The President Is Not Your Boss!

Deaniac83 over at The People’s View has yet another excellent piece that I highly recommend you read. It goes a long way towards explaining a lot of the whining and hand wringing on the left over President Obama’s performance as President. The President is not the CEO of the country, contrary to what you might have heard.

Despite our strong belief that the government does not and should not operate like a business, many on the so-called “Left” seem to be suffering from the delusion that the President is a unitary executive, and can do whatever he pleases. If he really wants to do something, he can do it, the argument goes, thereby attributing anything that does not get done to the President’s unwillingness to do it, rather than legislative reality or any other extraneous factor. It allows people to flat out ignore the fact that the President is but the head of one branch of government, restrained by the other branches, as well as the Constitutional limits on his power. But the same people are also always the first to scream that any use of legitimate executive power is itself abusive!

You have heard it all before. A, B, C didn’t get done because President Obama didn’t really want to do it. Or he didn’t fight for it. He didn’t pound podium enough. He didn’t twist enough arms. He didn’t do this. He didn’t do that. If only he had gone to Maine and verbally beat the Maine Republican senators over the head, we would have the public option in health reform. If only he had issued an executive order rather than go through the legislative process, DADT would be history on Day 2 of his presidency. And I suppose he was supposed to bullypulpit and podium-pound into submission all 90 senators and the overwhelming majority of the House who voted to block the closure of Guantanamo.

Go read it and while you are there, take a look at the other great posts at The People’s View.

The GOP’s Double-D Summer – Destruction And Distraction!

   The Potomac Shore

For the last few summers, Republicans have produced summer replacement shows for our enjoyment. Like last summer, this years script was written to do as much damage to President Obama politically as possible. The plot revolves around sabotaging the economy, causing higher unemployment and distracting us all from the fact that the Republican controlled House hasn’t done a goddamn thing since taking over in 2010.  It’s one big reality show with roles for everyone. And the media is more than willing to help produce it.

Last year we had the summer of “Muslim Bashing and Gulf Oil Surfing.” The summer before that we had the “Death Panel and Koch-funded Tea Party dances” and of course in the summer of 2008, during the election, we watched the “Rev. Wright and William Ayres Summer Spectacle.”

Since the election of Barack Obama, the Professional Left has had roles in this Republican non-reality show. They are playing the role of the “supposed” friend who ends up stabbing the lead in the back, all the while claiming to be his friend – who is just trying to help. In the current debt ceiling crisis, when Democrats and liberals need to rally together to fight the Republicans who are clearly trying to do harm to our country, instead, the Professional Left is attacking the mere idea of compromise and demanding completely unrealistic outcomes.

The Professional Left are running around screaming about every proposal and leak from an anonymous source and lamenting the fact that their newly found sacred cows are on the dreaded “table.” And they do it with absolutely no acknowledgement of the dire nature of the situation or the environment that the President is negotiating in. And of course, they don’t understand that the President is using reverse psychology. The President knows that if he is for something, the GOP is against it and he’s been using it to his advantage. Idiots like Jane Hamsher and Ed Schultz don’t quite grasp that idea or simply refuse to.

The media just eats that shit up too. The story has a hostage — our economy. It has drama — we could fall into a depression. It has grandstanding and heightened rhetoric – coming out of people’s asses. It has fighting within each faction AND even a ticking time bomb. Damn, you would have thought this whole thing was manufactured for our enjoyment. And it was — except it really isn’t that enjoyable.

Anyone who is paying attention knows that the debt ceiling has never been used as a hostage in the history of our country and the Republicans have created this crisis where none existed before. This is new folks.

John Boehner told many lies the other night in his response to the Presidents address. The one that proved to me that he either doesn’t understand what the fucking debt ceiling is, or he doesn’t care about the truth was when he referred to giving the President a “blank check”. Hey moron, the check has already been filled out, we just have to mail the damn thing. Any person in the media who doesn’t call him out on that one lie should be run out of fucking town. This very purposeful attempt to mislead his ignorant supporters proves that Speaker Boehner has no moral compass and will say anything to sway his mindless followers.

This big summer distraction certainly took the media and the public’s eyes off the fact that the Republicans in the House haven’t done a single thing to help get people back to work. And it threw gasoline on the fires burning on the Professional Left and is fueling their relentless attacks on our Democratic President. I have to give the GOP credit for playing the media on both sides of the political spectrum like a cheap fiddle. Anyone who thinks the “media” cares if they were played is fooling themselves.

Cross-posted at Angry Black Lady Chronicles