000... What You Said !!!

:applause::applause::applause:

:kick:

:hi:

[bullwinkle428]

28. +1

[okieinpain]

30. do not agree, none of that stuff would matter except to dems. the

whole message from last night is people are scared. i have a friend that lives in atlanta, that was in town over the weekend, his company has been bought out, so he is losing his job, and his daughter has been out of work for 18 months. so yes people are frightened to death, dems were just in the wrong spot at the wrong time.

[kirby]

31. Here is why I disagree...

I think most people, if they see that people are being held accountable, understand that Obama cannot fix the mess the Republicans got us into in only 2 years. However, if there is no accountability, it does not appear to the electorate, that we are even moving in the correct direction.

[Selatius]

4. Obama tried so long for bipartisanship. Now he's really going to get it.

He will have a massive headache with the Repubs in the House now.

[TornadoTN]

5. Seriously?

Well, there's our first sign that there is no fight in this President. There sure as hell hasn't been any in Congress for years.

[AnArmyVeteran]

14. White flag flies over White House.

But it's been there sine 1-20-09. Obama is weak. He lacks courage. He can't lead. And at the first sign of protest from the right wing he gives up and surrenders. He is certainly a one term president. I will not vote for known cowards.

[LibraLiz1973]

23. Anyone who voted for Obama and thought he was a liberal was an idiot

He is a right down the middle kind of guy- and we are getting what we paid for.

Is he a horrible President? Absolutely not. But he failed to deliver on things that meant a hell of a lot to many of us (DADT, a far more inclusive health care policy) and his team allowed the republicans to sculpt the message. Words like Obamacare and the vilification of Nancy Pelosi killed us. We should have been refuting that shit, and loudly. But Republicans are nasty liars and this is what they do- and this is what we do because we wont sink to their level. I don't think we should sink to their level, but we do have to be smarter about the messages and the way we get them across.

[Iggo]

8. So last month it's 'quitcher bitchin', and this month it's 'all my fault'?

Lead balloon, baby.

[TwilightGardener]

9. That is to be expected--he does have to take some responsibility for

how his party does at the voting booth. I don't read anything bad into it.

[Dinger]

10. He Thinks We Should Continue With Bipartisanship?

He's kidding, I hope.

[HereSince1628]

18. Obama uses "bipartisanship" as a tonic for every problem.

It does have much broader applicability that the r's "cut taxes" reply to every problem.

It's just not very likely to happen, and at some point there just must be a distinction between compromise and submission.

[AnArmyVeteran]

19. When the hell is he going to realize a president is supposed to be a leader?

[bobbolink]

29. You definitely got that right.

However, I'm afraid the aswer to your question is "Never." :cry:

[Winterblues]

15. Big Whoop

How does that help us now? The greatest economic crisis to hit America in eighty years and Democrats treated it like a joke.. They talked like it was a HUGE deal but then they legislated like it was business as usual...To me an adequate comparrison would be if we were attacked by a foreign country and we called out the Boy Scouts. Our efforts didn't live up to the rhetoric...

[Tatiana]

16. I don't feel like we've actually tried being partisan Dems, honestly. n/t

[Matariki]

21. He needs to start taking responsibility for his accomplishments

and FIGHTING the crap that's not his fault. sheesh.

[Javaman]

24. "put partisanship aside and solve the problems facing the country."

Broken record Obama.

He really has to get over that shit.

Or maybe he's really insane. You know the definition of that right? Try the same thing over and over and each time expecting a different result.

Frankly, it's getting down right insulting.

[Jakes Progress]

25. Secret WH Meeting:

"Hey guys. This kumbya, bipartisan stuff didn't work last month."
"Yeah. It didn't work all summer either."
"And don't forget about hcr and all last winter and fall."
"Not to mentions how horribly it failed in the first achingly ass-kissing months after the inauguration.'
"Boy. This really hasn't worked for us at all."

Long pause.

"So we are all agreed? We'll try it some more."

[Lagomorph]

34. It's big of Pres Obama...

to take responsibility, but it's not really his fault.

Americans are searching for a hybrid economy & government, they just don't know it.

Our open borders invite a staggering array of diversity and with it comes a vast set of differing goals.

We need a social engine that is powerful enough to go wherever it has to, but lean enough to be affordable.

It doesn't make sense to build a government that won't survive an economic downturn. Neither the government, nor the economy fully understands the consequences of their actions, nor the impact on human lives.

We don't need an economy that doesn't need people to function, where they make more money without workers than they do with workers.

If they want to replace workers with robots, then maybe robots should pay income tax for the workers they replace.

Long ago, before the computer age, we used people to design things and crunch numbers. It was a more inclusive time. The rich weren't quite so rich, but everyone who could work, had a job.