Obama Isn't Kissing Ass or He's Antisocial?

WHITE HOUSE MEMO

Bipartisan Agreement: Obama Isn’t Schmoozing

“This is not a Lincoln bedroom guy,” said James Carville, the Democratic strategist, referring to the guest bedroom at the White House where President Bill Clinton put up supporters and donors. “In fact, he’s the anti-Lincoln bedroom guy. He doesn’t seem to relish, or even like, having politicians around.”

The Daily Show: Q & O

HILARIOUS! PASS THIS AROUND. ESPECIALLY IF YOU HAVE FAMILY MEMBERS WHO WATCH GLENN BECK!

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Q & O
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Obama: Tougher On Al Qaeda Than Bush

"In a matter of months, both leaders of the Qaeda-allied Taliban in Pakistan have been targeted and killed by US drone attacks. The latest was in retaliation for the murder of CIA officials in a suicide attack by a double agent who turned on the US. If you add this record - and there are many examples of similar surgical strikes decapitating Qaeda figures in the last year - to the ramp-up of forces in Afghanistan and overhaul of strategy there, I think you can make a very solid case that in the war on Jihadist terrorism, Obama is proving far more effective - in both soft and hard power - than the Bush administration ever was.

The Republicans will not concede this, because their war is not really at this point on al Qaeda. It's on Obama." - Andrew Sullivan

2 Face Politics (Twitter Style)

Here's a twitter quote from North Carolina Republican Congresswoman Virginia Foxx. Amazing. They demonize him to their constituents and then shake hands and ask for autographs. Wow.

"Pres gave us another lecture. Our guys asked great questions. Need independent fact checker for his comments. Got autograph" -Cong. Virginia Foxx on Twitter

Republican Party of No

"On every single major issue of the day, they are incoherent. They have no workable plans to insure the uninsured and no practical way to contain healthcare costs; most deny climate change even exists; most seek to prolong wars because ... er, we have to be tough; their response to the massive debt is to defend Medicare and call for tax cuts; their position on civil rights is that gay people need to go to Jesus; their position on terror suspects is to detain them and torture them, violating domestic and international law; their position on immigration is to round up millions and force them to go home.

My worry, however, is that there are enough Americans perfectly happy to live with this nihilism indefinitely, and to perpetuate the policies of spend-and-borrow and invade-and-occupy that any serious attempt to address our problems is impossible. And their response to that will be to blame all those problems on a Democratic president, if there is one; and if there's a Republican president, to simply deny that any of the problems exist at all."
- Andrew Sullivan

Obama says F*ck It!

Sometimes you need humor to get the point across. Pass it around.

A Question Of Nerve

FROM ANDREW SULLIVAN:

"The one thing the Cheneyites and Rovians have is nerve. They assert everything with utter certainty and confidence even though their record is appalling. Conservatives and liberals of doubt don't think or act that way. We are aware that we can be wrong; we try and analyze our own mistakes; we try to give a fair hearing to the other side.

This can lead to an assumption that we are wusses. Or weak. But of course the opposite is true. It is the strong who can entertain doubt and the weak who cannot. Cheney is not a strong man; he is a bully hiding his own rank moral and political and national security failure.

The whole point of the Obama candidacy - why he matters - is that he is a liberal of doubt. But he also showed in the campaign that this was a strength. And when he needed to, he revealed a ruthlessness and radicalism and won.

And that is why this moment is so vital.

He must not just rally the House Dems, he must rally the country. He must bring us back in. And we must back him up. This is not just about a centrist comprehensive health reform bill. It is about defeating an entire brand of cowardly, cynical, spin cycle bullshit that has brought this country down and promoting an adult and reasonable discourse that grapples with our problems."

Democrats Need Balls

Previewing Obama's State of the Union Address

I'M BACK! I WILL BLOG EVERYDAY! IT'S TIME TO SUPPORT THAT SKINNY BLACK MAN WE HELPED WIN THE PRESIDENCY OF THE UNITED STATES. STAY UPDATED!

FOX NEWS and THE WHITE HOUSE

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Quote of the Day (Obama related)

"I challenge any Arab leader to go to the U.S. or the West and quote the Bible like Obama quoted the Quran." — Rabah al-Mutawa, a Saudi woman in Riyadh.

Obama's Speech at Notre Dame

The Audacity Of Humility
In this world of competing claims about what is right and what is true, have confidence in the values with which you’ve been raised and educated. Be unafraid to speak your mind when those values are at stake. Hold firm to your faith and allow it to guide you on your journey. Stand as a lighthouse.
But remember too that the ultimate irony of faith is that it necessarily admits doubt. It is the belief in things not seen. It is beyond our capacity as human beings to know with certainty what God has planned for us or what He asks of us, and those of us who believe must trust that His wisdom is greater than our own.
This doubt should not push us away from our faith. But it should humble us. It should temper our passions, and cause us to be wary of self-righteousness. It should compel us to remain open, and curious, and eager to continue the moral and spiritual debate that began for so many of you within the walls of Notre Dame. And within our vast democracy, this doubt should remind us to persuade through reason, through an appeal whenever we can to universal rather than parochial principles, and most of all through an abiding example of good works, charity, kindness, and service that moves hearts and minds.

Andrew Sullivan on Obama

ANDREW SULLIVAN GETS IT!

I've learned for two years now not to under-estimate Obama. I watched from the very start of the campaign how he strategized a path to achieving his goals partly by eschewing the kinds of tactics that Washington has come to see as political skill. I think of him in some ways as the Un-Rove. Karl Rove mastered the art of petty and nasty political tactics in the South of the post-Reagan era. And he never had a solid grip on conservatism as a political philosophy or of political strategy. And so Rove today endures as the architect of the biggest and deepest political implosion since the Democrats in the 1970s. It was all tactics, no strategy; all politics, no governance. He remains the worst single political strategist of modern times.

Now look at how Obama has framed the debate since the election. Every single symbolic act has been inclusive and sober. From that speech in Grant Park to the eschewal of euphoria on Inauguration Day; from the George Will dinner invite to the Rick Warren invocation; from meeting the House Republicans on the Hill to convening a fiscal responsibility summit; from telegraphing to all of us Obamacons that he wasn't a fiscal lunatic to ... unveiling the most expansive, liberal, big government reversal of Reagan any traditional Democrat would die for.

Smart, isn't he? He won the stimulus debate long before the Republicans realized it (they were busy doing tap-dances of victory on talk radio, while he was building a new coalition without them). And now, after presenting such a centrist, bi-partisan, moderate and personally trustworthy front, he gets to unveil a radical long-term agenda that really will soak the very rich and invest in the poor. Given the crisis, he has seized this moment for more radicalism than might have seemed possible only a couple of months ago.

The risk is, at least, a transparent risk. If none of this works, he will have taken a massive gamble and failed. The country will be bankrupt and he will have one term. His gamble with the economy may come to seem like Bush's gamble in Iraq. But if any of it works, if the economy recovers, and if the GOP continues to be utterly deaf and blind to the new landscape we live in, then we're talking less Reagan than FDR in long-term impact.

It's going to be a riveting first year, isn't it?

"Obama plans regular happy hours"

GREAT ARTICLE DESCRIBING OBAMA'S DESIRE TO BE IN THE "KNOW."

You can stiff the president on a policy issue and defy him on a political one, but who can turn down an invitation to the White House?

Using one of the world’s most famous private residences as bait, President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama are unleashing a bipartisan charm offensive and exploiting every square inch of their new home to make friends and influence rivals. The social calendar suggests a return to the days of Camelot.

Since moving into their new digs, the first couple has hosted a half-dozen gatherings — from bipartisan cocktail receptions to a public open house to the more intimate Super Bowl party two Sundays ago — ending many of their days past midnight. Most recently, on Wednesday, the Obamas opened the White House doors to House caucus leaders from the moderate Blue Dog Democrats and the Congressional Black Caucus. White House aides say the couple hopes to make the Wednesday cocktail parties a tradition.

HERE'S THE REST OF THE ARTICLE: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0209/18635.html

Quote of the Day

"The president is finally toughening up, and I suppose we shouldn't be surprised that his toughening process is taking the same calculated trajectory as it did in previous battles against Hillary Clinton and John McCain. First came Obama's exhortations for reasoned debate and civilized behavior, then came the inevitable unreasonable and uncivilized assaults in retort, and finally came a reinvigorated candidate, giving as much -- and then more -- as he got. Obama is something of a robust self-contradiction, if not a living oxymoron: He is, it seems, a kind of delicate but thunderingly hardass Illinois pol," - P.M. Carpenter, Buzzflash.

"Cheney Sets Obama Up"

FROM ANDREW SULLIVAN:

He hunkers down to play the Dolchstoss card, preparing to blame the next terror attack on the Obama administration's disavowal of his torture program. It seems to me that regardless of the merits or demerits of his view, it's a remarkable violation of civil norms for a vice-president just out of power to assault his successors and all-but declare them indifferent to public safety. It's deeply divisive, deeply partisan and utterly self-serving. In other words: as cheap as one would expect. And part of what ails conservatism. Yes, they seem to be rooting for failure at home and abroad, because it would help vindicate their own appalling record on both fronts.

Think of Cheney and Limbaugh as the two centers of gravity for the current GOP. A deeply unserious and deeply disturbing pincer movement against the democratic mandate of the new president.

"President Obama is feeling nostalgic"

"The Presider"

INTERESTING TAKE FROM ANDREW SULLIVAN ON THE OBVIOUS DIFFERENCE OF ADMINISTERING POWER. CHECK IT OUT:

One impression from Obama's interactions with the Republicans and Democrats in Congress: Obama clearly sees the presidency as a different institution than his immediate predecessor. This is a good thing, it seems to me. Bush had imbibed a monarchical sense of the office from his father and his godfather (Cheney). The monarch decided. If you were lucky, you'd get an explanation later, usually dolled up in propaganda. But the president had one accountability moment - the election of 2004 - and the rest of the time he saw the presidency as a form of power that should be used with total boldness and declarative clarity.
At times, Bush's indifference to the system around him bordered on a kind of political autism. And so one of the oddest aspects of Bush's presidency was his tendency to declare things as if merely saying them as president could make them so. The model was clear and dramatically intensified by wartime: the president pronounced; Congress anemically responded; the base rallied. At the start, it felt like magic, but as reality slipped through the fast-eroding firewall of reckless spending and military misadventure, Bush's authority disappeared all the more quickly - because his so-certain predictions were so obviously wrong. The Decider had no response to this. He just had to keep deciding and asserting, to less and less effect, that he was right all along. Hence the excruciating final months. Within a democratic system, we had replicated all the comedy and tragedy of cocooned authoritarianism.
Now look at Obama. What the critics misread in his Inaugural was its classical structure. He was not running any more. He was presiding. His job was not to rally vast crowds, but to set the scene for the broader constitutional tableau to come to life. Hence the obvious shock of some Republican Congressman at debating with a president who seemed interested in actual conversation, aas opposed to pure politics. Last Tuesday, there were none of the bold declarative predictions of the Second Bush Inaugural - and none of the slightly creepy Decider idolatry. Yes, Obama set some very clear directional goals, but the key difference is what came next: a window of invitation. The invitation is to the other co-equal branches of government to play their part; and for the citizenry to play its. This is an understanding of the president as one node in a constitutional order - not a near-dictator outside and superior to other branches of government. It is a return to traditional constitutional order. And it is rooted in a traditional, small-c conservative understanding of the presidency.
If Bush was about the presidency as power, Obama is about the presidency as authority. It's fascinating to watch this deep difference in understanding slowly but unmistakably realize itself in public actions. Somewhere the Founders are smiling. The system is correcting itself after one of the most unbalanced periods in American history. But it took the self-restraint of one man to do it.

"Why History Can't Wait"

A GREAT ARTICLE SUMMARIZING WHAT I EXPECT FROM AN OBAMA PRESIDENCY. IT'S WORTH YOUR TIME.

PICTURE: ANNE SAVAGE
Made of faces from Obama rallies, Savage calls this mosaic Out of Many, We are One. It is pieced together from the faces of 5,700 people who attended the rallies she covered.

Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2008
Why History Can't Wait (LINK)
By David Von Drehle (TIME MAGAZINE)

EXCERPT:
But crisis has a way of ushering even great events into the past. As Obama has moved with unprecedented speed to build an Administration that would bolster the confidence of a shaken world, his flash and dazzle have faded into the background. In the waning days of his extraordinary year and on the cusp of his presidency, what now seems most salient about Obama is the opposite of flashy, the antithesis of rhetoric: he gets things done. He is a man about his business — a Mr. Fix It going to Washington. That's why he's here and why he doesn't care about the furniture. We've heard fine speechmakers before and read compelling personal narratives. We've observed candidates who somehow latch on to just the right issue at just the right moment. Obama was all these when he started his campaign: a talented speaker who had opposed the Iraq war and lived a biography that was all things to all people. But while events undermined those pillars of his candidacy, making Iraq seem less urgent and biography less relevant, Obama has kept on rising. He possesses a rare ability to read the imperatives and possibilities of each new moment and organize himself and others to anticipate change and translate it into opportunity

The Moral Cost Of Leaving Iraq

This will not be an easy decision. Obama has a lot of cleaning up to do. Pray for him.



FROM ANDREW SULLIVAN:
An Iraqi man weeps next to the body of a dead child killed in an explosion at the morgue of the general hospital in the northeastern town of Baquba some 60 kms from Baghdad on November 16, 2008. A suicide car bomb exploded at a police checkpoint in Iraq's volatile Diyala province today, killing at least 15 people, including seven policemen, a security official said. Police Major Hassan al-Kurawi said another 20 people were wounded. STR/AFP/Getty Images.

This must be the most heart-rending and disturbing face of the day I've ever posted. My policy is to err on the side of showing everything - from the Nick Berg beheading to the worst abuse of prisoners under the Bush-Cheney interrogation policy. We need to see the evil that we unwittingly unleashed in Iraq and the evil that will doubtless take hold the minute we leave. It is part of the moral equation in deciding what must be done now. And it is not easy. As an advocate for withdrawal, I do not want to deny the moral costs it may involve.