Joe Conason: Obama Changes the Narrative

[babylonsister]

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/obama_changes_the_narrative_20110126/

Obama Changes the Narrative
Joe Conason


snip//

The president cannot expect the Republicans to move his agenda forward during the next two years, but he can start to demonstrate why their own agenda is empty and stagnant.

In that task, he was amply assisted by the (two!) sourly partisan and negative rejoinders to his speech from the other side. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., the tea party diva, repeated the same stale talking points that always issue from her mouth when she isn’t inventing fables about our history. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., the new House budget chairman, failed again to indicate how his party will restore fiscal balance—let alone how it means to address the central questions of education, science, technology and infrastructure.

With grace and openness, Obama invited the Republicans to engage those issues, as well as the more immediate debates over health care, taxes and the budget. He reminded them and the public that Democrats stand for fiscal equity. He urged the nation’s millionaires to give up their obscene tax breaks and set forth a deal to close loopholes and lower rates if every corporation pays its share of taxes. He explicitly rejected cutbacks that would fall most heavily on the most vulnerable and offered a spending freeze far less destructive than that proposed by the Republicans.

If the true state of the Union is more perilous than Obama dared to admit, he certainly began to describe the real challenges before us—and by implication, the obstacles that can only be removed at the next election.

[realFedUp]

1. Just sayin'

Just pointing out that the other side isn't going to play
fair, wisely, or justly isn't going to get what this country
needs to do done.
You got the power Mr. O, use it. Get out the big ole
stick and move the ball down the field yourself.
We know you want to. Be the hero we think you
want to be.

[soleft]

2. Someone send this to Will Pitt so he can feel better