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from an article about obama's monday primetime speech.


...Critics say Obama seems oblivious to the fact that there is little chance a major tax hike will be approved by Congress.

“It was a speech entirely divorced from reality,” said Jennifer Rubin, in her “Right Turn” column in Monday’s Washington Post. “The Senate Democrats can’t pass tax hikes. The grand bargain can’t get through the Congress with jumbo tax hikes.” Rubin asserted that “you have to wonder” why the President would continue the tax hike argument when it has been off the table for weeks.

“He’ll face the flood of ‘President Capitulates!’ headlines when it doesn’t come about,” Rubin asserted. “But the answer lies in the sole and consuming passion of this White House: reelection. Hence, the class warfare and the excuse-mongering.”

Charles Krauthammer, political columnist for The Post, saw it the same way, saying, “It’s his Campaign. 2012. He warned, I think it was Eric Cantor in one of these meetings, ‘I will take it to the country.’ That’s what he’s doing. This is campaigning.”

John Podhoretz, writing for Commentary, expected Obama’s speech to presage a budget deal.

“It wasn’t a bad speech. It was a glaringly ineffectual speech,” wrote Podhoretz. “And it adds to the growing impression of the Obama White House that threatens the president’s reelection chances now more than anything else: The impression that he simply doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

After budget discussions reached an impasse last Friday, congressional leaders, for the most part, took the issue upon themselves and began hammering out various plans without Obama, albeit in separate rooms. As a result, Monday saw a flurry of activity, as the nation was able to pour over the finer details in each one. That did not sit well with the White House and most likely played a large role in the president’s request for airtime.

Rubin asserted, “President Obama’s decision to give a speech tonight was proof that things have not gone well for him. He threw [another] tantrum in the Friday news conference, he turned down a bipartisan deal presented to him Sunday and thereby took himself out of the limelight.”

“Tonight’s speech was not intended to ‘solve’ the impasse but to make sure Obama would get credit if a deal is struck and avoid blame if it is not,” Rubin added.

Critics say pulling independent voters aboard again is an even more difficult challenge than keeping the few remaining with him. These voters began abandoning Obama’s ship in 2009 when the president talked more about healthcare than the more relevant issue of jobs and the economy.

Because of that pressure from the left, the White House has been reluctant to agree to any concrete plan that reduces spending by encroaching on the “Big 3” entitlement programs of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, though these issues are of interest to independents.



and another article.



I was struck by these sentences in President Obama’s speech:

    Now, what makes today’s stalemate so dangerous is that it has been tied to something known as the debt ceiling – a term that most people outside of Washington have probably never heard of before.

    Understand – raising the debt ceiling does not allow Congress to spend more money. It simply gives our country the ability to pay the bills that Congress has already racked up.

Consider the condescension implicit in the president’s statement—“a term that most people outside of Washington have probably never heard of before.” These “people outside of Washington” are not little children being lectured on an obscure subject by a worldly adult. These people outside Washington are ... citizens. Judging by the polls, most of us have opinions about whether, and under what conditions, the debt ceiling should be raised. We don’t seem to be as ignorant as Obama thinks we are of the term or concept of a debt ceiling. But the president assumes we’ve never bothered our pretty little heads about such a thing.

And he doesn’t want us to start bothering our pretty little heads about it now. So Obama instructs us as to what the debt ceiling is. He claims that “raising the debt ceiling does not allow Congress to spend more money.” That statement might be true about a rise in the debt ceiling that would take us only through the rest of the current fiscal year, for which funds have already been appropriated by Congress. It is simply not true about the increase Obama is asking for, which is designed to cover the next fiscal year and a bit more. The fact is, Obama’s $2.4 trillion increase (a number that never appears in the speech) does precisely what Obama says it doesn’t: it “allow Congress to spend more money.” It is not the case that Obama’s debt ceiling hike “simply gives our country the ability to pay the bills that Congress has already racked up.”




and another.



Pundits across the political spectrum agree: President Barack Obama has committed a series of strategic blunders during debt-ceiling negotiations that have hurt his credibility on the issue, they say, leaving him out in the cold as Congress cuts a deal.

On Monday, Obama took to the airwaves during prime time once again to try to position himself as the voice of moderation on the issue.

“Either way, I have told leaders of both parties that they must come up with a fair compromise in the next few days that can pass both houses of Congress — a compromise I can sign,” Obama said.

But despite the centrist focus that the president is counting on to help him win back disaffected independent voters, he appears to be taking a serious drubbing in the polls. The Gallup weekly average shows his approval rating slipping to 43 percent, tying the lowest weekly number of his presidency.

Even worse numbers arrived for the administration Tuesday, courtesy of a new ABC News/Washington Post poll that suggests even the president’s base is jumping ship. The percentage of Americans angry about the economy has jumped from 44 percent to 60 percent.

Among liberal Democrats, support for Obama’s job-creation efforts has crashed from 53 percent to 31 percent. Almost 60 percent of voters now disapprove of Obama’s overall management of the economy, according to that poll.

“More than a third of Americans now believe that President Obama’s policies are hurting the economy, and confidence in his ability to create jobs is sharply eroding among his base,” reports the Post.

How much the debt-ceiling talks have contributed to the deterioration of the president’s standing with voters is an open question. But New York Times financial columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin reports that analysts are turning a deaf ear to the administration’s drumbeat warnings of an impending financial doomsday.

“They have lost all credibility,” Neil M. Barofsky, former inspector-general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, told Sorkin. “It’s so typical of the way Treasury and the Fed treat everything — it is always to warn that Armageddon is coming.”

It now appears that Obama is out of options, his only choice being whether to sign whatever debt-ceiling deal Congress sends him, or risk shutting down the government.

Pundits from the left and the right are criticizing the president for continuing to call Monday night for a “balanced approach” involving both revenue increases and spending cuts. Neither of the two plans under consideration — the “cut, cap, and balance” plan passed in the House and the plan that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid proposed in the Senate — has any provision to increase taxes.

    He transparently painted doomsday scenarios to try to pressure Congress into making a deal he liked. His suggestion that Social Security checks might not go out, for example, never appeared probable under any scenario. Obama warned again Monday of dire repercussions, despite the collective shrug Wall Street has given the impasse so far. “We would risk sparking a deep economic crisis, this one caused almost entirely by Washington,” he said.
    Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s Aug. 2 deadline for normal government funding to cut off was never verifiable. Sorkin reports that “the market seems to believe it was a false deadline.” PIMCO chief Mohamed El-Erian has declared, “The Aug. 2 deadline is not as hard as indicated by Secretary Geithner.”
    The president repeatedly portrayed House Republicans as intransigent. But the White House reportedly agreed with Speaker Boehner to a deal including $800 billion in new tax revenues, then subsequently upped the ante and demanded $400 billion more. “The White House negotiating process was inadequate,” New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote Tuesday. “Neither the president nor the House speaker ever wrote down and released their negotiating positions. Everything was mysterious, shifting and slippery.”
    The president’s histrionic speech on Friday, in which he portrayed himself as being “left at the altar” by Republicans, appears to have backfired. “Obama never should have gone in front of the cameras just minutes after the talks faltered Friday evening,” writes Brooks. “His appearance was suffused with that ‘I’m the only mature person in Washington’ condescension that drives everybody else crazy.” After those remarks, Brooks said, Democrats and Republicans decided to take over and work around rather than through Obama, and began negotiating with each other directly.
    Throughout the budget and debt-ceiling crisis, Obama appeared to approach the issues more as a politician trying to protect his maneuvering room, rather than as a leader presenting a plan in a bid to persuade others to come on board. This ultimately left the resolution of the crisis up to Congress, while Obama stood on the sidelines and lectured both sides on what they should do.

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Yeah Obama's being hit hard about that pathetic speech.  I think the guy lives in a bubble.  It appears that he doesnt realize that most of the country is against raising the rate of spending.  He's also notoriously thin-skinned and apparently throws little tantrums during negotiations.

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starting to get a little pissed with the tea party members as well. many are showing themselves to be just as inflexible and ideological as those on the far-left. seems there's a lot of naivety there. i get that they wanted to go to washington to change business as usual, and i support them in that vital effort. however, with a minority in the government, you can't transform washington in one election cycle, nor can you solve all of our fiscal issues under a state of duress. doing so would take years of legislation and long term planning, even with a majority. while i do feel that something is going to come out of the house, i also feel that the tea partiers have played their hand long enough. if they continue to play it, they're virtually letting obama off the hook for his dismal performance and complete failure to lead. they need to stop worrying about winning 2011 and start focusing on the battle that matters in 2012.

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I agree.  And its why I'm not a Tea Partier at this point.  I think most have noble goals, but some are libertarians and they scare me as much as liberal progressives.  

seems like its a balancing act that is needed in Congress.  I admire the GOP for not caving in to the demands of Obama and the Progressives.  But I'd feel better if BAchman would not go on tv and say 'Never' to raising the debt ceiling.  I dont want the ceiling to be raised either, but if you can cut a deal where they promise to cut dollar for dollar...and if you can trust em to do it, then raising the debt ceiling might be ok for a short period of time.

We really need a balanced budget amendment and I understand the Dems are terrified of that.

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here's the thing. because of this administration's failure to lead on economics, we keep running into these deadlines, and everything is crafted hastily, leading to unintended (or intended) side effects. this just isn't the way to run a government. think about it. he and the democraps didn't even bother to pass budgets the first two years of admin. and how long have they known this debt ceiling deadline was coming up? and how long did they fail to do anything about that? then the republicans get the house, and literally FORCE obama to present a budget. like the next day the senate rejected his farce of a plan 93-0. that's ninety-three to zip. so then the republicans and the crats in congress - just like with the debt ceiling debate - have to come together to eek out a last minute deal. right? immediately after this, obama was again compelled to issue the formation of the simpson-boles committed, which upon the release of its findings, was completely put on the shelf and ignored by this president. so again, here we are, at the last minute, throwing together some piece of crap legislation that tries not to offend TOO many people, so they can squeek by. it's ridiculous.  and just you wait; when a deal is done, obama will try to absorb the credit. completely insane!

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let me say this. i'm more frustrated with the process itself, than anything else. without the tea party members, we wouldn't even be having a dialogue based on how much to cut. there would be no cuts, as obama wanted a clean increase, and even before that with his laughable budget that even his own party voted down. and i also feel that up until now, the house republicans have done a good job of trying to exercise as much leverage in this deal as possible. as long as they understand that in the end, they DO NOT want to be seen as the ones standing in the way. the media is already pushing that narrative enough as it is. this isn't the big battle. the big battle comes next year.