i do enjoy when people so emphatically exclaim that facts are not true. at any given time, the president is the head of his party. he decides who runs the party committee, and what that committee will be about. this isn’t disputable.

who else was it that pushed out howard dean and flushed all the state party building he did in 4 years? who replaced the DNC with OBAMA FOR AMERICA? who chose tim fucking kaine to be chairman? who decided to muscle out dem interest groups when they wanted a say?

>No difference between you and the tea party fellows, or Pat Robertson or dear departed Jerry or the militias.

that will be the end of your annoying little run here. go fuck yourself.

Also, we keep hearing about how it’s not clear who is the head of the Republican Party these days. Presumably, all the confusion exists because people just don’t get it that the head of the Republican Party these days is Barrack Obama?

Head of the Democratic Party?! No he is not. He is the President; chief executive for the entire country — dems, repubs, libertarians, liberals, conservatives, kooks, kikes, investment bankers, biologists, creationists, bloggers, op-ed writers, etc. etc.

But of course in your world, the dictator commands an ineffectual party apparatus —- an effete corps of nattering nabobs; sniveling sychophantic succulators. —(Other than of course few brave independent thoughtful souls like yourself). This Pres has made the Dem party scared of its own shadow. The senators and reps are so subservient to him. Obama only has to raise his eyebrows and the Dem pols get scared and quickly fall in line. Get real!

Bailouts, corruption at the highest level, torture regime. Wow!

No difference between you and the tea party fellows, or Pat Robertson or dear departed Jerry or the militias. You guys should get together and have a tea party and a bitchin’ session. You folks have lots in common —- complete absence of sense and sensibility

Meanwhile I am off to contemplate my lovely purchase. Have a nice day. Ta Ta.

Obama did what the executive branch is supposed to do.

obama isn’t just head of the executive branch, he’s the head of the democratic party. it was his order to get rid of dean and all of the organizational progress he made and trade it for the ineffectual party apparatus that has supplanted the party, OFA.

Mr. Glen Greenwald offers no substantive evidence.

it would be impossible for you to be more wrong. two comments here, loaded with nothing but the same platitudes we were forced to endure before obama was elected, you have provided nothing in the way of evidence yourself.

As examples are drivellings of Ms. Maureen Dowd on the left land Charles Krauthammer on the right.

oooh, he pissing off the left and right, he must be doing an excellent job!

The Obama purchase remains lovely!

congratulations! you own the torture regime, escalating un-winnable wars, bailouts and associated corruption at the highest levels of the administration, 10% unemployment due to premature capitulation on the stimulus, soon-to-be-flipped senate seats in CO, NY, PA, and loss of potential pickups in KS and AZ due to ham-handed political calculations, and more. it must be lovely indeed to own those things.

That makes just about as much sense as anything else you wrote.

Nothing stops folks from mobilizing their constituencies, challenging assertions made by politicians and making sure that they did not play games. Some did and some did not. Obama did what the executive branch is supposed to do. The fault dear Brutus ….

The manner in which most analysts, op-ed writers and bloggers talked about the health bill was instead apalling. Histrionics, personality attacks, posturing, faith substituted for any sensible and systematic scientific and economic analysis of specifics. That is scary.

Many more uninsured will benefit because of the hurly-burly of bargaining. It was disconcerting to see the Huffington crowd smugly sit on its haunches and disdain any dirtying of the hands or an energetic refutation of the rubbish Republicans were spouting. Instead, they found it more convenient to bitch and moan about the Pres.

Mr. Glen Greenwald offers no substantive evidence. He merely insinuates. And he is wrong. Neither does he offer any economic or financial analysis to support his insinuations that the recent policy measures are outcomes of cronyism and not really thought out efforts to stem an extraordinarily serious systemic crisis. Even worse, I suspect he has no alternative. He was clueless before and after the meltdown and he remains clueless about the rescue efforts

In addition to Bush the highlighted phrases describes most op-ed writers, bloggers and analysts on the ideological right and left, the christian evangelicals, the green evangelicals, and a host of ideologues who want us to suspend logic and reason. As examples are drivellings of Ms. Maureen Dowd on the left land Charles Krauthammer on the right.

The Obama purchase remains lovely!

1) Leave the outcome of the healthcare reform to one side. Did the way the “negotiations” were conducted make you “more than ever pleased” that you decided to purchase Obama?

2) How do you respond to the issues raised in the Glenn Greenwald quote?

3) It’s all very well to say “not because … he is different than Bush”. But out of the set of recent presidents and presidential candidates, who else do the highlighted phrases describe if not Bush?:

It is downright dangerous to have as a President a person who thinks he has a monopoly over wisdom and that rhetoric and faith overrides logic and reason. Certitude of convictions without reflection, without logic, without analysis of evidence, and disdain for views of people who think differently is the hallmark of the ideological right and left.

4) When you keep talking about the “ideological left” in the context of buying Obama as a presidential candidate, which other candidates are you thinking of?

I bought him because unlike the ideological left or the right he was willing to bring in logic, evidence, thought, determination, steadiness of purpose and a realism. It is downright dangerous to have as a President a person who thinks he has a monopoly over wisdom and that rhetoric and faith overrides logic and reason. Certitude of convictions without reflection, without logic, without analysis of evidence, and disdain for views of people who think differently is the hallmark of the ideological right and left. Both the ideological left and right show faith behaviors identical to believers in “intelligent design”.

Natura non facit saltum. And good governance is about aggregating competing and often conflicting interests. Good governance is about seeking maximum good for maximum number of people. Good governance is recognizing that steady incremental progress creates a lasting and substantive change; much more so than dashing bravado that ignores reality.

Obama has shown that he has a vision and that he has the courage to persist in pursuing that vision step by step. So, a year later I am more than ever pleased that I decided to purchase Obama.