Only nine more days. C’mon, Obama, time to get real.

If you reach out to Republicans, you’ll pull back a stump.

The Right Wing echo chamber still exists. You will have the bully pulpit. Use it.

Appoint a “special prosecutor” to investigate the eight year Bush/Cheney crime spree.

Tell Pelosi and Reid to “get on board.” You need their support. They need yours more.

Delegate people whose only job is to counter attack Limbaugh, Faux News, et al. in order to publicize and ridicule their lies.

Go for universal health care. The vast majority of Americans will back you.

Close our torture chambers.

Explain to Americans why “The War on Terror” has been a multi-trillion dollar rip off.

Make Hillary’s top priority finding a solution to the never-ending Israeli/Palestinian war.

Dump the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” bullshit. Truman integrated the U.S. military by a stroke of the pen, and against the wishes of the Pentagon. It worked out pretty damn well.

and its time to run with it. The Republican that I know are more hateful, more bitter, than ever. Still trying the old blame game and denial big time over the damage seen by Buxh!

Those I know, or who are family members, are foaming at the mouth and more rabid than ever before.

Many/most? of us despise Bush/Cheney because of what they did to us, our country and the world.

Many/most? Republicans hate Obama because he exists.

and am happy to report it is not that at all.

Peace,

have a great day

For what? Don't know if you remember or not but "Don't ask don't tell" was a huge improvement over what had been. There is no way in Hell Obama will start off his Administration on such a controversial issue like Clinton did. This dogged Clinton his entire time..While people here at DU may be sympathetic to the Gay cause most of America is not and especially the very Conservative Military establishment. The very last thing Obama wants to do is begin his Administration in a fight with the Military..

Five years later, it was no longer an issue to anyone but lunatic fringe white supremacists.

Oh, and aside from the headline "DEWEY WINS," Truman was reelected.

All I'm hearing is that Obama is going to be fixing roads and bridges for his stimulus package (and a few other things). Can't we come up with something more bold than shoveling asphalt around? Alternative energy will increase energy supplies, bringing down energy costs, resulting in lower inflation, resulting in lower interest rates, thereby alleviating the mortgage crisis and many other problems, while giving everyone cheaper everything which is even better than a tax cut we can't afford.

In fact, with greater energy efficiency and alternative energy, there would be an impact on energy futures contracts some of which extend years into the future. That is, even if alternative energy efforts don't produce immediate changes in our energy industries, the expectation of those changes will impact energy futures contracts NOW, and energy futures contracts and near-term energy prices are interrelated. That means that energy prices will start coming down NOW.

Why are we only hearing that the stimulus will include some alternative energy R & D? Why isn't the Obama plan DEMANDING alternatives and efficiencies right now by law?

Every time Detroit is asked to come up with alternatives, they say they're researching it and then the research never leads anywhere. How is the energy "research" in the Obama stimulus package different? The DLCers have taken over and are crying Chicken Little that alternative energy will wreck the economy when it could save the economy. Why is Obama hiding under the desk over this "threat to the economy"?

Didn't Obama say during the campaign that he was going to treat global warming with the same vision and energy as President Kennedy's New Frontier mission to land a man on the moon by the end of the decade? Where is that New Frontier now?

We can't tackle alternative energy and the global warming issue now?

YES WE CAN.

action on global warming and it should be near the top of his list.

Actually, there is so much that needs to be done almost immediately, you have to wonder why anyone would want to be president at this time.

that could solve so many other problems. That's what leadership is all about, to see a way out of the wilderness when others don't. Franklin Roosevelt listened to the best advice and led us out of the wilderness. Obama can do that too. If he isn't obsessed with shallow triangulation and DLC crap. If he IS obsessed with triangulation he will have squandered the first precious years of his administration. Vision is about seeing the BIG PICTURE, instead of just seeing a lot of little pictures.

not just reaching out across the aisle and listening to everybody else.

Yes, framing the formation of his cabinet as "The Team of Rivals" may have been a nice way to re-imagine the Lincoln presidency (and sell lots of books for Doris Kearns Goodwin), but now it's time to start showing some leadership and reacquaint Americans with the concept of "The Common Good". It's a much more inclusive gesture than just listening to the tired, worn-out and bankrupt rethug ideas that have taken over our government and economy and are about to take it down with a crashing thud.

Obama needs to be aware of how too many Dems on the Hill like Reid and Feinstein, to name a few, have either been threatened or bought off (or both) and given in on practically every good thing we've ever stood for as a country. "Going along to get along" mixed with triangulation and timidity is a totally naive and foolish approach (not to mention SUICIDAL).

The Opposition Party is not going to relent, give in or change just because Dems on Capitol Hill are "nice" to them. When have they done that for us? N*E*V*E*R.

It's not like Dems have been standing up to them on a consistent basis all these years. Time for a change, P-E Obama.

This can only be a win-win situation once again if we're all working for The Common Good. The alternative is to continue to give away what's left of our government and our economy (i.e., our "Commonwealth") to The Corporations.

Please STOP the hemorrhaging and DON'T "give away the store" anymore!!

Might I add that a "team of rivals" was also something utilized to an extent by President Kennedy. Both Kennedy and Lincoln were assassinated. There is much evidence that among those in the JFK conspiracy were people right in his own government, including people he hired. He chose the more conservative, and Texan, Lyndon Johnson as his running mate and it has been charged that Johnson was in on the conspiracy. There is great danger in bringing rivals into your government and many of them secretly harbor wishes to undermine you. It's very dangerous. It's POLITICALLY dangerous.

Here is what Machiavelli said in "The Prince" about some of this:

Machiavelli argued for daring over caution and prudence. He argued for AUDACITY. We remember audacity, don't we? That little book called "THE AUDACITY OF HOPE"??????? What happened to audacity?

Of the cautious man Machiavelli writes (in Chapter 25) that:

"If time and circumstances change he will be ruined, because he does not change his mode of procedure. No man is found so prudent as to be able to adapt himself...because he cannot deviate from that to which his nature disposes him...having always prospered by walking in one path, he cannot persuade himself that it is well to leave it, and therefore the cautious man, when it is time to act suddenly, does not know how to do so, and is consequently ruined."

In other words if you make prudence and caution a compulsive habit, it will paralyze you and you will get run over. There has to be AUDACITY.

Here's some of what Machiavelli said about the danger of embracing rivals:

In chapter 4 he speaks of how a kingdom can have a prince and his servants --- or --- a prince and barons who have their own states who recognize them as lords. Machiavelli argued that if you cede power to barons, they carve out their own fiefdom and pose a threat. Thus Machiavelli noted (chapter 4) that:

"The king of France is surrounded by a large number of ancient nobles...The king cannot deprive them without danger to himself."

Machiavelli goes on to say that this is not only a danger to the king but to the kingdom as a whole, that outside enemies find it easy to invade when there are barons who have mixed loyalties:

"It is easy to enter...by winning over some baron of the kingdom, there being always malcontents, and those desiring innovations."

Here's another relevant quote, from chapter 7:

"He who does not lay his foundations beforehand may by great abilities do so afterwards, although with great trouble to the architect and danger to the building."

And we find a similar idea in a Hassidic teaching:

Always plant a seed without a scratch, for if the initial embryo of the tree has a scratch or blemish, when the tree grows up the scratch will become a huge scar on the mature tree.

A "team of rivals" is a really foolish idea. It plants seeds that will cause huge problems and divisions and schisms and back stabbing down the road. It could disintegrate Obama's whole presidency and agenda. Especially in a huge government that is today so large that it is hard to hold together in the first place. Government was much smaller in Lincoln's day and the example of Lincoln, even if meritorious, proves little. And while President Kennedy started off with a Republican-appeasing tax cut, he had won the presidency only by a hair's breadth and there were a lot more Republicans in the Senate. Obama won massively but he is acting like he won only narrowly.

And here's another quote from Machiavelli, chapter 13:

"Men with their lack of prudence initiate novelties and, finding the first taste good, do not notice the poison within."

I fear that there is poison being brought into the Obama Administration, people who should not be trusted.

Ludicrous.

I think it's a question of activism and vigilance. President Obama encouraged us all to be involved. So we can do that right now by exerting our pressure to keep him from caving in or triangulating.

...